with supporting excerpts from What Does Colour Sound Like? Kandinsky and Music
In, L. (2020, April 28). Rothko and Mozart - Simple Expression of Complex Thought. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHjAwH1yPds&ab_channel=ListeningIn
Review
I’ve never really thought much about modern art, but it goes without saying that I admire the colours Rothko used. He took using colour and the colour field to a whole other level. His paintings look minimalistic. But are rather, a not so simple expression of the complex thought. Rothko’s compositions are known as what are called as colour field paintings. These are these really immersive and vast canvases of colour. Colour that both pulls you in and pushes you back.
Mark Rothko had a lot of major influences, and one was music. Mozart’s music. Music and colour actually share more similarities than you think. This translates into the definition of synaesthesia. Looking at colours and hearing music is a very good example of synaesthesia. When asked what he heard on looking at Blue Monochrome (1961), Ahmir Thompson, aka Questlove said “That sound of a single note…. a very low range b-flat, like what you would hear in a sunken place”. Listen to How Questlove Learned to Love Silence which I have linked below from A Piece of Work by MoMA, a podcast hosted by Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson. It’s pretty neat.
“That sound of a single note…. a very low range b-flat, like what you would hear in a sunken place”.
I coupled the main video with excerpts from the second because I think they complement themselves quite well. So, the next time you look at a painting ask yourself “What can I hear? or “What does this sound like?”
Excerpts from What Does Colour Sound Like? Kandinsky and Music. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xDnxkzQtdI&ab_channel=ListeningIn
Blue Monochrome.1961, Yves Klein. MoMA
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer with Questlove. Photo: Stephen Lovekind/Getty Images
How Questlove Learned to Love Silence from A Piece of Work by MoMA
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