Seeing Songs

No, not 'singing songs', SEEING songs. What a great idea for an exhibit! Below is a link to the website artdaily.org and to the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) in Boston MA. They have an exhibit up and running in the museums Foster Gallery from July 1st to February 21, 2010. After reading the exhibits review I was reminded of my college days. I'm pretty sure the assignment to draw a picture based on a song that your art professor gives you is a staple of the undergraduate fine arts curriculum, despite its commonality, its teaches a pretty damn good lesson! Bring the idea of art to music, or music to art, at the high school or lower school levels, art teachers repeatedly see and use music tied into art throughout their teaching. Lessons based on Kandinsky or Matisse and jazz, Pollock's action paintings and painting to emotion (what better and motivator, or should I say companion to action paitning than music?), Keith Harings break dancing inspired sculptures, and lest we forget Greg Percy's 'Songs in the Key of Art'. Even 'body sculpture' where students move their bodies into groups of living sculpture based on the rythm and tempo of the music being played is a popluar mainstay of a cross curriculum between art and music. I think some of the best artworks come from musical inspirations, and I'm sure if you asked musicians, some of their best songs were probably inspired by some form of visual art. The author of the review put it well by saying that the visual artists turn "something arbuably intangible into a visual form". What's a better way to study and learn about the artistic process than that?


http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=31957&int_modo=1

http://www.mfa.org/