Music and Painting
Colourful Songs of Nature
A song is sleeping in all things,
As they dream on and on,
And if you find the magic word
The world begins to sing.
Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857)
Music has accompanied mankind for thousands of years. With music we express our joy or sorrow, we dance to it and we go to war with it …
There is the music which has been composed, which can be heard by everyone and which everyone can sing. But there is also another kind of music which is inside us, inside all things, which only we can hear and feel. This is the point where poetry, music and painting meet.
Attempts have been made to portray music not only acoustically, but also visually. A whole therapeutic direction is concerned with the connection between music and visual arts which aims at the discovery of the self, at triumph over difficulties, and which wants to help you attain emotional freedom …
Art is the manifestation of the attempt to portray the harmony which is inside everything around us, which is important to us, and which is inside ourselves. The ancient Greeks strove for harmony, religions all over the world strive for harmony. Eichendorff calls this harmony “The Song in all Things”. This song may be in the threatening thunder of the approaching storm or in the roar of the towering waves in a stormy sea, but it may also be in the peaceful evening, in the tiny little flower or in the smile of a child.
To make people aware of this essence of all things, artists use all kinds of ways, often also alienation of generally known standards. Thus, not only Joseph Eichendorff, but every artist hopes that he can pass on the magic word he found, that also others can hear the song …
Some of the pictures of the exhibition were linked to music which has actually been composed and which everyone can hear, others want to show the inner song which – according to Eichendorff – sleeps in everything.
Jutta Legien-Vaya Athens, December 2013
Jutta Legien-Vaya’s Exhibition “Colourful Songs of Nature”
Jutta Legien-Vaya is a person of a great variety of interests, broad knowledge and intensive engagement in philanthropic activities. Painting becomes her personal refuge and simultaneously the continuation of a long family tradition, through which she obtains her first training. She continues to study with different artists in Canada, Germany and Greece acquiring practical abilities in numerous painting techniques and themes
With the exhibition “Colourful Songs of Nature”, JuttaLegien-Vaya presents paintings divided into separate units. She expresses her multiple spiritual dimensions through works of abstract character.
The artist uses tonal values of color in order to interpret tones of classical music, i.e. units of time, using the dynamics of multiple lines of potential perspectives. Sometimes the sounds turn into huge flowers and materialize the inner music of our being, reflecting our spiritual and emotional impressions. Sometimes she describes the phenomenon of aurora borealis, as the painter Frederic Edwin Church did already in 1865...
Aurora borealis is the Northern light and aurora australis the Southern light. It is a natural phenomenon, a light on the sky that is visible in the Arctic and Antarctic respectively. In Latin, “aurora” mean sunrise, and she was the Goddess of dawn. In Greek mythology she was called “Eos”, and she was the sister of the Sun God, depicted rising from the sea or crossing the sky with her wagon.
In the Middle Ages people in Europe believed that the Northern light was a “sign of God”. The “Dance of the Spirits” was connected with different superstitions. As people say and as has been proved scientifically, the Northern light can produce sounds like clapping of the hands, which derive from the sun particles, and when you hear them it is a special experience in life.
With her Northern lights, JuttaLegien-Vaya creates sensual pictures, depictions of dream landscapes of a nostalgic romanticism. The pictures evoke a strong feeling of atmosphere, a feeling of autonomous open space, with a strong unexpected contrast through the use of a dark melancholic sky.
Diffuse shining and dynamic light beams throughout the picture express the dream of eternity. Semi-transparent and light masses of thick white or half-white lower layers stress the role of light reflection and create an unrealistic dimension.
The vanishing point which attracts attention results in a thematic perspective beyond the borders of the picture. Smooth and even brush strokes lead to clear, shining forms with vague borders. The color and form combinations allow for multi-dimensional horizontal, vertical and diagonal interrelations.
With a variety of thin tonal changes between cold and warm colors the phenomenon is represented in a realistic way, whereas through the intensity and clearness of the colour a symbolic dimension is reached.
The “Planets”, as a language of colours,derive from a central, dark mass and spread over the whole surface. Nuclei of clear colour float and swing into the vacuum.
With the abundant use of colour and the resulting, intentionally random forms the artist expresses her emotions as well as universal meanings. Tonal values emphasize her works, and an aesthetic communication and theoretical dialogue with the onlooker is developed.
The “Flowers” are vigorous, of intense colour and intoxicating fragrance. With strong expressionism, often in an abstract style, JuttaLegien-Vaya manages to portray the essential. Sometimes the flowers resemble patches of undefinable forms and sprawl on each other.
The theme spreads over the whole canvas and creates a uniform, expressive image. With sparkling spontaneity, JuttaLegien-Vaya creates works of great dimensions which exude energy and dynamics and speak an exuberant, expressive language.
The ideas for the space paintings are only recognizable in connection with the world of nature. The strong impact of the paintings is based on the cognition of nature.
“Art does not show the visible, but art makes visible” (SchöpferischeKonfessionen, 1920), maintained the great painter of the 20th cent. Paul Klee, wishing to stimulate our awareness while simultaneously denying to depict what already has a form in the outer world.
A piece of art works like music. They follow parallel and autonomous worlds which touch the real world in a mystic way and correspond with our feelings.
Painting correlates with chamber music. It sees the invisible, hears the quietness and feels the movement of things. The colours, lines and forms make a musical journey. The colours become sounds, the sounds colours.
The relationship between painting and music is intrinsic. Music, in combination with other arts, represents creativity and arouses intense states of inner development while mobilizing mystic sensations.
Music symbolizes harmony, and many cultures use it for prayer. The harmony of the music is controlled by mathematical laws. Numbers are universal standards of creation, symbols of perfection and thus the existence of divinity.
Sound is the invocation of creation. In many mythologies, creation begins with a sound, and in several civilizations and religions, Gods evoke various tones through their existence which imitate the wind or the sounds of animals, and they own musical instruments, like Apollon his harp.
Sound can bewitch, like the song of the sirenes, or it can destroy, as with the walls of Jericho. Music can be full of meaning, and in connection with verse it can lead to individual epiphanies.
The musical compositions, especially of the 19th cent., use musical elements in the style of painting, with the possibility of discovery and experiment. Klee maintained that the musical order of Bach and Mozart was more complete and perfect, and simultaneously in his paintings he introduced the basic element of music, time. Thus, within painting, there is a fourth dimension, time, as the common element with music.
The works of art by Jutta Legien-Vaya seem to correlate with works of music. The correlation of her works with music, the identification with them and the inspiration through them transform her paintings into narrative allegories which depict the emotional universe.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory
And tomorrow is today's dream.
Kahlil Gibran – Der Prophet
Annita Patsouraki, Art Historian Athens, December 2013