The Cathedral

Here Kupka combined his interests in architecture and music, which he had been interested in since his early youth. It was in France where he became inspired with the architecture of Gothic cathedrals, especially with what he called in his book 'their vertiginous musicality'. The more rhythm there is in a work of art, the closer it approximates music, the art of sounds... Architecture, whose symmetrical alternation corresponds most closely to musical beats, is according to the situation a hymn, sonata, gavotte, or symphony…'. Kupka also describes the coloured windows that probably inspired this picture: '…as far as the colour purple is concerned, it is necessary to take into account the oscillating speed of red with regard to the speed of blue. In the church of Saint Germain-L'Auxerrois, on three windows behind the main altar there are meandering borders of blue and red of fairly equal area. Up close the blue was dominant. But from a distance, these borders were not purple, as one might think they would be, but they would seem red. The blue gets lost on the way…' I love this painting for its tension accomplished with diagonals. It is so raw!