Fugue

Georges Valmier was a French painter whose work encompassed the great movements in the modern history of painting: Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstractionism. He designed sets and costumes for theater and ballet, and models for fabrics, carpets, and other objects. Importantly, Valmier was also a professional musician, and performed the works of Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, and Satie at major concerts.

Valmier’s Cubism was part of a second wave of Cubism after 1910. Cubism was, in part, an artistic response to Einstein’s 1905 paper setting forth his Special Theory of Relativity. Cubism was intended to show not merely different perspectives, an equivalent to Einstein’s “frames of reference,” but also to introduce the passage of time into a static work of art. The artform most associated with time is, of course, music. This was Valmier’s advantage: as a musician, he had a more sophisticated sense of time than other artists. Cézanne's conception that the cube, the sphere, and the cone can depict all of nature is similar to the concept of musical notation, in which a few symbols can describe all of music. Valmier could speak both languages equally well.

As Valmier's work became more abstract, he developed his ability to paint the abstract elements of sound and divisions of time. Wassily Kandinsky, an amateur musician, was inspired by the possibility of marks and associative color resounding in the soul.  This idea was originated by Charles Baudelaire, who felt that all our senses respond to various stimuli, but that the senses are connected at a deeper aesthetic level. 

While Valmier’s other works are not as overtly musical as Fugue, his well-developed sense of time and rhythm comes through in all his works.

- Clinton Pittman

P.S. Speaking of art and music connections, check Candy's list of songs inspired by visual art!