Fantastic visions and cosmic rhythms: how Whistler is making me see – and hear – differently

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, Fantastic visions and cosmic rhythms: how Whistler is making me see – and hear – differently, A new exhibition at Tate Britain includes canvases titled after symphonies and nocturnes, but the inspiration flows in both directions. Plus, how Felicity Lott led me to an epiphany Comparisons between music, painting and sculpture have never quite rung true for me because you’re talking about fundamentally opposed ideas of what the experience of art is all about. A painting can be experienced in a second’s contemplation or an hour’s, but a piece of music, be it symphony or sonata, has to be journeyed through for just as long as the performance lasts. And yet, the week the James McNeill Whistler exhibition opens at the Tate in London (here’s Jonathan Jones’s five-star review ), I’m having to reconsider. Whistler was profoundly influenced by music, a connection that goes so deep that the results aren’t only aesthetic but visceral, in the fabric of the form and expression of his pictures a

Context

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What to watch

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Source

Primary source: Fantastic visions and cosmic rhythms: how Whistler is making me see – and hear – differently via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.