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In a lecture, which preceded the concert of Dvorak and Mozart at
the Jacqueline Du Pre Music Building in Oxford on 30 April this
year, Rowan-Hull revealed his long-standing interest in the relationship
between the visual arts and music. He is particularly interested
in the work of artists who cultivated interlinking relationships
with other art forms. Rowan-Hull feels a particular affinity for
the French composer Olivier Messiaen who died in 1992. He is interested
too in literature and poetry, and the titles of his works often
contain literary references. The world virtuoso organist
Dame Gillian Weir, also an expert on the work of the French composer,
described Messiaen as, 'The inimitable painter of sound'.1 Rowan-Hull
describes his encounter with Messiaen thus:
I could sense the bold colour, juxtaposed shapes and fluid movement
and a similarity in thought to what I was trying to achieve as
an artist. Following further listening and reading about Messiaen
I discovered that not only did he think of colours when composing
(often indeed notating the score in terms of colour) but also
interestingly, that he experienced a joining of the senses known
now as the clinical condition synaesthesia.2
Rowan-Hull believes that he himself experiences synaesthesia, 'sounds
ring musically, colours speak', colours evoking musical tones or
tastes suggesting colours.3
We all understand descriptions of music such as brightness, colour,
texture, movement density and lightness; linking vision and touch
with sound. With synaesthetes these are not only mere metaphor.
They are real experiences. Many people have sensations of colour
associated with words, letters or sounds.4
Rowan-Hull prefers so-called discordant and atonal music composers
such as Messiaen, Charles Ives and Arvo Part and finds that the
music of these composers stimulates colour, shape and texture. In
the last 15 years, brain-imaging techniques have made it possible
to establish that synaesthesia actually exists. Historically, many
composers, artists and writers have been interested in the relationship
between art, music and the spiritual and intellectual significance
of colour.
Symbolist painters were particularly interested in synaesthesia.
Baudelaire's poetry as well as his study of Delacroix and the Romantic
artists' chromatic concerns provided considerable inspiration.5
The Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), one of the most
important pioneers of abstract art and theory, took various strands
of 19th century aesthetics (with its emphasis on synaesthesia) and
produced a comparison of the fundamental elements of one art form
with those of another. On the Spiritual in Art is one of
the most important texts for abstract art. In it Kandinsky foresaw
new 'symphonic compositions' as represented by his superb paintings
entitled: 'Impressions', 'Improvisations', and 'Compositions'. The
trumpeter of the Apocalypse, in a number of key works, reinforces
Kandinsky's references to music. He wrote:
A painter … in his longing to express his internal life
… naturally seeks to apply the means of music to his own
art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting,
for mathematical, abstract composition, for repeated notes of
colour, for setting colour in motion, and on.6
Rowan-Hull continues:
Colour has been inextricably linked with music since the time
of the Ancient Greeks who constructed a scale of musical notes
divided in seven parts on the analogy of the seven colours and
the then known seven planets. There has been much music associated
with colour, however, it was Messiaen who reached a precision
of marking single chords with specific colours, in particular
his 'Couleurs de la cité Céleste', and which remained
a constant throughout his life's work.7
The organ work of Messiaen is an important source for Rowan-Hull's
recent paintings:
… because the organ is such a uniquely visual and colourful
instrument on which Messiaen improvised and composed on his themes
of colour and religious belief. Indeed, the organ throughout history
has been associated with colour and indeed sometimes directly,
with the creation of a colour organ by the Jesuit priest Bertrand
Castel in 1743 and later Rimmington in the 19th century whose
ideas led Alexander Scriabin into using colour accompaniment in
his 'Prometheus', the poem of fire in 1908. I often feel that
playing the organ must be akin to painting a vast canvas with
[one's] back to the audience and a vast sound audible and visible.8
'Seeing Music, Hearing Colour', is the product of Rowan-Hull's
recent work that takes as its cue, Messiaen's organ work. The artist's
collaborative events, which involve Rowan-Hull painting 'live',
to the music enable the viewer to be surrounded by colour and sound
simultaneously. In 2002, he was invited to produce two large canvases
for a concert to mark the tenth anniversary of Messiaen's death,
at the Royal Festival Hall. They were painted in situ whilst
listening to the organ piece 'Messe de la Pentecôte'.
Simon Tait described them. 'Thirty feet tall their blazing primary
colours either side of the concert platform brought another dimension
to the music.' (The Times, 27 January 2004)
Messiaen himself had a great affinity with and particularly
admired the ground-breaking abstract painting of Robert Delaunay
(1885–1941). Delaunay was particularly interested in the interaction
of large areas of juxtaposed and contrasting colour. The interconnections
between colour and movement were of particular interest. Both Delaunay
and Messiaen used stained glass windows as a source of inspiration.
Apollinaire gave the name 'Orphism' to Delaunay's work, which by
1902 had developed into a completely abstract style, and exerted
considerable influence on the German Expressionists, and Kandinsky.
Kandinsky went further, from a theoretical point of view, in developing
an abstract system of painting backed up by writings on non-figurative
abstraction, alongside his philosophical views on the nature of
art, theosophy and mysticism. In doing so he established himself
as one of the most important pioneers of abstract art. Kandinsky
went so far as to suggest that synaesthesia could be produced by
exercise. 'He thought that by screening off accidental impressions,
a procedure that is the classic preliminary to mystical meditation,
one could learn to receive higher stimuli.'9
Rowan-Hull takes his cue from the fine tradition of intellectual
artists and writers who were influential a hundred years ago, and
who exerted a profound impact on the development of 20th century
painting. In his own work, Rowan-Hull sees many parallels in Messiaen's
work:
Firstly, with the translucent medium of gouache and acrylic paint
on paper. This technique often recreates the effect of stained
glass which Messiaen was so inspired by. Working with this coloured
light there is a sense of a constant meditation on the relationship
between 'the power of lightness to the powers of darkness', and
visa versa. In Messiaen's music there is always what is described
as an 'intermingled afterglow'. This is akin to what one sees
when looking intently on one colour surrounded by that of a neutral
colour and seeing the complementary colour singing out. For instance,
if one stares at a square of, let's say, a bright red surrounded
by a flat grey, the grey will start to become the complementary
colour … a light green.10
In Messiaen's music Rowan-Hull is also conscious of the processes
involved in collage, which he also uses:
Collage is intrinsic to his way of composing in that he uses
colours and indeed notates them building them up in clusters and
blocks of sound, juxtaposed with eastern rhythms and birdsong.
This creates the overall effect of a huge collage and a transgression
of the particular natural world, linking with another cross-sensual
world beyond.11
Rowan-Hull also paints to the jazz music of Miles Davis; in 2003
he produced paintings on stage during a concert.
A similar collaborative improvisation was performed at the Art
Gallery of New South Wales in 1991. Australian jazz musicians Roger
Woodward and James Morrison and artist Ken Done, performed, 'Playing
on a Magenta Reef' (1991). Although Done belongs to a different
artistic tradition (Matisse, Bonnard and Patrick Heron) he has collaborated
with his great friend James Morrison on a number of projects. Done's
abstract painting, somewhat overlooked by the Australian art world,
are created in a passionate, intuitive manner. Many of his Sydney
paintings concentrate on the visual form of the Opera House and
allude to the musical forms that he aspires to in his lyrical abstract
paintings. In 'Sydney by Night' (1995), Done actually places musical
quavers and notes on the canvas. Done explains, 'Sydney by Night'
is a piece of music that James Morrison wrote to my painting of
the same title. We did an album together, he wrote seven pieces
of music to seven of my painting.'12 In the painting 'James and
Don at the Opera House' (1995), Done refers to his close friends
James Morrison and Don Burrows, two of Australia's leading jazz
musicians. In the place of the pylons of Sydney Harbour Bridge,
Done has created musical quavers and the lines of the bridge become
a somewhat stylised musical score: 'I put James's trumpet upside
down in the top right-hand corner. The Opera House is spikey and
boppy because it was a big jazz concert they were playing and I
was trying to find the painterly equivalent of the feeling of that
particular evening.'13
Much of Rowan-Hull's recent work is inspired by the mystical, natural
and divine love inspired by Messiaen and other composers. He uses
provocative titles as a cue to the viewer as well as passages by
poets such as Gerald Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney, Douglas Dunn
and in particularly Tom Paulin, a collector and admirer of Rowan-Hull's
work. Paulin has also written imaginative and profound poetry, which
reflects, and focuses on the improvisatory and creative thought
in painting, particularly in his books of poetry such as, Walking
a Line (1996) taken from a quote by the abstract painter Paul
Klee. In Fivemiletown, (1987) he wrote, I Am Nature: Homage to
Jackson Pollock 1912-56.
and my first cry was Scotch-Irish
a scrake
a scratch
a screighulaidagh.14
Tom Paulin says that 'Rowan-Hull's work is refreshingly, "in
the moment" and that most importantly that he understands all that
Baudelaire meant by correspondence.'15
I use passages by these poets because their work is cross-sensory
to me and often becomes very visual and musical and can create
a literary link with what I want to express. For these recent
paintings I have been using a motif from the wonderful West Door
at Iffley church. When I re-examined this church, after hearing
the music of Messiaen I immediately linked the idea of the heads
becoming beaks around the door to the other worldliness and strange
ethereal quality of the Turangulîla symphony. When one hears,
eastern rhythms and unearthly sounds together with the natural
and attainable.16
'Seeing Music, Hearing Colour' is a refreshing and inspired body
of work by a young artist. It will be on show at the Barbican later
this year where Rowan-Hull will also be 'performing' as a painter
to specially commissioned new music depicting colour by contemporary
composers such as Anthony Powers and John McCabe.
References
1. Hill P (ed). Messiaen Companion. London: Faber & Faber,
1995.
2. Rowan-Hull M. Seeing Music, Hearing Colour - Pre-concert
talk given at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, Oxford: 30 April
2004.
3. Tuchman M, Freeman J, Blotkamp C. The Spiritual in Art: abstract
painting 1890-1985. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986.
4. Rowan-Hull, op.cit.
5. Tuchman, op.cit.
6. Eldredge CC. Nature Symbolized: American Painting from Ryder
to Hartley. In: Tuchman, ibid.
7. Rowan-Hull, op.cit.
8. Ibid
9. Ringbom S. Transcending the Visible: The Generation of the Abstract
Pioneers. In: Tuchman, ibid.
10. Rowan-Hull, op.cit.
11. Ibid
12. Ken Done interview with Janet McKenzie, 4 June 1998. In: The
Art of Ken Done. Sydney: Craftsmans House, 2000.
13. Ibid
14. Paulin T. Fivemiletown. London: Faber & Faber, 1987.
15. Tom Paulin interview with Janet McKenzie, 28 May 2004.
16. Rowan-Hull, op.cit.
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