Art As Music, Music As Poetry, Poetry As Art, from Whistler to Stravinsky and Beyond

In 1877, Ruskin accused Whistler of a€?flinging a pot of paint in the publica€?s facea€?. Was he right? After all, Whistler always denied that the true function of art was to represent anything. If a painting does not represent, what is it, other than mere paint, flung in the publica€?s face? Whistlera€?s answer was simple: painting is music a€“ or it is poetry. Georges Braque, half a century later, echoed Whistlera€?s answer. So did Braquea€?s friends Apollinaire and Ponge. They presented their poetry as music too a€“ and as painting. But meanwhile, composers such as Satie and Stravinsky were presenting their own art a€“ music a€“ as if it transposed the values of painting or of poetry. The fundamental principle of this intermedial aesthetic, which bound together an extraordinary fraternity of artists in all media in Paris, from 1885 to 1945, was this: we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of art in another medium. Peter Dayan traces the history of this principle: how it created our very notion of a€?great arta€?, why it declined as a vision from the 1960s and how, in the 21st century, it is fighting back.

Peter Dayan is Professor of Word and Music Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His influential book Music Writing Literature, from Sand via Debussy to Derrida (Ashgate, 2006) showed how, since the time of the Romantics, poetry has been creating a space which music needs, and vice versa. All his more recent work, on 20th-century writers, painters and composers from Julio CortA!zar to Igor Stravinsky, has revolved around the question of why art in any given medium so compulsively defines itself as if it were in a different medium a€“ and how this intermedial round actually provides a surprisingly resilient definition of art itself.