Looking and Listening

Looking and Listening: Conversations between Modern Art and Music invites the art and music lover to place these two realms of creative endeavor in an open dialog with one another. While the worlds of music and visual art often seem to take separate path, they are commonly parallel ones. In Looking and Listening, conductor and art connoisseur Brenda Leach takes unique pairings of well-known visual art works and musical compositions from the twentieth century to identify the shared sources of inspiration, as well as similarities in theme, style and technique to explore the historical and cultural influences on the great artists and composers in the twentieth century. For readers, Looking and Listening asks and answers: What does jazz have in common with paintings by Stuart Davis and Piet Mondrian? How did Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" impact the work of artist Arthur Dove? How did painter Georgia O'Keeffe and composer Aaron Copland capture the spirit of a youthful America entering the twentieth century in their works? What did Kandinsky and Schoenberg share in their artistic visions? Leach takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the lives of these artists and others, surveying many of the key movements in the twentieth century, from pop art to minimalism, cubism to atonalism, by comparing representative works from modern master of the visual arts and music. Leach's refreshing and innovation approach will interest those passionate over twentieth century art and music and is ideal for any student or instructor, museum docent or music programmer seeking to draw the lines of connection between these two art forms.