WASSILY KANDINSKY

Happy Birthday to Wassily (Vasily) Kandinsky. The celebrated Russian painter and innovator was born on this day in 1866. Kandinsky's work went through an interesting transformation between the turn of the 20th Century and the 1920s, when he moved away from representational imagery to explore Constructivist and Suprematist ideas to create early abstractions using delineated shapes and overlapping planes. His interest in expression brought him to the Bauhaus in 1922, where he explored the psychological and spiritual effects of colors and forms. According to an article in the Telegraph, Kandinsky apparently had Synaethesia, a condition that enables a person to experience sounds, colors, and words with multiple senses at the same time. You can see a timeline of Kandinsky's work at the Guggenheim here. Image below: Composition 8 (1923). Learn more: Painting Music (NY Times), Birthday tribute at the Independent, Bauhaus design at The Met, The Bauhaus UNESCO World Heritage Sites here, Art at Bauhaus.

MOMA ON MUSIC

A new exhibit opened at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in November that focuses on the aesthetic connections between music and visual art and design. The scope of the collection is quite impressive, spanning designs for sound equipment, live hall spaces, sheet music, commercial design and graphics, as well as instruments themselves. Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye was curated by the Department of Architecture and Design and will be up through November 1, 2015. Official description from MOMA: "Music and design- art forms that share aesthetics of rhythm, tonality, harmony, interaction, and improvisation- have long had a close affinity, perhaps never more so than during the 20th century. Radical design and technological innovations, from the LP to the iPod and from the transistor radio to the Stratocaster, have profoundly altered our sense of how music can be performed, heard, distributed, and visualized. Avant-garde designers- among them Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Lilly Reich, Saul Bass, Jørn Utzon, and Daniel Libeskind- have pushed the boundaries of their design work in tandem with the music of their time. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, Making Music Modern gathers designs for auditoriums, instruments, and equipment for listening to music, along with posters, record sleeves, sheet music, and animation. The exhibition examines alternative music cultures of the early 20th century, the rise of radio during the interwar period, how design shaped the “cool” aesthetic of midcentury jazz and hi-fidelity culture, and its role in countercultural music scenes from pop to punk, and later 20th-century design explorations at the intersection of art, technology, and perception." More details here. As a music fan and musician, I hope to make it to the exhibit. I image they included a number of graphic scores, which I'd love to see up close. And as a record collector, it must be thrilling to see the various designs for LP jackets and players. Promo image below: Radio by Hiroshi Ohchi, 1954. Ohchi (2008-1974) was a prominent designer and art director of IDEA magazine. Related posts: my visit to SFMOMA to see the Dieter Rams design show here, 8-Track Museum, Vintage Vinyl, London HMV. 

DAVID BYRNE MOVES

We continue our spotlight on David Byrne today with two videos that feature his interest in bringing strong elements of movement to his music. Byrne's career has included ties to modern dance, perhaps most notably with his compositions for The Knee Plays (Robert Wilson's experimental opera with Byrne, Philip Glass, and Gavin Bryars), and The Catherine Wheel with Twyla Tharp. Mainstream audiences got a glimpse of Byrne's own quirky movement choices in the official video for Once in a Lifetime (1980), the classic Talking Heads track made in collaboration with Brian Eno. The piece was co-directed by performer and choreographer Toni Basil (Antonia Christina Basilotta), who also choreographed Crosseyed and Painless, David Bowie and Bette Midler tours, as well as films like American Graffiti and That Thing You Do. Once in a Lifetime rose the bar for video art in the 1980s and is exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. Post continues below.

David Byrne re-explored his work with Brian Eno for a 2008-2009 performance tour, which included the integration of modern dance by Noemie Lafrance, Annie B. Parson, Sonya Robbins, and Layla Childs. The production was recorded on film by David Hillman Curtis and released on DVD/Blu-ray in 2011. One of the most exciting sequences (below) is their rendition of Houses in Motion. In his 2011 interview with Helen Jack (The Quietus), Byrne said, "Well, in talking with the choreographers we all realised that it was really important to integrate what they were doing with the dancers with the rest of us. So in rehearsals they first worked with the dancers and then there was time spent to bring the singers in, to involve the three singers, to impart some of their movement and then me – to see how much I could be involved with what they were doing. And as the tour went on, I realised, for example, that Stephen [one of the dancers] plays guitar and sings so I thought OK we're going to add you to the band on some numbers and then we had the dancers singing on one number. We can blur the lines between what 'department' you're in.

"Although I'd seen these choreographers work before I realised that the world of contemporary dance is a kind of rarefied world which tends to have a very small audience. But we discovered that putting some of that stuff in more of a pop music context changed it and made it more accessible, made it seem a little less rarefied and took a way a bit of the fear factor, the 'I don't know what this is about.' It just kind of makes it all mush together and everybody goes 'Oh! This is a music concert, I understand that.' but as far as the feeling of humour mixed with dread and the kind of light and dark and balancing those elements - [long pause] I think we were just kind of lucky that way – the choreographers, dancers, band everybody kinda sensed where that balance might be – not to go into complete silliness and not to let it go too dark for too long." Related post: David Byrne St Vincent. 

ATOMIC ART

The impact of The Bomb on popular culture in the post-war era was a strange cocktail of fear and fascination. The 1982 documentary film The Atomic Cafe illustrated a trend in the US to transform this weapon of mass destruction into a cartoony, Sci-Fi mascot. Diners enjoyed Atomic Burgers and shakes, and the space-age fashion designers in the 1960s popularized new styles born from a fear of radiation. The influence of Cardin, Rabanne, and Courreges is even felt today in Retro Futurism. But while we enjoy the creative reactions to the Atomic Age and Cold War, it's important to keep a weary eye on the dark realities behind the artifice.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto created a conceptual piece in 2003 that presents a running timeline of every nuclear bomb explosion on earth between 1945 and 1998. Hashimoto's "1945-1998" (also called "2053" based on the number of bombs used/tested) takes the form of a digital world map, where each detonation is represented by colors and sounds arranged by country. The piece begins slowly as the timeline ticks forward, but soon the bleeps build to a cohesive pattern of sound reminiscent of early Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). To transform such data into an art experience is interesting- and even entertaining- but Hashimoto also succeeded in sending an ominous message. We might look back on the Atomic Cafe culture as a quaint period in our naive evolution since WWII, but viewers shouldn't be fooled by a false sense of security. Maybe Ian Fleming's warning of a "little man with a heavy suitcase" has thankfully not come true (ref: Moonraker/1955), but the radiation from our own nuclear testing (and power plants) is all too real. Fukushima may seem like a world away to many readers, but the crisis in Japan continues to unfold with dire details. More about Hashimoto at ctbto and Wired. Below: "1945-1998" by Isao Hashimoto. 

The music group DEVO satirized many elements of post-war culture and values in the 1980s. Readers might recall the leak of president Ronald Reagan's 1984 ill-conceived joke on NPR: "We begin bombing in five minutes." Cold War anxiety was alive and well! DEVO's iconic radiation outfit is available on their with the ad: "Protect yourself from dangerous human elements and stay cool during meltdowns in this official DEVO yellow suit." If you're asking why this parody is still relevant, these T-shirts (top picture) were available from the official Museum of Nuclear Science recently. See also the Atomic Testing Museum. 

Below: A recent Kraftwerk performance of "Radioactivity". The song was originally released on their 1975 album Radio-Activitivity (Radio-Aktivität). They have re-recorded it a number of times over the years and their Japan performances since the 2011 earthquake have included Fukushima in the list of nuclear disasters. Founding member Ralf Hütter has been leading a new line-up of Kraftwerk on a number of world tours to present 3D concerts at major museums like MOMA and the Tate. 

Learn more at my Spy Vibe blog: Cold War Comics, Atomic Platters by Bear Family, Fear and Fashion. Above: Fireball Atomic Candy. This spicy jawbreaker was introduced to children in 1954.