Towards a Synaesthetic Modernity

Towards a Synaesthetic Modernity

Wesleyan University
The Russell House
350 High Street, Middletown CT 06459

Saturday, March 29th, 2008. 9:00am - 6:00pm

This symposium examines the practical and conceptual exchanges between different artistic media—and painting and music in particular—in European art between 1860 and 1910. Revising existing narratives that equate modernism with the purity and isolation of each artistic medium, this symposium focuses on the historical formulation of three concepts: synaesthesia, the Gesamtkunstwerk, and the idea that all arts aspire to the condition of music. While there has been a recent surge in scholarship related to these three concepts, the existing literature examines each one in isolation and normally within a specific national framework. Synaesthesia is most often associated with the writings of Charles Baudelaire and French modern art; studies of the Gesamtkunstwerk most often focus on Germany and the reception of the philosophy and music of Richard Wagner; while the elevation of music as a dominant art form has most often been discussed within the context of English aestheticism. This symposium seeks to make an original contribution by examining the inter-relationship between these three models of artistic interaction and by weighing their respective importance to the history of modernism.

The related exhibition "Music and Modernism in the Graphic Arts, 1860-1910" at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, organized by Clare Rogan, will be open from Friday, March 28 until Sunday, May 25.