The San Diego Museum of Art has just mounted one of the largest exhibits in the museum’s history. The topic? Art and music. Not a new topic for exploration, but a fruitful one nonetheless.
Here are some of the most interesting pieces in the exhibit for you to ponder when you visit.
Chuck Close's tapestry of Philip Glass.
Photorealist painter Chuck Close's portrait of Glass is actually a tapestry and it's pretty incredible.
All 20 works from Henri Matisse’s jazz series.
They are juxtaposed next to African textiles that are said to have inspired Matisse's series. Jazz music can be heard in this area of the exhibit.
Christian Marclay's 32-minute video "Looking for Love."
Marclay is best known for his video "The Clock," which is a pastiche of thousands of film excerpts that form a 24-hour montage, all culled from the last 100 years of cinema. "Looking for Love" has Marclay repeatedly raising and dropping the needle of a record player, searching for the moment in songs when the word “love” is sung.
John Baldessari's Beethoven's Trumpet (With Ear) Opus #127.
This is the first artwork in the show, a 10-foot sound sculpture which allows you to summon Beethoven's music by talking into the giant trumpet coming out of a wall-mounted white ear.
Jasper Johns’ Dancers on a Plane, 1979.
This work was created during the period Johns was influenced by and collaborated with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. The repetition in the work is said to reflect repetition of music as if you were dancing. A paper work by John Cage is exhibited next to Johns' work and a video by Merce Cunningham streams nearby.
A room full of band posters.
There's an entire room devoted to band posters of the psychedelic variety. The Grateful Dead is well-represented. They're all from one man's collection. Associate curator Ariel Plotek says these posters are not unlike what Toulouse-Lautrec was making for the Moulin Rouge. "We’re accustomed to thinking of those works as high art because we regard someone like Toulouse-Lautrec as a great artist of the period," said Plotek. "When we see these works, we’re really talking about an accomplishment that's no different. It's just that we're less accustomed to seeing them in museums."
Artist Tristan Perich's Microtonal Wall sound installation.
A grid of 1,500 speakers emit different pitches. Standing back from the piece and hearing the pitches in aggregate, the sound is white noise. Walk close to it and you can distinguish the various pitches. As you move along the wall, you can manipulate what you hear by moving your body.
The Art of Music is on view through Feb. 7, 2016. For a list of concerts and events related to the exhibit, go here.
