In Harmony
June 23rd, 2024
I don’t know if Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Erik Satie ever met. Most likely so, since they were famous at about the same time in the same place. Even though there is an age difference between them and a difference in the medium they created their own art, I am sure they were moving in the same social and artistic circles in the 1880s and 1890s in Paris. I could probably look it up, but I am not going to — sometimes it is better not to search for some specific piece of information but to use ideas created in our own minds. And it doesn't matter if those ideas are correct.
They are both very forgettable artists for me. What I mean by that is that I know about them and I know their work, but that knowledge has no bearing on my day-to-day aesthetic experiences. I appreciate their work, especially for the fact that it is so difficult to pigeonhole their output within the prevalent artistic genres of the late XIX century. Puvis de Chavannes straddles some imaginary division between academicism and symbolism with some classical technical skills added for good measure. Erik Satie sounds very contemporary — like modern ambient composers, but for me every time I listen to his Gymnopédies, I feel like being taken back to the 70s. The 1970s, that is — for a reason that is beyond my understanding.
Until today, they were quite separated as artists for me — art is art, but painting and music are very clearly separated, not only by the artistic media themselves, but also by the permanence of the end product. Painting is done the moment the last daub of paint is applied to the canvas when, in a musical composition, the music score is only the foundation laid open for interpretation with each performance. Until today, until I watched the video below — the commonality between both of them was so obvious that I felt embarrassed for myself for not realizing it sooner…
