Braque’s “Homage to J. S. Bach”

Braque, “Homage to J S Bach,” winter 1911-12. Oil on canvas, 21 1/4 x 28 3/4″ (54 x 73 cm). Link to MoMa image

Final week considered one of my college students chosen to put in writing about Georges Braque’s “Homage to J. S. Bach” for his or her weekly task. I believe that this portray is intelligent in a number of other ways, together with how the signature of Braque appears to even be a witty reference to the similarity between the artist’s final identify and the final identify of the well-known Baroque composer.

Braque contains musical instrument or references to music ins a number of of his work, and he himself was a gifted musician who performed the violin, flute and accordion. So it’s unsurprising that he would create an homage to one of many best Western composers, who occurred to be a personal favorite of Braque. And I believe that Bach’s polyphonic musical compositions, which current dominant musical motifs at by means of completely different layers of devices and voices, parallels that manner that Cubist work current the identical objects by means of a wide range of fragmented views. The assorted innovations of Bach additionally parallel how Braque sought to create variations of comparable topics all through his profession. The Philips Assortment weblog has a put up, “From Bach to Braque,” which takes the evaluation even additional by declaring that weaving collectively of voices in a Bach fugue provides a way of construction, line, and structure in Braque’s portray.

In keeping with the MoMA website, Braque “thought musical devices added a tactile dimension to the visible picture: ‘The distinctive characteristic of the musical instrument as an object, he stated, ‘is that it comes alive to the contact.’” Maybe, as a painter, he felt a disconnect together with his work as a result of he didn’t bodily contact them within the creation course of, since he used a paint brush. In that manner, music may bridge the hole of physicality. And I believe that the musical subject material provides an additional layer of expertise that goes past the spatial explorations of Cubism, by including visualization of the aural expertise of listening to music.