Smithsonian Associates: Art Meets Music – A Duet of Visual Artists and Composers, Lecture 4 – The Artist as Musician, the Composer as Model

Music and the visual arts have always walked hand in hand. For millennia, artists have obsessed about how to represent music’s invisible beauty, just as composers have sought to render art’s vibrant colors in pure sound.

Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a fascinating exploration into the intimate relationship between the visible and invisible arts and how music can literally bind the arts together.

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Many great artists were also musicians. Ingres, Delacroix, Klee, and Matisse, all were passionate instrumentalists. How did their deep friendships with composers and constant musical immersion shape their art? Franklin delves into the meaning behind some famous portraits of Chopin and Paganini and considers how Matisse and Klee expressed the essential presence of music in their own lives.

British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.