Ingres was one of the finest draughtsmen in history, and a great neo-classical painter. He was also an accomplished violinist.
At the age of 13 he was second violinist in his local orchestra, and later, when he was Director of the French Academy in Rome he played with Franz Liszt on a regular basis.
He was so proficient at his music that a new expression entered the French language, ‘un violon d’Ingres’, meaning a hobby at the level of a second career.
Music took a lot of words from art, such as tone, colour, composition, light and shade, nocturne, harmony, melody line, notes and chords; and applied them to sound, enriching their meaning.
That is where they remained.
Could we artists reclaim our words? Could we get a richer meaning to our old word, line, or tonality?
When I explored various concepts such as harmony in art, I decided to take lessons in the viola. In art “line” usually means outline, but in music it has a melodic quality, weaving in and out through the colours of the orchestra.
In the tired old arguments about whether art should be abstract or realistic, I believe that art should have the qualities of music.
Composition, harmony, chiaroscuro, attack, finish, texture, fields, transitions and edges, these are the elements that fascinate me. When in the end I found the true meaning of, for example, harmony, I found it in the visual world.
From music, I learnt that we can either play a note or a chord, and that in art, likewise, we can paint either a note or a chord or a passage.
The task of the artist? Making visual music.
The art of Ryno Swart 