Shostakovich (1969-1981)
| Shostakovich | |
|---|---|
Shostakovitch 3rd Symphony Opus 20
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| Artist | Aubrey Williams |
| Year | 1969-1981 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Subject | The quartets and symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich |
Shostakovich (1969-1981) is a series of thirty oil paintings by Aubrey Williams. Each painting in the series is based on a particular symphony or quartet by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whom Williams regarded as "the greatest composer of [his] time".
The Shostakovich series grew out of an intense involvement with Shostakovich's work that extended throughout Williams' adult life. Williams first heard Shostakovich's music (Symphony No. 1) as a teenager, when he was studying for an agricultural apprenticeship in Guyana, and the experience had a dramatic effect on him. In 1981 he described how hearing the symphony's finale had made him realize "a sonic connection with a new wellspring of this state of human consciousness we call ART"; and in 1987, he recalled that the music had "hit [him] really hard" in a way that had "profound visual connotations" and that made him "feel colour".
By 1969, Williams had been living and working in London for seventeen years. Following an initial period of excitement and artistic success, he had come to feel increasingly "isolated" and "exiled from the art world". It was at this time that he began immersing himself in a "wild unknown world of sound" and working on a "visual expression" of Shostakovich's music. From 1970 onward he spent large amounts of time each year working in studios in Jamaica and Florida.
In the first five years of working on the series, Williams experimented with different systems of notation: first a formal system, then a system based on colour-notation. He subsequently abandoned the idea of notation completely, but remained, in his words, "lost in a miasma of structural rendition". Shostakovich's death in 1975 prompted further reconsideration and intensified his pursuit of an approach that was more attuned to the "rich humanity and surrealistic mystery" of Shostakovich's work. The final series was created between 1980 and 1981.
Williams described Shostakovich as an exploration of "common concerns and perceptions in our work". In particular he stressed his admiration of Shostakovich's "world aesthetic" which was "open to all forms of music he heard" including jazz, Indian music and African drumming (he noted, for example, the presence of Samba in Symphony No. 11). He also regarded the series as an effort to find the "right connection" between music and painting - a problem that he thought had not been solved "even by Kandinsky".
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