Wagner & Brontë

Brontë connections can be found in the most unusual places. Sometimes the link is direct and some other times the connection is made through another artist. For instance, Richard Wagner and Emily Brontë:

RICHARD WAGNER, VISIONS D'ARTISTES.
From Auguste Renoir to Anselm Kiefer
from October 25th 2007 to January 20th 2008
Cité de la Musique, 221, avenue Jean Jaurès
Paris, France

Richard Wagner is doubtless the major composer of the 19th century, not least if we consider the huge influence he had over the artists of his time, in all artistic fields, not to mention the passionate reactions he provoked, arousing as much fanatical admiration as he did outright rejection.

This exhibition presented by the Music Museum was designed by the Geneva Museum of Art and History for the Rath Museum. It is devoted to the influence of Richard Wagner's work on the fine arts, from painting in the 1850s through to contemporary art. Although the composer is frequently associated with the symbolist movement, this exhibition demolishes the idea that there is a "Wagnerian" painting that is stylistically unequivocal, on the contrary shedding light on the diverse influences his music, his stage productions and writing inspired in several generations of artists worldwide. Thanks to exceptional loans from public and private collections, the Paris presentation of the exhibition, slightly different to the Geneva exhibition, highlights the universal nature of the preoccupation with “total artwork” taking root in the depths of legend to evoke the most intimate and unconscious spheres of being.

Wagner meets Brontë through Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión:

Visions de cinéastes
Tristan et Isolde, prélude et « Liebestod » d’Isolde
- L’Âge d’or (Luis Buñuel, 1930) 2’31
- Abismos de Pasión (Luis Buñuel, 1953) 4’48

You can watch a scene here.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights