Monday, December 17, 2007

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEETHOVEN



Well, he's not exactly an illustrator, but I simply can't let the great man's birthday go by without tipping my hat in respect.

The illustrator Robert Fawcett studied Beethoven's notebooks and found their thematic notations surprisingly similar to an artist's conceptual sketches: they are both "notations of plastic linear ideas."



Fawcett said that abstract drawing "is probably as close to music as drawing can come." Enjoy these handwritten manuscripts as abstract art.




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

From afar, his notations look a little like Ralph Steadman's drawings. Happy birthday, Ludwig Van...

RJ said...

Hmmm... musical notation as art... makes me think of John Cage.

Here's a link to a page from one of his scores:

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/
assets/img/data/2785/bild.jpg

David Apatoff said...

Thanks, rj. Very interesting.

lotusgreen said...

it reminds me of japanese calligraphy

Catherine A. Moore said...

I like pieces like this that blur the line between different types of art... they're finding solidarity in the sketch quality Beethoven used while writing music, not so different from an illustrator's sketch quality.