Synaesthesia: Inspiring artists

Holly Williams released a BBC series called 'Life in colour', explores the history of synaesthesia, her own experience and also famous artists experiences of the condition. 

'This neurological phenomenon is called synaesthesia; if you don’t have it, it sounds strange, like the straining of an overactive imagination. But if you're part of the estimated four per cent of the population who are synaesthetes, such descriptions are as obvious and natural as the sky being blue and the grass being green. Synaesthesia is best described as a union of the senses; one sensory experience involuntarily, and consistently, prompts another. There are up to 70 different types – from tasting the time to smelling a symphony – although the most common involve colour.'

Synaesthesia within the music industry has become more well known and lots of famous music artists such as Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Dev Hynes and Frank Ocean have admitted to having synaestheia. 

Pharrel Williams hit 'Happy' is thought to be yellow with accents of mustard and sherbet orange. There have been a lot of reactions to the song happy, with some people uploading videos to Youtube of them painting along to the song. it seems to be common that the higher notes within the song are illustrated with the colour yellow. The brush strokes also replicate the notes within the song and the lengths of each of them, accenting the brush strokes within the painting to match appropriately. 

Wassily Kandinsky created abstract paintings representing his experience of seeing music in colour, line and form. The 1991 work 'Impression III (concert)', was inspired by a concert in Munich at which he heard some of the Arnold Schoenberg. The painting has some representational elements of the song but the vivid wash of yellow describes sound itself. Kandinsky - "Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposely sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key." Kandinsky played the cello - an instrument that, for him, evoked a deep blue, a colour he used heavily within his work. 

David Hockney is known to have sound-colour synaesthesia, but tends not to use this in his artwork very often. He does however use this in his construction of stage sets of operas and ballets because he can listen to he music of the piece he is constructing a set for and uses the colours he sees in his set designs.

French composer Olivier Messiaen, said that he didn't see colours with his eyes, but intellectually in his head. He said that if a particular sound complex was repeated an octave higher, the colour he saw persisted, but grew paler.    Olivier Messiaen presents the audience with these colours in a live performance with the aim to project the visualisation of the song.
"I realised that I also connected colours to sounds, but intellectually, not with the eyes. In fact, when I hear or read music, I always see colour complexes in my mind that go with the sound complexes."

Vincent van Gogh was known to paint not with what he saw with his eyes, but what he felt with his eyes. While the paitner was taking piano lessons in 1885, the teacher noticed that he was continually relating the sounds of the piano keys with specific colours.

Duke Ellington - “I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it’s one color. I hear the same note played by someone else and it’s a different color. When I hear sustained musical tones, I see just about the same colors that you do, but I see them in textures. If Harry Carney is playing, D is dark blue burlap. If Johnny Hodges is playing, G becomes light blue satin.”


Some other famous artists with synaesthesia:
Franz Liszt 
Jean Sibelius
Russian author Vladimir Nabokov
Marilyn Monroe