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Frantiek Kupka (1871-1957), Disks of Newton (Study for "Fugue in Two Colors"), 1912, Czech, active in France. Oil on canvas. 100.3 x 73.7 cm. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (http://www.philamuseum.org/), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, New York/ADAGP, Paris, France.

The modern Czech painter Frantiek Kupka (1871-1957) aspired to do in color what Johann Sebastian Bach had done in sound: create pure form. Nothing so grand as a Mass or a chorale perhaps, but something more akin to a fugue, something in which the music becomes its own subject. Traditionally, from Giotto to Picasso, painting had always begun with an object and then, based on the artist's creative vision, the object was translated to a two-dimensional surface. The object could be imitated, duplicated, edited, distorted, but the picture always maintained its origins . . . [Full Text of this Article]

M. Therese Southgate, MD