The Singing of Statues: How Art Sounds

Abstract

Silent figures placed in a landscape seem to silently speak to and for our condition. A static sculptural group in a museum or gallery may seem full of violent sound, but that sound is inside us, as a response to what we see. An art exhibition can leave sonic echoes in the minds of many who visit it. We use a case study of Brueghel’s painting, ‘The Hunters in the Snow’ to demonstrate the capacity of a two-dimensional work to attain an auditory dimension in the mind. Wassily Kandinsky saw a direct link between sound and colour, while photography is considered as a medium for transmitting imaginative sound. We examine the role of public art. An image is a fixed moment, sound is temporal.