Composing “Symmorphies”: Chromatism, Astral Vision and Music of the Spheres in František Kupka’s Cosmological Modernism

The concepts of chromatism in music and musicality in colour were vital for achieving what František Kupka called “compenetration” in his composition of “symmorphies” – symphonies of colour and sound in painting that were able to vibrate with major and minor chromatic modalities and sing in major and minor keys. Simultaneously conscious of what he called “the influence exerted on artists by the new sciences”, particularly radioactivity, x-rays, and the fourth dimension alongside Henri Bergson’s L’évolution créatrice, as well as occultism, Theosophy, and neo-magnetism, Kupka explored not only the vital part played by electromagnetic fields in generating this rhythm but also how his “symmorphies” could act as, in his words, “living magnetic or electromagnetic fields”. By unravelling this complex confluence, this chapter will endeavour to reveal the cosmic significance of chromatising music and musicalising color in Kupka’s “symmorphies”, and the mesmeric roles that rhythm and harmony were designated to play in his cosmological modernism in generating an evolution of consciousness, if not “superconsciousness”.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in Art, Music, and Mysticism at the Fin-de-siècle: Seeing and Hearing the Beyond on 29/07/2024, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781032145662