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At the beginning of the twentieth century, many artists wanted visual art to be more like music. The idea may have developed from a late 19th-century longing for a “total work of art,” which combined several art forms. This talk will look at how music of various kinds, from classical to modern experimental to jazz, influenced and inspired certain Modernist artists. In honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, the prime examples of music-loving artists will be Bauhaus teachers and painters Paul Klee (a musician as well as a painter), and Wassily Kandinsky, who talked about the color of sounds.

Laura Mueller has strong interest in both the visual arts and literature. She holds a B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.A. from the University of Chicago in Comparative Literature; she also studied art and art history in Venice with New York University’s graduate program in Italy. Laura worked for the Art Institute’s Department of Museum Education from 1987 to 2017 and is currently offering lectures on art to the museum’s associate groups, among others. Laura began lecturing for the Road Scholars program of the Illinois Humanities council in 2017. She teaches private drawing and painting classes, in addition to teaching drawing for the CLL program of the 4th Presbyterian Church in Chicago. She has also created and taught a host of new classes for the Art Institute’s Members’ Sketch program. Laura has been an Art Institute study leader on trips to Europe, lecturing on sites around the Adriatic, Holland and Belgium, Germany, the prehistoric caves of southwest France, and Normandy and Paris.