Leonardo Reviews Posted July 2020

Leonardo Reviews is pleased to announce this month’s reviews posting.

Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity
by Melanie Schiller
Reviewed by Beate Peter

Planet of the Humans
by Jeff Gibbs, Director; Michael Moore, Executive Producer
Reviewed by George Gessert

Was Kandinsky a Synaesthete?

Take a look at  Dyedra K. C. Just‘s paper “Was Kandinsky a Synaesthete? Examining His Writings and Other Evidence,” which examines a subject also examined by Amy Ione and Christopher Tyler  in their paper “Was Kandinsky a Synesthete?
Below is the abstract for the D. K. C. Just paper:

Wassily Kandinsky is widely regarded as one of the most prominent examples of a synaesthetic artist. However, in the scientific literature there is disagreement on the genuineness of his synaesthesia. This paper investigates whether Kandinsky had inborn synaesthesia, while acknowledging that there are also types of induced synaesthesia which he may have cultivated. As these two types of synaesthesia are seen to work additively in some synaesthetes and not to be mutually exclusive, this is not seen as an argument against the view that he was a true inborn synaesthete. Whether Kandinsky was a synaesthete is examined through a detailed study of his primary writings (e.g., On the Spiritual in Art, Point and Line to Plane, and Reminiscences), in light of the modern diagnostic criteria. The experiences described in those writings indicate that his synaesthetic perceptions were genuine and inborn and not just a theoretical endeavour. Given the genetic dimension of synaesthesia, this view is further supported by the fact that Kandinsky’s uncle Victor Kandinsky also described having synaesthetic experiences.

Continue reading “Was Kandinsky a Synaesthete?”

Notre Dame Cathedral Reconstruction

An American art historian, Andrew Tallon, a late professor of art at Vassar College, created a spatial map of Notre Dame using more than a billion laser-measured points in an effort to better understand how medieval Gothic architecture was built. His digital model will immensely aid restoration efforts because it details precisely what the church looked like before the fire’s destruction. This painstakingly project, performed in 2015, offers a perfect digital replica of the Gothic structure that could help architects and engineers rebuild it after the April 15-16, 2019 fire.

Full article

Location of Johannes Vermeer’s “The Little Street” discovered

New research in the archives has made it possible to pinpoint the exact location of Johannes Vermeer’s world-famous ‘The Little Street’. The Rijksmuseum has an exhibition on the discovery.

See https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/vermeers-the-little-street-discovered