Singing Red: Topstukken van James Ensor, Rik Wouters en Jules Schmalzigaug (KMSKA)
Adriaan Gonnissen
KMSKA & Hannibal, 2026
€34,95
What if colors could sing? What if colors could be seen, but also heard?
Singing Red takes the reader to the heart of Belgian modernism, where color creates spectacle, vibrates, and resonates. In the paintings of James Ensor, Rik Wouters, and Jules Schmalzigaug, pigments are not silent matter, but musical forces: vermilion red that screams, blue that clatters, yellow that blares, and green that resounds.
This book sketches a compelling cultural history of color as sound. Drawing on artists’ letters, art criticism, poetry, music, and philosophy, this publication illustrates how modern artists and thinkers—from Charles Baudelaire and Vincent van Gogh to Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Scriabin, and the Futurists—searched for synesthetic connections between seeing and hearing. The ‘singing red’, a metaphor borrowed from Schmalzigaug, serves as the guiding principle for a broader reflection on expression, emotion, and modernity, ranging from modern masters to old acquaintances such as Peter Paul Rubens and Henri De Braekeleer, as well as Adolphe Monticelli, Willem Paerels, and Jean Brusselmans.
This publication coincides with the exhibition *Singing Red: Masterpieces by Ensor, Wouters, and Schmalzigaug*, running from April 11, 2026, to August 30, 2026, at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). IN DUTCH! AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH UPON REQUEST
ISBN: 9789493416994
