Wagner Plays to the Gallery: Suzanne Bosman examines a survey of visual artists influenced by Wagner’s work

Review of Donald A. Rosenthal, Richard Wagner and the Art of the Avant-garde, 1860–1910 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023).

November 2024, Volume 18, Number 3, 94–6.

In his book Richard Wagner and the Art of the Avant-Garde, 1860–1910, Donald A. Rosenthal describes an encounter between the composer and the Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin. When Wagner proposed in 1880 that the artist should design the sets for Parsifal, the following exchange between the two men reportedly occurred:

Richard Wagner: So you don’t seem to understand much about music?

Arnold Böcklin: More, I hope, than you understand about painting, dear Master.