The “Fan Tan Pi Pa Tu” (the traditional Chinese painting of a beautiful woman playing the lute with her backhand) captured the fleeting moment when a lady made a sudden move to play the lute with her backhand while dancing to the string music. The painting typifies the nationalization of the Buddhist painting artistry with its true-life style and lively drawing lines, thus attracting nationwide attention as a masterpiece of the Dunhuang frescoes.

As a visual artistry and an aural artistry respectively, art interlinks with music in a broad spectrum of areas such as rhythm, tempo, emotion and the artistic conception. Therefore, artists often draw inspiration from the music while music frequently adopts art as its main theme.

For ages, artists have made unremitting efforts to explore the effects of music on both the color and shape on their way to create works of art and now art history has witnessed the perfect union of music and painting. Against the backdrop of the alliance between music and paintings, a new branch of learning emerged— Music Graphics.

By Hu Zhicheng