Swing Music (Louis Armstrong)

Arthur DoveWW-1938-016259

1938·Emulsion, oil, and wax on canvas·44.8 × 65.7 cm (17 5/8 × 25 7/8 in.)

<p>Arthur Dove used abstraction to interpret musical subjects in works such as <em>Swing Music (Louis Armstrong)</em>. Louis Armstrong was renowned in the 1930s for his gravelvoiced singing and virtuosic trumpet playing. Dove, who often listened to popular music while he worked, translated the fast syncopation, joyous rhythms, and improvisational elements of Armstrong’s swing music into paint. Here, the artist rendered patches of red that erupt across the canvas, leaping out of darker areas as if to suggest the blare of a horn across a nightclub.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1938
Medium: Emulsion, oil, and wax on canvas
Dimensions: 44.8 × 65.7 cm (17 5/8 × 25 7/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Arthur Dove

Artist

Arthur Dove

Painting

Arthur Garfield Dove was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations, to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes. Me and the Moon from 1937 is a good example of an Arthur Dove abstract landscape and has been referred to as one of the culminating works of his career. Dove made a series of experimental collages in the 1920s. He also experimented with techniques, combining paints like hand mixed oil or tempera over a wax emulsion as exemplified in Dove's 1938 painting Tanks, in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

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