The Jazz Wall

1963

Marisol (Marisol Escobar)
American, born France, 1930-2016

One of the few female Pop artists, Marisol is known for juxtaposing flat surfaces with dimensional forms, painted and collaged elements with sculpted ones, and scavenged materials with handmade objects. As she stated in 1963, “I like to make combinations that seem incongruous—wood with plaster, pencil drawing on wood—but finally I put things where they belong: a hand at the end of an arm, a nose in the middle of the face … a mouth a little below the nose.” A more thematic or metaphorical incongruity animates the monumental Jazz Wall: the work is literally silent and still while summoning the expansiveness of collaborative sound.

Status: On loan to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk for MARISOL (Marisol Escobar 1930-2016)

Artist: Marisol
Title: The Jazz Wall
Place: United States (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1963
Medium: Wood, found objects, paper, and paint on wood
Dimensions: 241.3 × 271.8 × 35.6 cm (95 × 107 × 14 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of The Leonard and Ruth Horwich Family Foundation
Reference Number: 2016.91a-h
Copyright: © 1963 Estate of Marisol

“The Fasion Independent,” Harper’s Bazaar, 96, no. 3023 (Oct. 1963), 200 (ill.).
Lawrence Campbell, “Marisol’s Magical Mixtures,” Art News, 63, 1 (Mar. 1964), 38.
lawrence Campbell, “The Creative Eye of the Artist Marisol,” Cosmopolitan, 156, no. 6 (June 1964), 65 (ill.), 68.
Louis Faurer, “Discerino Dressing,” Vogue, 144, 2 (Aug. 1964), 70, 71 (ill.), 72 (ill.), 73 (ill.).
Brian O’Doherty, “Marisol: The Enigma of the Self-Image,” New York Times, Mar. 1, 1964, p. X23.
Whitney Museum of American Art, The Friends Collect: recent acquisitions by members of the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art, exh. cat. (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1964), 16, 51 (ill. as The Jazz Band).
Grace Glueck, “It’s Not Pop, It’s Not Op—It’s Marisol,” New York Times Magazine, Mar. 7, 1965, 34, 35 (ill.), 45, 46, 48, 50.
Arts Club of Chicago, Marisol, exh. cat. (Arts Club of Chicago, 1965), n.p. (ill.).
Edward Barry, “The Art of Marisol: Intriguing Objects Fashioned of Wood,” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 22, 1965, B9 (ill.).
Leonard Feather, Encyclopedia of Jazz (in the Sixties) Volume One: The Blues, 33 rpm album (Verve Records, 1967), front cover (color ill.).
John Baur, “The Rich Turmoil of Contemporary Art: Todays art and how it got that way,” Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Apr. 23, 1967, 44 (ill.).
Nancy Grove, Magical Mixtures: Marisol Portrait Sculpture, exh. cat. (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 20.
Elizabeth T. Smith, Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain: Selected Works from the MCA Collection, exh. cat. (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2002), 68, 69 (color ill.), 348.
Marina Pacini, Marisol: Sculptures and Works on Paper, exh. cat. (Memphis Brooks Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2014), 35.
Cathleen Chaffee, Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Estrellita Brodsky, Alex Da Corte, Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Jessica Hong, Delia Solomons, Julia Vazquez, Jason Hose, and Janne Sirén, Marisol: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (Buffalo: Buffalo AKG Art Museum; New York: DelMonico Books, 2023), 24, fig. 25, 30, fig. 25 (color ill.), 262.

New York, L’Interdit, the Gotham Hotel, New York, Apr. 1, 1963–early Feb. 1964.
New York, Stable Gallery, Marisol: Recent Sculpture, Feb. 25–Mar. 21, 1964, no cat. (as The Mural).
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Friends Collect: Recent acquisitions by members of the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art, May 8–June 16, 1964, cat. 102 (as The Jazz Band).
Arts Club of Chicago, Marisol, Dec. 14, 1965–Jan. 15, 1966, cat. 17.
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Decades in Dialogue: Perspectives on the MCA Collection, Feb. 27–Oct. 31, 1999, no cat.
Montréal, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Marisol: A Retrospective, Oct. 7, 2023-Jan. 21, 2024, no cat. no.; Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art, Feb. 24-June 2, 2024; Buffalo, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, July 12, 2024-Jan. 6, 2025; Dallas Museum of Art, Feb. 23-July 6, 2025.

The artist; sold through Stable Gallery, New York, to Harry N. Abrams, Feb. 24, 1964 [According to affidavit from the artist and sales and accounts document from Stable Gallery; copies in curatorial object file]; returned to the artist, New York, Oct. 1, 1964 [letter; copy in curatorial object file]; sold through Sidney Janis Gallery, New York [via the Arts Club of Chicago], to Leonard J. and Ruth P. Horwich, Chicago, Dec. 20, 1965 [invoice from the Arts Club of Chicago; copy in curatorial object file]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, July 6, 2016.

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On loan to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk for MARISOL (Marisol Escobar 1930-2016)

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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On loan to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk for MARISOL (Marisol Escobar 1930-2016)

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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