Arthur Dove used abstraction to interpret musical subjects in works such as Swing Music (Louis Armstrong). 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.
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.
Ann Lee Morgan, “Arthur Dove: Life and Work with Catalogue Raisonne” (Associated University Press, 1984).
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of CHicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 117.
New York, An American Place, Arthur G. Dove: Exhibition of Recent Paintings, 1938, Mar. 29–May 10, 1938.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, One Hundred and Thirty–Fourth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1939.
New York, An American Place, Arthur G. Dove: Exhibition of Oils and Temperas, Apr. 10–May 17, 1939.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Tenth Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting, June 13–July 14, 1940.
Washington DC, Phillips Collection, Arthur Dove: A retrospective, Sept. 20, 1997–Jan. 4, 1998; Whitney Museum of American Art, Jan. 15–Apr. 12, 1998; Addison Gallery of American Art, Apr. 25–July 12, 1998; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Aug. 2–Oct. 4, 1998.
Washington, DC, Hirshhorm Museum and Scultpure Garden, Visual Music, 1900–2005, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Feb. 13–May 22, 2005, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, June 23–Sept. 11, 2005 (Washington, DC only).
Art Institute of Chicago, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, June 5–Sept. 18, 2016; Paris, Musee de l’Orangerie, Oct. 15, 2016–Jan. 30, 2017; London, Royal Academy, Feb. 25–June 4, 2017, cat. 15.
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, New York; bequeathed through Georgia O’Keeffe to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.
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