Swing Music (Louis Armstrong)

1938

Arthur Dove
American, 1880–1946

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 263
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Arthur Dove
Title: Swing Music (Louis Armstrong)
Place: United States (Object made in)
Date: 1938
Medium: Emulsion, oil, and wax on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed bottom: "Dove"
Dimensions: 44.8 × 65.7 cm (17 5/8 × 25 7/8 in.)
Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Reference Number: 1949.540

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, Jun 13–Jul 14, 1940.
Washington DC, Phillips Collection, Arthur Dove: A retrospective, Sep 20, 1997–Jan 4, 1998; Whitney Museum of American Art, Jan 15–Apr 12, 1998; Addison Gallery of American Art, Apr 25–Jul 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, Jun 23–Sep 11, 2005 (Washington, DC only).
Art Institute of Chicago, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, Jun 5–Sep 18, 2016; Paris, Musee de l’Orangerie, Oct 15, 2016–Jan 30, 2017; London, Royal Academy, Feb 25–Jun 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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