My mini-exhibition highlights the relationship between art and avant-garde music. Staged in an exclusive Saturday night after-hours Toad’s event, Romare Bearden’s “Empress of the Blues” and “Wrapping it up at the Lafayette” lie hidden, unlabeled beside both works in progress and those recently completed. Musicians stand in physical isolation across the room listening to each other and spinning melodies reminiscent of late 1960s free jazz. While the dim lighting blurs the boundaries between hung works from the rising artists in attendance and those of established masters such as Bearden, the live musical improvisation illuminates their shared spontaneity.
The “Empress of the Blues” hangs eye-level in a narrow hallway between the dance floor and lower level where the old walls muffle higher and distort lower frequencies. The painting, just like the empress’s eyes, greatly contrasts its surroundings. Because of the piece’s position in the hallway, the observer must face its brutally vivid chunks of color. Combined with the unsettling soundscape, the positioning makes the viewer feel both uncomfortably out of their time and awed by the painting’s sheer beauty. Just like the female singer, deemed the Empress in a band full of men, likely felt torn between her love of jazz and her disdain for the position she held within a patriarchal society.
By the exit of the exhibition, Bearden’s “Wrapping it up at the Lafayette” evokes strong contrast between four seemingly unrelated scenes at the Lafayette nightclub. While the color schemes of each depiction are strikingly dissimilar, Bearden places musicians in the foreground that cast single feel across the entire work. The viewer may feel that the painting acts as a metaphor for the night at the after-hours event, where music brought together seemingly unrelated works of art and collections of people.
Outside the exhibition, Arnold Schoenberg’s disturbing Self Portrait stares the attendants directly in the eye, reminding of the similarities between them and their artistic works. Just as he pioneered early atonal music that can both ease and jar its listeners, Schoenberg stands with soothingly cool blue skin and a missing left ear. Artists should be mindful of the art they create, as it ultimately defines who they become.
