Mingus

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on March 5, 2017 at 3:41pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

Looking back through these tightly rendered and related series of portraits of musicians on sheet music, I keep returning to Mingus. A larger than life image is presented proportionally in the picture plane, and that of a man that leads with his instrument and improvisation.  The imposing presence and sound of the double bass is visually communicated in the piece.  The highlights in the bottom of the bass carry over into the figure’s garments; a visual pull is created by their connection and the trajectory of the instrument’s neck.  While I see some of the other jazz portraits as intimate in nature, and imagine them on actual printed pages of sheet music, I’m wondering if in fact this actual painting is larger in scale.  It also occurs to me scrolling through them on the site that they create a nice varied rhythm as a set as the figures are compositionally offset from center.