Swing Music (Louis Armstrong)

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.