In this time of multiple crises in our world, how important is music to you?

Your daily dip into rhythm is what, or WHO?

Are you haunting a forbidden “nightclub”, streaming Pandora, listening to NPR’s classical stations, iTunes, Prime Music, or making requests to Alexa? Maybe plugging into your personal favorites from your ear buds, old vinyls, CDs on your 80’s boom-box, or just your trusted car radio?

Who is HOT? Bob Marley, Billy Holiday, Bach, Mahler, Pavarotti, The Grateful Dead, George Beverly Shea, Cool Daddy, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, Prince, Michael Jackson, John Prine, Duke Ellington, the Beatles???

 OR are you making your own?

We all know that music brings joy and levels emotional extremes. It can energize your soul and feed your rhythms, and allow you to escape. It is a script, in a way, that silences those nasty outside voices.

Music calls us to be present whether listening to another’s or making your own. Music is an experience in another realm.

So, how does an artist paint music?

Don’t you love this painting?

Breathtakingly fresh.

Large and bold forms.

It has a beat.

And energy that makes the sheet music dance off of the stand.

AND the broadcasting power of RED.

A RED PIANO. (and bench)

This is not Elton John.

It has to be JAZZ

And it is likely that there is a little Matisse influence here. Agree?

It’s 1943.

This is “The Music Lesson” by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), gouache on paper, New Jersey State Museum.

Lawrence was a powerful spotlight in the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of art, music, and culture that was birthed by “the Great Migration of the Negro from the segregated South in search of a better job and a better life.”

The most vibrant planet in 1920s America was the “Broadway of the North”, Harlem, including the Apollo Theatre, the Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn,  and multiple jazz clubs and cabarets –  urban, sophisticated, avant garde, dreamy and addictive.

This triumphant period and site, lasting into the 1940s, broke all barriers and norms of racial lines.  

Look closely at the painting.

The RED piano, the flattened and compressed space, the simplified and yet powerful figures, the magically emphasized piano keys, the performance we see and feel, and the sheets of music that bounce and jive on and off of the piano.

Vibration.

Besides the strength of the colors, and the power of the forms, and the body languages of both figures, one authoritative and one submissive, this painting also holds us captive, a familiar family scene, especially today, as so many parents are “home-schooling”.

AND that may included piano lessons, like it or not.

Who do we see here? a father, teaching his son?

Why do you think that?

Not a piano teacher?

There is an intimacy here, comfortable and believable, strong and true.

A little intimidation, too?

You can eavesdrop on this conversation, right? 

“Listen to this…”; ‘let me show you”…. “you do it THIS way”….

Go ahead – tap your foot – it is hard not to!

Lawrence was known for truth in his work – whether illustrating the struggle and plight of the African American migrating north in his “Great Migration” series (1940-41), held half at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and the other half at the Museum of Modern Art in New York or his descriptions of everyday life – the city, recreation, the home, or the greater family of church and community.

Lawrence’s appeal defies race and clearly IS race. His works are classically modern, crisp, vibrant, readable and this one, heartwarming.

His work is described as “semi-abstract”, meaning representational shapes that eliminate illusion, modeling, tonality and tradition.

He is a straight shooter. Keep it simple and direct.

 He “nails” the humanity of family and country and his love of music.

Lawrence died in 2000.

He was the first African American represented by a NY gallery, the Downtown Gallery in Greenwich Village.

Lawrence’s first teaching job was at Black Mountain College. He went on to teach at The Arts Students League, Pratt, Skowhegan School and the University of Washington for 15 years.

He married Gwendolyn Knight, a painter, in 1941.

Lawrence said: For me, a painting should have three things – universality, clarity and strength.”

And now taking a look at his Parisian counterpart – and a probable influence.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) also loved music, and played the violin.

His son, Pierre, played the violin, his other son, Jean, played the cello, and his daughter, Marguerite played the piano.

The theme of music appears multiple times in his art as instrument and as dance.

One of his most well known paintings is “The Piano Lesson”, 1916, oil on canvas, 8’x7′, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Like Lawrence, Matisse uses his family as models in many of his paintings. This is his son, Pierre.

And this is Matisse’s home in Isny-les-Moulineaux.

Survey the painting.

What else do you see?

As usual, Matisse is giving us a little exhibit of his other work – a sculptured figure from 1908 at the left bottom.

You also see a small candle, and a metronome.

The piano seems to be in a room with a balcony, a view of a garden, an arabesque grill on the balustrade, an open window, and an attentive female figure in the background, sitting in a tall chair.

Who is she?

Madame Matisse, Amélie?

or a piano teacher.

Matisse is also bragging a little.

If you notice, the piano reads PLAYEL, and these pianos were the standard for taste and sound in Paris, Paris and family made, respected and proper, found in the finest and most cultured homes.

Matisse implies that the study and practice here is the Classical period, indicated by the upright posture and the metronome, a seriousness that is not casual.

This is the age of the jazz invasion of Paris. However there is no rhythm here. The painting seems to be more about the structural element of music represented by a tight design and a frozen composition.

And little Matisse, Pierre – his focus is a direct stare at the music, severe and with one eye shadowed. Frightened? Overwhelmed?, Hypnotized?

Notice the repetitions.

The shape of the metronome – how many times do you see it?

And the play of flat planes of color, not unlike Lawrences, but influenced here more by the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, but without the plane rotations.

The only softness and movement is found in the grill of the music stand and the grill of the balustrade, the arabesque feature reminiscent of Art Nouveau.

The sensual and thumping rhythms of Lawrence are tight and formal in Matisse, outlined and decorative.

There are no unnecessary details. And there were none in Lawrence.

Matisse’s style, here, could also be described as “semi-abstract” although Matisse wore many garments and labels during his career.

He was a man of order and economy.

He loved flat planes and flat color and shallow space. (Look back at “The Red Studio”.)

And in Matisse’s paintings, there is usually an autobiographical touch,  intimate and nostalgic.

Many of his paintings include music and dance. They were optimistic, playful and unsentimental.

Matisse died at the age of 84 in Nice, France.

Pierre, his son, became a well-known art dealer in New York.

Alexander Matisse, his great-grandson founded East Fork ceramic company in Asheville, NC.