Visual Improvisation: James McGarrell and the Art of Jazz
Special exhibition now on display at IU Art Museum
In conjunction with its annual "Jazz in July" concert series, the Indiana University Art Museum is presenting "Visual Improvisation: James McGarrell and the Art of Jazz" from now through Aug. 6, in the Special Exhibitions Gallery. The exhibition features 18 works on paper, including the complete suite of lithographs comprising the artist's Two Part Inventions portfolio (shown in its entirety for the first time at the museum) and a major painting in the artist's oeuvre, the four-panel Travestimento. Two other important paintings by the artist will be on view in the museum's first floor Gallery of the Art of the Western World.
James McGarrell's "Surf Piece for Four Hands," 1977. Color lithograph on paper. IU Art Museum, Gift of the artist in memory of Diether Thimme, 78.39. ©James McGarrell.
One of the most influential figural painters of the postmodern movement of the 1980s and 1990s, James McGarrell is an artist for whom music, particularly jazz, is both a passion and an inspiration. An Indianapolis native who was born in 1930, McGarrell taught painting on the IU School of Fine Arts faculty from 1959 until 1981. The artist's musical obsession dates back to his days as an IU undergraduate (B.A. 1953), when he hosted a popular student radio program and hitchhiked more than 830 miles to see a show in a New Orleans dance club. A serious music aficionado, McGarrell was one of the earliest collectors of New Orleans jazz, and some of the recordings that he made in the early 1950s are now considered cult classics.
Interested in showing active figures, McGarrell frequently includes musicians in his work. However, as Nan Brewer, the exhibition's curator, notes, "These depictions are not meant to be portraits of famous people, but rather sensory memories of his own experiences. As such, the performers are often juxtaposed with incongruent visual elements, creating a dreamlike effect." McGarrell calls this fictionalized approach to image making, "inventive reality."
McGarrell also incorporates the language of music into his artistic process, as he harmonizes discordant visual elements and uses pictorial geometry as a "ground beat" in his work. His method is as swinging, freewheeling and improvisational as those of his jazz counterparts. He is particularly interested in phrasing and structural intervals, much in the same way that a composer works in movements. In the Two Part Inventions portfolio, McGarrell riffs on a single theme by creating five different inventions based on the same composition and then further improvises on these variations. When viewed as a whole, the series plays out in a syncopated rhythm.
The Indiana University Art Museum's "Jazz in July" concert series is entering its 16th year. Taking place on the museum's outdoor sculpture terrace each Friday evening in July, these free concerts have been a venerable Bloomington summer tradition and draw crowds that average 500 people per concert.
About the Indiana University Art Museum: With collections ranging from ancient gold jewelry and African masks to paintings by Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, the Indiana University Art Museum is located on 7th Street in the heart of the Bloomington campus. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon until 5 p.m., and now features the redesigned Angles Café & Gift Shop. The Art Museum is closed on Mondays and major holidays. All exhibits are free and open to the public.
