L. Kent Wolgamott: The sound of art at Sheldon

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The solitary piano note rings in the gallery, followed by a washing, waterlike sound. On one of the walls is an etching by the composer of the music being played. Nearby is one of his musical scores.  The composer is John Cage, the legendary figure in the midcentury American avant-garde. The captivating show is “Painting Music: Rhythm and Movement in Art,” the 20th annual Sheldon Statewide Exhibition. It will be on view at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery through Aug. 13. It will then travel to eight cities in Nebraska ending its run next June.

Drawn from Sheldon’s permanent collection by curator Sharon Kennedy, “Painting Music” includes work by early 20th century painters, who were trying to reproduce on canvas the feeling they found in music, and more contemporary pieces that connect with her well-developed theme.

Not surprisingly, much of the work in the show is abstract and involves a blending and clashing of line and color. Among the first artists to make the jump to abstraction was Russia’s Wassily Kandinsky, who became interested in the connection between music and art after attending a 1911 concert by composer Arnold Schoenberg.

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Kandinsky is represented in the show by “No. III, Die Kleine Welton (The Little Worlds),” a music-based piece from 1922.

But he wasn’t the only artist trying to put color, line and movement together in the first decades of the 20th century.

Using the idea of a “symphony” as its basis, American artists Stanton McDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell created a style of art called “synchromy” in which color fields bounce against each other in rhythm patterns — the first American abstract painting.

Russell’s “Synchromy” from 1925 is a gray oil that illustrates the line and rhythm of synchromy. But the gem of the show is McDonald-Wright’s “Dragon Forms,” a larger 1926 painting in which vibrant colors advance and recede and overlap each other in much the same manner as notes and sections interplay in music.

The Russell and McDonald-Wright paintings hang next to each other. But Kennedy wisely eschewed a chronological hanging of the show, putting pieces together that look good against each other. That gives the exhibition a buzz that doesn’t wear off.

But there are some historical connections that need to be made with some of the pieces.

Jan Matulka’s “Cubist Nudes” from 1918 shares some of the color schemes of synchromy and conveys movement ala Marcel Duchamp’s infamous “Nude Descending a Staircase.” He was friends with Stuart Davis, whose paintings were heavily influenced by his interest in jazz, particularly pianists Earl “Fatha” Hines and Fats Waller. Davis is represented in the show by “Detail Study for ‘Cliche’” (no date), a lithograph that captures some of the basic forms and rhythms that typify his work.

“Jazz” is the title of Romare Bearden’s 1979 photogravure with hand coloring. A depiction of a jazz band at work, “Jazz” is one of the few figurative pieces in the exhibition.

There is a strong midcentury representation in the show as well. Among the artists is abstract expressionist James Brooks, whose “U-1951” (1951) is filled with fluid lines of blue and white over gray, creating a lyrical variation with a minimum of elements.

Also from the 1950s is John Ferran’s “Red and Blue” (1954), a delicate abstraction that’s connected to Kandinsky, the music the artist heard working for L.A.’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and Eastern spirituality. That work, then, provides a natural connection to Cage, who was highly influenced by Buddhism and the idea of chance, which is incorporated into his music and into “Stages 2,” one of a series of prints using rocks, random placement and the movement of smoke.

I’m not sure I’d ever seen the Cage piece before I visited “Painting Music.” That’s one of the joys of the Sheldon Statewide shows, which often unearth objects from the museum’s collection that are rarely, if ever, shown.

For example, Victor Huggins’ “Composition,” a tiny abstract 1969 piece made of wavering, colliding lines created when the artist cut the canvas then restitched the pieces, likely won’t be seen again for years, but fits perfectly in the show. The waves in the piece are a vivid reminder that music is created in waves and its structure appears to be a musical staff.

It’s hanging next to Douglas Peden’s “Landscape #14,” another wave-filled piece that makes for a natural pairing.

Huggins and Peden are among the more obscure artists in the show. But their work contributes to the theme as naturally as do pieces by art world names, such as Man Ray, Paul Klee and Joseph Albers, whose repeating 1972 screenprint “Formulation: Articulation I” bears more than a little resemblance to a treble clef sign.

The “newness” of many of the paintings and prints, their visual pop and the challenging theme make “Painting Music” a very compelling show that not only challenges the viewer to think about  the connections between music and art but to think about the music that might be contained within each of the pieces.

“Painting Music” contains just one sculptural work. It’s called “Casade,” and it’s a music stand on which Walter McConnell has painted an image of a waterfall and “anchored” it with rope and metal weights. The music there — probably a washing, watery sound, a direct linkage to the Cage music being played in the gallery.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott cat 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.