Mozart accompanies the video, please turn up your volume. Thank you!
Six years ago at the MOMA exhibit: “Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925”, I was quite taken with Duncan Grant’s “Abstract Kinetic Collage”, painted in 1914. I didn’t know anything about it, I just loved its15 feet of beautiful abstract color panels. I guess Duncan’s painting was always in the back of my mind, because when I found a 5”x8” moleskine fold out book I nabbed it is a perfect travel art project. With some pens and watercolors it weighs almost nothing. What you see on the video is the result of three vacations of doodling, often inspired by environments. Costa Rica,
Canadian Laurentians, St. John Virgin Islands.
After I finished all the pages and decided to put it to music, I looked up Grant’s painting again. It is a different piece, collage, with beautiful color rectangles and squares. I learned that in fact he had conceived of this work of his as “visual music”. He never carried it through, but his intention was to put it on a scroll, accompanied by the music of Bach. Having no grounding in the academics of art, I had no idea of the coincidence.
Canadian Laurentians, St. John Virgin Islands.
After I finished all the pages and decided to put it to music, I looked up Grant’s painting again. It is a different piece, collage, with beautiful color rectangles and squares. I learned that in fact he had conceived of this work of his as “visual music”. He never carried it through, but his intention was to put it on a scroll, accompanied by the music of Bach. Having no grounding in the academics of art, I had no idea of the coincidence.