Gene Davis: Hot Beats at the SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

Veröffentlicht am 06.12.2016

James Kalm is in Washington DC for the holidays, and makes a pilgrimage to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to take viewers on a stroll through “Hot Beats”. “This selection of fifteen classic stripe paintings by Gene Davis from the 1960s reveals the ambitious vision and accomplishment of one of Washington, D.C.’s outstanding visual artists. A number of the paintings are nearly 20-feet-wide…and have not been seen publicly in decades due to their huge size.” As one of the most recognized painters of the “Washington Color School” Davis reduced his format to simple stripes, yet the visual weight, tone, intervals and rhythm of the paintings, might equally be applied to music, specifically, jazz. It’s with this notion in mind that your correspondent decided to present this video without commentary, and only a musical accompaniment by the renowned Jazz Collective. This program was recorded November 25, 2016 in Washington D.C.