DISCOVERING THE ART MOVEMENT OF SYNCHROMISM

Morgan Russell (January 25, 1886 – May 29, 1953) was a modern American artist. With Stanton MacDonald-Wright (July 8, 1890 – August 22, 1973), he was the founder of Synchromism, a provocative style of abstract painting that dates from 1912 to the 1920s. Russell's "synchromies," which analogized color to music, were an early American contribution to the rise of Modernism. In Paris, Russell met Stanton Macdonald-Wright, a fellow expatriate, in 1911, and soon after the two began developing theories about color and its primacy in the creation of a meaningful work of art. Like other young adventurous artists of the time, they had come to view academic realism as a dead-end and were pondering the possibilities of an art form that might minimize or even abandon representational content. They were particularly interested in the theories of their teacher, Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart, who believed that colors could be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony.

During these years MacDonald-Wright and Russell developed Synchromism (meaning "with color"), seeking to free their art form from a literal description of the world and believing that painting was a practice akin to music that should be divorced from representational associations.MacDonald-Wright collaborated with Russell in painting abstract "synchromies" and staged Synchromist exhibitions in Munich in June 1913, in Paris in October 1913, and in New York in March 1914. These established Synchromism as an influence in modern art well into the 1920s, though followers of other abstract artists.

Your Assignment:

Using watercolors or color pencils, you are to listen to one of your favorite pieces of music and create colorful visual notes from the song. You may make this piece of art any size and you may combine watercolors with color pencils as well. Create two paintings. When you are finished make a nice photo of each painting. Crop the painting so no border or background exists.

Send your two photos of your two paintings to ihs.db@yahoo.com

You have one week to produce these two pieces of art.