NARRATOR: Buoyant passages of red and fractured green-blue forms
dominate this 1918 canvas by Stanton MacDonald-Wright. On the
eve of World War I, Macdonald-Wright and fellow artist Morgan
Russell produced some of the earliest abstract, nonobjective
paintings in American Art. Their vanguard style, which Russell
coined “Synchronism,” correlated art and music, color and sound.
Part of the vibrant community of American expatriates living in
Paris before the outbreak of World War I, the two artists
believed that colors were analogous to musical notes, and that a
painterly composition was like a symphony of color and form. As
Macdonald Wright explained, “Whenever man had a desire for
heavenly intoxication, he turned to music. Yet color is just as
capable as music of providing us with the highest ecstasies and
delights.” The artist described the arrangement of forms in this
painting as being inspired by and loosely based upon a group of
figures smoking opium, including himself. In the prewar period,
many artists we