Focus on Composition for "Jazz" and explore the Description.
Composition for "Jazz" is a gouache on cardboard, mounted on Masonite measuring 73 × 73 cm (28 3/4 by 28 3/4 inches), inscribed to the lower right 'Albert Gleizes / 15, N.Y.'
A precursor to Crystal Cubism, Composition for "Jazz" consists of broad, overlapping planes of black, white and two primary colors, yellow and red, dynamically intersecting diagonal lines coupled with circular movements. Despite its highly abstract nature, two figures emerge, one in the 'foreground' and one towards the upper center of the composition. The principal figure, to the left, appears to be playing a banjo. The treatment of the paint is erratic, brushstrokes rapidly applied, almost expressionistic in placement. The composition is dynamic, not in time, but in spatial elements. Details such as the banjo strings and the hand strumming them are delicately yet nervously rendered. Facial features are reduced to mere lines crossing an arc-shaped head. The head of the musician on the left is poised vertiginously on top of a man's body, as if disconnected, balanced somehow in unstable equilibrium. The lines, arcs, colors, and brushstrokes are together juxtaposed seemingly at random, as if the entire composition was an improvised memory of a jazz performance.
Crystal Cubism Cubism banjo Albert Gleizes abstract gouache