Inner Sleeve This Month’S Artwork Chosen by Paul Steinbeck

The Inner Sleeve This month’s artwork chosen by Paul Steinbeck Art Ensemble Of Chicago in bright yellows, whites and reds. These geometric patterns stand in contrast of the canvas – or even from across a room, The Third Decade In 1969, The Art Ensemble left Chicago to the rest of the image, which is filled as happened to me when I saw the painting ECM 1985 and set sail for France. During two highly with solid colours, shading and intricate, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art Painting by Roscoe Mitchell successful years in Europe, the musicians non-repeating designs reminiscent of in 2015. Mitchell’s painting was part of The Roscoe Mitchell began painting at a pursued extramusical interests: Jarman woodcuts or textile prints. Freedom Principle, an exhibition dedicated young age. By the early 1960s, he was an joined a Paris theatre company and Mitchell You can lose yourself in the elaborate to the AACM, AfriCOBRA and the Black Arts accomplished visual artist, as were two had time to finish the painting shown above designs, especially in the triangular blocks Movement in 1960s Chicago. I spent several other Chicago musicians in his circle, fellow – a richly textured image on canvas, fabric, at the lower left. Those blocks, though, hours at the exhibition, and whenever The saxophonist Joseph Jarman and pianist wood and fringe entitled The Third Decade. flow into a Y-shaped yoke that reveals them Third Decade was within view, I found myself Muhal Richard Abrams. Mitchell and Jarman Like the Numbers 1 & 2 album cover, The to be sections of a garment draped on the crossing the gallery to get a closer look studied painting with Abrams in between Third Decade uses patterns and saturated mysterious figure which dominates the left (and to let Mitchell’s enigmatic figure stare rehearsals of his Experimental Band, the colours, two techniques associated side of the canvas, and indeed the entire back at me). It was one of the most profound ensemble from which the Association for with Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, painting. The figure’s visage is both human encounters I’ve ever had with an artwork. the Advancement of Creative Musicians Barbara Jones-Hogu and other painters and not human, and the longer you look at As I left the museum, I wondered if record emerged. In addition to playing with from the AfriCOBRA collective, a Chicago it, the more surreal it becomes. The chin buyers had the same experience three Abrams’s Experimental Band, Mitchell arts organisation allied with the AACM. and mouth are lifelike, but the nose above decades earlier when they browsed through and Jarman led their own groups, and However, the palette employed in The them appears to be carved, as in a wooden shops in search of a new Art Ensemble album around 1967, the two finally joined forces, Third Decade is darker than the ‘coolade sculpture or mask. There are protruding called The Third Decade, and saw the cover partnering with bassist Malachi Favors colours’ seen in many AfriCOBRA works, horns where the figure’s ears should be, art gazing at them intently inviting them to and trumpeter Lester Bowie to form The and there are only a few of their distinctive and its deep-set eyes are hollow orbs that listen – if they dared – to the music therein. Art Ensemble Of Chicago. Numbers 1 & 2 mosaic-like patterns on Mitchell’s canvas: answer your gaze with an unrelenting, Paul Steinbeck’s Message To Our Folks: became the quartet’s first album in 1967, diamond-shaped inlays and checkerboard entrancing stare. The Art Ensemble Of Chicago is published by and the first to feature on its cover one of grids at the centre and right, counterpointed You try and look elsewhere, but focus University of Chicago Press. The Art Ensemble Mitchell’s paintings, an astonishing Afro- by the brick and mortar wall and staircase inevitably returns to those eyes, which can Of Chicago perform at London’s Cafe Oto this Cubist portrait of three musicians rendered that extend upward to the top of the frame. summon your attention from the other side month: see Out There 74 | The Wire | The Inner Sleeve.

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