''Shostakovich'' is a series of thirty oil-on-canvas paintings by the Guyanese artist

Aubrey Williams Aubrey Williams (8 May 1926 – 27 April 1990) was a Guyanese artist. He was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art o ...

, created between 1969 and 1981. Each painting in the series is based on a particular

symphony A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning c ...

quartet In music, a quartet (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quar ...

by the Russian composer

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...

, whom Williams regarded as "the greatest composer of istime".

Background

The ''Shostakovich'' series grew out of an intense involvement with Shostakovich's work that extended throughout Williams' adult life. Williams first heard Shostakovich's music ( Symphony No. 1) as a teenager, when he was studying for an agricultural apprenticeship in

Guyana Guyana, officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern coast of South America, part of the historic British West Indies. entry "Guyana" Georgetown, Guyana, Georgetown is the capital of Guyana and is also the co ...

, and the experience had a dramatic effect on him. In 1981 he described how hearing the symphony's finale had made him realize "a sonic connection with a new wellspring of this state of human consciousness we call ART"; and in 1987, he recalled that the music had "hit imreally hard" in a way that had "profound visual connotations" and that made him "feel colour". By 1969, Williams had been living and working in London for seventeen years. Following an initial period of excitement and artistic success, he had come to feel increasingly "isolated" and "exiled from the art world". It was at this time that he began immersing himself in a "wild unknown world of sound" and working on a "visual expression" of Shostakovich's music. From 1970 onward he spent large amounts of time each year working in studios in

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

and

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

Creation, style and themes

In the first five years of working on the series, Williams experimented with different systems of notation: first a formal system, then a system based on colour-notation. He subsequently abandoned the idea of notation completely, but remained, in his words, "lost in a miasma of structural rendition". Shostakovich's death in 1975 prompted further reconsideration and intensified his pursuit of an approach that was more attuned to the "rich humanity and surrealistic mystery" of Shostakovich's work. The final series was created between 1980 and 1981. Williams described ''Shostakovich'' as an exploration of "common concerns and perceptions in ''our'' work". In particular he stressed his admiration of Shostakovich's "world aesthetic" which was "open to all forms of music he heard" including jazz, Indian music and African drumming (he noted, for example, the presence of

Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...

in Symphony No. 11). He also regarded the series as an effort to find the "right connection" between music and painting – a problem that he thought had not been solved "even by

Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

". The series is painted in an

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

style. In 1981, art critic

Guy Brett Guy Anthony Baliol Brett (1942–2021) was an English art critic, writer and curator. He was noted for a personal vision, particularly of cultural production of an experimental character. He is known for the promotion of Latin American artists, an ...

described the paintings as combining "prominent and defined" forms that "convey the idea of musical structure" with "less defined and more suggestive areas of colour and texture". He also noted that the paintings incorporate

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

inspired by the

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

cultures of

indigenous peoples of the Americas In the Americas, Indigenous peoples comprise the two continents' pre-Columbian inhabitants, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with them in the 15th century, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with the pre-Columbian population of ...

– a signature motif in Williams' work. In 2010, Leon Wainwright described the series as "rooted in a sensorial project" that explores the "tactility of vision" and reveals "the ability of music to create spatial depth that can be pictured and played with.

Exhibitions and collections

''Shostakovich'' was first exhibited at the Commonwealth Institute in 1981. The exhibition was opened on October 22 by Dmitri Shostakovich's son,

Maxim Shostakovich Maxim Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (; born 10 May 1938 in Leningrad) is a Soviet, Russian and American conductor and pianist. He is the second child of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and Nina Varzar. His older sister is Galina Shostakovich. He is ...

. It has since been exhibited at the

Royal Festival Hall The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London, England. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a G ...

(1984) and at the

Hales Gallery Hales Gallery is a contemporary London art gallery located on Bethnal Green Road in Shoreditch owned by Paul Hedge and Paul Maslin. Hales Gallery opened in 1992 in Deptford, South London, before moving to the Tea Building, in Shoreditch, Lond ...

(2013). One of the paintings from the series, ''Shostakovich 3rd Symphony Opus 20'', was purchased by

the Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

in 1993.

References

Notes

Sources

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External links

Shostakovich 3rd Symphony Opus 20 at the Tate

Webpage for Hales Gallery Exhibition, 2013
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shostakovich (1969-1981) 1981 paintings Modern paintings Dmitri Shostakovich Oil on canvas paintings