Arthur Dove, painting, and phonography

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Notes

1. Diary entries for 21 July, 22 August, 1 and 29 December 1926, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 20, and 29 January, 5, 18, 19, and 25 February, 2 March, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 22 April, 30 November, and 24 December 1927, Arthur and Helen Torr Dove Papers, 3:1:54, 3:2:1. Dove's wife, the artist Helen Torr, described Dove's painting from records in a diary kept collaboratively by she and her husband. Here and throughout, the first number of the citation refers to the digitized archival series, the second to the box, and the third to the folder. For more detailed information about these paintings see Cassidy, ‘Arthur Dove's Music Paintings,’ 4–23; Cassidy, Painting the Musical City; Cooper, ‘Arthur Dove Paints a Record,’ 70–7; Zilczer, ‘Synaesthesia and Popular Culture,’ 361–6; and Zilczer, ‘Music for the Eyes,’ 24–87.

2. For Dove's art and career, see Balken, Arthur Dove; Cohn, Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol; and Ann Lee Morgan, Arthur Dove: Life and Work. For Stieglitz, see Greenough, Modern Art and America.

3. Cooper notes this in ‘Arthur Dove Paints a Record,’ 73–4.

4. Cassidy, Painting the Musical City; Cooper, ‘Arthur Dove Paints a Record.’

5. My forthcoming book, Arthur Dove and the Art of Translation, focuses on this aspect of Dove's practice; the third chapter, from which the present article is drawn, examines the paintings Dove made from records as well as other of his musically themed works, including a set of paintings that originated in radio listening, in light of his interest in language and expression.

6. The set of pictures inspired by radio listening includes Me and the Moon (1937; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC), The Moon Was Laughing at Me (1937; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC), and Swing Music (Louis Armstrong) (1938; The Art Institute of Chicago). I discuss these in relation to the record pictures and consider as well the role of other communication and sound technologies in Dove's art in my forthcoming book, Arthur Dove and the Art of Translation.

7. Cooper, ‘Arthur Dove Paints a Record,’ 73–4.

8. Stebbins, ‘Memory and the Present,’ 24. Stebbins cites a 1982 conversation with William Dove. It is almost certain that Dove and Torr owned an acoustic (or ‘mechanical’) phonograph, for the boat on which they lived at the time Dove created the record paintings – the Mona, which was anchored on the North shore of Long Island – was not wired for electricity until November 1926, several months after Torr's first mention of their Victrola listening. (Diary entry for 29 November 1926, Arthur and Helen Torr Dove Papers, 3:1:54.)

9. For the history and technology of phonography, see Chanan, Repeated Takes, 48; Katz, Capturing Sound, 74; Morton, Sound Recording, 36–7; and Read and Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo.

10. Dove, ‘An Idea,’ n.p.

11. For discussion of sounds indigenous to recording and playback, which one scholar has dubbed ‘sonic artifacts,’ see Chanan, Repeated Takes, 10; Katz, Capturing Sound, 25–6, 30–5, 81; and Morton, Sound Recording, 40. The term is Katz's.

12. Chanan, Repeated Takes, 16–20; Katz, Capturing Sound, 14–21; Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity; and Connor, ‘Edison's Teeth: Touching Hearing,’ 153–72.

13. Diary entries for 7, 17, and 19 October, 22 November 1924, 29 December 1926, 5 February 1927, Arthur and Helen Torr Dove Papers, 3:1:51, 54, 3:2:1; Dove, ‘An Idea,’ n.p. For more on the assemblages, see Johnson, Arthur Dove: The Years of Collage and Scott, ‘Submerged,’ 138–55. I dedicate a chapter to the assemblages in my forthcoming book, Arthur Dove and the Art of Translation.

14. For Kandinsky, including his influence on American art, see Barnett, Derouet, and Bashkoff, Kandinsky; Brougher et al., Visual Music; Cassidy, Painting the Musical City, 89–90; Levin, Theme and Improvisation; Meyer and Wasserman, Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider; and Zilczer, ‘Color Music,’ 101–26.

15. As is well known, several artists of the period, most notably Francis Picabia, Joseph Stella, and Charles Sheeler, explored modern machine technology in their art; Dove's phonographic painting, then, was part of a larger cultural interest in the relationship between humans and machines and the role of machines in human existence, interaction, and expression.