As a way into Mural, I’ve contacted a few musicians and bands working and composing in Siouxland, and I’ve asked them to create music inspired by or in reaction to this painting. Each edition of this series will have three parts: the viewing, the composition, and the summation. For this, the first edition, I met with a few folks from Sioux City’s Drum Fest – a local non-profit organization that brings together drummers and promotes the local music community.
Mural, though completed in 1943, challenges viewer's ideas of what art is or can be. This can't be explained away simply by pointing to its non-representational image. Rather, the challenge seems to come from a more unexpected place: that the painting holds together so easily. What causes this? My first thought was that it had a rhythm, a relationship within space t The idea that they painting was held together by rhythm struck me
