1923

Chinese Music

American, 1880 - 1946

Arthur Dove created abstract paintings, or “extractions,” as he called them, to convey the rhythms and forces of the natural world. The title of this painting was probably inspired by Arthur Jerome Eddy’s 1914 defense of modern art in which the author compared it to the clashing harmonies of Chinese music, foreign to Western ears: “The great majority of people on first hearing Chinese music exclaim, ‘What a horrid din!’ and turn away. A very, very small minority . . . say, ‘True, it sounds to us like a din, but to a people of extraordinary civilization it is music.’”