Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal ("real" or "concrete") concepts, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" is the product of this process – a concept that acts as a super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category.

Abstractions may be formed by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball retains only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that particular ball.

Origins[link]

Thinking in abstractions is considered to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour, which is believed to have developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, probably before the modern human exodus from Africa. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language, which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking.

The oldest known physical representations identified as symbols for abstract concepts are abstract engravings found on two pieces of ochre in Blombos Cave, South Africa, in 2001. These have been dated to about 77,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age.^[1][2]

Thought process[link]

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In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas^[3] are distanced from objects.

Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient. This is true for all verbal/abstract communication.

Cat on Mat (picture 1)

For example, many different things can be red. Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1, to the right). The property of redness and the relation sitting-on are therefore abstractions of those objects. Specifically, the conceptual diagram graph 1 identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their five labels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph.

Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram. For example the arrow between the agent and CAT:Elsie depicts an example of an is-a relationship, as does the arrow between the location and the MAT. The arrows between the gerund SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the diagram's basic relationship; "agent is SITTING on location"; Elsie is an instance of CAT.

Conceptual graph for A Cat sitting on the Mat (graph 1)

Although the description sitting-on (graph 1) is more abstract than the graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (picture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vagueness is characteristic of abstraction. Thus something as simple as a newspaper might be specified to six levels, as in Douglas Hofstadter's illustration of that ambiguity, with a progression from abstract to concrete in Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979):

(1) a publication

(2) a newspaper

(3) The San Francisco Chronicle

(4) the May 18 edition of the The San Francisco Chronicle

(5) my copy of the May 18 edition of the The San Francisco Chronicle

(6) my copy of the May 18 edition of the The San Francisco Chronicle as it was when I first picked it up (as contrasted with my copy as it was a few days later: in my fireplace, burning)

An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels of detail with no loss of generality. But perhaps a detective or philosopher/scientist/engineer might seek to learn about something, at progressively deeper levels of detail, to solve a crime or a puzzle.

Referents[link]

Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous referents; for example, "happiness" (when used as an abstraction) can refer to as many things as there are people and events or states of being which make them happy. Likewise, "architecture" refers not only to the design of safe, functional buildings, but also to elements of creation and innovation which aim at elegant solutions to construction problems, to the use of space, and to the attempt to evoke an emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers and users of the building.

Instantiation[link]

Things that do not exist at any particular place and time are often considered abstract. By contrast, instances, or members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many different places and times. Those abstract things are then said to be multiply instantiated, in the sense of picture 1, picture 2, etc., shown above.

It is not sufficient, however, to define abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define abstraction as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the concepts "cat" and "telephone" abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of the concept "cat" or the concept "telephone". Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are abstractions, they are not abstract in the sense of the objects in graph 1 above.

We might look at other graphs, in a progression from cat to mammal to animal, and see that animal is more abstract than mammal; but on the other hand mammal is a harder idea to express, certainly in relation to marsupial or monotreme.

Physicality[link]

A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a particular individual that occupies a particular place and time.

Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences, like the color red. That definition, however, suffers from the difficulty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which things exist in reality). For example, it is difficult to agree to whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.

An approach to resolving such difficulty is to use predicates as a general term for whether things are variously real, abstract, concrete, or of a particular property (e.g. good). Questions about the properties of things are then propositions about predicates, which propositions remain to be evaluated by the investigator. In the graph 1 above, the graphical relationships like the arrows joining boxes and ellipses might denote predicates. Different levels of abstraction might be denoted by a progression of arrows joining boxes or ellipses in multiple rows, where the arrows point from one row to another, in a series of other graphs, say graph 2, etc.

Abstraction used in philosophy[link]

Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in concept-formation of recognizing some set of common features in individuals, and on that basis forming a concept of that feature. The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and the problem of universals. It has also recently become popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction. Another philosophical tool for discussion of abstraction is thought space.

Ontological status[link]

The way that physical objects, like rocks and trees, have being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being, for example the way the concrete, particular, individuals pictured in picture 1 exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1 exist. That difference accounts for the ontological usefulness of the word "abstract". The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times.

Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars. E.g., the particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular. Akin to qualia and sumbebekos.

Compression[link]

An abstraction can be seen as a process of mapping multiple different pieces of constituent data to a single piece of abstract data based on similarities in the constituent data, for example many different physical cats map to the abstraction "CAT". This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from the distinction between "abstract" and "concrete". In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is itself an object).

For example, picture 1 above illustrates the concrete relationship "Cat sits on Mat".

Chains of abstractions can therefore be constructed moving from neural impulses arising from sensory perception to basic abstractions such as color or shape to experiential abstractions such as a specific cat to semantic abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as "object" as opposed to "action".

For example, graph 1 above expresses the abstraction "agent sits on location".

This conceptual scheme entails no specific hierarchical taxonomy (such as the one mentioned involving cats and mammals), only a progressive exclusion of detail.

Abstraction in linguistics[link]

Abstraction is frequently applied in linguistics so as to allow phenomena of language to be analyzed at the desired level of detail. A commonly considered abstraction is the phoneme, which abstracts speech sounds in such a way as to neglect details that cannot serve to differentiate meaning. Other analogous kinds of abstractions (sometimes called "emic units") considered by linguists include morphemes, graphemes and lexemes.

Abstraction also arises in the relation between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Pragmatics involves considerations that make reference to the user of the language; semantics considers expressions and what they denote (the designata) abstracted from the language user; and syntax considers only the expressions themselves, abstracted from the designata.

Abstraction in mathematics[link]

Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.

The advantages of abstraction in mathematics are:

• it reveals deep connections between different areas of mathematics
• known results in one area can suggest conjectures in a related area
• techniques and methods from one area can be applied to prove results in a related area.

The main disadvantage of abstraction is that highly abstract concepts are more difficult to learn, and require a degree of mathematical maturity and experience before they can be assimilated.

Abstraction in computer science[link]

Computer scientists use abstraction and communicate their solutions with the computer in some particular computer language. Abstraction allows program designers to separate categories and concepts from instances of implementation, so that they do not depend on software or hardware.

Abstraction in psychology[link]

Carl Jung's definition of abstraction broadened its scope beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mutually exclusive, opposing complementary psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Together they form a structural totality of the differentiating abstraction process. Abstraction operates in one of these opposing functions when it excludes the simultaneous influence of the other functions and other irrelevancies, such as emotion. Abstraction requires selective use of this structural split of abilities in the psyche. The opposite of abstraction is concretism. Abstraction is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types.

There is an abstract thinking, just as there is abstract feeling, sensation and intuition. Abstract thinking singles out the rational, logical qualities ... Abstract feeling does the same with ... its feeling-values. ... I put abstract feelings on the same level as abstract thoughts. ... Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as opposed to sensuous sensation and abstract intuition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic intuition. (Jung, [1921] (1971):par. 678).

The neurology of abstraction[link]

A recent meta-analysis suggests that the verbal system has greater engagement for abstract concepts when the perceptual system is more engaged for processing of concrete concepts. This is because abstract concepts elicit greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus compared to concrete concepts when concrete concepts elicit greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus.^[4]

Other research into the human brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres differ in their handling of abstraction. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage.^[5]

Abstraction in art[link]

Typically, abstraction is used in the arts as a synonym for abstract art in general. Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world^[6]—it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory.^[7] Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.^[8]

In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality. Atonal music has no key signature, and is characterized by the exploration of internal numeric relationships.^[9]

See also[link]

Thinking portal

	Book: Abstraction
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Nucleophilic abstraction

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Eugene Raskin, Architecturally Speaking, 2nd edition, a Delta book, Dell (1966), trade paperback, 129 pages
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition, Houghton Mifflin (1992), hardcover, 2140 pages, ISBN 0-395-44895-6
• Jung, C.G. [1921] (1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01813-8.

External links[link]

Look up abstraction in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Abstraction

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gottlob Frege
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Abstract Objects
• Discussion at The Well concerning Abstraction hierarchy

Matthew Dear
Dear performing at Roskilde Festival, 2011.
Background information
Birth name	Matthew Dear
Also known as	False, Audion, Jabberjaw
Origin	Texas, U.S. Detroit, Michigan
Genres	Glitch Microhouse Electropop Tech house
Occupations	producer DJ
Years active	1999 to present
Labels	Ghostly International Spectral Sound M nus Perlon Plus 8
Website	matthewdear.com

Matthew Dear is an American music producer, DJ and electronic avant-pop artist.

History[link]

Texas- (Kingsville, Texas) born Dear moved to Michigan as a teenager, where he was inspired by the sound of Detroit Techno. Dear met Sam Valenti IV at a party while attending the University of Michigan, after which the two started the record label, Ghostly International, based on a shared love of electronic music. Dear’s first single was 1999’s "Hands Up For Detroit" (co-produced by ghettotech pioneer Disco D, who performed under the name Daisha). Successive singles, such as "Stealing Moves" and the chart-topping "Mouth to Mouth" (as Audion) were issued on Spectral Sound, Ghostly’s offshoot that focuses on dancefloor music.

Dear’s first album Leave Luck to Heaven appeared in 2003 and was praised widely as a seminal fusion of pop and minimal techno. The album’s single "Dog Days" became one of Spectral’s best sellers and a favorite of international DJs like Richie Hawtin.^[1] Dear followed the album with Backstroke in 2004 and has also begun working under the harder-edged Audion alias, apart from additional monikers False and Jabberjaw.

In 2007, Matthew Dear released his sophomore full length, Asa Breed. Matthew and his band, Matthew Dear's Big Hands then began a US promotional tour tour and a European tour as the opening act for Hot Chip. 2008 saw the re-release of Asa Breed as the Asa Breed Black Edition. This re-release added 5 new songs, including a remix of Don and Sherri from Hot Chip and the video for the song, shot in downtown New York City.

Matthew Dear's latest album, Black City, was released on August 17, 2010. It conceptualizes a futuristic metropolis that never sleeps. Dear describes 'Black City': "Well, there's a kind of timelessness to it in the sense that I don't want things to run on a 24-hour clock. It seems like a city that's always awake, maybe always dialled in electronically, and cannot be turned off. It's this imaginary weird never-sleeping town. But yeah it's full of lust, and love, and dark shadows. Weird things around the corner…"^[2]

Dear is a graduate of Lake Orion High School in Lake Orion, Michigan.

2011[link]

Matthew is currently opening for the NYC band Interpol, performing on their first three dates in the UK.

Influences[link]

Matthew Dear has listed Talking Heads, David Bowie, Adonis, Nitzer Ebb, and Roman Flügel as inspirations.^[3]

When asked who he is influenced by as Matthew Dear, "Definitely I'm influenced by Brian Eno and a lot of his work. I've said it before but he is one that is so interesting to listen to on all formats whether it be his production with other bands, whether it's his solo work or whether it's his collaboration work with other artists. He's probably the number one."^[4]

Discography[link]

As Matthew Dear[link]

Solo[link]

Albums:

• 2003 Leave Luck to Heaven (Spectral Sound)
• 2004 Backstroke (Spectral Sound)
• 2007 Asa Breed (Ghostly International)
• 2008 Asa Breed Black Edition (Ghostly International)
• 2010 Black City (Ghostly International)
• 2012 Beams

EPs

• 2003 EP1 (Spectral Sound)
• 2003 EP2 (Spectral Sound)
• 2007 Don and Sherri (Ghostly International)
• 2012 Headcage

Singles

• 2000 Irreparably Dented (Spectral Sound)
• 2001 Stealing Moves (Spectral Sound)
• 2003 Dog Days (Spectral Sound)
• 2004 Anger Management / Future Never Again (Spectral Sound)
• 2007 Deserter (Ghostly International)

Compilations

• 2008 Beginning of the End: Spectral Sound Singles (Spectral Sound)

Tracks featured on[link]

• 1999 Hands Up For Detroit (Ghostly International)
• 2003 Idol Tryouts: Ghostly International Vol. 1 (Ghostly International)
• 2003 State of the Union EP (Spectral Sound)
• 2005 Spectral Sound Vol. 1 (Spectral Sound)
• 2006 Idol Troyouts: Ghostly International Vol. 2 (Ghostly International)
• 2007 Chuck (TV series) Season 1, Episode 4 (NBC)
• 2007 "Gossip Girls (TV series) Season 1, Episode 1"
• 2008 Life Beyond Mars: Bowie Covered

Remixing[link]

• 2004 DJ Minx A Walk In The Park (M_nus)
• 2004 Håkan Lidbo Clockwise Rmxs (Shitkatapult)
• 2004 L'usine Flat Remixes (Ghostly International)
• 2004 Monobox The Remixes (Logistic Records)
• 2004 Osborne Bout Ready to Jak Remixes (Spectral Sound)
• 2004 Someone Else + Miskate Rip It Cookie Muenster EP (Foundsound)
• 2005 Circlesquare / Colder 7 Minutes / Shiny Star (Remixes) (Output)
• 2005 The Postal Service We Will Become Silhouettes (Sub Pop)
• 2006 Hot Chip No Fit State (EMI)
• 2006 The Chemical Brothers Do it Again (EMI)
• 2007 Black Strobe "I'm a Man" (Playlouder)
• 2007 Terence Fixmer "Electrostatic" (Planete Rouge)
• 2007 Dubfire "I Feel Speed" (SCI + TEC Digital Audio)
• 2008 Matt John "Olga Dancekowski" (Bar25)
• 2008 Sasha "Park It In The Shade" (emFire)
• 2008 Kieran Hebden, Steve Reid "People Be Happy/Rhythm Dance" (Domino)
• 2008 Spoon "Don't You Evah" (Merge Records)
• 2008 Liquid Liquid "Optmo" (Domino Records)
• 2009 The Juan MacLean "Happy House" (DFA Records)
• 2010 The XX "VCR" (XL Recordings, Young Turks)
• 2010 Charlotte Gainsbourg "Time Of The Assassins" (Because Music)
• 2010 The Drums "Me And The Moon" (Moshi Moshi/Island)

As Audion[link]

• 2004 Kisses EP (Audion I, Spectral Sound)
• 2004 The Pong EP (Audion II, Spectral Sound)
• 2005 Just Fucking (Audion III, Spectral Sound)
• 2006 Suckfish (Audion IV, Spectral Sound)
• 2006 Fabric 27 (Fabric)
• 2006 Mouth to Mouth (Audion V, Spectral Sound)
• 2006 Just a Man / Just a Woman [with Ellen Allien] (Audion VI, Spectral Sound)
• 2007 Mouth to Mouth (Remixes) (Audion R1, Spectral Sound)
• 2007 Noiser/Fred's Bells (Audion VII, Spectral Sound)
• 2008 Billy Says Go (Audion VIII, Spectral Sound)
• 2009 I Am The Car (Audion IX.I, Spectral Sound)
• 2009 Look At The Moon (Audion IX.II, Spectral Sound)
• 2009 It's Full of Blinding Light EP (Audion IX.III and X,Spectral Sound)
• 2009 Stoplight (Audion IX.IV, Spectral Sound)
• 2009 Instant In You (Audion IX.V, Spectral Sound)
• 2009 That's That (Audion IX.VI, Spectral Sound)
• 2009 Push (Audion IX.VII, Spectral Sound)

As Jabberjaw[link]

• 2003 Girlfriend (Perlon)
• 2009 The Connie Shake (Spectral Sound)
• 2009 The Garden Of Eden (Spectral Sound)

As False[link]

Singles/EPs:

• 2002 .WAV Pool (Plus 8)
• 2002 Warsaw Bread (Plus 8)
• 2003 You Wouldn't/Beginner's Luck(Plus 8)
• 2004 Sink the Ship EP (M_nus)
• 2005 River Camping (M_nus)
• 2007 Fed on Youth (M_nus)
• 2009 Love Letters (M_nus)

Albums:

• 2003 False (Plus 8)
• 2007 2007 (M_nus)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Matthew Dear

• Official Home Page
• Matthew Dear on Myspace
• Review of Asa Breed at Grooves Magazine
• Review of False's River Camping at Grooves Magazine
• Review of Audion's Mouth to Mouth at Grooves Magazine

Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Birth name	Georgia Totto O'Keeffe
Born	(1887-11-15)November 15, 1887 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, United States
Died	March 6, 1986(1986-03-06) (aged 98)[1] Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States[1]
Nationality	American
Field	Painting
Movement	American modernism
Influenced by	Arthur Wesley Dow

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American artist.

Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists were well known or highly celebrated. Within a decade, she had distinguished herself as one of America's most important modern artists, a position she maintained throughout her life. As a result, O’Keeffe not only carved out a significant place for women painters in an area of the American art community that had been exclusive to and is still dominated by men, but she also became one of America’s most celebrated cultural icons well before her death at age 98 in 1986.

Her abstract imagery of the 1910s and early 1920s is among the most innovative of any work produced in the period by American artists. She revolutionized the tradition of flower painting in the 1920s by making large-format paintings of enlarged blossoms, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens. In addition to this, O'Keeffe's depictions of New York buildings, most of which date from the same decade, have been recognized as among the most compelling of any paintings of the modern city. Beginning in 1929, when she first began working part of the year in Northern New Mexico—which she made her permanent home in 1949—O’Keeffe depicted subjects specific to that area. Through paintings of its unique landscape configurations, adobe churches, cultural objects, and the bones and rocks she collected from the desert floor, she ultimately laid claim to this area of the American Southwest, which earlier had been celebrated primarily by male artists; the area around where she worked and lived has become known as “O’Keeffe Country."

Early life[link]

Georgia O'Keeffe as a teaching assistant to Alon Bement at the University of Virginia in 1915

Georgia O'Keeffe was born November 15, 1887, in a farmhouse near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.^[2][3] Her parents, Francis Calyxtus O'Keeffe and Ida (Totto) O'Keeffe, were dairy farmers. Her father was of Irish descent. Ida Totto's father, George Victor Totto, for whom Georgia O'Keeffe was named, was a Hungarian count who came to America in 1848.^[4]

Georgia was the second of seven O'Keeffe children, and the first daughter. O'Keeffe attended Town Hall School in Sun Prairie. By age ten she had decided to become an artist,^[5] and she and her sister received art instruction from local watercolorist Sara Mann. O'Keeffe attended high school at Sacred Heart Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, as a boarder between 1901 and 1902. In Fall 1902 the O'Keeffes moved from Wisconsin to the close-knit neighborhood of Peacock Hill in Williamsburg, Virginia. Georgia stayed in Wisconsin with her aunt and attended Madison High School, then joined her family in Virginia in 1903. She completed high school as a boarder at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia (now Chatham Hall), and graduated in 1905.

O'Keeffe studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906.^[5] In 1907, she attended the Art Students League in New York City, where she studied under William Merritt Chase. In 1908, she won the League's William Merritt Chase still-life prize for her oil painting Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot. ^[6] Her prize was a scholarship to attend the League's outdoor summer school at Lake George, New York. While in the city in 1908, O'Keeffe attended an exhibition of Rodin's watercolors at the 291, owned by her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

O'Keeffe abandoned the idea of pursuing a career as an artist in the fall of 1908, claiming that she could never distinguish herself as an artist within the mimetic tradition, which had formed the basis of her art training.^[5] She took a job in Chicago as a commercial artist. She did not paint for four years,^[5] and said that the smell of turpentine made her sick. She was inspired to paint again in 1912, when she attended a class at the University of Virginia Summer School, where she was introduced to the innovative ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow by Alon Bement.^[5] Dow encouraged artists to express themselves using line, color, and shading harmoniously. From 1912-14, she taught art in the public schools in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.^[7] She attended Teachers College of Columbia University from 1914–15, where she took classes from Dow, who greatly influenced O'Keeffe's thinking about the process of making art.^[5] She served as a teaching assistant to Bement during the summer from 1913–16 and taught at Columbia College, Columbia, South Carolina in the fall of 1915, where she completed a series of highly innovative charcoal abstractions. After further course work at Columbia in the spring of 1916 and summer teaching for Bement, she took a job as head of the art department at West Texas State Normal College from fall 1916 to February 1918, the fledgling West Texas A&M University in Canyon just south of Amarillo. While there, she often visited the Palo Duro Canyon, making its forms a subject in her work.^[8]

New York[link]

Early in 1916, Anita Pollitzer took some of the charcoal drawings O'Keeffe had made in the fall of 1915, which she had mailed to Pollitzer from South Carolina, to Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 gallery. He told Pollitzer that the drawings were the "purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while", and that he would like to show them. O'Keeffe had first visited 291 in 1908, but did not speak with Stieglitz then, although she came to have high regard for him and to know him in the spring of 1916, when she was in New York at Teachers College. In April 1916, he exhibited ten of her drawings at 291.^[5] Although O'Keeffe knew that Stieglitz was planning to exhibit her work, he had not told her when, and she was surprised to learn that her work was on view; she confronted Stieglitz over the drawings but agreed to let them remain on exhibit. Stieglitz organized O'Keeffe's first solo show at 291 in April 1917,^[5] which included oil paintings and watercolors completed in Texas.

Stieglitz and O'Keeffe corresponded frequently beginning in 1916, and in June 1918, she accepted Stieglitz's invitation to move to New York to devote all of her time to her work. The two were deeply in love, and shortly after her arrival, they began living together, even though the then married Stieglitz was 23 years her senior. That year Stieglitz first took O'Keeffe to his family home at the village of Lake George in New York's Adirondack Mountains, and they spent part of every year there until 1929, when O'Keeffe spent the first of many summers painting in New Mexico. In 1924 Stieglitz's divorce was finally approved by a judge, and within four months he and O'Keeffe married. It was a small, private ceremony at Marin's house, and afterward the couple went back home. There was no reception, festivities or honeymoon. O'Keeffe said later that they married in order to help soothe the troubles of Stieglitz's daughter Kitty, who at that time was being treated in a sanatorium for depression and hallucinations. The marriage did not seem to have any immediate effect on either Stieglitz or O'Keeffe; they both continued working on their individual projects as they had before. For the rest of their lives together, their relationship was, as biographer Benita Eisler characterized it, "a collusion ... a system of deals and trade-offs, tacitly agreed to and carried out, for the most part, without the exchange of a word. Preferring avoidance to confrontation on most issues, O'Keeffe was the principal agent of collusion in their union."

Alfred Stieglitz photograph of O'Keeffe. New York City, 1918

Stieglitz started photographing O'Keeffe when she visited him in New York to see her 1917 exhibition. By 1937, when he retired from photography, he had made more than 350 portraits of her. Most of the more erotic photographs were made in the 1910s and early 1920s. In February 1921, forty-five of Stieglitz's photographs, including many of O'Keeffe, some of which depicted her in the nude, were exhibited in a retrospective exhibition at the Anderson Galleries that created a public sensation.^{[citation needed]}

Blue and Green Music, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1921

Beginning in 1918, O'Keeffe came to know the many early American modernists who were part of Stieglitz's circle of artists, including Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Paul Strand and Edward Steichen. Strand's photography, as well as that of Stieglitz and his many photographer friends, inspired O'Keeffe's work. Soon after 1918, O'Keeffe began working primarily in oil, a shift away from having worked primarily in watercolor in the earlier 1910s. By the mid-1920s, O'Keeffe began making large-scale paintings of natural forms at close range, as if seen through a magnifying lens. In 1924 she painted her first large-scale flower painting Petunia, No. 2, which was first exhibited in 1925. She also completed a significant body of paintings of New York buildings, such as City Night and New York—Night, 1926, and Radiator Bldg—Night, New York, 1927.

O'Keeffe turned to working more representationally in the 1920s in an effort to move her critics away from Freudian interpretations. Her earlier work had been mostly abstract, but works such as Black Iris III (1926) evoke a veiled representation of female genitalia while also accurately depicting the center of an iris. Moreover, the centers of flowers are androgynous and can hardly be understood exclusively as feminine. O'Keeffe consistently denied the validity of Freudian interpretations of her art, but fifty years after it had first been interpreted in that way, many prominent feminist artists assessed her work similarly -- in essential terms -- such as Judy Chicago, who gave O'Keeffe a prominent place in her The Dinner Party. Although 1970s feminists celebrated O'Keeffe as the originator of "female iconography", O'Keeffe rejected their celebration of her work and refused to cooperate with any of their projects. What they were saying sounded too much to her like what the men had written about it in the 1910s and 1920s and overlooked the larger issue: that her paintings reveal vital parallels between animate and highly sensual forces in nature and humans.

In 1922, the New York Sun published an article quoting O'Keeffe: "It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."^[9] Inspired by Precisionism, The Green Apple, completed in 1922, depicts her notion of simple, meaningful life.^[9]

Beginning in 1923, Stieglitz organized annual exhibitions of O'Keeffe's work. By the mid-1920s, O'Keeffe had become known as one of the most important American artists. Her work commanded high prices; in 1928, Stieglitz masterminded a sale of six of her calla lily paintings for US$25,000, which was the largest sum ever paid for a group of paintings by a living American artist. Though the sale fell through, Stieglitz's promotion of the potential sale drew extensive media attention.

Hawaii[link]

In 1938, the advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son approached O'Keeffe about creating two paintings for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Food Company) to use in their advertising.^[10] Other artists who produced paintings of Hawaii for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company’s advertising include Lloyd Sexton, Jr., Millard Sheets, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Miguel Covarrubias.^[11] She arrived in Honolulu February 8, 1939, aboard the SS Lurline, and spent nine weeks in Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and the island of Hawaii. She painted flowers, landscapes, and traditional Hawaiian fishhooks. However, she did not paint the requested pineapple until after the Hawaiian Pineapple Company sent a plant to her New York studio.^[12]

New Mexico[link]

By 1929, O'Keeffe acted on her increasing need to find a new source of inspiration for her work and to escape summers at Lake George, where she was surrounded by the Stieglitz family and their friends. O'Keeffe had considered finding a studio separate from Lake George in upstate New York and had also thought about spending the summer in Europe, but opted instead to travel to Santa Fe, with her friend Rebecca Strand. The two set out by train in May, 1929 and soon after their arrival, Mabel Dodge Luhan moved them to her house in Taos and provided them with studios. O'Keeffe went on many pack trips exploring the rugged mountains and deserts of the region that summer and later visited the nearby D. H. Lawrence Ranch, where she completed her now famous oil painting, The Lawrence Tree, currently owned by the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut."^[13]

While in Taos in 1929, O'Keeffe visited and and painted the nearby historical San Francisco de Asis Mission Church at Ranchos de Taos. She made several paintings of the church, as had many artists, and her painting of a fragment of it silhouetted against the sky captured it in a different way.^[14]

Between 1929 and 1949, O'Keeffe spent part of nearly every year working in New Mexico. She collected rocks and bones from the desert floor and made them and the distinctive architectural and landscape forms of the area subjects in her work. She also went on several camping trips with friends, visiting important sites in the Southwest, and in 1961, she and others, including photographers Eliot Porter and Todd Webb, went on a rafting trip down the Colorado River about Glen Canyon, Utah.^[14]

Late in 1932, O'Keeffe suffered a nervous breakdown that was brought on, in part, because she was unable to complete a Radio City Music Hall mural project that had fallen behind schedule. She was hospitalized in early 1933 and did not paint again until January 1934. In the spring of 1933 and 1934, O'Keeffe recuperated in Bermuda, and she returned to New Mexico in the summer of 1934. In August of that year, she visited Ghost Ranch, north of Abiquiu, for the first time and decided immediately to live there; in 1940, she purchased a house on the ranch property. The varicolored cliffs of Ghost Ranch inspired some of her most famous landscapes. In 1977, O'Keeffe wrote: "[the] cliffs over there are almost painted for you -- you think -- until you try to paint them."^[14] Among guests to visit her at the ranch over the years were Charles and Anne Lindbergh, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, poet Allen Ginsberg, and photographer Ansel Adams.

Known as a loner, O'Keeffe explored the land she loved often in her Ford Model A, which she purchased and learned to drive in 1929. She often talked about her fondness for Ghost Ranch and Northern New Mexico, as in 1943, when she explained: "Such a beautiful, untouched lonely feeling place, such a fine part of what I call the 'Faraway'. It is a place I have painted before . . . even now I must do it again."^[14]

In the 1930s and 1940s, O'Keeffe's reputation and popularity continued to grow, earning her numerous commissions. Her work was included in exhibitions in and around New York. She completed Summer Days, a painting featuring a deer's skull adorned with various wildflowers, against a desert background in 1936, and it became one of her most famous and well-known works. During the 1940s O'Keeffe had two one-woman retrospectives, the first at the Art Institute of Chicago (1943), and the second in 1946 at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Manhattan, the first retrospective MOMA held for a woman artist. O'Keeffe enjoyed many accolades and honorary degrees from numerous universities. In the mid-1940s, the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan sponsored a project to establish the first catalogue of her work.

O'Keeffe's "White Place," the Plaza Blanca cliffs and badlands near Abiquiu.

As early as 1936, O'Keeffe developed an intense interest in what is called the "Black Place", which was about 150 miles west of her Ghost Ranch house, and she made an extensive series of paintings of this site in the 1940s. She traveled and camped there often with her friend, Maria Chabot, and in 1945 with Eliot Porter as well as in subsequent years,^[15] 1959, and 1977. O'Keeffe said that the Black Place resembled "a mile of elephants with gray hills and white sand at their feet."^[14] At times the wind was so strong when she was painting there that she had trouble keeping her canvas on the easel. When the heat from the sun became intense, she crawled under her car for shade. The Black Place still remains remote and uninhabited.

She also made paintings of the "White Place", a white rock formation located near her Abiquiu house. In 1945, O'Keeffe bought a second house, an abandoned hacienda^[16] in Abiquiu, some 18 miles (26 km) south of Ghost Ranch.^[16] The Abiquiu house was renovated through 1949 by Chabot.

Cerro Pedernal, viewed from Ghost Ranch. This was a favorite subject for O'Keeffe, who once said, "I painted it often enough thinking that, if I did so, God would give it to me." ^[17]

Shortly after O'Keeffe arrived for the summer in New Mexico in 1946, Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis. She immediately flew to New York to be with him. He died on July 13, 1946. She buried his ashes at Lake George. She spent the next three years mostly in New York settling his estate, and moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949. From 1946 through the 1950s, she made the architectural forms of her Abiquiu house — patio wall and door — subjects in her work. Another distinctive painting of the decade was Ladder to the Moon, 1958. From her first world travels in the late 1950s, O'Keeffe produced an extensive series of paintings of clouds, such as Above the Clouds I, 1962/1963. These were inspired by her views from the windows of airplanes. Below is an external link to a color image of one of these aerial cloudscape canvases.

O'Keeffe met photographer Todd Webb in the 1940s, and after his move to New Mexico in 1961, he often made photographs of her, as did numerous other important American photographers, who consistently presented O'Keeffe as a "loner, a severe figure and self-made person."^[18] While O'Keeffe was known to have a "prickly personality", Webb's photographs portray her with a kind of "quietness and calm" suggesting a relaxed friendship, and revealing new contours of O'Keeffe's character.^[19]

In 1962, O'Keeffe was elected to the fifty-member American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966.^[20] In the fall of 1970, the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted the Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition, the first retrospective exhibition of her work in New York since 1946, the year Stieglitz died. This exhibit did much to revive her public career.

Later years and death[link]

In 1972, O'Keeffe's eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, leading to the loss of central vision and leaving her with only peripheral vision. She stopped oil painting without assistance in 1972, but continued working in pencil and charcoal until 1984.^[21] Juan Hamilton, a young potter, appeared at her ranch house in 1973 looking for work. She hired him for a few odd jobs and soon employed him full time. He became her closest confidante, companion, and business manager until her death. Hamilton taught O'Keeffe to work with clay, and working with assistance, she produced clay pots and a series of works in watercolor. In 1976, she wrote a book about her art and allowed a film to be made about her in 1977. On January 10, 1977, President Gerald R. Ford presented O'Keeffe with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to American citizens.^[22] In 1985, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

O'Keeffe became increasingly frail in her late 90s. She moved to Santa Fe in 1984, where she died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98. In accordance with her wishes, her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered to the wind at the top of Pedernal Mountain, over her beloved "faraway".

Legacy[link]

Following O'Keeffe's death, her family contested her will because codicils made to it in the 1980s had left all of her estate to Hamilton. The case was ultimately settled out of court in July 1987.^[23] The case became famous as case law in estate planning.^[24][25] A substantial part of her estate's assets were transferred to the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, which dissolved in 2006, leaving these assets to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, established in Santa Fe in 1997 to perpetuate O'Keeffe's artistic legacy. These assets included a large body of her work, photographs, archival materials, and her Abiquiu house, library, and property. The Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiu was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998 and is now owned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

In 2006, a fossilized species of archosaur was named after O'Keeffe. Blocks originally quarried in 1947 and 1948 near O'Keeffe's home at Ghost Ranch were opened fifty years after being collected. The fossil strongly resembles ornithomimid dinosaurs, but are actually more closely related to crocodiles. The specimen was named Effigia okeeffeae ("O'Keeffe's Ghost") in January 2006, "in honor of Georgia O'Keeffe for her numerous paintings of the badlands at Ghost Ranch and her interest in the Coelophysis Quarry when it was discovered".^[26]

In 1991, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired the American Playhouse production A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, starring Jane Alexander as Georgia O'Keeffe and Christopher Plummer as Alfred Stieglitz. Lifetime Television produced a biopic of Georgia O'Keeffe premiering on September 19, 2009, starring Joan Allen as O’Keeffe, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Stieglitz, Henry Simmons as Jean Toomer, Ed Begley, Jr. as Stieglitz's brother Lee, and Tyne Daly as Mabel Dodge Luhan.^[27][28]

A new exhibit of O'Keeffe's works at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which emphasizes her lesser-known abstract works, was on view from May 2010.^[29][30]

Writings[link]

• O’Keeffe, Georgia, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York: Viking Press, 1976. ISBN 0-670-33710-2
• O'Keeffe, Georgia, Some Memories of Drawings, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8263-1113-9
• Lovingly, Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O'Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer (ed C.Giboire).Touchstone Books 1990 ISBN 978-0-671-69236-0
• Giboire, Clive, ed. Lovingly, Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O'Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. ISBN 978-0-671-69237-2
• Greenough, Sarah, ed. My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933. Annotated edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-300-16630-9

See also[link]

• Georgia O'Keeffe Cooperative House
• Georgia O'Keeffe Middle School

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. About Georgia O'Keeffe
• Haskell, Barbara, Barbara Buhler Lynes, et al., 2009. Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction'. New Haven, ISBN 978-0-300-14817-6
• Lynes, Barbara Buhler, 2007. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections. New York. ISBN 978-0-8109-0957-1
• Lynes, Barbara Buhler, Georgia O'Keeffe. Encyclopædia Britannica online
• Lynes, Barbara Buhler, 1999. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, London. ISBN 0-300-08176-6
• Merrill, C.S., 2010. Weekends with O'Keeffe, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. ISBN 978-0-8263-4928-6
• Messinger, Lisa Mintz, 2001. Georgia O'Keeffe, Thames & Hudson, London. ISBN 0-500-20340-7
• O'Keeffe,Georgia, "The Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz," American Playhouse, PBS, 1991
• Patten, Christine Taylor and Alvaro Cardona-Hine, 1992. Miss O'Keefe, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press.
• Robinson, Roxana, 2000. O'Keeffe, Georgia. American National Biography Online
• Robinson, Roxana, 1990. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life, Bloomsbury, London. ISBN 0-7475-0557-8
• Saville, Jennifer, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paintings of Hawai'i, Honolulu, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1990, ISBN 0-937426-11-3

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Georgia O'Keeffe

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Georgia O'Keeffe

• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections Online

• Georgia O'Keeffe at the Museum of Modern Art
• Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keeffe Archive at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• Color image of aerial-view cloudscape by Georgia O'Keeffe
• Documentary Film, Georgia O'Keeffe
• Georgia O'Keeffe at Find a Grave
• Georgia O'Keeffe Gallery at MuseumSyndicate
• Works by or about Georgia O'Keeffe in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Lifetime Honors - National Medal of Arts.
• The Apple (1920–1922) Phoenix Art Museum
• Pink Abstraction (1929) Phoenix Art Museum

Eric Allan Dolphy, Jr. (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist. On a few occasions he also played the clarinet, piccolo, and baritone saxophone. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s. He was also the first important bass clarinet soloist in jazz, and among the earliest significant flute soloists. His improvisational style was characterized by the use of wide intervals, in addition to using an array of extended techniques to reproduce human- and animal-like effects which almost literally made his instruments speak. Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos were often rooted in conventional (if highly abstracted) tonal bebop harmony and melodic lines that suggest the influences of modern classical composers Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Dolphy was born in Los Angeles to Eric Allan Dolphy, Sr. and Sadie Dolphy, who emigrated to the United States from Panama. He picked up the clarinet at the age of six, and in less than a month was playing in the school's orchestra. He also learned the oboe in junior high school, though he never recorded on the instrument. Hearing Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins led him towards jazz and he picked up the saxophone and flute while in high school. His father built a studio for Eric in their backyard, and Eric often had friends come by to jam; recordings with Clifford Brown from this studio document this early time. He performed locally for several years, most notably as a member of bebop big bands led by Gerald Wilson and Roy Porter. He was educated at Los Angeles City College and also directed the orchestra there. On early recordings, he occasionally played baritone saxophone, as well as alto saxophone, flute and soprano clarinet. Dolphy finally had his big break as a member of Chico Hamilton's quintet. With the group he became known to a wider audience and was able to tour extensively through 1959, when he parted ways with Hamilton and moved to New York City. Dolphy appears with the Hamilton quintet in the film Jazz on a Summer's Day playing flute.

Early partnerships[link]

Charles Mingus had known Eric from growing up in Los Angeles, and Dolphy joined his band shortly after arriving in New York. He took part in Mingus' big band recording "Pre-Bird", and is featured on "Bemoanable Lady". Later he joined Mingus' working band which also included Dannie Richmond and Ted Curson. They worked at the Showplace during 1960 and recorded the classics "Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus" and "Mingus at Antibes" (the latter adding Booker Ervin on all tracks except "What Love" and Bud Powell for "I'll Remember April"). Dolphy, Mingus said, "was a complete musician. He could fit anywhere. He was a fine lead alto in a big band. He could make it in a classical group. And, of course, he was entirely his own man when he soloed... He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than was supposed to be possible to do on them" (Last Date liner notes Limelight). During this time Dolphy also recorded a large ensemble session at the Candid label and took part in the Newport Rebels session. Dolphy left Mingus' band in 1961 and went to Europe for a few months, where he recorded in Scandinavia and Berlin, though he would record with Mingus throughout his career. He participated in the big band session for "Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus" in 1963 and is featured on "Hora Decubitus". In early 1964 he joined Mingus' working band again, along with Jaki Byard, Johnny Coles, and Clifford Jordan. This sextet, widely regarded as one of the finest groups ever put together, worked at the Five Spot before playing shows at Cornell University and Town Hall in New York and touring Europe. Many recordings have been made of their tour, which although short, is well-documented.

Dolphy and John Coltrane knew each other long before they played together, having met when Coltrane was in LA with Miles Davis. They would often exchange ideas and learn from each other, and eventually, after many nights sitting in with Coltrane's band, Dolphy was asked to become a full member. Coltrane had gained an audience and critical notice with Miles Davis's quintet, but alienated many purists when he began to move away from congenital hard bop. Although Coltrane's quintets with Dolphy (including the Village Vanguard and Africa/Brass sessions) are now legendary, they originally provoked Down Beat magazine to brand Coltrane and Dolphy's music as 'anti-jazz'. Coltrane later said of this criticism: "they made it appear that we didn't even know the first thing about music (...) it hurt me to see [Dolphy] get hurt in this thing."^[1] The initial release of Coltrane's stay at the Vanguard selected three tracks, only one of which featured Dolphy. After being issued haphazardly over the next 30 years, a comprehensive box set featuring all of the recorded music from the Vanguard was released by Impulse! in 1997: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. The set heavily features Dolphy on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, and Coltrane made Dolphy the featured soloist on their renditions of "Naima". A later Pablo box set from Coltrane's European tours of the early 1960s collected more recordings which feature tunes not played at the Village Vanguard, such as "My Favorite Things" which Dolphy performs on flute.

Booker Little was a trumpet player who tragically died at 23 years old of uremia, although for a short time he and Dolphy had a very fruitful musical partnership that produced some of their finest music. Booker's leader date for Candid, "Out Front" featured Dolphy mainly on alto, though he played bass clarinet and flute on ensemble passages. "Far Cry" recorded for Prestige just after Eric had finished recording "Free Jazz" with Ornette Coleman, features Booker on Jaki Byard's "Mrs. Parker Of K.C." and "Ode To Charlie Parker" and Dolphy's "Far Cry" and "Miss Ann". Dolphy and Little also co-led a quintet at the Five Spot during 1961 that created some of jazz's most celebrated recordings. The rhythm section consisted of Richard Davis, Mal Waldron and Ed Blackwell. One night was documented and has been released on three volumes of "At the Five Spot" as well as the compilation "Here and There". Both Dolphy and Little backed Abbey Lincoln on her album "Straight Ahead", and played on Max Roach's "Percussion Bitter Sweet" as well as the horn section on John Coltrane's "Africa/Brass" sessions.

During this period, Dolphy also played in a number of challenging settings, notably in key recordings by Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation), arranger Oliver Nelson ("Screamin' the Blues", The Blues and the Abstract Truth and Straight Ahead) and George Russell (Ezz-thetics). He also worked with Gunther Schuller, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Mal Waldron, multi-instrumentalist Ken McIntyre, and bassist Ron Carter, among others.

As a leader[link]

Dolphy's recording career as a leader began with the Prestige label. His association with the label spanned across 13 albums recorded from April 1960 to September 1961, though he was not the leader for all of the sessions. Fantasy eventually released a 9-CD box set containing all of Dolphy's recorded output for Prestige.

Dolphy's first two albums as leader were Outward Bound and Out There; both featured artwork by Richard "Prophet" Jennings. The first, sounding closer to hard bop than some later releases, was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with then newcomer trumpet player Freddie Hubbard. The album features three Dolphy compositions: "G.W.", dedicated to Gerwald Wilson, and the blues "Les" and "245". Out There is closer to "third stream" music which would also form part of Dolphy's legacy, and features Ron Carter on cello. Charles Mingus' "Eclipse" from this album is one of the rare instances where Dolphy solos on soprano clarinet (others being "Warm Canto" from Mal Waldron's "The Quest" and "Densities" from the compilation "Vintage Dolphy".

Far Cry was also recorded for Prestige in 1960 and represented his first pairing with trumpeter Booker Little, a like-minded spirit with whom he would make a set of legendary live recordings at the Five Spot in New York before Little's death at the age of 23. The album includes his compositions "Far Cry" (which is the same line as "Out There", rearranged for two horns) and "Miss Ann".

Dolphy recorded several unaccompanied cuts on saxophone, which at the time had been done only by Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins. The album Far Cry contains his famous performance of the Gross-Lawrence standard "Tenderly" on alto saxophone, and his subsequent tour of Europe quickly set high standards for solo performance with his exhilarating bass clarinet renditions of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child" (an early version of this tune was recorded at the Five Spot during his residency with Booker Little). Numerous recordings were made of live performances by Dolphy on this tour, in Copenhagen, Uppsala and other cities, and these have been issued by many sometimes dubious record labels, drifting in and out of print, though many of not all have been remastered and are readily available. He also recorded a short solo rendition of "Love Me" on "Conversations".

20th century classical music also played a significant role in Dolphy's musical career. He performed Edgard Varèse's Density 21.5 for solo flute at the Ojai Music Festival in 1962^[2] and participated in Gunther Schuller's Third Stream efforts of the 1960s.

Around 1962-63, one of Dolphy's working band included the young pianist Herbie Hancock, who can be heard on "The Illinois Concert" and "Gaslight 1962".

In July 1963, Dolphy and producer Alan Douglas arranged recording sessions for which his sidemen were among the leading emerging musicians of the day, and the results produced his Iron Man and Conversations LPs. These sessions were the marked the first time Dolphy played with Bobby Hutcherson, whom he knew from Los Angeles. The sessions are perhaps most famous for the three duets Dolphy performs with Richard Davis on "Alone Together", "Ode To Charlie Parker", and "Come Sunday". They also include a rendition of Fats Waller's classic "Jitterbug Waltz", Sonny Simmons' "Music Matador", and Dolphy's "Iron Man", "Mandrake" (a.k.a. "The Madrig Speaks, The Panther Walks"), and "Burning Spear" (a.k.a. "Half-Note Triplets").

In 1964, Dolphy signed with Blue Note Records and recorded Out to Lunch! with Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams. This album features Dolphy's fully developed avant-garde yet highly structured compositional style rooted in tradition. Out to Lunch!, his last major studio recording, is often considered his magnum opus.^[3]

Final months[link]

After Out to Lunch! and an appearance as a sideman on Andrew Hill's classic Point of Departure, Dolphy left to tour Europe with Charles Mingus' sextet in early 1964. Before a concert in Oslo, he informed Mingus that he planned to stay in Europe after their tour was finished. Mingus then named the blues they had been performing on the tour, "So Long Eric". He intended to settle in Europe with his fiancée, who was working on the ballet scene in Paris. After leaving Mingus, he performed and recorded a few sides with various European bands, and American musicians living in Paris, such as Donald Byrd and Nathan Davis. The famous Last Date with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink was recorded in Hilversum, Holland, though it was not actually Dolphy's last concert. Dolphy was also preparing to join Albert Ayler for a recording, and spoke of his desire of playing with Cecil Taylor. He also planned to form a band with Woody Shaw and Billy Higgins, and was writing a string quartet titled "Love Suite".

Eric Dolphy died accidentally in Berlin on June 28, 1964. Some details of his passing are still disputed, but it is accepted that he died of a coma brought on by an undiagnosed diabetic condition. The liner notes to the Complete Prestige Recordings boxset say that Dolphy "collapsed in his hotel room in Berlin and when brought to the hospital he was diagnosed as being in a diabetic coma. After being administered a shot of insulin (apparently a type stronger than what was then available in the US) he lapsed into insulin shock and died." A later documentary and liner note disputes this, saying Dolphy collapsed on stage in Berlin and was brought to a hospital. The attending hospital physicians had no idea that Dolphy was a diabetic and decided on a stereotypical view of jazz musicians related to substance abuse, that he had overdosed on drugs. He was left in a hospital bed for the drugs to run their course.^[4]

Ted Curson remembers, "That really broke me up. When Eric got sick on that date [In Berlin], and him being black and a jazz musician, they thought he was a junkie. Eric didn't use any drugs. He was a diabetic - all they had to do was take a blood test and they would have found that out. So he died for nothing. They gave him some detox stuff and he died, and nobody ever went into that club in Berlin again. That was the end of that club".

Charles Mingus said, "Usually, when a man dies, you remember-or you say you remember-only the good things about him. With Eric, that's all you could remember. I don't remember any drags he did to anybody. The man was absolutely without a need to hurt".

Dolphy was posthumously inducted into the Down Beat magazine Hall of Fame in 1964. Coltrane paid tribute to Dolphy in an interview: "Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician."^{[citation needed]} Dolphy's mother, Sadie, who had fond memories of her son practicing in the studio by her house, gave instruments that Dolphy had bought in France but never played to Coltrane, who subsequently played the flute and bass clarinet on several albums before his own death in 1967. Dolphy was engaged to be married to Joyce Mordecai, a classically-trained dancer.

Influence[link]

Dolphy's musical presence was hugely influential to a who's who of young jazz musicians who would become legends in their own right. Dolphy worked intermittently with Ron Carter and Freddie Hubbard throughout his career, and in later years he hired Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson and Woody Shaw to work in his live and studio bands. Out to Lunch! featured yet another young lion who had just begun working with Dolphy in drummer Tony Williams, just as his participation on the Point of Departure session brought his influence into contact with up and coming tenor man Joe Henderson.

Carter, Hancock and Williams would go on to become one of the quintessential rhythm sections of the decade, both together on their own albums and as the backbone of the second great quintet of Miles Davis. This part of the second great quintet is an ironic footnote for Davis, who was not fond of Dolphy's music (in a 1964 Down Beat Blindfold Test, Miles famously quipped, "The next time I see [Dolphy] I'm going to step on his foot."^[5]) yet absorbed a rhythm section who had all worked under Dolphy and created a band whose brand of "out" was unsurprisingly very similar to Dolphy's.

Dolphy's virtuoso instrumental abilities and unique style of jazz, deeply emotional and free but strongly rooted in tradition and structured composition, heavily influenced such musicians as Anthony Braxton, members of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Arthur Blythe, Don Byron and many others. Dolphy's compositions are the inspiration for many tribute albums, such as Oliver Lake's "Prophet" and "Dedicated to Dolphy", Jerome Harris' "Hidden In Plain View", and Ōtomo Yoshihide's re-imagining of "Out to Lunch".

In addition, his work with jazz and rock producer Alan Douglas allowed Dolphy's style to posthumously spread to musicians in the jazz fusion and rock environments, most notably with artists John McLaughlin and Jimi Hendrix. Frank Zappa, a highly influential composer who drew his inspiration from a variety of musical styles and idioms, paid tribute to Dolphy in the instrumental "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" (on the 1970 album Weasels Ripped My Flesh) as well as listing Dolphy as an influence on the liner notes for the Mothers' first LP, "Freak Out!".

Discography[link]

Authorized releases are ones issued with Dolphy's input and approval, with all but the Blue Note LP appearing in Dolphy's lifetime. Dates for authorized albums are year of release; for posthumous compilations and sideman sessions by year of recording. Some releases with Dolphy as a sideman were issued much later than the date of the recording sessions.

Authorized releases[link]

• 1960: Outward Bound (New Jazz)
• 1960: Out There (New Jazz)
• 1961: Far Cry (New Jazz)
• 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 1 (New Jazz) (live)
• 1964: Out to Lunch! (Blue Note)

Posthumous compilations[link]

• 1959: Hot & Cool Latin
• 1959: Wherever I Go
• 1960: Candid Dolphy
• 1960: Status
• 1960: Dash One (Prestige)
• 1960: Fire Waltz
• 1960: Magic
• 1960: Other Aspects (Blue Note)
• 1960: Eric Dolphy
• 1961: Here and There
• 1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vols. 1-3 (Prestige) also released as Copenhagen Concert (live)
• 1961: The Complete Uppsala Concert
• 1961: Stockholm Sessions
• 1961: Quartet 1961 also released as Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (live)
• 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 2 (Prestige) (live)
• 1961: Memorial Album (Prestige) (live)
• 1962: Vintage Dolphy
• 1962: Eric Dolphy Quintet featuring Herbie Hancock: Complete Recordings
• 1962: Berlin Concerts (live)
• 1963: Iron Man
• 1963: Conversations (both Conversations and Iron Man were released as a double LP titled Jitterbug Waltz)
• 1963: The Illinois Concert (Blue Note) (live)
• 1964: Last Date (live)
• 1964: Naima
• 1964: Unrealized Tapes
• 1964: The Complete Last Recordings In Hilversum & Paris 1964

As sideman[link]

With Ornette Coleman

• Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960)

With John Coltrane

• Olé Coltrane (1961)
• Africa/Brass (1961)
• Live! at the Village Vanguard (1961)
• Impressions (1963)

With Phil Diaz

• The Latin Jazz Quintet (United Artists, 1961)

With Chico Hamilton

• Chico Hamilton Quintet with Strings Attached (1958)
• The Original Ellington Suite (1958)
• Gongs East! (1958)
• That Hamilton Man (also released as Truth) (1959)

With Andrew Hill

• Point of Departure (1964)

With The Latin Jazz Quintet

• Caribe (Prestige) (1960)

With John Lewis

• The Sextet of Orchestra U.S.A. (1964)
• John Lewis Presents Jazz Abstractions (1960)
• Play Kurt Weill (1961)

With Abbey Lincoln

• Straight Ahead (Candid, 1961)

With Booker Little

• Out Front (1960)

With Ken McIntyre

• Looking Ahead (1960)

With Charles Mingus

• Mingus Revisited (a.k.a. Pre-Bird) (1960)
• Mingus at Antibes (1960)
• Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960)
• "Mingus" (Candid, 1960)
• "The Complete 1960 Nat Hentoff Sessions" (Candid, 1960)
• Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963)
• Town Hall Concert (1964)
• The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (1964)
• Revenge! (1964)
• Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964 (1964)
• "Complete Live In Amsterdam" (1964)
• "Complete Bremen Concert" (1964)
• Astral Weeks (1964)

With Oliver Nelson

• Screamin' the Blues (1960)
• The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961)
• Straight Ahead (1961)

With Max Roach

• Percussion Bitter Sweet (1961)

With George Russell

• Ezz-thetics (1961)

With Mal Waldron

• The Quest (New Jazz, 1961)

With Ron Carter

• Where (New Jazz, 1961)

With Freddie Hubbard

• The Body & The Soul

With Ted Curson

• Plenty of Horn

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Vladimir Simosko & Barry Tepperman: Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography and Discography, Da Capo Press, New York, 1979, ISBN 0-306-80107-8
• Guillaume Belhomme: Eric Dolphy, Le mot et le reste, Marseille, 2008, ISBN :9782915378535
• Raymond Horricks: "The Importance of Being Eric Dolphy", D J Costello Publishers Ltd., Great Britain, 1989. ISBN 0-7104-3048-5

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Eric Dolphy

• A Dolphy website and instructions for mailing list
• Session and discography

For other persons named John McLean, see John McLean.

John Lenwood (Jackie) McLean (May 17, 1931 – March 31, 2006) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, educator, and is a member of the DownBeat Hall of Fame, born in New York City.^[1]

Biography[link]

McLean's father, John Sr., played guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra. After his father's death in 1939, Jackie's musical education was continued by his godfather, his record-store-owning stepfather, and several noted teachers. He also received informal tutoring from neighbors Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Charlie Parker. During high school he played in a band with Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins, and Andy Kirk Jr. (the tenor saxophonist son of Andy Kirk).

Along with Rollins, he played on Miles Davis' Dig album, when he was 19 years old. As a young man McLean also recorded with Gene Ammons, Charles Mingus on the seminal Pithecanthropus Erectus, George Wallington, and as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. McLean joined Blakey after reportedly being punched by the volatile Mingus. Fearing for his life, McLean pulled out a knife and contemplated using it against Mingus in self-defense. He later stated that he was grateful that he did not stab the bassist.^[2]

His early recordings as leader were in the hard bop school. He later became an exponent of modal jazz without abandoning his foundation in hard bop. Throughout his career he was known for a distinctive tone, akin to the tenor saxophone and often described with such adjectives as "bitter-sweet", piercing, or searing; a slightly sharp pitch; and a strong foundation in the blues.

McLean was a heroin addict throughout his early career, and the resulting loss of his New York City cabaret card forced him to undertake a large number of recording dates; consequently, he produced an extensive body of recorded work in the 1950s and 1960s. He was under contract with Blue Note Records from 1959 to 1967, having previously recorded for Prestige. Blue Note offered better pay and more artistic control than other labels, and his work for this organization is highly regarded and includes leadership and sideman dates with a wide range of musicians, including Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Lee Morgan, Ornette Coleman, Dexter Gordon, Billy Higgins, Freddie Hubbard, Grachan Moncur III, Bobby Hutcherson, Mal Waldron, and many others.

In 1962 he recorded Let Freedom Ring for Blue Note. This album was the culmination of attempts he had made over the years to deal with harmonic problems in jazz, incorporating ideas from the free jazz developments of Ornette Coleman and the "new breed" which inspired his blending of hard bop with the 'new thing': "the search is on, Let Freedom Ring". Emblematic of his stylistic growth is the solo on his piece "Quadrangle" as compared to the version of the same tune on BST 4051, Jackie's Bag, recorded in 1959. Let Freedom Ring began a period in which he performed with avant-garde jazz musicians rather than the veteran hard bop performers he had been playing with previously. His adaptation of modal jazz and free jazz innovations to his vision of hard bop made his recordings from 1962 on distinctive.

McLean recorded with dozens of well-known musicians and had a gift for spotting talent. Saxophonist Tina Brooks, trumpeter Charles Tolliver, pianist Larry Willis, trumpeter Bill Hardman, and tubist Ray Draper were among those who benefited from McLean's support in the 1950s and 1960s. Drummers such as Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Lenny White, Michael Carvin, and Carl Allen gained important early experience with McLean.

In 1967, his recording contract, like those of many other progressive musicians, was terminated by Blue Note's new management. His opportunities to record promised so little pay that he abandoned recording as a way to earn a living, concentrating instead on touring. In 1968, he began teaching at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford. He later set up the university's African American Music Department (now the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz) and its Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies program. His Steeplechase recording, "New York Calling" showed that by 1980 the assimilation of all influences was complete, in this outstanding recording made with his son, René McLean.

In 1970, he and his wife, Dollie McLean, founded the Artists Collective, Inc. of Hartford, an organization dedicated to preserving the art and culture of the African Diaspora. It provides educational programs and instruction in dance, theatre, music and visual arts. The membership of McLean's later bands were drawn from his students in Hartford, including Steve Davis and his son René, who is a jazz saxophonist and flautist as well as a jazz educator. Also in McLean's Hartford group was Mark Berman, the jazz pianist and broadway conductor of Smokey Joe's Cafe and Rent. In 1979 he reached #53 in the UK Singles Chart with "Doctor Jackyll and Mister Funk".^[3]

He received an American Jazz Masters fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001 and numerous other national and international awards. McLean was the only American jazz musician to found a department of studies at a University and a community based organization almost simultaneously. Each has existed for over three decades.

After a long illness, McLean died on March 31, 2006, in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2006, Jackie McLean was elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame via the International Critics Poll.

Discography[link]

As leader[link]

Jubilee

• Presenting Jackie McLean (1955)
• Fat Jazz (1957)

Prestige

• Lights Out! (1956)
• 4, 5 and 6 (1956)
• Jackie's Pal (1956)
• McLean's Scene (1957)
• Jackie McLean & Co. (1957)
• Makin' the Changes (1957)
• A Long Drink of the Blues (1957)
• Strange Blues (1957)
• Alto Madness (1957)

Blue Note

• New Soil (1959)
• Swing, Swang, Swingin' (1959)
• Capuchin Swing (1960)
• Jackie's Bag (1959–60)
• Bluesnik (1961)
• A Fickle Sonance (1961)
• Let Freedom Ring (1962)
• Tippin' the Scales (1962)
• Vertigo (1962–63)
• One Step Beyond (1963)
• Destination... Out! (1963)
• It's Time! (1964)
• Action Action Action (1964)
• Right Now! (1965)
• Jacknife (1965)
• Consequence (1965)
• New and Old Gospel (1967)
• 'Bout Soul (1967)
• Demon's Dance (1967)
• One Night with Blue Note Preserved Volume 2 (1985) with Woody Shaw, McCoy Tyner, Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette
• It's About Time (1985) with McCoy Tyner
• Hat Trick (1996)
• Fire & Love (1998)
• Nature Boy (2000)

SteepleChase

• Ode to Super (1973)
• Dr. Jackle (1979; recorded 1966)
• New York Calling (1979)
• Contour (1980)
• Dynasty (1990)

Others

• The Jackie Mac Attack Live (1991)
• Rhythm Of the Earth (1992) Dreyfus
• The Complete Jubilee Sessions (2008) Lone Hill Jazz

As sideman[link]

With Gene Ammons

• The Happy Blues (1956)
• Jammin' with Gene (1956)
• Funky (1957)
• Jammin' in Hi Fi (1957)

With Art Blakey

• Hard Bop (1956)
• Drum Suite (1956)
• Ritual (1957)

With Kenny Burrell

• 2 Guitars with Jimmy Raney (1957)

With Donald Byrd

• 2 Trumpets with Art Farmer (1956)
• Off to the Races (1958)
• Fuego (1959)
• Byrd in Flight (1960)

With Sonny Clark

• Cool Struttin' (1958)

With Miles Davis

• Dig (1951)
• Quintet / Sextet (1955)

With Walter Davis Jr.

• Davis Cup (1959)

With Kenny Dorham

• Inta Somethin' (1961)
• Matador (1962)

With Ray Draper

• Tuba Sounds (1957)

With Dizzy Gillespie

• Bird Songs: The Final Recordings (Telarc, 1992)
• To Bird with Love (Telarc, 1992)

With Charles Mingus

• Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956)
• Blues and Roots (1958)

With Hank Mobley

• Mobley's Message (1956)
• Hi Voltage (1967)

With Grachan Moncur III

• Evolution (1963)

With Lee Morgan

• Lee-Way (1960)
• Tom Cat (1964)
• Cornbread (1965)
• Infinity (1965)
• Charisma (1966)
• The Sixth Sense (1967)

With Freddie Redd

• The Connection (1960)
• Shades of Redd (1960)
• Redd's Blues (1961)

With Jimmy Smith

• Open House (1960)
• Plain Talk (1960)

With Art Taylor

• Taylors Wailers (1957)

With Mal Waldron

• Mal 2 (1957)
• Like Old Time (1976)
• Left Alone '86 (1986)

With Jack Wilson

• Easterly Winds (1967)

With Michael Carvin

• Antiquity (1975)

Filmography[link]

• The Connection, as himself (Dir. Shirley Clarke)
• Jackie McLean on Mars (1980), as himself (Dir. Ken Levis)
• Ken Burns' Jazz (2000), as himself (Dir. Ken Burns)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Derek Ansell, Sugar Free Saxophone: The Life and Music of Jackie McLean. London: Northway Publications, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9557888-6-4

External links[link]

• Jackie McLean complete discography from Music City
• Jackie McLean at Find a Grave
• Allmusic
• MusicWeb
• NEA Jazz Masters
• Official history of the Artists Collective Inc.
• History of the Artists Collective Inc.
• Jackie McLean on the Hard Bop Home Page
• Obituary in The Guardian (London) by John Fordham, April 3, 2006
• "Blues for Jackie," Obituary by Owen McNally in Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT) April 1, 2006
• New England Jazz History Database - Audio Interviews
• Jazz Portraits from the WGBH Archives: Jackie McLean a radio documentary from WGBH Radio Boston