A Retrospective Poem on Paint and Song

by David Hurtado

I

Enter: A company of ballerinas.

The company, dressed in black, stands patiently in front of the oxidized wall of a warehouse. Concrete floors, a vaulted ceiling, and an idiosyncratic musician playing the piano in front of us…

I.2

In the full-length film Runaway, George Condo’s demonic ballerina steps out of her frame, multiplies, and becomes the human amalgam dancing in front of Kanye West’s white piano—as if it were a theatrical presentation of a work by Edgar Degas.

The company leaps from lyric to lyric, rhythmically decorating time and space. Yet, the music is not implied like it would in an oil painting. Rather, it is the premise of this fluid visual show. The intimate connection between this work and the corresponding music video makes this painting simply a facet of Kanye West’s mixed-media masterpiece.

II

Enter: A lone ballerina

The star of the show, elegant and poised, is frozen on the stage. The audience’s gaze is omniscient but irrelevant. The pastel colored backdrop of trees behind her implies that she is the source of heat in a gray forest clearing.

II.2

In a 1936 essay on Edgar Degas’ ballerinas, Paul Valéry writes:

The intimate connection between the World of the Dance and the World of Music is felt by all, but no one so far has shown the reason for it, or how it functions.

Nothing is more mysterious than equality of duration, equal intervals of time, the observation of which can be so simply stated. How is it we can decide that sounds follow each other at equal intervals, and can tap out sounds “equidistant” from each other? And what is the meaning of that equality [within a work of fine art and music] which the senses recognize?

The Dance generates a whole plastic world; the pleasure of dancing releases and radiates the pleasure of seeing the dance.

Out of the forming, dissolving and re-forming patterns created by the same set of limbs, as out of the movements which echo each other at equal or harmonious intervals, comes decoration in time, just as the spatial repetition of motifs, or their symmetry, gives rise to decoration in space.

The dance is composed of interchangeable sensory experiences, where sounds and colors interact like performers and audience. L’Etoile dances to “Clair de Lune”—by both Flight Facilities and Debussy. She dances to Kanye West and Tchaikovsky; and with each song and movement the ballerina curates a decorative show in time and space.

III

 

Enter: A lost boy

 

Not the one from Peter Pan. Rather, the lost mountain boy, 2,196 miles from home with nothing but a box full of his favorite sounds and pictures. He’s on the third floor of the gallery sitting on the smooth gallery-grade wood bench and staring at gallery-grade white-washed walls.

III.II

“Woofs” –The orange dog

He’s spent two days on this unfamiliar campus making tenuous friendships, being told that it’s all about the people, yet this cold room is where he is most comfortable. Music box in hand, he hits play on his Spotify playlist:

PLAYLIST: El Portal

Created by: David Hurtado ∙ 31 songs, 2 hr 11 min

1. The Boogie Man Song                                    Mos Def
2. Get The Green                                                Caleborate
3. Girl                                                                  The Internet [feat. Kaytranada]
4. …                                                                    …

Looking around the room, he takes note of the contrast his ripped jeans create with the pristine exhibition space he is in. Basquiat’s Diagram of the Ankle hangs confidently on the wall. There are rough edges on the playlist, painting, and haggard clothing that have come together in this moment. This corner of the gallery that the boy is inhabiting has become his own, and he realizes that he is not so out of place. He wonders if Basquiat felt out of place—or strangely at peace—when he was surrounded by white faces and white walls.

He wonders what Basquiat would have thought of Mos Def’s 2004 album, The New Danger.

IV

In Degas, there is a different spectacle with each shuffle through a playlist. In Basquiat, each song calls to mind a different element of the work—a backstory, a word, or a memory.

Perhaps the connection between the worlds of music, dance, and visual expressions exists precisely in this place—or places—of memory. Scenes that can be constructed and deconstructed only to be weaved back together by new experiences.

Decorations in space and time that are remembered and re-associated—always switching roles. Hip-Hop ballerinas and melancholy lost boys follow the same steps in composing decorative spaces with rhythmic sounds and shuffling feet.