Street Singers

Claude Flight

1925 · Color linocut on Japanese paper · Drawings and Prints

Here, Flight created an image of sound made visible, expressed by curved lines radiating from the singers’ mouths. Their powerful voices rather than any physical movement of their bodies are what bend the surrounding structures into the fragmented, billowing forms that fill the composition. Edward Wadsworth’s earlier Vorticist image of a similar subject (Street Singers, 1914, MMA 2019.592.27) seems static by comparison, the three machine-like figures—rendered in tones of black and gray—appearing still, self-contained, somber, and almost sculptural. Flight, by contrast, created a prismatic effect by layering colors from four blocks (yellow, blue, red, and black) into vibrant decorative patterns, perhaps in reference to the joyful serenade of his singers.

Artist

Claude Flight

Date

1925

Medium

Color linocut on Japanese paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Leslie and Johanna Garfield Gift, Lila Acheson Wallace, Charles and Jessie Price, and David T Schiff Gifts, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, Dolores Valvidia Hurlburt Bequest, Peco Foundation and Friends of Drawings and Prints Gifts, and funds from various donors, 2019