Stanton Macdonald-Wright
Arm Organization

Arm Organization

© Estate of Jean Macdonald-Wright

Arm Organization
Arm Organization
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Arm Organization
Date1914
PlaceUnited States
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas: 36 × 30 3/16 in. (91.4 × 76.7 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Object number80.33
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
American Art
Object Type
Description

With his friend Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald-Wright developed a style of color abstraction called Synchromy, meaning “with color.” Informed by color theory, Synchromists explored the relationship of color and shapes. The central motif here may suggest a torso or flexed arm; notice the graceful modulations of form and color surrounding the contorted “knot” at the center.


At the age of 19, Macdonald-Wright left his home in Southern California for Paris. He remained overseas for six years, enrolling in a succession of art schools and committing himself to studying and assimilating the most advanced art of his time. In 1911 he met Russell, a fellow American, and they pioneered Synchromism as the only avant-garde movement in Europe established by Americans in the years before World War I. The war forced Macdonald-Wright to return to the United States, where he ultimately settled in Southern California and became a tireless advocate of Modernism.


Macdonald-Wright was convinced that color and sound were equivalent phenomena and that one could orchestrate the colors of a painting the way a composer arranges notes and chords in music. Here, he uses such “chords” of complementary colors as a means of organizing the seemingly abstract composition. Yet, Arm Organization is not entirely abstract, and the potential forms of the curving torso, shoulder, and flexed arm likely derive from Michelangelo’s sculpture Dying Captive, which the artist studied at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.


Provenance Research Ongoing Exhibition HistoryExhibited in "Synchronism and Color Principles in American Painting 1910-1930," at the Museum of Modern Art.

Exhibited in "Modern American Paintings" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, May 18 to June 22, 1983 (LN:83.7).

Exhibited in "Direction and Diversity: Twentieth Century Art in the Museum Collection," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May 21, 1988 to September 3, 1988 (MFAH exh. #24).

Exhibited in "Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchronism" at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina (organizer), March 4 to July 3, 2001; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, August 5 to October 29, 2001; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Law Bldg., Andrews Gallery), December 2, 2001 to February 24, 2002 (LN:2001.3).

"American Made: 250 Years of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 7 July 2012 - 2 January 2013.

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Signed lower left corner recto: "S MacDonald Wright"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Waregane no hibiki mo atsushi natsu no tsuki (The sound of a cracked temple bell is also hot under a summer moon)
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Te no uchi ni hotaru tsumetaki hikari kana (In the hand the fire fly makes a cold brilliance)
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Osoki hi no tsumorite toki mukashi kana (Slow days piling up, how distant they seem, these past times,)
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Kojima nimo hatake utsunari naku hibari (On small islands also men till the earth while larks sing above)
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1966–1967
Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper, edition 44/50
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Hanko no shajitsu henun no shigure kana (Sun beams slant on the riverbank and cold rain falls from a floating cloud)
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1966–1967
Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper, edition 44/50
2021.420.9
Mugi maki no moryo nagaki yuhi kana (Demons sowing barley in the long rays of sunset)
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1966–1967
Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper, edition 44/50
2021.420.10
Yuku haru ya shunjun to shite osozakura (Departing spring hesitates in the late cherry blossoms)
Stanton Macdonald-Wright
1966–1967
Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper, edition 44/50
2021.420.8
Atsu kurushi midaregokoro ya rai o kiku (Cruel heat, my mind in a whirl, I listen to the thunder rumble)
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1966–1967
Woodcut in colors on Japanese paper, edition 44/50
2021.420.17