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Theory and style[edit]


The abstract "synchromies" are based on color scales, using rhythmic color forms with advancing and reducing hues, they typically have a central vortex and explode in complex color harmonies. The Synchromists avoided using atmospheric perspective or line, relying solely on color and shape to express form[4]. Macdonald-Wright and Russell were among a number of avant-garde artists at work in the period immediately before World War I who believed that realism in the visual arts had long since reached a point of exhaustion and that, to be meaningful in the modern world, painting needed to sever any ties to older ideas about perspective and to literary or anecdotal content.

The earliest Synchromist works were similar to Fauvist paintings, the multi-colored shapes of Synchromist paintings also loosely resembled those found in the Orphism of Robert and Sonia Delaunay.[5] MacDonald-Wright insisted, however, that Synchromism was a unique art form and "has nothing to do with Orphism and anybody who has read the first catalogue of Synchromism ... would realize that we poked fun at Orphism." The Synchromists' debts to Orphism remain a source of debate among art historians. Their approach more clearly owed something to Cubism, the Synchromists made use of the broken planes of the Cubists, but their lavishly colored areas of paint sometimes looked, as the art historian Abraham Davidson has described them, like "eddies of mist, the droplets of which collect to form parts of a straining torso....To find anything like this in American painting one has to wait for the color-field canvases of Jules Olitski in the 1960s."[6]


Synchromism was developed by Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell while they were studying in Paris during the early 1910s;[7] in 1907, Stanton MacDonald-Wright studied with optical scientists such as Michel-Eugene Chevreul, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Ogdon Rood in order to further develop color theory influenced by musical harmonies[8]. Then from 1911 to 1913, they both studied under the Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart, whose color theory connected qualities of color to qualities of music, such as tone to hue and intensity to saturation.[9] Also influential upon MacDonald-Wright and Russell were the paintings of the Impressionists, such as Cézanne and Matisse, along with the Cubists, which heavily emphasized color over drawing;[10] in addition to the Cubists and Impressionists, MacDonald-Wright and Russell were also inspired by artists such as Emile Bernard, who was a Cloisonnist, and the Synthetist Paul Gauguin for their unique explorations of the properties and effects of color[11]. Russell coined the term "Synchromism" in 1912, in an express attempt to convey the linkage of painting and music.

The first Synchromist painting, Russell's Synchromy in Green, exhibited at the Paris Salon des Indépendants in 1913. Later that year, the first Synchromist exhibition by Macdonald-Wright and Russell was shown in Munich.[12] Exhibitions followed in Paris in October 1913 and in New York in March 1914. Macdonald-Wright moved back to the United States in 1914, but he and Russell continued separately to paint abstract synchromies.[13] Synchromism remained influential among artists well into the 1920s, though its purely abstract period was relatively brief.[14] Many synchromies of the late 1910s and 1920s contain representational elements, at no time, though, did Macdonald-Wright or Russell achieve the level of critical or commercial success they had hoped for when they introduced Synchromism to the United States. It was not until after Russell's death and late in Macdonald-Wright's life that extensive museum and scholarly attention was paid to their highly original achievements. Other American painters who experimented with Synchromism include Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Andrew Dasburg (1887-1979), Patrick Henry Bruce (1880-1936), and Albert Henry Krehbiel (1873-1945).[15]



See also[edit]


  2. ^ Hughes, p. 345.
  4. ^ Miyasemervekaplan. "Art Movements: Synchronism". Art Movements. Retrieved 2017-05-25. 
  6. ^ Davidson, p. 124.
  8. ^ "Synchromism | art movement". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-05-24. 
  9. ^ South, pp. 30-35.
  10. ^ South, p. 21.
  11. ^ "Synchromism: Abstract Painting Style". Retrieved 2017-05-24. 
  12. ^ South, p. 43.
  13. ^ Roberts, p. 94.
  14. ^ Roberts, p. 94.
  16. ^ Loughery, pp. 94-97.

