Bouquet Guanajuato

Date: 1986

Medium: Crayon

Dimensions: 14 x 19 1/4 inches

Related Information

Remarks:
“Harris assures us that he knows very little about music although he took classes, one summer, in music history, with the composer, Ernest Krenek. Despite his denial Harris does think in musical terms. He speaks of his crayons as if they were a piano keyboard, ‘Some keys are missing—whole octaves in the reds!’ He notes that the drawing Rag Rug is in the ‘key of somber', reading its gray tonality as a musical quality and a mood. On a deeply intuitive level the drawings are composed like musical compositions. A drawing may be in the key of blue (Bouquet, Guanajuanto) or brown, (Empty Box), or orange (Flowers, Mallinkrodt). Harris adjusts color through ‘hearing’ in a way so specific that color scales are conceptualized as musical notes. If the crayon manufacturer has not produced a color which should be available in the chromatic scale Harris feels that he is trying to compose on a broken piano or that a key is stuck.”
—Morris Yarowsky, introduction to Paul Harris: Drawings (Bolinas, CA and Seattle: Wrongtree Press and University of Washington Press, 1998).

Publications:
Yarowsky, Morris. Paul Harris: Drawings. Bolinas, CA and Seattle: Wrongtree Press and University of Washington Press, 1998).