Can the Visual Arts Have the Blues?

“Ain't got no rest in my slumbers/ Ain't got no feelings to bruise/ Ain't got no telephone numbers/ I ain't got nothing but the blues,” goes Jazz composer Duke Ellington’s 1945 song “Ain’t Got Nothing But the Blues.” Jazz wins credit as the only original American art form (and rightfully so), but before Jazz there was the Blues. The Blues began as an African-American phenomenon (and rightfully so, since for so long they had “nothing but”), but the idea of the Blues eventually spread to the human condition itself, adopted by every race and every means of expression, not just music. Blues for Smoke, which runs through April 28, 2013 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, illustrates how the visual arts got the Blues through the 90 works of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and installation art. As smoky and ill-defined as the idea of the Blues can be, Blues for Smoke pictures Blues as a fleeing feeling, a lasting philosophy, and nearly everything in between. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can the Visual Arts Have the Blues?"

[Image: Jack Whitten. Black Table Setting (Homage to Duke Ellington), 1974. Acrylic on canvas. 72 x 60 inches. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Purchase with funds provided by Jack Drake and Joel and Karen Piassick.]

[Many thanks to the Whitney Museum of American Art for the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition Blues for Smoke, which runs through April 28, 2013.]