Street Singers
Claude Flight British
Not on view
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.
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