John Altoon s Jazz Players From 1950 - 1396 Words

John Altoon’s Jazz Players from 1950 is an oil on Masonite painting located in the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. Altoon’s piece conveys a sense of art deco style with his use of bold contour line outlining geometric shapes along with his use of strong saturated colors. Altoon’s Jazz Players reflects Modernism by exemplifying cubism as well as Harlem Renaissance art through the use of angular, geometric shapes and the depiction of the â€Å"New Negro.† John Altoon was born in 1925 in Los Angeles and died in 1969 at the of age 43 due to a massive heart attack (Orange County Museum of Art Website). Altoon’s other works were known for being involved in L.A. avant-garde during the 1950’s and 1960’s. After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute and the Otis College of Art and Design he established his own style that somewhat reflected Abstract Expressionism (Orange County Museum of Art Website). Altoon uses geome tric shapes, angles, and lines in Jazz Players, which echoes Picasso’s modern cubist principles. His entire piece is composed of geometric shapes including triangles and rectangles. These principles make the piece more flat and two-dimensional. Altoon’s piece prominently demonstrates shallow space due to the subject matter consuming the entire work. His depiction of space therefore elicits a sense of flatness embodied in his work. The use of shapes throughout the piece abstracts the form and creates a distortion of the jazz player’s bodies and