McArthur Binion Discusses "Visualizing Music"

McArthur Binion, 2021. Courtesy: the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London; photograph: William Jess Laird

McArthur Binion (MFA Painting 1973) recently talked with Frieze about the opening of his new solo exhibition DNA:Study/(Visual Ear) at Lehmann Maupin in Seoul, South Korea. The work is Binion’s attempt at visualizing music, a practice that began during his time at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Binon says, “I’ve been working on ‘Visual:Ear’ since 1971. It was my first attempt at trying to visualize how I heard music. My first project in graduate school, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, was a piece titled Drawn Symphony:in:Sane Minor [1971]. It comprised ten pages of music manuscripts that I used as a surface on which to make this drawn symphony. The first time I used the terminology ‘visual ear’ was in my graduate thesis paper that I wrote in 1973 at Cranbrook. In fact, the right-hand side of the painting DNA:Study/(Visual Ear) [2022] draws on that same image I made in 1971, but breaks it up into nine different parts, so it becomes way more complicated and, I think, visually more pleasing.”

Read the full article here. Binion’s exhibition will be open through October 22, 2022.