George Gershwin and Modern Art: A Rhapsody in Blue by Olivia Mattis (review)

During his short lifetime and career, George Gershwin wore a remarkable number of hats—more than we might be aware of. Known as an iconic US American composer, Broadway songwriter, song plugger, and performing pianist (and perhaps less as a conductor, radio show host, and concert organizer), few are aware of his connections to the visual arts. These links were substantial, diverse, and interconnected. Besides composing, performing, and collaborating in New York and Hollywood, Gershwin was also a painter and a draftsman, a photographer, a commissioner of art, a supporter of working artists, an author of essays on music and art, an epistolary correspondent, a board member and patron of artistic institutions, a [End Page 521] sportsman, and—significantly—an ambitious collector of European and US American modern art. Olivia Mattis's George Gershwin and Modern Art: A Rhapsody in Blue is the first scholarly monograph and exhibition catalog to focus on precisely this relationship—Gershwin and the visual arts. Her publication marks the centennial of the premiere of Gershwin's landmark composition, Rhapsody in Blue, at Aeolian Hall on 24 February 1924 in New York under the baton of Paul Whiteman, with Gershwin at the piano. George Gershwin and Modern Art, a pioneering art exhibition of works Gershwin owned, curated by Mattis, was on view at the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida, from 10 February to 16 June 2024. Celebrating the Rhapsody's anniversary, Artis–Naples, the multidisciplinary institution housing the Baker Museum and the Naples Philharmonic, presented concerts and guest lectures on Gershwin and modern art.