John Banting (1902-1972)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more
John Banting (1902-1972)

Piano player

Details
John Banting (1902-1972)
Piano player
signed 'John Banting' (lower right)
gouache, pencil and charcoal
13¾ x 15½ in. (34.9 x 39.3 cm.)
Special Notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Lot Essay

The present work shows a dislocated but playful composition based on the tension between fluidity and shapelessness on the one hand and control and geometricity on the other. The strings (the three lines) hold the image and dislocation in check, echoing the square of the piano keyboard on the other side. Organicity and ordering - a fundamental contrast so recurrent in Banting's works -, or, we might say, reason and imagination are, after all, the two "components" of music, feeling and structure, both mutually suspending each other, and thus creating a third reality, almost intangible and inaccessible.

We are very grateful to Michel Remy for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot and lots 20 and 22.

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