Arrangement for Drums

Benton Murdoch Spruance's Arrangement for Drums is an image of three black-suited jazz percussionists playing their instruments, all rendered in an arrangement of nearly abstract geometric shapes and varying tones and textures. At the left, a musician is poised to clap cymbals together; the centrally placed player holds a drumstick upright as he prepares to strike the bass drum; on the right, another drummer, his bald head in profile, extends his drumstick to hit the surface of one of a trio of kettledrums. Spruance's image celebrates a range of rectilinear, circular, curvilinear, and triangular shapes that overlap and interlock to create a visual rhythm appropriate to his musical subject. Indeed, the work's title might refer as much to a composition performed by the musicians as to this portrayal of them as an arrangement of black, white, and gray forms on paper.

When Spruance created this print, he was already noted as an adept and prolific black-and-white lithographer. This image was one of his earliest attempts in color lithography. It was made in two steps, printing first in black ink for the main design, followed by use of a second, so-called tint stone in tan; thus the two superimposed colors created a third on the white paper. Arrangement for Drums is also a rare instance of Spruance working in geometric abstraction, a mode appropriate to his jazz subject but in contrast to his customary representational or social realist style amply demonstrated in his better-known print series "The People Work" (TF 1995.47.a, TF 1995.47.b, TF 1995.47.c, TF 1995.47.d).

L'Amérique et les Modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Atelier 17: Modern Printmaking in the Americas (Atelier 17: Gravura moderna nas Américas, Museu De Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP) and Terra Foundation for American Art (organizer). Venue: Museu De Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), March 23–June 2, 2019. [exh. cat.]

Adams, Clinton. American Lithographers 1900–1960: The Artists and their Printers. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 1983. Ill. pp. 115–17.

Fine, Ruth E. and Robert F. Looney. The Prints of Benton Murdoch Spruance. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. No. 191, p. 191.

Master Prints of Five Centuries: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection. (exh. cat., The Detroit Institute of Arts). Detroit, Michigan: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1990. No. 110, p. 122.

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 28, p. 56 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 28, p. 56 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]