Concert Grand c. 1929

Harold Emerson Keeler made this drawing, Concert Grand, with graphite on paper. It’s all in grays, as you can see, with the artist exploring the possibilities of light and shade. I wonder about the decisions Keeler was making. He's looking hard at the piano and pianist and getting down what he sees; at the same time, he's also improvising, pushing things around, like a jazz musician. He varies the marks: Look at the keys on the piano – they seem to shimmer under that light. There's something kind of cubistic about how Keeler has depicted the elements, breaking them down into geometric forms, and reassembling them. He's a bit like Picasso, who used a similar approach to show different points of view all at once. It’s as if Keeler is showing us the piano from multiple angles, all in the same image. It’s like artists are always in conversation, responding to what came before, but always finding their own voice.