Ragtime | HYPERCOMMON

David Wilson (misidentified as David Walker in the photo of him and his Ragtime painting in the May 23^rd 1974 article in The Sedalia Democrat) was quoted as saying, “his aim as an artist is to create a fest for the eyes.”

That phrase, “feast for the eyes,” was used In Chapter XV, “A Walk on the Bottom of the Sea” in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) to describe the vision a diver had of a coral reef:

It was marvelous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of colored tints, a perfect kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue; in one word, the whole palette of an enthusiastic colorist!

We have no way of knowing if Wilson read Verne. It’s not a unique simile. That Wilson was familiar with the Greek goddess Hygieia signals he had wider literary interests than the funny papers. Verne, a literary precursor to science fiction and surrealism, could have been describing Wilson’s art, which is a “whole palette of an enthusiastic colorist!” His colors are somewhat muted, but he engaged a “wide range of hues” that interact radioactively. These colors interact, abetted by his pointillist application of paint. Every surface is covered by a stippled effect of small blobs of thick oil paint using several hues.

All the paintings we’ve seen are signed WILSON.

None are dated.

No titles are on the front or back.

The ground for all but one is Masonite. Some are painted on the smooth side, some on the textured side.

Our following divisions are arbitrary, but they show Wilson exerted selective control over his output. All share stylistic and technical similarities. Clearly they are all by the same hand.

Biomorphic Abstractions

These compositions are almost totally curvilinear shapes. Occasionally one suggests a recognizable figure but stops short of being conclusively figural.

Above left: Oil on Masonite, 17 ¾ x 24 ½

Above right: Oil on Masonite 24 x 23 ½

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Biomorphic Abstraction with Figure(s)

The two large ragtime paintings have stylized figures with cubistic, fractured backgrounds, but they are a mix of straight-lined divisions with rounded, organic, i.e. biomorphic shapes. The 22 ½ x 27 oil on Masonite (left) has a bearded face with a headdress in the upper right hand quadrant.

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Geometrized Faces

Above left: This 13 ½ x 14 ½ oil on Masonite appears to be a convict.

Above center: The Asian portrait is 21 ½ x 15 ¾ It is oil on plywood.

Above right: This vaguely Dogbert-looking figure appears to be in a vehicle. As Scott Adams introduced the malicious beagle only three month before Wilson’s death, it’s likely a coincidence. Oil on Masonite 12 x 15 ¾

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Religious Works

The Calvary Episcopal Church, 1713 S. Ohio, Sedalia, Missouri, has two large paintings signed WILSON. They too are oil on Masonite, but are stylistically more conventional than most of his art. Although the faces are realistic and the proportions accurate, the backgrounds have some degree of the abstracted treatment of his other work. The fabric has not been rendered three-dimensional, but is decoratively realized. They prove Wilson could produce more illusionary pictures than he usually chose to.

Above right: Appears to be a profile of Christ, 19 ½ x 10, oil on Masonite.

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Close-ups of Wilson’s quasi-pointillist technique.

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David Wilson, Ragtime, circa 1974, oil on Masonite, 51 x 36, City of Sedalia, Missouri. Now in an office in the Municipal Building. One might think a fractured folk modern work like this would vex the citizens of a mid-size Midwestern town, but Wilson’s depiction of Scott Joplin is a favorite with the public. It has kinetic energy, not unlike the spirited rhythm of ragtime music.

In 1974 David Wilson was commissioned to paint a portrait of Scott Joplin. It was displayed in the hall of Sedalia’s new municipal building. For better security today it hangs in an office. That same year, Sedalia launched its first annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival.

At the end of World War I, other syncopated popular music forms like stride piano, boogie-woogie, Dixieland, blues and jazz successively supplanted ragtime. Periodically, it was dusted off and performed. Joshua Rifkin’s album of Scott Joplin in 1970 sold a million copies, equally the sales number of Maple Leaf Rag sheet music a century earlier.

Marvin Hamlisch won an Oscar for his score based on Scott Joplin’s songs for the movie The Sting. That 1973 film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford was awarded a total of seven Academy awards including Best Picture.

The 1970s saw a national revival of interest in Joplin, but Sedalia’s ragtime heritage had been continuous since the turn of the nineteenth century when the town was the base for a number of black piano players who pioneered the lively syncopated dance music. Businessman John Stark was located here and his success publishing Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 established Joplin as the “King of Ragtime.”

Article from The Sedalia Democrat, May 23, 1974.

The Sedalia Democrat followed every stage of Joplin’s career. Through the years, nostalgic stories recalled his success and the good old days when he enthralled white concertgoers and diverse patrons of the town’s many bawdy houses. Sedalia is a well-churched town, but is candid about its wide-open past as a booming railroad nexus with a thriving red light district and surfeit of saloons. Does the fetching musicality of ragtime provide a soundtrack that covers over the grim realities of its prostitution industry and rampant alcohol abuse? Scott Joplin would die in an asylum at the age of 48 of syphilitic dementia.

Photographs of Scott Joplin have survived so artists are able to paint credible portraits. Some of David Wilson’s other paintings prove he could have created a recognizable Joplin, but obviously he chose not to. In both our painting and the one at Sedalia’s Municipal Building he departed from the constraints of verisimilitude.

Other Sedalia public art works of Joplin are realistic. In 1977, Eric Bransby was paid $10,000 to paint three panels illustrating the town’s past (below left).

The entire chamber of a courtroom of the Pettis County courthouse is lined with pictures of local history by Barbara Campbell done in 2000. She of course included scenes evocative of Scott Joplin’s years in Sedalia, circa 1895-1901 (center).

Stanley James Heard painted a large mural of Joplin at the piano in 1994 on the wall of the Wilkins Music Co. 205 S. Ohio (below right).

(Click image to enlarge).