Bill Dixon
(b. 1925, Nantucket, MA - d. 2010, North Bennington, VT)
As a youth, Dixon was trained formally in art at the Work Progress Administration Arts School. He first began creating as a visual artist in the late 1940s. Music came later, after his service in World War II.
A multi-disciplinary artist, Dixon did not differentiate, in the sense of hierarchy, between any of the forms of his work. “Concrete representational objects serve comparable roles: in his music, notation helps direct the ensemble through portions of a piece; in the visual works, squares, circles and other geometric objects help guide the eye, give a sign or marker, or arguably explicate some type of narrative. ‘Music is something that you can’t see, and painting is something that you can’t hear...so they balance each other’.” (1)
The lithographs in this exhibition were created at URDLA in Villeurbanne, France during a six-week residency in January and February of 1994. Dixon created a folio of new work – 25 prints - in editions of varying number. In November of 1994, he gave a lecture on his work and performed with his quartet (Dixon, Barry Guy, William Parker, Tony Oxley) at Espace Tonkin, Villeurbanne. (2) These works were subsequently exhibited in Paris, New York, Berlin and Vermont and are in the permanent collection of Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Stephen Haynes
Advisor to the William R. Dixon Living Trust
(1)Andrew Raffo Dewar / Aesthetics, Music and Visual Art of Bill Dixon / Unpublished MA Thesis, Wesleyan University / 2004
(2)Ben Young / Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon / Greenwood Press / Westport, London / 1998
UPCOMING
New York: Bill Dixon’s Centennial Celebration at NYU
EXHIBITIONS
New York: Outsider Art Fair
March 2 - 5, 2023
New York: The Art of Counterpoint, 8 Musicians Maker Art, at Zürcher Gallery, New York
November 10, 2022 - January 10, 2023
