Sold for: $721,250

PROVENANCE
Acquavella Galleries, New York
Private Collection, Weston, USA
By descent to a Private Collection, USA
First Open, Christie's New York, March 6, 2015, lot 62
Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Stefanie Waldek, "Jack Bush’s Swing Gay Is on the Block, A Preview of Selected Lots from Sales Around the World," Architectural Digest, February 28, 2015, reproduced

Swing Gay calls to mind the kind of music that Jack Bush loved: simple jazz with a strong beat and lyrical melody. The swing era of jazz spanned from about 1930 to 1945, and these were busy but youthful years for the artist. Bush was in his twenties for most of the 1930s. He had hoped to move to New York City to try to make his mark as an artist, but the Depression soon hit, and his solid job in Toronto at the commercial art firm Rapid Grip was not something he could give up during uncertain times. In 1934, he married Mabel Teakle, whose family had been long-time friends of the Bushes in Montreal. By 1945, the couple had three sons between the ages of 3 and 10 years old. Things were certainly swinging for Bush through these years. Thirty years later, when he painted Swing Gay towards the end of his life, listening to big-band swing jazz likely sent Bush back to his younger years, inspiring vigour and cheerful reminiscence, as we all tend to feel when listening to the music of our own generation.

There is a wonderful quality of showmanship in swing jazz that is present in its best musicians, such as Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Count Basie, to name just a few. Although Bush was mostly described as a gentleman and a little more conservative than his peers, since he was older than his fellow Colour Field artists, his paintings are anything but traditional or cautious. Bush’s abstract paintings manifest showmanship in paint. Swing Gay is bold, bright and splashy, in the best way. Like swing jazz, the painting provokes a visceral feeling and sense of movement; shapes of colour push and pull like swing dancers, making daring swoops again and again.

While the title for this painting pays tribute to an earlier time, its aesthetic is forward-looking. Swing Gay belongs to Bush’s last group of lyrical paintings with stylized strokes or notes of colour. It was painted in June 1976, which would be the artist’s last summer, and he had been working on a new series, now known as his Handkerchief paintings. The width and relatively straight-edged sides of the strokes in Swing Gay foreshadow the falling squares of this late series. However, instead of falling, the strokes of colour in Swing Gay move swiftly upward, producing positive feelings of elation and levity.

Music can transport the body and mind back to more carefree days or distant places. Bush enjoyed listening to music in his studio while he painted. Although virtually all of Bush’s paintings were executed in Toronto, either at home or in his studio, music could take him anywhere while he painted. Listen, for example, to a recording of Ellington and his band performing “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and it might set your mind on traveling through New York City. Suddenly you are there, back with a spring in your step.

It may be the jazzy nature of this painting that convinced the artist, in September 1976, to send the canvas to the art dealer Martha Baer at Acquavella Galleries in New York City. The painting’s next public appearance happened again in New York City, in 2015, when it went on the block at Christie’s and hammered well above estimate. It is no wonder the painting moved fast; the swish style of Swing Gay is upbeat and keeps you on your toes. It may even sweep you off your feet.

We thank Dr. Sarah Stanners, director of the Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné, contributor to the Bush retrospective originating at the National Gallery of Canada in 2014, and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Art History, for contributing the above essay.

This work will be included in Stanners’s forthcoming Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars