I recently went to Lehmann Maupin, one of my favorite contemporary art galleries on 26^th street in Chelsea, to see their summer exhibition titled, On Shuffle, a group exhibition of interdisciplinary underground cult figures in various mediums, which use and reference music.

One of the contemporary artists that held his own was UK-born Billy Childish.  His portraits of turn of the 20^th century composers Edward Elgar and Sergei Rachmaninov fascinated me because they reflected the artist’s own crossover from art and music. Childish himself is a prolific poet, musician and artist, so I was keen to see him depict artists in his own milieu.

Particularly interesting to me was his depiction of Elgar (shown above) resting across two chairs and taking a break, presumably his mind still over-working as reflected in the multicolored, erratic and psychedelic background.