Listen with Your Eyes

Listen with Your Eyes by Rolph Scarlett. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780979020728.

Born in Guelph, Canada, and into an artistic family, Rolph Scarlett (1889-1984) spent his teenage years as an apprentice in his uncle’s jewelry firm and briefly studied at the Art Students League, New York. While working in the jewelry industry, Scarlett found time to paint and design theatrical sets in his free time, including one for the 1928 world premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s drama Lazarus Laughed (1926). In 1923, while on a business trip to Switzerland, Scarlett had met the artist Paul Klee and soon after abandoned his figurative painting style in favor of an abstract language that suggested more universal, cosmic truths. In 1937, after permanently settling in New York, Scarlett became acquainted with the artist and curator Hilla Rebay, the first director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952). Rebay provided Scarlett with a Guggenheim Foundation scholarship to paint full-time and obtained several of his paintings for the museum’s collection. From 1940 to 1946, Scarlett served as the museum’s chief lecturer, giving Sunday afternoon talks on art. Scarlett avoided any reference to the outside world and believed that nonobjective painting was an act, in his words, of “pure creation.” There were several shows of his work during his lifetime. This book is the exhibition catalog from a show of his work in 2011 by the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco, California.