Syncopated Accompaniment (staccato)

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (Spain).

Canvas, oil.

This work by Kupka is more abstract in comparison with other canvases from The Machine Cycle. The sharp contrasts between black, white rod-shaped elements and segmented discs in bright red, orange and blue tones have a visual spontaneity. It contradicts the flickering effects of metal parts of rotating mechanisms. The paint is applied with short strokes, providing a material presence of the author. The name also does not make a literal reference to cars. Instead, we are talking about music; not about fugues and colours, as in the works of 1912, but about jazz. He entered Europe from the United States, gathering millions of enthusiasts. Kupka, like Leger and Mondrian, discovered its energy for himself and also drew an analogy between the sharp rhythms of the movement of the machine and the syncopations of jazz. It is more obvious to compare the forms of this work with Leger’s disks than with Kupka’s earlier paintings. The vibrant abstraction “Syncopated”, with its piston and gear shapes, anticipates his Jazz-Hot Series of the mid-1930s.