Robert P. Taylor's Musicians: Reflections of Music Making

Musicians -- Main Page

Opened July 2001 Based on more than 300 drawings, this "webbery" (web gallery) is the work of Robert P. Taylor of Teachers College, Columbia University. It is not a "music" site in the traditional sense, for it includes no audio. Rather, it is a reflection of the making of music, a reflection built upon a number of concurrent exhibits of drawings of musicians performing and waiting to perform. A fuller rationale for creating Musicians is presented elsewhere (see Rationale for this website, below), but the main reasons for creating it can be stated succinctly. First, drawing musicians is interesting, they are generally at ease as subjects. Second, as a practicing musician in New York, I am around serious musicians a good deal, and so have ample opportunity to sketch them. Third, making music and observing others do so demonstrates my conviction that human lives are defined as much by the unplanned encounters with others that occur as we carry out our lives as they are by any life plans we formulate and attempt to live by. Fourth, artists have always created images of musicians, seeing them as significant symbols of human activity. And fifth, creating this site provided yet another opportunity to demonstrate and utilize the simultaneity and concurrency that computer-based digital media uniquely facilitate for human learning and entertainment.

The first three links below access more on these reasons. Index to all Exhibits provides access to all the images, arranged in various exhibits. Comments allows the visitor to register constructive suggestions and reactions.

Rationale for this website (whymusic) Musicians as subjects of visual art (ArtonMus) More on this site's creator and artist (artist)

Index to all Exhibits (whoswho) Comments