Daydream by Seward Johnson

All around the old Customs House in Key West, which is now a museum, they have art. In back of the customs house is a sculpture of a group of naked girls holding hands and dancing in a circle. laying on the ground under them looking up is a young boy.

Nearyb is another sculpture of a painter painting the scene. One fellow tourista was to my left and a bit in front taking a photo of the front of the statue. However, I wanted to capture the scene of a painter painting the dancing girls and show his painting.

Bold, witty and playfully mischievous, J. Seward Johnson’s cast bronze Day Dream is situated in the Water Garden adjacent to the Domestic Arts Building. Based on Henri Matisse’s (1869 – 1954) famous painting, Dance, Johnson translates another two-dimensional classic into a three-dimensional, real-life fantasy wherein Matisse’s dancers have stepped out of the canvas to become part of an intriguing sculptural tableau.

Johnson’s work captures the expressive colors and the rhythmic movement portrayed in Matisse’s painting. The five dancing figures are lively and energetic as their bodies move in full, celebratory swing to, perhaps, the sound of folk music. Associated with Fauvism, the early 20th century movement wherein artists created expressionistic works using pure color and simplified lines, Matisse aimed to create a visual harmony on his canvases—perfectly uniting color and composition. Johnson intends to maintain that harmony in his three-dimensional work, Day Dream; however, with an extra twist and a remarkably daring sense of humor. (http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/c_jjohn.htm)

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