Outsider artist painting: Duke Ellington - by Harriet Young
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  • Duke Ellington

  • 1995
  • Acrylic Gel
  • 30" x 36"
Head shot of photo of Duke Ellington that appears in the painting Duke Ellington by outsider artist Harriet Young

This spectacular Duke Ellington tribute has a decidedly Vegas vibe but was actually inspired by Sophisticated Ladies, a musical review that ran on Broadway from 1981-'83 and featured Ellington songs from the '30s and '40s. Duke is actually not rendered in this painting - Harriet just pasted him in with a small black and white head shot from the review's playbill. Given the visual extravaganza before us, this gesture is a genuine delight, and surely the irony of it was not lost on the artist.

The six women in the painting with blond hair and blue faces surrounding Duke were inspired by the playbill, but the playbill itself could have been inspired by the Moulin Rouge Showgirls, shown below in this photo taken 25 years earlier. Harriet decided to give her showgirls blond hair and blue faces, but facial features don't lie. Obscuring the identity of her subjects (including herself on occasion) while leaving (or not leaving) clues as to their identities was deliberate, and she obviously loved doing it.

Photo of the Moulin Rouge show girls, who appear in the painting Duke Ellington by pop art chronicler of mid-century Hollywood and Las Vegas, Harriet Young
Clockwise, from lower left (1955): Barbara McCory, Jane Craddock, Norma Talbot, Lorraine Riley, Anna Bailey, Dee Dee Jasmin, and (center) Norma Washington. They would appear in performance on the cover of Life Magazine one month later. (non-commercial image use courtesy UNLV University Libraries)

Regarding the Moulin Rouge Showgirls, there is some interesting history here that for many will enhance an appreciation of this work. The desegregation of the entertainment industry in Las Vegas during the mid-1950s and beyond was one of the great sidebars to the American civil rights movement. Pivotal in this history was the Moulin Rouge, a hotel, nightclub and casino located away from the Strip in Westside, the small black neighborhood in the then fledgling entertainment mecca of 25,000 called Las Vegas. As of this writing there are some very good articles on the internet that describe the edginess and inevitable workarounds of segregated Las Vegas back then, and how it all finally played out:

From sfgate.com

From smithsonianmag.com

The subject is also covered in the mid-‘90s double DVD set The Real Las Vegas, and includes interviews with folks who were right in the middle of it, including one of the ladies above.

Duke Ellington is as complex and visually arresting a piece of artwork as we’ve ever experienced from Harriet Young, and clicking it into enlargement mode and beyond will provide endless delight.