Ayé Aton (born Robert Underwood, January 29, 1940,
Versailles, Kentucky
Versailles () is a home rule-class city in Woodford County, Kentucky, United States. It lies by road west of Lexington and is part of the Lexington-Fayette Metropolitan Statistical Area. Versailles has a population of 9,316 according to 2017 cen ...
; died October 30, 2017, in
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...
), was an American painter, designer, muralist, musician, and teacher.
Aton played percussion in
Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific out ...
's Arkestra for several years in the 1970s. As a visual artist he was known for his outer space-themed murals, which he painted in private homes and on building exteriors in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s. He later became an arts educator in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...
, and rendered hundreds of fine art paintings with African, Egyptian, Native American,
Afrofuturist
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology. It addresses themes and concerns of the African diaspora through technocultu ...
, and abstract motifs.
In 2013, historian
John Corbett
John Joseph Corbett Jr. (born May 9, 1961) is an American actor and country music singer. On television, he is best known for his roles as Chris Stevens on ''Northern Exposure'' (1990–1995), Aidan Shaw on ''Sex and the City'' (2000–2003), ...
collaborated with artist/author
Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon (born 1960, pronounced Lie-gōne) is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity.Meyer, Richard. "Glenn Ligon", in George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman (eds), ''Gay Histories a ...
on a book entitled ''Sun Ra + Ayé Aton: Space, Interiors, and Exteriors'', which featured previously unpublished 1960s and ’70s photographs of Aton’s large-scale murals, as well as stills from Sun Ra’s feature length film, ''
Space is the Place
''Space Is the Place'' is an 85-minute Afrofuturist science fiction film made in 1972 and released in 1974.
" ton'smurals, with their images of blazing suns, pyramids, comets and planetary bodies painted on the walls of black homes all over hicago'sSouth Side," wrote Ligon, "were about a future that he, by way of Sun Ra, was reaching his hand out to take them to. Commissioned from the early 1960s through the beginning of the 1970s, the murals were backdrop to house parties, birthdays, heated arguments, fucking, heartache and life. They were the album sleeve art for Afrocentric and Afrofuturist philosophies that helped a generation reimagine itself."
Ian Bourland, in ''
Frieze
In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...
'' magazine in 2015, wrote that "
ton
Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses.
Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean
* the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds
...
drummed for Ra’s Arkestra, whose synthesis of
occultism
The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism an ...
and sci-fi aesthetics found their way into Aton’s large-scale, pop-psychedelic wall paintings in homes throughout Chicago’s southside – an update of the visionary panoramas of black deco artists such as Aaron Douglas."
Life and involvement with Sun Ra
Underwood was born in Versailles, Kentucky, and moved to New York during his teens. In 1960, he moved to Chicago, around the time that his eventual mentor, musician Sun Ra, moved from Chicago to New York. Corbett wrote that " nderwood spenttime with a study group made up of older men who played checkers in Washington Park on Chicago’s South Side. He was an inquisitive young man, asking deep questions about all manners of obscure topics, and several members of the study group told him about their go-to guy for such queries: a fellow they knew as Sunny Ray ic who had recently left town but was best equipped to help nderwoodon his quest for knowledge."
Underwood phoned Ra, who was receptive to mentorship. According to Corbett, Ra and Aton spoke almost daily for the next eleven years, with Ra providing artistic, philosophical, and religious guidance. It was during this period that Underwood changed his name to Ayé Aton, possibly at the suggestion (or instruction) of Sun Ra. (The name "Aton" is a variant spelling of "
Aten
Aten also Aton, Atonu, or Itn ( egy, jtn, ''reconstructed'' ) was the focus of Atenism, the religious system established in ancient Egypt by the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. The Aten was the disc of the sun and originally an aspect of ...
," the disc of the sun, which was an aspect of the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra. When Sun Ra was based in Chicago in the 1950s, his band often performed at dances sponsored by a social group called "The Atonites.") During this period Ayé began painting ambitious murals in the homes of Chicago's South Side residents and outdoors in public venues, guided by Ra's suggestions of Egyptian motifs, colorful abstractions, and outer space imagery.
Around 1972 Aton relocated to Philadelphia, where he took residence in Sun Ra's communal house in the
Germantown Germantown or German Town may refer to:
Places
Australia
* Germantown, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region
United States
* Germantown, California, the former name of Artois, a census-designated place in Glenn County
* Ger ...
district and joined Ra's celebrated Arkestra as a drummer and percussionist. While living in the house, Aton painted murals in the rooms of fellow musicians
Marshall Allen
Marshall Belford Allen (born May 25, 1924) is an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player. He also performs on flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI (an electronic valve instrument made by Steiner, Crumar company).
Allen is best ...
and
John Gilmore John Gilmore may refer to:
* John Gilmore (activist) (born 1955), co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cygnus Solutions
* John Gilmore (musician) (1931–1995), American jazz saxophonist
* John Gilmore (representative) (1780–1845), ...
, as well as in Sun Ra's room.
Aton played drums and percussion with Sun Ra & His Arkestra from 1972 to 1976, and was part of Ra's ensemble on the albums ''
Space is the Place
''Space Is the Place'' is an 85-minute Afrofuturist science fiction film made in 1972 and released in 1974.Campbell, Robert L. and Christopher Trent, ''The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra'' (2nd edition), Cadence Jazz Books, 2000 He performed with Sun Ra & His Arkestra at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, and at Sun Ra's
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
concert on July 6, 1973. Over the years, Aton also performed extensively with other musicians, including Fred Anderson and
Joseph Jarman
Joseph Jarman (September 14, 1937 – January 9, 2019) was an American jazz musician, composer, poet, and Shinshu Buddhist priest. He was one of the first members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of the ...
of the
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran. The AACM is devote ...
.
Three of Aton's murals (credited to "aye") were reproduced in Sun Ra's 1972 poetry compilation, ''Extensions Out: The Immeasurable Equation, Vol. II''. (The original works were rendered in color, but were reproduced in black and white, including one on the cover.)
Later career
In 1976, Ayé left the Arkestra and moved back to Chicago. He played percussion with Infinite Spirit Music, who in 1979 recorded the album ''Live Without Fear'', issued in 1980 on Ancient Afrika Records.
In 1983, Aton moved to Baton Rouge, where he became a community arts advocate and played drums in local ensembles.
After being diagnosed with cancer in 2016, he moved back to Kentucky, where he spent the last year of his life living with his son Ahmosis Aton. In Ayé's final 20 years he produced hundreds of works on canvas, paper, and board, most of which have never been publicly exhibited or published.
In 2013, the
Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...
presented his first solo exhibition of work, ''Ayé Aton: Space-Time Continuum''. Aton's work was featured in the 2016 exhibition ''The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965–Now'', which was organized by Chicago's
Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to:
Africa
* Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi
Asia East Asia
* Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...