Blinky Palermo visited New York for the first time in 1970, together with his artist friend Gerhard Richter, before he moved into his own studio in the American metropolis in December 1973. New York, with its vibrant art, music, and party scene, promised new inspiration and a different lifestyle. It was here that Palermo created four drawings, which he grouped under the title “Happier than the Morning Sun (for S. Wonder),” a reference to Stevie Wonder's song of the same name from his 1972 hit album “Music of My Mind.” The blind, black soul musician, wearing his striking sunglasses, was one of the absolute stars of the New York music scene at the time. Andy Warhol, for example, captured himself and Stevie Wonder in several iconic party Polaroids after a Rolling Stones concert at Madison Square Garden in 1972. Perhaps Palermo also went to a Stevie Wonder concert. Still, in any case, he will have listened to his album “Music of My Mind,” especially the feel-good song “Happier Than the Morning Sun,” many times in his New York studio, perhaps even on endless repeat while painting. New York not only provided Palermo with crucial artistic inspiration, but the young, promising artist, who was still a married man in Germany, also found a new love and source of inspiration in the American artist Robin Bruch. Wonder's song, which features lyrics stating “I'm happier than the morning sun / And that's the way you said that it would be / If I should ever bring you inside my life,” could hardly express Palermo's situation at the time any better. Palermo was very musical himself, playing piano in a band. In addition to art and literature, music always played an essential part in his life, especially jazz and later soul and funk. Joseph Beuys, Palermo's teacher at the Düsseldorf Academy, also emphasized this in a conversation about Palermo: "Music inspired him. [...] Very unusual music. Let's say the extreme innovations that mostly came from America, from the underground, mostly even from fairly unknown people – but he had a range that extended to Thelonious Monk, etc." (Joseph Beuys on Blinky Palermo, in: Palermo. Werke 1963-1977, exhibition catalog, Kunstmuseum Winterthur / Kunsthalle Bielefeld / Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Munich 1984, p. 99) Palermo loved the thrill of the new and uniquely turned innovative musical impulses into artistic creations and, ultimately, multi-part rhythmic color tones. In the late 1960s, Palermo had already begun staging his wall drawings in combination with music. For instance, in 1969 at Galerie René Block in Berlin, he placed 24 neatly drawn, rhythmically arranged vertical lines in English red on the white wall of a nonagonal room, interrupted by spaces and pauses. According to the instructions the artist gave to the gallery owner, these “wall drawings with music” were accompanied by “the piano piece with text/model op. 33 by Henning Christiansen, which is to be played constantly on a tape loop. This piece is to be concretized by my intervention, in that it comes from an imaginary space into your concrete space, thus reinforcing my intentions.” (Letter from Palermo to René Block, February 8, 1969, in: Palermo – who knows the beginning and who knows the end?, exhibition catalog, Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster / Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Heidelberg 2011, p. 39)
Beuys recognized the unique, ephemeral, or even ethereal aesthetic of Palermo's work, the origin of which—like the rhythmic, multi-part nature of his famous later pieces, including this work—can be found in Palermo's obsession with music. In every respect, Palermo was a restless seeker who felt a magical attraction to everything new, both aesthetically and emotionally. His wife, Kerstin Heisterkamp, to whom Palermo was married until 1975, described him as follows: “Blinky always sought the greatest love, but he also desired everything else – he wanted security, but he also wanted adventure” (quoted from: “To the people ...” Sprechen über Blinky Palermo, Cologne 2003, p. 20). It is probably this enormous restlessness inherent in Palermo's character that enabled him to create such an outstanding and innovative oeuvre in the few years before his unexpected death at the age of just 33. [JS]