Jazz and Visual Art

Abstractionism Abstractionism - What is it? Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses color and form in a non- representational or subjective way. (from the wikipedia article: Abstract Art

Vassily Kandinsky Russian Painter Proponent of Abstract Art Wrote On the Spiritual in Art Series of “Improvisation” paintings “…the improvisations are spontaneous Reactions to subjective experiences And emotions, and therefore derive From an inner compulsion…” From Kandinsky by Ramon Tio Bellido, p. 54

Kandinsky: Improvisation 30 (1913)

Ravine Improvisation (Kandinsky, 1914)

Jackson Pollock Listened to jazz when painting -Paintings embody improvisation

Alchemy is one of Jackson Pollock’s earliest poured paintings, executed in the revolutionary technique that constituted his most significant contribution to twentieth-century art. After long deliberation before the empty canvas, he used his entire body in a picture-making process that can be described as drawing in paint. By pouring streams of commercial paint onto the canvas from a can with the aid of a stick, Pollock made obsolete the conventions and tools of traditional easel painting. He often tacked the unstretched canvas onto the floor in an approach he likened to that of the Navajo Indian sandpainters, explaining that “on the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.” Surrealist notions of chance and automatism are given full expression in Pollock’s classic poured paintings, in which line no longer serves to describe shape or enclose form, but exists as an autonomous event, charting the movements of the artist’s body. As the line thins and thickens it speeds and slows, its appearance modified by chance behavior of the medium such as bleeding, pooling, or blistering. Process (from the guggenheim website, Lucy Flint)

Jackson Pollock: Alchemy (1947)

Jackson Pollock: Untitled (Green Silver), c.a. 1949