The Improvisational Gesture in Jazz and the Visual Arts
Many renowned visual artists are also skilled musical improvisers, and many renowned musical improvisers are also skilled visual artists. Some of these artists see little difference between their two art practices, considering themselves to be improvisers in varied media, while others do. Given the number of creative individuals who see improvisation as playing a key role in their varied art practices, both visual and musical, it is surprising how little investigation there has been into improvisation as an inter-arts practice. That there might be both points of contact, and points of conflict, between improvising in distinct media, has gone under-theorized, perhaps due to the fact that improvisers in general fly under the radar of most art-discourse, where composition, in both its musical and visual forms, is taken to be the hallmark of expertise. This exhibit, Ensemble, is therefore both prescient and timely, a testament to the organizers finely tuned sensibilities and aesthetic.
And yet recognizing that both visual artists and musicians improvise, and often draw upon jazz as their model and inspiration, might mask the fact that precisely what it is to improvise—in both music in general, and jazz in particular, and in the visual arts, is far from clear, and is highly contested territory. Again, this exhibit, by bringing the visual arts into dialogue (itself a crucial notion for many improvisers) with the music, offers us an ideal opportunity to interrogate the whole notion of improvising.
Before turning to a discussion of how the art-works on display here might help us understand what it is to improvise, let me say a little about a theoretical “gap” between a common account of improvising in jazz and in the visual arts. Surely the example of an improvising painter par excellence that is usually first thought of is Jackson Pollack. His so-called action paintings, created with the be-bop improvisations of the great black experimentalist Charlie Parker playing, are often said to be improvisations, and, more strongly still, painterly versions of be-bop. (One should note that recent research suggests that Pollack did not listen to much be-bop, but earlier swing era jazz.) Yet what does, or can, this mean? When this claim is unpacked and not just left as a kind of “jazz age” metaphor, it is often said that the very technique employed by Jackson, of allowing the paint to splatter the canvas in an uncontrollable, unpredictable way, is an improvisatory gesture. And this claim is further backed up by stating that the resultant works are essentially freed of the artist’s own personality and history. They are self-referential works, or, if one accepts the once dominant discourse on Pollack inspired by Clement Greenberg, essentially about flatness and the limitations of a canvas. The combination of having art be for its own sake, and directed towards the investigation of its own media, is very much part of a modernist program, originally undertaken, say, in the 17th century, to allow each art form to have its own realm, so to speak. And so Pollock’s great drip paintings are seen as improvisations since they do not contain any obvious mark of the artist’s own intentions, the intentional link between thought and product has been broken. This break with the artist’s own history is in keeping with Greenberg’s formalism, the paintings can be seen, a la Harold Rosenberg, as pure events, gestures par excellence, and libratory gestures at that, free of all cultural, historical, and aesthetic baggage. They are therefore pure improvisations, studies in structure and form. One might, at this point, quote Pollock’s own claim to not be aware of what he is doing while he is painting, therefore nodding towards a common claim made about Charlie Parker specifically, and improvising jazz musicians more generally, that they too act in a mindless manner, that both Jackson and the jazzers are, in some literal sense, out of their minds.
Now before returning to the question of how accurate a description this is of Pollock, we need to turn to a brief description of what improvising in the jazz tradition is often taken to be. It is common to be told that what distinguishes an improviser from a mere performer is the fact that improvisations bear all the hallmarks of the improviser herself, her emotions, feelings, thoughts, actions and history are found in her improvisations. In this sense improvisations are highly personal, they are imbued through and through with the essence of their creator, unlike with a performer, who is often said to be the vehicle of someone else’s “self”, the composer. And so jazz is improvisational since its performances are highly colored by, and closely bear the marks of, the individual performers.
These two accounts of improvisation are squarely in conflict with each other—Pollocks are improvisations since they are freed from the artist’s direct control, they are unmediated gestures, the product neither of forethought or precise planning. Jazz is improvisational since its improvisations bear all the hallmarks of the improviser; they are highly mediated acts of the presentation of the self, highly intentional acts. How are we to reconcile these two accounts, how did we find ourselves at this impasse? Perhaps there is little more to say about the similarities between the archetypal improvising painter and jazz improvisers than the fact that the latter was a sonic backdrop to the former.
This will not do, yet shows how much more needs to be said about improvising in these two art forms, painting and music. Indeed the painting and painters in this exhibit help point us towards a more fruitful way of seeing what it might be to improvise as a visual artist, and what the affinities with jazz improvising might actually be.
A story for another day is how the above gloss on Pollock is in many ways highly misleading. Are we really to take it that his practice is mindless, like the parody of the romantic hero so often foisted upon the jazz musician? Charlie Parker, taken by many to be Pollock’s muse, was said to channel elemental forces, to be a mere vehicle for a voice not properly his own. Apart from the intrinsic absurdity of such a position, it fits well with a persistent gloss on Pollock himself. Yet mindlessness is too elastic a notion to go un-scrutinized, and intentions, and the related notion of intentionality, are equally complex—it is far from clear what one is committed to in either denying them a role in a given artistic process, or foregrounding their instrumentality. Consider the following image of Pollock. Is this an image of a person acting unintentionally? Are Pollock’s in any sense “generic”, or, rather, are his action paintings not instantly recognizable as his, and far different, dare I say superior, to similar attempts made by many others. Is not his history as apparent in his works as with other more “intentional” artists? We need to think a lot more closely about the role of intentions, intentionality and purpose when thinking about improvisation. The scathing, and misplaced, critique of improvisation undertaken by John Cage and his followers, substituting the notion of the random, chance or aleatory for the improvisational, has had pernicious and long lasting effects. There must be a sense in which improvisers intend what they do, be they musicians or visual artists, their actual gestures are a direct product of who they are, their particular histories and experiences, their prowess both technical, mental, physical and spiritual. If Pollock improvised it is not in virtue of his absence from his works (itself a myth), any more than Parker’s improvisations lack his presence, but are said to be the product of a mythical muse. Curiously, the discourse that erases Pollack from his works hails this as a triumph, a truly libratory gesture, while Parker’s absence is motivated only by a racist discourse that refuses to acknowledge black genus.
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What can we say positive about improvising, and how can we see these art works on display as partaking positively in the improvisatory gesture? The lovely banner introducing the show mentions one such way, by seeing jazz as providing an analogy for explaining various features of modern art. Surely this is correct, yet I am more concerned not with analogical understanding, but with how these visual art works might actually manifest features of improvisation--how can we see these works as kinds of improvisations?
There is much to say about improvising as practiced in the jazz, and related black music, traditions, let me point towards some aspects of the improvisatory gesture as I see them made manifest in the wonderful collection of artworks on display next door. My comments are meant only to be suggestive, like a good improvisation these artworks contain varied “laminar depths of meaning”, to borrow from the great improviser George Lewis, and present themselves differently each time viewed.
Indeed, all these works seem to invite one to enter into dialogue with them, which is, perhaps, a hallmark of all good art. They demand one’s attention and ask the viewer to become a participant in the construction of their meaning. This intrinsic dialogicality is a crucial element of improvisation, for improvisation is a kind of social dialogue, involving not just the performers, but the audience. And, to me at least, all these works invite, or, more strongly still, demand one to enter into the dialogue, the project of finding meaning, form, and function each time one encounters them. Let us consider the works in turn:
Sam Borenstein, View of Montreal
This characteristic Borenstein city-scape exemplifies perfectly the signifying tradition so crucial to jazz improvising. As the great alto saxophonist Marion Brown once said about his own musical practices, Borenstein is like “a man walking backward into the future.” This work both references a European tradition of city-scapes, while commenting on it, and moves this tradition forward. The work is therefore both squarely embedded in a tradition, yet is in dialogue with it, changing it, not rejecting it. Borenstein makes the tradition his own, as any jazz improviser does when faced with playing a standard.
Graham Coughtry, Walking Figure - Dawn:
Coughtry was long associated with Michael Snow and the Artist’s Jazz Band. He identified with modern jazz musicians such as T. Monk and J. Coltrane. The work shown here, characteristic of his work of the late 50’s and early 60’s, is often seen as being about loneliness and alienation. Here one might see a point of contact with the stereotypical life of the embittered jazz artist. Yet for me this work foregrounds the body, but with the strong presence of the mind. Improvisation is centrally about the body, it is performance. And, improvising is a constant negotiation between the mind and body, you are constantly asking your body to do new things, and the body itself suggests to one’s consciousness “ways it might go”. This work also obviously references the trickster figure so important to signifying arts such as jazz, for where is the “walking figure”? Things are not what they appear, or perhaps they are….
Jacques de Tonnancour, Cruciforme:
This work wonderfully embodies the due notions of abstraction and social embeddedness and commentary so characteristic of the Jazz produced contemporaneous with this painting. While Mingus, Max Roach and others were producing increasingly abstract jazz works with overt political content, often engaging in rather scathing social commentary concerning race relation in the U.S., De Tonnancour takes the most deeply culturally significant form for the Catholic Quebecois, and abstracts it to the degree where it becomes essentially about its very materials. It evokes even older traditions, from cave painting glyphs to naturally found lichen (a subject dear to De Tonnancour’s heart). And so this work is in keeping with the precepts of both formalist and social analysis. This duality of function, having a work which both can be fruitfully read via formalist principles, while equally undertaking a cultural commentary, is, again, characteristic of jazz improvising, where the impulse towards creating formally interesting sound structures is often undertaken with the equally important goal of effecting social commentary.
Yves Gaucher, Danse carrée / Il était un carré:
These themes are also picked up by this wonderful piece. Indeed it too signifies on a tradition of formally jazz inspired pieces, most obviously works such as Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. Yet where Mondrian’s work was a riff, so to speak, on jazz inspired rhythm, Gaucher, in keeping with the changes in jazz in the intervening twenty-two years, digs deeper and draws upon the notion of pulse and movement, musical features difficult to define, but easy to feel, as one does with this work. The fact that this work is displayed on edge, coupled with the formal arrangement of the painting, and, crucially, the color values chosen, has the work, while formally rather austere, imbued with an intense forward momentum and pulse. It moves in two conflicting, yet complementary, directions, like the cross-rhythms of modern jazz. Indeed this is often an overriding goal of jazz improvisations of the mid sixties, to capture a sense of pulse and forward propulsion without the rhythmic framework of, say, Boogie Woogie.
Betty Goodwin, The Weight of Memory X:
This work, with its evocation of memory, perhaps not pleasant ones, foregrounds the importance of intention, memory and personality which are so crucial to the jazz improviser. Improvisations are the presentation of individual and group narratives, and often these narratives are of histories of oppression and pain. African Americans have long used jazz improvisations as a vehicle for the presentation and renewal of their own histories, as fraught as they often are. Feminist theorists and improvisers have drawn our collective attention towards gender bias and histories of oppression of women, and have rightly questioned the sometime wholly egalitarian discourse into which improvisation is often placed. Improvisations, via their role as mediators of collective and individual memories, present us with the memories themselves, they are not about them, they are them. Similarly, this work, via its representation of the rocks on the mylar, and the dual presentation of the actual rocks themselves, does the same thing. We are no longer one degree of abstraction away from the memories, but confronted with them directly, a far more effective way of forcing one to confront “the other.”
John Heward, untitled (clamps):
As there will be a discussion with John Heward and Sylvia Safdie later today, I will not dwell on their works. However, it is worth noting how these clamp pieces embody an essential aspect of jazz improvisation. While the works have a firm foundation, they are literally clamped to a fixed point, like the melody or chord changes of a standard, the works flow freely from this fixed point. Indeed each time you approach the work, each time it is manipulated (something the works invite one to do) they change, revealing new shapes, forms and interplay of shadow and light. There is a sense in which these works are a powerful distillation of a pure gesture, yet a gesture that, via the intervention of the viewer, is ever changing. T. Monk, known for the simplicity of his melodies, and for playing a rather limited repertoire of such tunes, also once quipped, “if I have played it already once like this, why would I want to play it this way again.” Jazz improvisations often reveal the multitude of meanings inherent in the most simple of sound structure, like such improvisations, Heward’s works with simple forms, the complexity arising from their careful manipulation, and their ever changing relationships to viewer/participants.
Harold Klunder Landscapes (Self-Portrait VI):
This work, with its central visage merging into, or out of, the surrounding forms, themselves suggestive of other faces, other bodily forms, seems to be a frozen moment of the intense negotiation of self and other that is at the heart of the improvisational act. Those who engage in group improvisation are constantly shifting between the assertion of the self, and the reception of the other. Many improvisers comment that when a group improvisation is going well, one almost literally merges into the group, one no longer can tell what one’s individual contribution to the whole sound happens to be, and one no longer receives and responses to the sound heard as if they are foreign. Here Klunder displays visually this most private, yet crucial, aspect of the phenomenology of improvisation. Klunder is himself also a musical improviser.
Guido Molinari, Untitled/ Sans Titre:
Molinari, a distinguished teacher at this University, decades long study of color abstraction places him firmly within that tradition of abstract painters who saw in jazz, particularly w.r.t. its rhythmic properties, a temporal model for their spatial experiments. However I want to suggest another affinity between Molinari’s color abstractions and improvisation. There is a sense in which Molinari’s vertical band paintings are “about” the interface of the color fields, that is where the motion takes place, that is where the works find their tension, their “significant form” to borrow from Bell. It is the give and take between bold saturated colors that attracts the eye, and engages the mind. Group improvisations also often generate their internal tension, and their form, from the sonic contacts between strong and independent musical lines. Two improvisers may each play powerful independent melodies which suddenly impact upon each other, creating a phantom third melody. This is particularly true with rhythmic instruments, like percussion, where the boundary between two time keepers independent rhythms form a locus of energy and forward propulsion.
Michael Snow, Rolled Woman II:
Michael, himself an accomplished musical improviser, disavows there being any sonicism in his visual art, or visual significance to his sonic improvisations. And yet, as we shall see this evening, he was a pioneer in merging free musical improvisation with moving visual images, as with his ground breaking New York Eye and Ear Control. This work teeters between pure abstraction and representation, it gestures just enough towards the form of a female body as to allow you to consider it in such terms. And yet once you do so, it raises many questions: what is a rolled woman? Is “roll” here a verb or adjective? How does she feel about this state? We are therefore quickly brought face to face with questions about what is it to be a women, to be rolled, and so on. These questions are raised due to the tension between this work’s abstraction of the image, and its representational content. It is this very same act that is at the core of, say John Coltrane’s many abstractions on My Favorite Things. By always grounding his fantastic flights of fancy in the original tune, his abstractions draw our attention to the meanings implicit in the song; what is it to have such a list of favorite things; what might the song mean to a African American avant-gardist in the 60’s; who has the privilege of yearning for “white paper packages tied up with string”? Such improvised abstractions grounded in representation affect such a critique far more effectively than any learned discourse might do.
Sylvia Safdie, Joe:
This study of the master improviser Joe McPhee, part of an ongoing series by Sylvia on improvisers, is really, I think, when consider as a series, about improvisation itself. Can anyone really hold on to the view of improvisation as unintentional, as unthoughtful, after viewing this video? Freedom follows upon control, the control of the improviser over, here, his own breath, and his own singular vision (for is it not the mind’s eye Sylvia presents us with). Yet it is equally the careful control of the film image, the care with which the shots are cropped and shot, that allows the film itself to manifest freedom, the numerous ways its suggests the interactions of mind, body and imagination that are at the heart of any improvisation. Joe McPhee’s control is matched by Sylvia’s, and so the two artists themselves dialogue about what it is to create improvisationally, about how to express freedom as a product of thoughtful control.
Joyce Wieland, Summer Blues—The Kiss:
This work, via the careful placement of the forms, and their color and three-dimensionality, conjures both a strong sense of movement, and a palatable sense of expectation in the viewer--what forms will emerge next, where were these forms in the prior moment, where are they going? We are faced with a moment in the life of emerging forms (will they come together to compose a single whole, have they just been ripped asunder and will continue to float apart?) This has, I think, a very curious, and profound, effect. For both improvisations and this work place the viewer into a very particular relationship to temporality. When either performing or listening to an improvisation one is forced to rapidly think about what is happening in relation to what has happened, and the totality of what may happen. Both our experience of the now, our memories of the immediate past, and our projections into the future are themselves brought into dialogue, and so we find ourselves in a heightened sense of awareness of time and its movement. This work is like an abstract representation of a mental moment of the contemplation of time induced in one by improvising.