Tuesday 8 January 2019

Abstraction / The Agony Of Not Knowing & all that Jazz


The Agony Of Not Knowing, RTomens, 2019


Form itself, even if completely abstract ... has its own inner sound
- Wassily Kandinsky

Much has been made of the connection between abstract art and Jazz, from the roots of both in the early-20s to Be-Bop and the Expressionist school of the 50s. You don't need a Masters degree in either Jazz or Art history to see why...the free-form, improvisational approach to art and sound. 

Despite the wildest flights of Charlie 'Bird' Park during the Be-Bop revolution it would take Jazz another decade to totally free itself of 'the rules', by which time the Abstract Expressionist big bang had trailed off to a whimper, succeeded by splinter groups either going off-canvas with Happenings, hardening edges, exploring pop culture etc.

Abstraction, as Kandinsky said, does have 'its own inner sound'. As I painted today, I listened to both that and Joe Harriott, both somehow mingling in my head, or rather, my head tuned in to both, channel-to-channel, as if twisting a radio dial from one station to the other and back. So it goes when I make art with music playing, which is always the case. 

I'd like to say Harriott spurred me on but it's not quite that straight forward. Music does inspire me whilst I work; some, such as Harriott's Abstract album, almost informs what I'm doing, as if the sound waves seep into the ears and down the arms to the hand.

I mindful of sounding rather...pretentious? But I'm not making grand claims here, only speculating on the effect of music on painting. Besides, in relation to pop culture, it doesn't take much to garner accusations of 'pretentiousness'...reading a certain novel, perhaps, watching a type of film...and of course, listening to Jazz. If simply listening to Jazz doesn't raise hackles, making any statements about it's importance may do. Important to the listener, that is. Let's not enter the murky waters of placing Jazz on a higher plain than other genres.

I'm old-fashioned, perhaps, in that Jazz and other musics do represent more to me than mere entertainment, light relief from the tyranny of everyday concerns. How music does what it does is another matter...the mystery of sound and it's impact on the mind. 

Why the impulse to create non-representational, non-figurative images came about today I do no know. Perhaps it was a yearning for 'freedom', the same yearning that can be heard in, say, the music of Charlie Mingus and the Free school of the 60s. Not that I'm oppressed, merely plagued by all the common psychological ailments of someone struggling to stay sane and content in the post-industrial world. 

Making art is one means of staying sane. I'm sure making Jazz had the same benefit for those who blew their blues away.






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