On the second floor of the new $64 million SFJazz Center in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, are three tiled murals. My interview with the artists who created these, Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, can be found here.
Larry Blumenfeld on jazz and other sounds
BLU NOTES: Larry Blumenfeld on jazz and other sounds
February 8, 2013, 6:10 pm
Sadly, when jazz and modern art are so obvious allies and Matisse, the Miles Davis of art, created his late Jazz series in awe of the form. This is but cute illustration, colorless, so lacking both the chordal/chromatic structure or modal fluctuations of open improvisation.
It is sad that two so similar languages that has so much in common of content and spirituality are so foreign to one another, perhaps being good at one makes one tone/color deaf to the other. Seek this alliance, it is there, Romare Bearden the most obvious and great example of it. Todays souless Contemporary art has none of the Soul of a Coltrane/Picasso, the passion of a Miles?Matisse, the eccentric poetry of a Monk/Klee.
Color, there must be rich color! Without it there is no harmony, as line is the melody and structure the rhythm. Seek pulsing, living, sweating, swearing, sensual, spiritual color. And purity of line and complex rhythms of life. this and the art at the center i have seen is lacking, revealing compromised committees at its worst. And architects in their hubris of being sculpture as often behind it. None understand color, but create sterile backgrounds for the most living of artforms.
Seek, and ye shall find.