Images of a Sound: Portraits and Pictures of Jazz

Images of a sound.Portraits and Pictures of Jazz.Davide Sparti [trans. lise hogan] It has always been maintained that jazz reflects the social and urban changes of its times, but little attention has been given to the reversed statement, or rather, that twentieth-century culture reflects jazz, reacting and responding to its presence, and re-elaborating its sounds in visual (as well as textual and choreographic) forms. This paper, inspired by an exhibition of jazz album covers, examines the interplay between jazz and the visual arts. Notwithstanding the significant link between image and sound at the referential level of the content (album covers represent a mirror of the era and of its political changes), it is primarily the relationship established through the notion of process, action or operation that is crucial. We live in a videocentric age that greatly emphasizes the defined and completed object, and that has sanctioned the existence of a place for its worship: the museum. But an (improvised) performance is above all an action, the action of generating music during the course of a performance. By focusing on the final product of a performance, we risk losing sight of the “phenomenon”: the emergence, sound after sound, of a musical sense. For many painters, precisely because they can take their time deciding what to “express”, the process recedes to the background and what becomes relevant (also for the evaluation of the artwork) is what they produce. Yet, dating from the Surrealists and from Pollock, many visual arts exhibitors have been inspired by jazz and have placed the notion of process at the centre of their artistic practice. Les images d'un son.Portraits et tableaux du JazzDavide Sparti [traduction de lise hogan] On a toujours affirmé que le jazz reflète le changement social et urbain de l'époque, mais peu d'attention a été payé à la déclaration inverse, c'est-à-dire, que la culture du XXe siècle reflète le jazz, elle réagit et répond à sa présence, elle réélabore ses sons en formes visuelles (et aussi chorégraphiques et textuelles). Cet écrit présente une étude de l'interaction entre le jazz et les arts visuels, inspiré d'une exposition de pochettes de disques jazz. Au-delà d'un lien déjà assez important entre les images et les sons sur le plan référentiel du contenu (les pochettes de disques représentent un miroir de l'époque et de ses changements politiques), c'est essentiellement le rapport réglé sur le concept de processus, d'action ou