Table Of ContentT h e h e a r i n g e y e
This page intentionally left blank
edited by
graham Lock and DaviD murray
T h e h e a r i n g e y e
Jazz & Blues influences
in african american visual art
1
2009
3
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The hearing eye : jazz and blues influences in African American
visual art / edited by Graham Lock and David Murray.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-534050-1; 978-0-19-534051-8 (pbk.)
1. African American art—20th century. 2. Art and music—United
States—History—20th century. 3. Jazz in art. 4. Blues (Music) in art.
I. Lock, Graham, 1948–. II. Murray, David.
N6538.N5H43 2008
704.0396073—dc22 2007047198
Recorded audio tracks and full-color illustrations (marked in text with )
are available online at http://www.oup.com/us/thehearingeye
Access with username Music2 and password Book4416
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in China
on acid-free paper
in memory of eric Dolphy and rose Piper
This page intentionally left blank
acknowledgments
This book and its companion volume, Thriving on a Riff, initially took shape
as part of a research project, to which we gave the rather grandiose title
Criss Cross: Confluence and Influence in Twentieth-Century African American
Music, Visual Art, and Literature. The project was funded by the Arts and Hu-
manities Research Council of Great Britain and housed in the School of Ameri-
can and Canadian Studies at Nottingham University, and to them we are greatly
indebted. Indeed, several of the book’s chapters began life as papers presented at
the Criss Cross conferences we hosted at Nottingham in 2003 and 2004: thanks
are due to our keynote speakers, panelists, chairs, and all the participants for
their contributions (which, in 2004, included a poetry reading by Michael S.
Harper); to the AHRC, the British Academy, and the University of Nottingham
Research Committee for additional conference funding; and to everyone who
provided administrative, artistic, technical, and other essential assistance, es-
pecially David A. Bailey, Sally Britten, Sheila Jones, Ali Norcott, Horace Ové,
Shona Powell, Ellen Salway, Byron Wallen, John Walsh, and Jim Waters from
Nottingham Castle Museum.
The School of American and Canadian Studies offered both financial back-
ing and a supportive intellectual home for the project itself and our subsequent
work on the books. We are grateful to our colleagues, notably Celeste-Marie
Bernier, Ian Brookes, and Richard King, for their advice and encouragement,
and to the school’s ever-efficient office staff for their help, especially Helen Tay-
lor and Stuart Wright. We have also benefited from the aid of other Notting-
ham colleagues, in particular Mike Beard (Photography) and Mervyn Cooke
(Music), as well as the conceptual swingers of the campus Jazz Listening and
Reading Group. Generous grants from the University of Nottingham Research
Committee and Dean’s Fund have enabled us to reproduce many paintings in
full color in the first printing of this book.
We were fortunate to have backing for our project from Anthony Brax-
ton, Bill Dixon, and Nathaniel Mackey; their endorsement in the initial stages
proved crucial. We would also like to thank the following people for their valu-
able input: our contributors, in particular Robert Farris Thompson for letting
us reprint his essay on Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Richard Ings, Johannes Völz,
and Sara Wood for their persistence against the odds; Norm Hirschy, our exem-
plary editor at Oxford, for his guidance, patience, and unfailing good humor;
the anonymous readers whose comments on the original manuscript have, we
hope, helped to make this a better book; and Jane Ira Bloom, Marty Ehrlich,
Branford Marsalis, Doug Wamble, Gillian Atkinson at Document Records,
Sherry McAdams at Marsalis Music, and Matthias Winckelmann at Enja Re-
cords for permitting us to include their recordings on the Hearing Eye Web site.
(There is more about the Web site in the postscript to the introduction.)
We are honored and delighted that Joe Overstreet has allowed us to repro-
duce his painting St. James Infirmary on the cover of the paperback edition.
The work comes from his 1988 Storyville Series, which he discusses in chapter
10. We (and GL in particular) wish to thank Ellen Banks, Jane Ira Bloom, Mi-
chael Cummings, Marty Ehrlich, Wadsworth Jarrell, Sam Middleton, and Joe
Overstreet for graciously allowing time for interviews and for permitting us to
use their artwork, both in the book and on its companion Web site. We are also
indebted to Roy DeCarava and Oliver Jackson, who have generously consented
to the inclusion of their work.
On behalf of our contributors and ourselves, we would like to acknowledge
the help of the following people in providing materials, facilitating permissions,
making connections, and generally performing good offices: Lynette Addison
(Document Records), Fatime Ba (Kenkeleba Gallery), Donald Baechler, Dorian
Bergen (ACA Galleries), Diane Bland (Clark Atlanta University Art Galler-
ies), Maeve Butler (IMMA), Lynn DeRosa, DeAnn Dankowski (Minneapolis
Institute of the Arts), Robert L. Douglas, all at Downtown Music Gallery, Tina
Dunkley (Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries), Ari Evans (Studio Museum
in Harlem), Melissa Falkner Mercurio (Birmingham Museum of Art), Tarin
Fuller, AnnEden Gibson, Jeannine Guido (Broad Art Foundation), Scott Han-
kins (Ackland Art Museum), Juliette Harris (IRAAA), Diedra Harris-Kelley
(Bearden Foundation), Bill Hodges and Navindren Hodges (Bill Hodges Gal-
lery), Michael Holman, Corrine Jennings (Kenkeleba Gallery), Rose Jefferson
(National Urban League), Amy Helene Kirschke, Erin Krause (Donald Baechler
Gallery), Tammi Lawson (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture),
viii acknowledgments
George Lipsitz, Richard Marshall, Kunle Mwanga, Paula Mazzotta (VAGA),
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz (ARS-NY), Khela Ransier, Diane Roby (Anne Kohs &
Associates), Myron Schwartzman, M. Lee Stone, Sylvia Sokalski (Galerie Bruno
Bischofberger), Judy Thom (Archives of American Art), Marjorie Van Cura
(Michael Rosenfeld Gallery), Tammy Wells-Angerer (Ackland Art Museum),
and Aileen Zylman (Wadsworth Atheneum).
Finally, GL, as chief editor and roving researcher, wishes to add some per-
sonal acknowledgments: “I’d like to say a special thank you to Benny Andrews,
Anthony Braxton, Frederick J. Brown, Marilyn Crispell, Bill Dixon, Kevin Nor-
ton, Rose Piper, and Vincent DaCosta Smith for talking to me about their work;
to Dorian Bergen, Tammi Lawson, Khela Ransier, and in particular Corrine
Jennings for the invaluable help they gave to the project (and to an art world
tiro); and—with a Louis Armstrong trumpet fanfare—to Ian Brookes, Jack Col-
lier, Nicole Dalle, Jeff Eaman, Roz Laurie, Stephen C. Middleton, Chrissie Mur-
ray, Dave Murray, Susie Roth, Victor Schonfield, Chris Trent, Diane Wallace,
Nick White, and Val Wilmer, for all kinds of support through some tough times
in recent years, when the kindness of friends and the solace of music have been
my lifelines, together with the hope of seeing Eye and Riff into print. I am deeply
grateful to everyone who has made this possible.”
acknowledgments ix
