Description
Price: $35.00
(as of Mar 15, 2025 07:32:18 UTC – Details)
A perfect gift for the musicians and artists in your life!
The Art of Jazz explores how the expressionism and spontaneity of jazz spilled onto its album art, posters, and promotional photography, and even inspired standalone works of fine art.
Everyone knows jazz is on the cutting edge of music, but how much do you know about its influence in the visual arts? With album covers that took inspiration from the avant-garde, jazz’s primarily African American musicians and their producers sought to challenge and inspire listeners both musically and visually.
Arranged chronologically, each chapter covers a key period in jazz history, from the earliest days of the twentieth century to today’s postmodern jazz. Chapters begin with substantive introductions and present the evolution of jazz imagery in all its forms, mirroring the shifting nature of the music itself. With two authoritative features per chapter and over 300 images, The Art of Jazz is a significant contribution to the literature of this intrepid art form.
Publisher : Imagine (October 20, 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 1623545048
ISBN-13 : 978-1623545048
Item Weight : 3.24 pounds
Dimensions : 10.06 x 0.93 x 11.25 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book’s graphics crisp and colorful. They find the content useful for jazz fans and a gift for jazz enthusiasts. The text is informative and interesting, making it a pleasure to read and look at. The visual style includes artwork influenced by jazz from early days to more modern times.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Stuart Jefferson –
JAZZ GRAPHICS FROM THE LATE 19TH CENTURY INTO THE 21ST CENTURY, PLUS INFORMATIVE TEXT/CAPTIONS.
A beautiful book, well made (nice binding and thick cover boards), that’s stuffed with visuals from across the jazz spectrum from early days to more contemporary graphics–from sheet music, jazz club ads, movies, concerts, and other types of art. The text is also informative and useful for jazz fans wanting to know more about how jazz influenced art. The reproductions are nicely done–crisp and colorful.From the first chapter “Jazz Begins”, to the final chapter “Twenty-First Century Jazz”, this book has a good cross-section of the changing art in jazz advertising and artwork influenced by jazz, from the beginnings of jazz up to the present century. Also here are period photos most in b&w of various bands and performers along with color art from other areas from various periods. The book is weighted towards the visual side, but the text is always informative and interesting. Included is a section for end notes, a bibliography, and an index which can be helpful.There have been other books dedicated to the history of jazz advertisements and artwork, many of them focusing on album artwork. This book too has a number of album covers (examples–“Swing ’35-’39” by The Quintet of the Hot Club of France, to artist David Stone Martin’s work, to Blue Note Records, into jazz fusion, the ECM label, to 21st Century jazz) that fit well with the other graphics from whatever period in jazz being shown. But if you’re a deep jazz fan (like me) and can’t seem to get enough of looking at jazz graphics of many types–especially laid out historically, you owe it to yourself to check this book out. Great reproductions, great text and captions–all in a well made book. Yes.
Kindle Customer –
The Art of Jazz
The Kindle edition is formatted so well-if you have a Fire, many illustrations are in color. Shipton supplies excellent historical commentary but the graphics take center stage. Quite well done-I have so many badly formatted Kindle editions but this is both a pleasure to read and look at!
Garth Jowett –
A thoughtful appraisal
A useful, well-researched and beautifully presented look at the way that jazz was expressed in the fine arts, photography and graphic art.
mostHelpful –
Book came VERY Quickly and in NEW condition – Thank You!
I liked the Graphics and the well-written Text.
M. Jimenez –
Great book in a attractive package
This book zeros in the commercial art design side of Jazz, very nice book indeed.
H –
Gift for jazz fan
A big hit!
bookwomen37 –
Jazz Music and the Visual Arts
I loved this book. The author presents a history of jazz music through the visual arts. The text is well written and informative but the illustrations are star. Album covers, sheet music, posters, playbills and more are all included. The book is beautiful to look at and fun to read. Enjoy
Robin –
Commercial art
A disappointing book. First off, I thought the title was rather misleading, implying that somehow jazz had influenced lots of fine art folk. The better title (though unwieldy) would have been ‘The commercial art of jazz’. There are a few examples of fine art though really only included because of the jazz genre in the title. Page thirty-three has Mondrian’s stunning ‘Broadway boogie woogie’ painting, if he had called it ‘Broadway grid’ it probably wouldn’t have been included. Likewise Van Doesburg’s ‘Composition in gray (ragtime)’, is a very unjazz-like picture. Page thirty-one has a book cover with an illustration by Picasso titled ‘Igor Stravinsky, ragtime’, delete ragtime and it would have no connection to jazz.Most of the images in the book are record covers and PR shots of musicians and some photos are no better than snaps. Regarding the photos, I really would have expected a few portfolio spreads of the leading jazz photographers, like William Claxton, Herman Leonard, Francis Wolff, showing their work minus the design aspect of a cover. Claxton had a fine portfolio of his work in the Japanese published ‘Jazz West Coast: artwork of Pacific Jazz records’ published in 1992. I found the most interesting part of the book the first few chapters that reveal a collection of historical sheet music covers and film posters, these are now so old that they are fascinating to look at.The author has written a comprehensive history of jazz with some unusual detours on some spreads, like jazz in Germany in the thirties, all-black movies, zoot suits, bebop fashion, Andy Warhol (he illustrated a few LP covers) South Africa, the art of ECM. All of them get plenty of images. There are several pages devoted to individual musicians like Django Reinhardt, Sidney Bechet, Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers, Ornette Coleman, John McLaughlin, Wynton Marsalis.As the book is probably sixty percent visual I thought the material could have been better displayed, there is plenty of empty page space where photos and record covers could easily have been bigger without making the spreads look too cramped. Maybe a drop shadow on all the covers would have given them a dimensional feel on the pages. The design overall is very bland and lacks any visual sparkle.Finally, for a book full of record covers the back page bibliography only lists Graham Marsh’s cover art of Blue Note records, missing is Blue Note covers volume two (1997) and his other two books on cover art: ‘California cool’ (1992) and ‘East coasting’ (1993). Richard Havers book (2015) on Norman Grantz labels likewise is full of covers, especially the wonderful art of David Stone Martin. You can look inside the book at Westread Book Reviews then click 2022 and May.
mariska stevens –
best illustrated history of Jazz I have ever come across.
Mrs. G. Beale –
A beautiful book, a lot of jazz history tied in with the art of the time. I paint to the sound of jazz. But in particular the book confirms my theory that Art Deco and jazz belong together .This is a superb âcoffee table bookâ and will entertain you and your guests well.
Mr. D. W. Nyman –
Well written and illustrated book
john Hall-Freeman –
About 60 % of the visual information in this book I have in other Jazz books in my vast collection of Jazz books collected over 60 years, but Mr Shipton has unearthed some rare beauties that I have never seen before.So I would highly recommend this book to the serious long term Jazz fan, and for someone with hardly any books or is just getting into Jazz, this book I would consider essential a lovely birthday or exmas gift.
John Jazz –
Thoroughly researched, and richly illustrated with historic paintings, drawings, photographs and album covers. A unique work covering every era of jazz – and must-have book for every lover of jazz.