Artista Blog

Compounding the problems of affixing a singular name to any art movement is the fact that each of these innovations, or stylistic changes occur at the same time and count the same names over a few decade period. Moving from Impressionism to full on abstraction didn’t take too long. But the endless and divisive separation of approaches apparently warranted a litany of genre names.

By the time Expressionism had been totally disseminated, replicated and plundered, its main adherents and the figures directly influencing those folks had been affiliated with any number of art strains dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Coming out of the fertile German arts scene of the early twentieth century, George Grosz was unique even amongst some of the most thoughtful artists of his assumed cohort. Combining some of the ridiculous nature Dada sought impart and social criticism rendered the paintings and drawings Grosz worked up through beginning of the thirties as the most astute observations landed upon canvas.

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By contrast, Cohran remained in Chicago and lives here today. As a result, the few sparse recorded efforts that he has released have not made too much of an impression on the record buying public. After leaving Sun Ra’s band, the trumpeter formed the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, which, oddly enough, would morph into Earth, Wind and Fire a few years into its career. A lack of touring could be cited as the reason for Cohran’s oeuvre being ignored, but being based in Chicago did not always help. His dedication to Chicago, as well as teaching needs to be considered equally important to future musicians from the Midwest as anything that his peers accomplished (6).

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Various art forms achieve similar ends at different times. Much as radical politics in any nation develops without it being perceived by straight society, visual art and music at varying times extend concepts beyond the understanding of a staid society.

Abstract painting, which could be figured to begin its codification in the first few decades of the twentieth century, needs to be considered the forbearer of group improvisation, free jazz and free improvisation. While painters might represent any number of organic figures in terms of shapes or obtuse brush strokes, both visual art and improvisation aims to relate some sense of place or feeling through the use of non-traditional conception of a medium. There are detractors of both, but at the same time each unique approach to painting and music has worked to engender change in mainstream art works, aural and visual.

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