NEW YORK
Ted Joans
Jazz Is My Religion
September 12 - October 29, 2024
At Zürcher Gallery, New York
The exhibition catalog with an essay by Justin Desmangles can be viewed here
Ted Lives ! by Walker Mimms / The New York Review of Books
A Black Surrealist Finally Gets His Due by Jack Denton / New York Magazine
James Kalm Rough Cut: Ted Joans at ZÜRCHER Mike Cloud at THOMAS ERBEN
“My head is a trumpet
My heart is a drum
Both arms are pianos
Both legs are bass viols
My stomach the trombone
My nose the saxophone
Both lungs are flutes
Both ears are clarinets
My penis is a violin
My chest is a guitar
Vibes are my ribs
Cymbals are my eyes
My mouth is the score
And my soul is where the music lies”
Jazz Anatomy, from AFRODISIA, old & new poems by Ted Joans, 1970
"Jazz is my Religion and it alone do I dig the jazz clubs are my houses of worship and sometimes the concert halls but some holy places are too commercial like churches so I don’t dig the sermons there I buy jazzsides to dig in solitude Like Man ! Harlem used to be a jazz heaven where most of the sermons were preached but nowadays due to commercial chacha and pseudo- rock’n roll alotte good jazz musicians have sold their souls but Jazz is Still my Religion because I know and feel the message it brings: like reverend Dizzy Gillespie / brother Bird and Basie/ uncle Armstrong / minister Monk/ deacon Miles Davies/ rector Jelly Roll and Sonny Rollins/ priest Ellington/ his funkiness Horace Silver/ and the great pope John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor They Preach a Sermon That Always Swings Yeah Jazz is my Religion.”
Ted Joans, New York 1958
Ted Joans’ adage "Jazz is my Religion, Surrealism is my Point of View" reflects the free-form and itinerant lifestyle he adopted in his travels to Europe, Mali and Morocco. Rejecting the endemic racism in the United States, Ted Joans declared in “Black Flower” (1968) published in L’Archibras n°3, Paris, March 1968 : “ I am a Black American, born poor, I lived in the ghettos and I was lucky enough to survive.” I chose Surrealism when I was very young, before I even knew what it was. I felt there was a camaraderie like that which I found in Jazz. It was the only thing that seemed to disturb the powers that dominated me. I was born a black flower and therefore revolutionary in spite of my insignificant person … I use my senses exercised by Surrealism… I am Maldoror, Malcom X, the Marquis de Sade, Breton, Lumumba, and many others still, so many that you cannot know them all. They are my fuel, my endurance, and I will continue to use all the means to win my freedom, which will become freedom for all. Black Power is a means to achieve this freedom.”
“ Surrealism as a way of life reinforced my religious adoption of jazz. Both are highly contagious and have transformed my life into a permanent quest of the marvelous." (Une Rêverie au Bistrot Beaubourg, collection L’Envers du Réel n°4, LES LOUPS SONT FACHES ).
Ted Joans (born Theodore Jones in Cairo, Illinois on July 4, 1928 – died on April 25, 2003 in Vancouver) is probably best known for his poetry, for his charcoal chalk graffiti “ Bird Lives !” on the walls of the City of New York upon Charlie Parker’s death (March 12, 1955) and for his mantra “ Jazz is my religion, Surrealism is my point of view. “ Yet he was trained as a trumpeter and a painter. His father was a musician, riverboat entertainer and taught Ted to play the trumpet. He studied fine arts at Indiana University. Ted Joans lived many lives, first a beat life when he arrived in New York in 1951. He never considered himself a beatnik but a “jazz poet” of the beat generation. In New York, Ted met Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk. In 1960, he exiled himself to Europe. He was a world-traveler, and traveled in Africa (Mali, Ghana, Upper Volta, Nigeria. The series of 9 Trader Joe’s bags drawn in black ink exhibited here show Ted in Timbuktu carrying a backpack, his favorite animal the rhinoceros and the anvil, formally the rhinoceros of human tools which is a bridge and a site of energy and truth, which Ted kept through many adventures and upheavals.
We are exhibiting a series of drawings Remembering & Remembrances dated October 15, 23 and 29, 2000. Ted wrote “that they are dedicated to Theodore The First, to Cheikh Anta Diop to Michel Leiris and Mama Love, my most immediate blood line to Africa. These four worthy beings especially Mama Love were hip to the likeness and nearness in the spontaneous images that my automatic lines suggest to the best eye sights “. This series of 38 R&R drawings shows the vast network of connections and friendships made over the years, be writers, poets, painters, musicians. Charlie Parker lived in Ted’s small Van Gogh-like room at 4 Barrow Street in Greenwich Village and had similar dues paying Black-man-in-America backgrounds. The genius Bird died at the age of 35. Ted said that he still scrawled Bird Lives ! on the Bird Dates of August 29th and March 12th wherever he was on earth. We are exhibiting a selection of rare works Ted Joans made in relation to Bird in the mid and late 90’s such as a “Cornell-type” box Bird Lives Lucratively Amongst White Shadows, a plastic toy saxophone and Bird Lives ! cutout paper letters, a letter Dear Bird (1 May, 1999) written on a wooden board, a large triptych Bird Lives! on black paper and a painting on canvas board Ndege lives! We are extremely grateful to Robin Kelley who generously lent Ted Joans’ personal trumpet to the show and to Olivier Ledure who lent a series of Jazz magazines including Ted‘s reviews.
TED JOANS EXHIBITIONS 2024-2025
Fort Worth, TX: Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940
Organized by Curator Maria Elena Ortiz, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
March 10 - July 28, 2024
Richmond, VA: Ted Joans: Land of the Rhinoceri, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
June 1 - November 17, 2024
Paris: Ted Joans, Dirty Rainbow (1981), curated by Gwenolee Zürcher
Galerie Pixi, 95 rue de Seine, Paris
September 2 - October 9, 2024
Paris: Surréalisme, Centre Pompidou, Paris
September 3, 2024 - January 13, 2025
New York: Ted Joans, Jazz is my Religion, Zürcher Gallery, 33 Bleecker St, New York
September 12 - October 29, 2024
Paris: Ted Joans, Bill Dixon, Oliver Lake, Zürcher Gallery, Outsider Paris, Le Molière, Paris
Opening Monday, October 14th
October 14 - 20, 2024
Munich: But live here? No thanks: Surrealism and Anti-Fascism
Lenbachhaus, Kunstbau, Munich
Opening Monday, October 14th, 7-11 pm
October 15, 2024 - March 2, 2025
New York: Vital Signs, Artists and the Body, curated by Lanka Tattersall at MoMA, NY
November 3, 2024 - February 22, 2025
Paris: Paris Noir, Centre Pompidou, Paris
March 19 - June 30, 2025