In the fourth segment of our series of articles on the relationship between jazz and comic books we will discuss the visual design of the genre.Go to Part 1 , Part 2 or Part 3.

Columbia Records was one of the pioneers in creating designs for LP covers and part of its history has Alex Steinweiss as the main character. In the late 1930s, at the age of twenty-two, Steinweiss changed the status of vinyl (until then packaged in cheap paper) by introducing a novelty that would change the world of the music industry: designed covers.

Over three decades Steinweiss developed a style of cover design that remained in dialogue with the viewer. The new media available created a high demand for illustrators, who were often also jazz musicians.

Initially, the inspiration for the album covers came from the European posters from the 1930s. Art-déco was spreading throughout Paris and the work of artists such as A.M. Cassandre, Jean Carlu and Paul Colin brought international attention to modernist art.

Jean-Marie Mouron, better known as A.M. Cassandre was born in Ukraine in 1901, but he moved to France at a young age with his family. Inspired by Cubism and Surrealism, in the 1950s he produced album covers, although his most famous works are posters produced in the 1930s -1940s, as well as the famous logo for the brand of French acclaimed couturier Yves Saint Laurent.

Influenced by Italian futurism, Jean Carlu produced advertising pieces for the label Odéon and Paul Colin signed the poster for “Black Ball” (1927), a performance of his long time friend Josephine Baker.

The poster fashion and art-déco inspiration was later followed by the incorporation of abstract art elements on album covers, with a special appeal for minimalist paintings. An example of how jazz and visual arts interact is the work of the previously mentioned Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and his canvases structured around a base with sections filled with primary colors and separated by black lines.

Mondrian regularly cited jazz in his articles and personal correspondence, making no secret of the influence influence of the genre on his art and in his life. Broadway Boogie Woogie (1943) is an example of this direct influence.

Celebrated designer Paula Scher called it an “abstract portrait of Manhattan”. Considered by many to be a masterpiece, the canvas not only pictorially represents formal characteristics of boogie woogie (such as the repetition of bass lines), but it also expresses the seduction of the painter by the lights and sounds of New York.

The work of Mondrian continued to inspire the art of albums over the decades, such as the album Byrd Jazz (1956), by Donald Bird, an instrumental version of the Beatles songs by Roger Webb (John, Paul and All That Jazz, 1964), or a collection João Gilberto, Sylvia Telles & Dick Farney, released in 1988 by EMI..

Jim Flora is also a prominent name when it comes to the construction of a language that became typical of jazz at the time. Record collectors easily recognize his style, directly influenced by the comic art. He worked for Columbia in the 1940s and later pursued a career at RCA Victor.

His illustrations were not urban vignettes and did not necessarily reflect the content of the album. Flora stated that he was not woried about making her designs for the covers complement the music of the album. understanding the cover as a place to show his art (“I always thought that the musicians had already done their part and now it was my turn”, he said in a 1984 interview).

A good example of how Flora manages to escape from the commonplace and still convey an overall idea to the illustration is his work for the cover of the album The Panic is On (RCA Victor, 1954), by the Nick Travis Quintet. The dreamlike atmosphere ( the musicians float in the air) and the complete freedom in relation to proportions and perspectives bring lightness to the composition, as opposed to the “panic” reference in the title, in a typical effect of a Flora cover nothing is exactly as it seems and everything makes sense.

The small revolution brought to the music industry by Steiweiss continuesdto be impactful and engaged with issues such as racism, as in the openly political message on the cover of Boogie Woogie, a collection released in 1941, at a time when racial segregation was institutionalized.

It is no coincidence that the Columbia label was an obligatory passage for cover illustrators. In the mid-1950s, the label it was one of the homes of jazz. Its artists made the genre both popular and avant-garde, crossing borders (we will see later how the paths of jazz and samba crossed) with their experimentations.

Alex Steinweiss left Columbia in the early 1950s, but he continued to be much in demand as an album cover designer, especially for classic music. He worked during the 1950s for labels such as Decca, London and Everest. Later, he concentrated on graphics for posters, magazine covers and packaging design.

With the hiring of S. Neil Fujita, Columbia hoped to keep up with the graphic designs and illustrations released by Blue Note Records. Based on the work of former art director Alex Steinweiss, Fujita was challenged to transform the album art, adapting it to the modernist sounds that Columbia presented.

After assuming artistic direction in 1954, he decided to interpret and transmit the same vigor, abstraction, improvisation and freedom as the jazz artists. At Columbia, Fujita became one of the first graphic designers to employ both men and women in a racially integrated office. He also became the first designer to use painters and photographers to produce album covers.

Many of the original pieces of art that Fujita created as album covers for Columbia include albums that are today considered true masterpieces of 20th century jazz.

Tom Hannan is a prominent character in the visual construction of jazz, as well. He was the designer responsible for the cover art of several jazz labels, especially Prestige and Bethlehem Records, but before turning to the visual arts, Hannanhad actually attempted a career as a drummer.

His designs mix abstract images with unusual typography, translating the aura of improvisation, so typical of jazz. It is interesting to note how his work for the album “The Jazz Experiments of Charlie Mingus” (Bethlehem Records, 1956), which dialogues directly with the collages from the series “Jazz” (1947), by French painter Henri Matisse.

As Tom Hannan, Paul Bacon was also a passionate jazz musician. He is also a name to remember when thinking about the construction of the visual identity of jazz. Bacon was for a long time the main designer of the Blue Note. Most of the covers designed for the first albums of the label, the 7000 series, were his creations. Later, he became the main art director of the company.

Be seeing you!

G.F.