The late African-American abstract painter Sam Gilliam shared one of his greatest sources of inspiration with W magazine in 2014: “Before painting, there was jazz. I mean cool jazz. Coltrane. Ornette Coleman, the Ayler brothers, Miles Davis. It’s something that was important to my work, it was a constant. You listened while you were painting. It made you think that being young wasn’t so bad. All the young painters were into jazz.”
That sentiment is shared by countless other contemporaries in the art realm. Many have owned jazz dens and performed in bebop bands when they weren’t creating on canvas, and American Duet: Jazz & Abstract Art, the current exhibit at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, seeks to explore that connection.