The Paintings of Miles Davis

Ask enough peo­ple to name their favorite artist of any kind, and soon­er rather than lat­er, some­one will name Miles Davis. The trum­peter and jazz auteur behind — or, strict­ly speak­ing, up in front of — such unchal­lenged mas­ter­pieces as Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Sketch­es of Spain, and Bitch­es Brew has long since ascend­ed to the pan­theon of Amer­i­can music, but that doesn’t mean we should over­look his oth­er artis­tic achieve­ments. Achieve­ments as a painter, for instance: true fans know that Davis’ visu­al art appears on a few of his album cov­ers, such as that of 1989’s Amand­la right below.  “Paint­ing, long a Davis avo­ca­tion, is becom­ing a prof­itable side­line,” says a con­tem­po­rary Los Ange­les Times arti­cle. “In col­lab­o­ra­tion with his girl­friend, Jo Gel­bard, he did the art­work for his new album; the cov­er is an impres­sive self-por­trait using the reds and greens he seems to favor.”

You can see more of Davis’ visu­al art over at Dan­ger­ous Minds and The Dai­ly Beast. The so-called Prince of Dark­ness “didn’t begin to draw and paint in earnest until he was in his mid-fifties, dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s and a peri­od of musi­cal inac­tiv­i­ty,” writes Tara McGin­ley. ”

Miles being Miles, he didn’t mere­ly dab­ble, but made cre­at­ing art as much a part of his life as mak­ing music in his final decade,” result­ing in “a sharp, bold and mas­cu­line mix­ture of Kandin­sky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Picas­so and African trib­al art.” Just last year, Insight Edi­tions pub­lished Miles Davis: The Col­lect­ed Art­work, final­ly bring­ing togeth­er the fruits of the cre­ativ­i­ty the trum­peter could com­mand even with­out his horn. Count­less young jazz play­ers claim Davis as an influ­ence to this day, and they’ll con­tin­ue to do so as long as jazz itself per­sists, but I do won­der how soon young painters will as well.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Watch Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Char­lie Parker’s “Con­fir­ma­tion” & Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Miles Davis’ “South Side Chica­go Chili Mack” Recipe Revealed

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.