"jazz" in painting, 1915/1916

[George Thompson]

Douglas Wilson asks:

> What is "Jazz 3e et."? I'm generally ignorant of French.
>
> Is it "Jazz troisie`me e'tude" = "Jazz, third study" maybe? Then would
> there be a couple of earlier "jazz" works?
>

I am supposing that this is the meaning of the abbreviation and also its significance.  Two of the three other paintings on this theme in this book are also dated '15, but none are given any title or identified as an 1st or 2nd attempt at this subject.  But earlier versions might have been very casual and not saved by Gleizes or otherwise lost, or perhaps casual and not recognized by him as drafts of a subject he intended to treat in a finished work until he was did the 3rd version.  In this latter case, the 1st and 2nd attempts might be the two other studies reproduced in this book.

My impression from this catalog raisonne and some other stuff I've looked at is that Gleizes did not visit Chicago while he was in the U. S.  He was not here very long, but his stay was for several months, so a trip to Chicago could have been possible.  I do not see that his letters have been published.

Another French artist visiting the U. S at about this time was Francis Picabia, who also made a study of musicians, dated, if I recall, 1914, but since he didn't identify them as "jazz" musicians, his painting is of merely artistic interest.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.