For the Scottish artist Alan Davie (1920-2014), music and visual art were inextricably intertwined forms of expression. In his paintings, Davie drew inspiration from free jazz. He came to believe that, through improvisation and the transcendent state it produces, one could access the ‘collective unconscious’ theorised by Carl Jung – an inner layer of reality characterised by symbols and motifs shared by all humans across history.
Filmed inside an art class in the village of Little Comberton, England, this video from Tate features an introduction to Davie’s work, as well as several experiments in image and sound that put his ideas into action. These include a free jazz trio improvising in response to Davie’s art, art students painting in response to the improvised music, and finally the jazz players improvising to the images created by the class. The result is a fascinating feedback loop of intersecting sounds and images that raises intriguing questions about how we associate, respond and create.
