In painting, as in jazz music, there is a symbiosis of improvisation and creativity. While there are certain loose rules, or forms, that the artist must follow (the painter respects a formal color synthesis, the jazz musician riffs on certain chord progressions), the brilliant result comes from of-the-moment inspiration.
Paying homage to the musical form of improvisation, American contemporary painter LeRoy Neiman will be unveiling his latest work of art-a massive painting (13 feet by nine feet) titled “LeRoy Neiman’s Big Band”-at a cultural and philanthropic event taking place at the Skirball Cultural Center Feb. 17, hosted by Malibu resident and former NBA star and jazz connoisseur Tommy Hawkins.
Hawkins, whose Saturday morning show on FM public radio station KJAZZ 88.1 continues to rank first in its time slot regionally, maintains that “jazz is America’s true, original art form.”
Hawkins said Neiman’s latest piece captures the personality of America’s most revered jazz artists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus.
“Jazz means improvisation,” Hawkins, who played with the Lakers and the Cincinnati Royals before moving on to sports television and radio broadcasting, said in an interview with The Malibu Times. “You never play a song the same way twice. Just like you never play a basketball game the same way twice.”
That might be why Neiman’s work has so prominently featured athletes like Jack Nicklaus and Muhammad Ali as much as musicians like Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.
Neiman began his career as an illustrator for a department store in Chicago alongside a copywriter named Hugh Hefner. He moved to New York City and spent time with musicians attracted to the burgeoning jazz scene in Greenwich Village. When Hefner launched “Playboy” magazine, Neiman signed on as illustrator and his career took off.
Neiman’s original paintings now sell for up to $500,000 and his work can be found in a number of important public and private collections. He is electing to keep “LeRoy Neiman’s Big Band” in his own private archives (which have already been earmarked for the Smithsonian Institution), but it will be on view from Feb. 18 until March 7 at the Timothy Yarger Fine Art Gallery in Beverly Hills.
“LeRoy Neiman is a social documentarian who has captured American pop culture since the ’50s,” Yarger said. “Whether sports, music or public personalities, he has memorialized aspects of our culture that we refer to as lifestyle. I’ve known LeRoy for 25 years and he’s hung out with such a wide array of people and places. Louis Armstrong, James Baldwin … in cafes in Paris in the ’50s. He painted the White House signing of the peace treaty between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin.”
While Neiman’s genius may lie in capturing public figures’ characters through gesture and heightened moments of reality, such as Arnold Palmer blasting a wedge shot out of a bunker to win the U.S. Open or Marilyn Monroe’s sleepy come-hither glance, Yarger said Neiman’s brilliance as a colorist is one of his main contributions to contemporary art.
“As with this painting, LeRoy’s color is musical in itself,” Yarger said.
A documentary on the creation of Neiman’s work that will be screened at the Skirball the evening of the unveiling, also titled “LeRoy Neiman’s Big Band,” was produced by Eric Marciano of American Montage, a company that produces documentaries for HBO and the Discovery Channel.
“When we first started working on this process, LeRoy realized he didn’t want a lot of hullabaloo,” Marciano said. “So, I ended up going to his studio at the Hotel des Artistes (in New York) and shooting the whole thing myself on Hi-def. He would play jazz and talk, and show me this huge catalogue of sketches of various musicians he had made over the years.”
Neiman used these sketches as studies for the assembly of “Big Band,” going back to Coltrane and Mingus. He relied on photographs of the musicians who had died so long ago, like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, that he had no other reference to create their painted image.
“LeRoy never got the recognition he deserved as one of America’s greatest living artists,” Marciano said. “This piece is huge, both is size and concept, though. It really shows how he merged his color style with American jazz influence.”
The unveiling of Neiman’s “Big Band” will take place at the Skirball Cultural Center in a star-studded evening of cocktails and a gourmet dinner with musical entertainment offered by world-class jazz musicians such as Kenny Burrell, Buddy Collette and Hubert Laws.
The event will benefit the California Jazz Foundation, a nonprofit that helps musicians in need.
“Guests at the event will not only get the best evening of entertainment they’ll get all year, they’ll be helping a terrific cause,” Hawkins said.
More information on tickets to the Feb. 17th “An Evening With LeRoy Neiman & All That Jazz!” can be obtained by calling Rebecca Mizrahi at 323.904.4400. His painting will be on display at Timothy Yarger Fine Art Gallery from Feb. 18 to March 7 at 354 N. Bedford Dr., Beverly Hills.