Ted Joans
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Ted Joans
“JAZZ IS MY RELIGION AND SURREALISM IS MY POINT OF VIEW.”
—Ted Joans
Explore the life, work, and influences of visual artist, poet, and musician Ted Joans.
Experimental jazz musician, poet, and painter Ted Joans was associated with Bebop jazz, Surrealism, and Beat poetry—20th-century movements that shaped contemporary artistic expression.
Born Theodore Jones in Cairo, Illinois, in 1928, Ted Joans was raised between Louisville, Kentucky, and Fort Wayne, Indiana; his parents worked as riverboat entertainers in the region. The artist cites his teenage years as the beginning of his musical career, when his father placed a trumpet in his hands for the first time. He would later attend the University of Indiana, where he earned a fine arts degree with a concentration in painting.
Erudite and experimental in his artistic leanings, Jones, who changed his surname to Joans, soon relocated to New York to engage in the explosive poetry and jazz scene in Greenwich Village. He also began traveling extensively, first to Europe and later Africa, where he would establish a winter residency in Timbuktu, Mali.
Joans died in 2003, leaving behind a vast repository of poems, artists’ books, and visual art that are now foregrounded as we celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Surrealism.
This collection story was developed to explore the life and work of Ted Joans and as a companion to the exhibition, Ted Joans: Land of the Rhinoceri, on view in the Mary Ann Frable Works on Paper Gallery June 1–November 17, 2024.
Beat Poetry and Beyond
Joans moved to New York City in the early 1950s. By then, the Beat poetry movement that had begun a decade earlier was in full swing. He was drawn to Lower Manhattan, where a thriving community of writers, poets, and visual artists was emerging.
Joans’s poems were enlivened by the spoken word and his infusion of jazz sensibilities like tone and rhythmic timing. This style and delivery became known as Jazz Poetry, and Joans, alongside others like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, and Leroi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), was at its forefront.
Joans capitalized on his status not only as a Beat poet but also as a Black Beat poet. He would often perform at neighborhood spots like The Artists’ Club, Gaslight Cafe, Café Bizarre, The Artist’s Studio, and the San Remo Café. Bob Kaufman and Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka)—often considered the “Black Beats”1—were also well known and regarded within these literary circles at that time.
Ted Joans outside of Cafe Bizarre, Greenwich Village, New York, ca. 1959. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah 
LEFT: Birthday celebration for Ted Joans, ca. 1959. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah; RIGHT: Paddy Chayefsky, Seymour Krim and Ted Joans, circa 1959. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah
Baraka once said:
“Ted Joans’s poetry is one paradigm of an era, soundings from one of the more colorfull [sic.] individuals who lit it up, whose voice still brightens the curious world he ceaselessly observes. . .”2
Throughout his career, Ted Joans collaborated with notable writers, like James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Michel Leiris, Aimé Césaire, Robert Creeley, Jayne Cortez, Stokely Carmichael, Ishmael Reed and Paul Bowles, and Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, among many others. A list of select publications by Joans can be found at the end of this story.
Joans speaking with guests at his “Rent-A-Beatnik” party, ca. 1960. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah Hear Joans reading his poem “The Poet” and “Jazz is My Religion” in Amsterdam in 1964.
Surrealism
“The true world of the marvelous, that Surreal world where one exists in between the state of being half in dream and half awake.”
—Ted Joans
Joans found a kindred sensibility in Surrealism, an art and cultural movement that revealed the landscapes and dreams of the subconscious. Surrealist dreamscapes often contained the legible yet illogical context and setting of the ordinary.
More than just an aesthetic, Surrealism was foundationally philosophical and politically revolutionary. While Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term, French writer and poet André Breton solidified its definition, framing Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism,” or, more plainly stated, the immediacy of thought translated to pen or brush.3 Like free jazz, Surrealism promoted the unconscious flow of ideas and emotion without the filter of societal norms. In painting, Surrealism manifested as hyper real or wildly fantastical landscapes of the mind. Politically, the movement sought to implode the hierarchical and establish anarchism in its wake.
Ted Joans in his New York studio loft, ca. 1959. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah 
Ted Joans in his studio loft, ca. 1960. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah Joans felt the shockwaves of Surrealism as a college student in America. While an undergraduate, he encountered and translated Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism using only a French dictionary. Upon traveling to Europe, he met Breton in Paris. The author was so impressed by Joans that he proclaimed him “the only African American Surrealist!”
Untitled (Langston Hughes and André Breton)
Joans used the subconscious as a guide to his visual expression, resulting in paintings and collages that were often composed with vast stretches of monochromatic fields combined with collaged or drawn figuration upon the surface. This style can be seen in the work Land of the Rhinoceri (1957), where the legibility of the rhinoceros repeated easily dissolves into line and form. Joans adopted the rhinoceros as a persona that would often appear in his paintings and drawings as well as in his literary work.
Just as Joans embraced André Breton as a significant influence on his practice, he also saw Langston Hughes as foundational to his literary work. Joans would befriend the poet and icon after Hughes attended a few of his readings in Greenwich Village. Joans would later accompany Hughes playing the trumpet at readings both in Paris and New York. The duality of these influences can be seen in the collage featured above. Collaged portraits of Hughes and Breton are united by the word “nor.” For Joans, the intention was to portray that neither influence outweighed the other, but rather lived seamlessly within his practice.
Untitled (Langston Hughes and André Breton), 1992, Ted Joans (American, 1928–2003), collage of found printed matter, graphite, and crayon on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Kathleen Boone Samuels Memorial Fund, 2023.787 Drawings from Africa
Drawings from Africa, 1956, Ted Joans (American, 1928–2003), watercolor and pencil on board. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Dr. Regenia Perry, 2020.366a-b “Africa is a Surrealist continent, thus the most marvelous”
—Ted Joans
Drawings from Africa is a collection of thirty drawings created using pencil, ink, and watercolor that Joans made as a travelogue while journeying on foot throughout West Africa and Europe. His travels profoundly inspired his paintings, poetry, and musical compositions. He distilled his many experiences in Africa and Europe through collected volumes of poetry.
View all thirty drawings included in this portfolio below.
Untitled (Kidoga)
Untitled (Kidoga)
Untitled (Kidoga)
Untitled (Wakifaru)
Untitled (Wakifaru)
Untitled (Timbuktoo)
Untitled (Timbuktoo)
Untitled (Watu Wa Mungo)
Untitled (Watu Wa Mungo)
Untitled (Mzuri Mwili)
Untitled (Mzuri Mwili)
Untitled (Mzuri Mwili)
Untitled (Mzuri Mwili)
Untitled (Mzuri Mwili)
Untitled (Mzuri Mwili)
Untitled (Ruando)
Untitled (Ruando)
Untitled (Ruando)
Untitled (Ruando)
Untitled (Ruando)
Untitled (Ruando)
Untitled (Study)
Land of the Rhinoceri
Land of the Rhinoceri underscores Joans’s passion for the African continent and his commitment to Surrealism. The painting depicts a large herd (known as a crash) of rhinoceros across a vast plain devoid of humans. The black rhinoceros was an alter ego for the artist in his paintings and poetry from this period. The earth toned canvas has a dreamlike quality and was likely painted from the memory of his 1956 trip to Mali, in northwest Africa.
Although the black rhino is not found in Mali, Joans has combined them with scenes he must have observed there of the dry, barren landscape of the Niger River delta around Timbuktu. Joans eventually acquired a house in Timbuktu in 1961 and spent his winters there for the next thirty years. The combination of the real and the imaginary is emblematic of Joans’s lifelong belief in the power of the subconscious mind. To Joans, “the true world of the marvelous, that Surreal world where one exists in between the state of being half in dream and half awake,” was conjured by the subconscious.
Land of the Rhinoceri, 1957, Ted Joans (American, 1928–2003), oil on Masonite. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, 2021.593
Experimental Jazz
Like James Baldwin, Joans was a fixture of the jazz scene in Paris, which saw many writers pass through, especially expats living in Europe. Joans often situated himself among musicians who were reshaping the landscape both in Paris and back home in New York. For a short time, he shared a room with the great saxophonist Charlie Parker and coined the phrase “Bird Lives!” upon the icon’s death. The phrase was reiterated in a 1958 portrait Joans created of Parker, simply entitled, Bird Lives.
Although Joans eventually stopped performing himself, he brought to his poetry and visual art a jazz aesthetic and collaborated with many musicians over the long arc of his career. In his 2008 book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, composer and performer George Lewis wrote:
Joans lived in Paris and could be found at the famous Café Deux Magots, but was also a regular among the “outcasts” creating the new music…For the most part, however, one is tempted to speculate that a major reason why these new musicians were considered outcasts in the black [sic] American expatriate community was the strong possibility that their music was very different from what that community (with the exceptions already cited) had grown up with or understood as black music.4
Explore selections from Black Pow-Wow Jazz Poems.
Ted Joans (American, 1928–2003), Black Pow-Wow Jazz Poetry (Cover), Private Collection, Richmond, VA, L2024.23.1
Selection of publications by Joans
Beat Poems. New York: Deretchink, 1959.
All of Ted Joans and No More, with collages by the author. New York: Excelsior Press, 1961.
The Hipsters, with collages by the author. New York: Corinth, 1961.
A Black Pow-Wow Of Jazz Poems. London: Marion Boyars, 1969.
Black Pow-Wow Jazz Poems. New York: Hill and Wang, 1969.
Afrodisia, with collages by the author. London: Marion Boyars, 1970.
Afrodisia; New Poems. New York: Hill and Wang, 1970.
A Black Manifesto in Jazz Poetry and Prose. London: Calder and Boyars, 1971.
Cogollo Caniculaire, with artist Heriberto Cogollo and poet Joyce Mansour. Rome: Carlo Bestetti, 1977.
Flying Piranha, with poet Joyce Mansour. New York: Bola Press, 1978.
Der Erdferkelforscher/The Aardvark Watcher, translated by Richard Anders. Berlin: LCB-Editionen, 1980.
Vergriffen: oder Blitzlieb Poems. Kassel, Germany: Loose Blätter Press, 1979.
Mehr Blitzliebe Poems. Hamburg, Germany: Michael Kellner Verlag, 1982.
Merveilleux Coup de Foudre, with poet Jayne Cortez, translated by Ms. Ila Errus and M. Sila Errus. Paris: Handshake Editions, 1982.
Sure, Really I Is, with collages by the author. Sidmouth, UK: Transformaction, 1982.
Double Trouble, with poet Hart Leroy Bibbs. Paris: Revue Noire, Editions Bleu Outremer, 1991.
Honeyspoon. Paris: Handshake Editions, 1993.
Okapi Passion. Oakland, CA: Ishmael Reed, 1994.
WOW, with artist Laura Corsiglia. Mukilteo, WA: Quartermoon Press, 1998.
Teducation: Selected Poems 1949–1999, illustrations by Heriberto Cogollo. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1999.
Select One or More: Poems. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft Library Press, 2000.
Our Thang: Several Poems, Several Drawings, with artist Laura Corsiglia. Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, 2001.
In Thursday Sane, with illustrations by the author. Davis, CA: Swan Scythe Press, 2001.
1. Robert Elliot Fox, “Ted Joans and the (B)reach of the African American Literary Canon.” MELUS 29, Issue 3–4 (Fall/Winter 2004): 41–58, https://doi.org/10.2307/4141841.
2. Lena Rubin, “Research Resource: Surrealism in Our Neighborhood,” Village Preservation, June 11, 2021, https://www.villagepreservation.org/2021/06/11/research-resource-encounter-the-history-of-surrealism-in-our-neighborhoods/.
3. Malcolm Haslam, The Real World of Surrealists (New York: Galley Press, 1978), 11.
4. George Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 221.
TOP: Ted Joans (portrait), 1969. Photo by David Gahr, © Estate of David Gahr
Photographs of Joans are attributed to Fred W. McDarrah (1926–2007), photographer for the Village Voice recognized for chronicling the art, artists, and events of downtown New York from the 1950s–70s.