Free Jazz linked improvised music to abstract expressionist painting

Evidence

Totally improvised by two combos playing simultaneously—one in each stereo channel—Free Jazz embodied freedom and effectively named the tendency most identified with Coleman, sometimes referred to by musicians as the “New Thing.” No less than We Insist!, the LP cover made a statement. Not a news photo but a canvas, reproducing a section of Jackson Pollock’s White Light (1954), one of the artist’s last completed paintings—an amazingly dense web made in part by squeezing paint from the tube directly onto the canvas. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 328