Joe Tillman at the Dew Drop Inn, 1952

The Maritime Challenge at Dock, 1950-60s

Ralston Crawford was not an artist limited by medium.

His photographs, lithographs, drawings, paintings, and films come together at “Ralston Crawford and Jazz,” the New Orleans Museum of Art’s current exhibit of Crawford’s work. On view until October 14, the exhibit offers a rare, comprehensive look into a mind perpetually inspired by New Orleans’ most beloved music.

Despite never living in the city, Canadian-born Crawford was a constant visitor to New Orleans. His intimate black-and-white photographs of old-time jazz musicians like Bill Matthews, Joe Tillman, and “Wooden” Joe Nicholas illustrate the close friendships he must have developed during his time here (and the permit he supposedly acquired to visit bars and establishments open only to blacks at the time).

Drawing on this personal connection to his subjects, Crawford documented local performers and legendary venues like the Dew Drop Inn and Chris Owens’ Bourbon Street Club. He brings a strong sense of compositional awareness to photos of New Orleans buildings, boats, and signage. “The Maritime Challenge at Dock,” a striking, richly contrasted image of a black ship berthed on a gray day, displays the clean lines and geometry that Crawford and other early Precisionists were known for.

Though first recognized for his depictions of Northern industrial and urban locations, Crawford later moved into abstraction. However, his appreciation for architecture endured, and shows in much of his work—sepulchral tombstone-like forms appear in nonobjective lithographs like “New Orleans #4,” while the framing of a photograph like “Advertising the Dance” captures both the spirit of jazz and the city’s characteristic shotgun construction.

At NOMA, exhibit curator Olivia Lahs-Gonzales of the Sheldon Art Galleries in St. Louis has thoughtfully placed Crawford’s subtly colored drawings, lithographs, films, and paintings next to the photographs that inspired them. The juxtaposition showcases the artist’s impressive ability to interpret material in multiple ways, and simultaneously invokes a sense of jazz’s classic, playful call-and-response form.

Standing in front of “Basin Street,” Crawford’s close photo of a cemetery cross, you can almost follow him into “Basin Street Cemetery,” a stark nonobjective painting full of color and line, featuring that same cross shape. Crawford said of his work:

“Techniques should not be limited to the articulation of existing conceptions, but technical discoveries can be deeply related to the process of the picture and make the ideas soar.”

Inspired by jazz to discover new ways of creating a picture, and in his many explorations of different media and techniques, Crawford catapulted each of his pieces to soaring levels.

The NOMA exhibit features over 150 of Crawford’s post-World War II works, including original proof prints of iconic photos used as album covers for Riverside Records’ 1960s “New Orleans Living Legends” jazz series. Tulane’s Hogan Jazz Archive also contributed a selection of photographs, making “Ralston Crawford and Jazz” the most comprehensive display yet of Crawford’s New Orleans work.