Leif Ericson – A Tribute to Play, Imagination and Music

In his book Homo Ludens (1938), Johan Huizinga emphasised play as a fundamental and constitutive factor in humanity’s historical and cultural development. The book played a significant role in establishing Homo Ludens as a central concept in 20th-century art, music, and literature. Movements such as Dadaism – with its radical critique of rationality and structure – and Surrealism, with its ideas around automatism, embraced the subversive power of play early on. For artists like Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp, and Alexander Calder, play was not merely an artistic method but a means of challenging societal conventions and established norms. Calder created his renowned work Cirque Calder between 1926 and 1931 – a miniature circus featuring marionettes made from simple materials like wire, fabric, and found objects. He performed the circus himself, often for friends, artists, and critics, and the freedom of play became an essential part of his artistic expression.

In a similar way to sculptor Alexander Calder, the circus was also, for Leif Ericson, an arena for play and imagination. Like many other 20th-century artists, Ericson also saw early silent film – particularly the slapstick genre with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin – as a new art form that echoed the circus’s liberating perspective on the world. In addition to being a visual artist, Leif Ericson was also a drummer and jazz musician. During his time at Valand, he was already inspired by the soundscapes of jazz. Both early jazz pioneers like Kid Ory and Bunk Johnson, and more modernist-oriented musicians like Chet Baker, created groundbreaking music rooted in improvisation and rhythmic spontaneity – where the music evolved through playful exploration in the moment rather than through formal structure. The intuitive interaction between jazz performers and their audience mirrors the artistic methods of Surrealism and Dadaism, as both celebrate the playful human being – homo ludens.