Ted Joans (born Theodore Jones; Cairo, Illinois, 1928 – Vancouver, 2003) was an American painter and collagist associated with the Beat generation and Surrealism. He is remembered mainly as a jazz poet, but his visual work, made of collage, painting and drawing, deserves attention in its own right.
He studied fine arts at Indiana University and, after moving to New York City in 1951, changed his surname to Joans and entered the bohemian scene of Greenwich Village. There he painted in a style close to Abstract Expressionism that he called "Jazz Action Painting". From the 1960s he lived mostly in Paris, where he came into contact with André Breton's Surrealist circle, and his collages drew on the example of Max Ernst. The rhinoceros is a recurring motif in his work.
His best-known piece is Long Distance Exquisite Corpse (1976–2003), a chain of drawings and collages on dot matrix paper more than 30 feet long, made with 132 invited contributors. His legacy lies in combining jazz, Surrealism and a critique of American middle-class values.