Conceptual Art and Rock and Roll

MTV loves America. According to the Associated Press, J. Lo, Kid Rock and Ja Rule are off to a “U.S. Military base overseas” to entertain the USO troops during the holidays, sponsored by the popular music pantheon. Those stationed in Kosovo will have the pleasure of being serenaded by Mariah Carey. U2’s Bono ended the band’s Elevation tour in Miami with the exclamation, “I’d like to say how much we love this country and we wish you safety and prosperity,” wearing a New York Fire Department T-shirt.

Meanwhile, conceptual art maven Yoko Ono performed “Blueprint for a Sunrise” (2000), a call for peace and healing, at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT in late October. The List’s annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art, which occurred last weekend, featured a panel of artists and critics who decried the war in Afghanistan and waxed nostalgic for the hippie mentality of the 1960s.

The disparate reactions of the musical community and the art world to America’s “war against terror” reveal the ever-widening rift between the two factions of expression. But this, of course, was not always the case. Last weekend, the Wasserman Forum presented a talk titled, “Losing the Revolution: A discussion on the loss of seditious potential when avant-garde art and rock music stopped sleeping in the same bed.” Although the discussion itself quickly degenerated into anti-war proselytizing and reminiscence about the good old days of 1968, the topic of discussion broaches an important question in the context of pop culture.

BOHEMIAN LIKE YOU

For decades, avant-garde art and rock and roll strove towards the common goal of social and political upheaval. Even prior to the creation of rock and roll, music and revolutionary art have made natural bedfellows. Five years before Marcel Duchamp drew a goatee on the Mona Lisa, Luigi Russolo and Babilla Pratella were accompanying traditional music with an orchestra and Pratella was accompanying traditional music with an orchestra of “Bruiteurs” that interrupted traditional compositions with grunts and hisses. The Bruiteurs shared the revolutionary spirit of the Dadaists, who believed that traditional cultural institutions, symbolic of societies responsible for the brutality of the First World War, must be overthrown.

Similarly, the work of the Italian Futurists, who loved the frenetic pace, noise and pollution of large cities, was echoed more than 30 years later by the French creators of musique concrete. Pierre Schaeffer assembled “songs” from ready-made noises of jackhammers, traffic, spinning pan covers and locomotives. Edgar Varse combined visual art with musique concrete for his “Pome electronique,” which was commissioned for the Brussels World Fair in 1958 and combined electronic voice manipulation and pulse generation with film projectors, ultra-violet lights and hundreds of fluorescent lamps in various colors. John Cage’s “prepared piano” (which involved the insertion of nails, bolts, nuts, screws and bits of rubber, leather and wood in the strings of an ordinary grand piano to create innovative percussive sounds) mirrored the work of the Fluxus group, who believed in removing everyday elements from their natural context, thus allowing the viewer to experience a familiar object as art.

GOODNESS GRACIOUS

Still, true social and political revolution cannot occur without the widespread support of the public, which was not attained until the popularization of rock and roll. Although lacking a distinctive corollary in the art world, early rock and roll still was still driven by the same motivation of avant-garde art: questioning blind adherence to societal norms. What began as a search for personal identity among post-war teenagers resulted in a blow to the sanitized, suburban nuclear family unit of Eisenhower’s America. The resounding popularity of rock and roll icons Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley blurred the barriers between white and “colored,” poor and affluent, and right and wrong. Good little girls screamed upon witnessing the King’s pelvic gyrations and an entire generation fell in love with the sounds of “poor white trash” from the Bayou and a black man with a guitar.

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

By the beginning of the 1960s, rock and roll was an avenue for teenage personal rebellion, but it had not attracted the attention of the artistic community, who had long ago discovered sex and drugs. However, the two movements soon found idealistic common ground in the form of the American anti-war movement. In the case of rock and roll, the Vietnam War was a personal threat—rock’s young audience risked the threat of being drafted and killed in a war in which they did not support. In the case of art, the war represented the rejection of love and beauty; supporting the war would mean that one was unable to critically question the goings-on of the outside world. Avant-garde art and music literally began sleeping together. John Lennon and Fluxus artist Yoko Ono’s famous bed-in, followed by their erection of billboards in cities around the world reading “WAR IS OVER” epitomized the joint efforts of the musical and artistic communities in to effect social and political upheaval.

MATERIAL GIRLS

Running parallel to the anti-war effort during the 1960s and 70s was Pop Art, which, like the Fluxus group, adopted everyday images. However, for Pop artists, these images became art for art’s sake. While Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol replicated images of consumer culture, rock and roll’s rebellion turned inwards toward the self. Studio 54’s house band, the Velvet Underground, took introspection to its apex, while No Wave bands would perform audienceless in the New York streets as firm proponents of music for music’s sake. Towards the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 80s, self-satirizing disco, new wave and Pop artists began to acquire a large fan base. The Village People topped the charts with songs that band member David Hodo described as, “the worst you have ever heard;” Devo produced a skeletal reproduction of pop culture reference point, the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” while Madonna freely admitted that she was a “material girl.” Even ivory-tower electronic music became a public commodity as New Order and Soft Cell produced dance club hits.

THE END OF THE AFFAIR

While self-satirization through frenetic reproduction—as demonstrated by emergent movements at the end of the 1970s like photo-realism—remains a continual theme in the avant-garde art world, rock and roll has lost its sense of humor. The creation of MTV turned rock songs themselves into commercials, and the 1990s have seen the increasing importance of commercial success to rock and roll. At the beginning of the decade, athletes endorsed soft drinks; now that honor goes to Britney Spears. As seen by the reaction of the musical community to the current American war effort, rebellion through popular music is passé—rock and roll now seeks to placate the public that funds it. Meanwhile, conceptual art remains rooted in ideals, but no longer has the public support to effect change. When the self-preoccupation of the art world and music’s commercial drive can reach a compromise, avant-garde art and rock and roll can fall in love again. Until then, the boys abroad have J-Lo’s booty-shaking to enjoy.

–Reporting contributed by Matthew B. Sussman