Art pop

This article is about the music genre. For the Lady Gaga album, see Artpop. For the Githead album, see Art Pop.

Art pop is a loosely defined style of pop music[1] which reflects an affinity with practices in areas of non-musical art, such as pop art, cinema, avant-garde literature, fine art, art school studies, and fashion.[3][5] Central to some purveyors of the style are notions of artifice, style, and irony,[6] as well as a movement away from the conventions of rock music and traditional pop audiences.[7]

Characteristics

See also: Art rock
Further information: Pop art

Art pop has been characterized by its emphasis on the manipulation of signs over personal expression, in distinction to art rock[3] or progressive rock, two terms which are often interchangeable.[8] Sociomusicologist Simon Frith has distinguished the appropriation of art into pop music from that of rock music, noting pop's particular concern with style, gesture, and the ironic use of historical eras and genres.[6] Central to particular purveyors of the style were notions of the self as a work of construction and artifice,[7] as well as a preoccupation with the invention of terms, imagery, process, and affect.[9] Cultural theorist Mark Fisher wrote that the development of art pop evolved out of the triangulation of pop, art, and fashion.[7] Frith states that it was "more or less" directly inspired by pop art.[10][3]

According to critic Stephen Holden, the genre often refers to any pop style which deliberately aspires to the formal values of classical music and poetry, though these works are often marketed by commercial interests rather than respected cultural institutions.[1] Writers for The Independent and the Financial Times have noted the attempts of art pop music to distance its audiences from the public at large.[11][12]

History

1960s: Origins and commercial peak

The boundaries between art and pop music became increasingly blurred throughout the second half of the 20th century.[13] In the 1960s, pop musicians such as John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, and Bryan Ferry began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies.[3] Frith states that in Britain, art school represented "a traditional escape route for the bright working class kids, and a breeding ground for young bands like the Beatles and beyond".[6] In North America, art pop was influenced by Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, and became more literary through folk music's singer-songwriter movement.[1] Another chief influence on the development of the style was the pop art movement of the 1950s and 1960s.[1]
The Beach Boys – "Good Vibrations"
"Good Vibrations" (1966) is a "majesty" of art pop by critic Ed Masley's description. Upon release, it became the group's biggest selling single.[14]
The Beatles – "Strawberry Fields Forever"
Journalist Peter Doggett also characterized "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967) as art pop, noting its attempt to "self-consciously exclude ... the mass audience".[12]
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Holden places art pop's origins in producers such as Phil Spector and musicians such as Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys incorporating pseudo-symphonic textures to their pop recordings (both Americans), as well as the Beatles' first recordings with a string quartet.[1][nb 1] Pop artist Andy Warhol's Factory house band the Velvet Underground was an American group who emulated Warhol's art/pop synthesis, echoing his emphasis on simplicity, and pioneering a modernist avant-garde approach to art rock that ignored the conventional hierarchies of artistic representation.[18] In the words of author Matthew Bannister, Wilson and Spector were both known as "eremitic studio obsessives ... [who] habitually absented themselves from their own work", and like Spector, Warhol existed "not as presence, but as a controlling or organising principle behind and beneath the surfaces of media. Both vastly successful commercial artists, and both simultaneously absent and present in their own creations."[19] Writer Erik Davis called Wilson's art pop "unique in music history",[20] while collaborator Van Dyke Parks compared it to the contemporaneous work of Warhol and artist Roy Litchenstein, citing his ability to elevate common or hackneyed material to the level of "high art".[21] The Beach Boys' singles "California Girls" (1965), "God Only Knows" (1966), and "Good Vibrations" (1966) are considered "revelations" of art pop by music critic Thor Christensen.[22][nb 2]

As the dominant format of pop music transitioned from singles to albums,[nb 3] many rock bands created works that aspired to make grand artistic statements, where art rock would flourish.[1] Wilson's unreleased Smile, conceived and recorded in 1966–67, has been described as an attempt to create "the great art pop album"[25] and the "preeminent psychedelic pop art statement" of the era.[26] Colin Larkin described the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as "no mere pop album but a cultural icon, embracing ... pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control."[27] Author Michael Johnson wrote that art pop music would continue to exist subsequently, but without ever achieving the popular success of the Beatles.[16] Before progressive rock (or art rock) became the most commercially successful British sound of the early 1970s, the psychedelic movement (in its attempt to bring the worlds of art and pop together) focused on the question of what it meant to be an "artist" in a mass medium. This was resolved by those like Pink Floyd, who recognized that artistic status depended on personal autonomy, to use mass media forms without being used by them. For composer Frank Zappa, he specifically targeted the issue of pop commercialism with the cover of the Mothers of Invention's 1968 album We're Only in It for the Money, which parodied the cover of Sgt. Pepper's.[28]

1970s: Glam and post-punk

Roxy Music performing on Danish television in 1973

The glam rock scene of the early 1970s would again draw widely on art school sensibilities.[6] Some of its artists, like the group Roxy Music, singer David Bowie, and ex-Velvet Underground member Lou Reed, would continue the practices associated with the modernist avant-garde branch of art rock.[29][nb 4] Bowie, a former art-school student and painter,[6] made visual presentation a central aspect of his work,[33] deriving his concept of art pop from the work and attitudes of Warhol and the Velvet Underground.[34] Roxy Music is described by Frith as the "archetypical art pop band"[6] Their frontman, Bryan Ferry, incorporated the influence of his mentor, pop art pioneer Richard Hamilton[30][35] while synthesizer player Brian Eno drew on his study of cybernetics and art under theorist Roy Ascott.[36] After leaving the group, Eno would further explore art pop styles on a series of experimental solo albums[37][nb 5] and serve a crucial part in the careers of Bowie and the group Talking Heads.[28]

Music theorist Mark Fisher stated that Bowie and Roxy Music's English style of art pop "culminated" with the music of the British group Japan.[5] The Quietus characterized Japan's 1979 album Quiet Life as defining "a very European form of detached, sexually-ambiguous and thoughtful art-pop" similar to that explored by Bowie on 1977's Low.[39] Fisher also characterized German electronic music group Kraftwerk[40] and a variety of musical developments in the late 1970s, including post-punk, industrial music, and synthpop, as situated within art pop traditions.[4] After the amateurism of the punk movement, post-punk era saw a return to the art school tradition previously embodied by the work of Bowie and Roxy Music,[41][4] with artists drawing ideas from literature, art, cinema, and critical theory into musical and pop cultural contexts while refusing the common distinction between high art and low culture.[42][43][nb 6] Examples of artists who combined elements of dance and electronic music with art-school techniques include Talking Heads[46] and Devo.[47]

1980s–present: Later artists

See also: New Romanticism
Björk performing in 2003 at Hurricane Festival.

Fisher characterized subsequent artists such as Grace Jones, Róisín Murphy, and the New Romantic groups of the 1980s as a part of an art pop lineage.[7] He noted that the development of art pop involved the rejection of conventional rock instrumentation and structure in favor of dance styles and the synthesizer.[7] Critic Simon Reynolds dubbed British singer Kate Bush "the queen of art-pop", citing her merging of glamour, conceptualism, and innovation without forsaking commercial pop success during the late 1970s and 1980s.[48] He considered contemporary artists such as Grimes, Julia Holter, and FKA twigs to be working in analogous territory.[48] The music of Grimes in particular was described by the Montreal Gazette as part of "a long tradition of fascination with the pop star as artwork in progress", with particular attention drawn to her use of digital platforms in her work.[49] The music of Icelandic singer Björk has also been described as art pop for its wide-ranging integration of disparate forms of art and popular culture.[50]

List of artists

Notes

  1. ↑ Through their influential work, Wilson and the Beatles' George Martin spread the idea of the recording studio as a musical instrument used to aid the process of composition.[15] Author Michael Johnson credits the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966) and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) as the first documented "ascension" of rock and roll.[16] Spector has also been credited by journalist Richard Williams with transforming rock music as a performing art to an art which could only exist in the recording studio, which "paved the way for art rock".[17]
  2. ↑ The Beach Boys were virtually disconnected from the cultural avant-garde, according to biographer Peter Ames Carlin, who concluded that – with the possible exception of Wilson – they "had [not] shown much discernible interest in what you might call the world of ideas."[23]
  3. ↑ The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, and Frank Zappa all indicated a direction that transformed long-playing records into a creative format while variously reciprocating each others' creative developments throughout the 1960s.[24]
  4. ↑ Glam rock emphasized outlandish costumes, theatrical performances, heavy guitars, and allusions to throwaway pop culture phenomena, becoming one of the most deliberately visual phenomena to emerge in rock music.[30] Scholar Philip Auslander noted a pattern with artists who irreverently plundered older styles of music, such as Brill Building and Spector's Wall of Sound.[31] Producer Tony Visconti remembers that in 1970, he, Bowie, and T. Rex's Marc Bolan would "get high and listen to Beach Boys albums and Phil Spector albums – we all had that in common, that we loved the Beach Boys."[32]
  5. ↑ Eno's 1970s work is cited by musicologist Leigh Landy as an archetypal example of a pop musician who "applied developments from the experimental sector while creating their own experimental pop sector".[38]
  6. ↑ Among major influences on a variety of post-punk artists were postmodern novelists such as William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard and avant-garde political movements such as Situationism and Dada.[44] Additionally, in some locations the creation of post-punk music was closely linked to the development of efficacious subcultures, which played important roles in the production of art, multimedia performances, fanzines related to the music. Simon Reynolds would note: "Beyond the musicians, there was a whole cadre of catalysts and culture warriors, enablers and ideologues who started labels, managed bands, became innovative producers, published fanzines, ran hipster record stores, promoted gigs and organized festivals."[45]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Holden, Stephen (February 28, 1999). "MUSIC; They're Recording, but Are They Artists?". The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  2. ↑ Frith & Horne 2016, p. .
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Buckley 2012, p. 21.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Fisher, Mark (2010). "You Remind Me of Gold: Dialogue with Simon Reynolds". Kaleidoscope (9).
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Fisher 2014, p. 5.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Frith 1989, p. 208.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Fisher, Mark (November 7, 2007). "Glam's Exiled Princess: Roisin Murphy". Fact (London). Archived from the original on November 10, 2007. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  8. ↑ Bannister 2007, pp. 37–38.
  9. ↑ "The Best of Roxy Music Shows Ferry's Talent for Exploring Pop While Creating It". Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  10. ↑ Frith & Horne 2016, p. .
  11. ↑ DJ Taylor (August 13, 2015). "Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone: 125 Years of Pop Music by Peter Doggett, book review". The Independent. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  12. 1 2 Aspden, Peter. "The Sound and Fury of Pop Music." Financial Times. 14 August 2015.
  13. ↑ Edmondson 2013, p. 1233.
  14. ↑ Masley, Ed (October 28, 2011). "Nearly 45 years later, Beach Boys' 'Smile' complete". Arizona Central.
  15. ↑ Edmondson 2013, p. 890.
  16. 1 2 Johnson 2009, p. 197.
  17. ↑ Williams 2003, p. 38.
  18. ↑ Bannister 2007, pp. 44–45.
  19. ↑ Bannister 2007, pp. 38, 44–45.
  20. 1 2 Davis, Erik (November 9, 1990). "Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMILE! The Apollonian Shimmer of the Beach Boys". LA Weekly. Archived from the original on December 4, 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2014.
  21. ↑ Himes, Geoffrey. "Surf Music" (PDF). teachrock.org. Rock and Roll: An American History.
  22. ↑ Christensen, Thor (June 25, 2015). "Concert review: Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson shines with 11-member band at the Verizon Theatre". Guide Live.
  23. ↑ Carlin 2006, p. 62.
  24. ↑ Julien 2008, pp. 30, 160.
  25. ↑ Richardson, Mark (November 2, 2011). "The Smile Sessions review". Pitchfork. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  26. ↑ Staton, Scott (September 22, 2005). "A Lost Pop Symphony". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved September 12, 2013.
  27. ↑ Larkin, Colin (2006). Encyclopedia of Popular Music 1. Muze. pp. 487–489. ISBN 0-19-531373-9.
  28. 1 2 Frith & Horne 2016.
  29. ↑ Bannister 2007, p. 37.
  30. 1 2 Molon & Diederichsen 2007, p. 73.
  31. ↑ Auslander 2006, pp. 55, 86, 179.
  32. ↑ Curtis 1987, p. 263.
  33. ↑ Cavna, Michael. "Beyond the music: How David Bowie was one of our smartest visual artists". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  34. ↑ Jones, Jonathan. "David Bowie and the sexual stamina of Dorothy Iannones – the week in art". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  35. ↑ Walker, John. (1987) "Bryan Ferry : music + art school". Cross-Overs: Art into Pop, Pop into Art.
  36. ↑ link
  37. ↑ Heller, Jason (June 14, 2012). "Getting started with Brian Eno, glam icon and art-pop pioneer". The A.V. Club (Chicago). Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  38. ↑ Landy 2013, p. 167.
  39. ↑ Burnett, Joseph. "Thirty Years On: Japan's Oil On Canvas Revisited". The Quietus. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  40. ↑ BFI
  41. ↑ Rojek, Chris. Pop Music, Pop Culture. Polity, June 2013. Print. p. 28.
  42. ↑ Anindya Bhattacharyya. "Simon Reynolds interview: Pop, politics, hip-hop and postpunk" Socialist Worker. Issue 2053, May 2007.
  43. ↑ Reynolds 2006, p. "Those postpunk years from 1978 to 1984 saw the systematic ransacking of twentieth century modernist art and literature...".
  44. ↑ Reynolds 2006, p. 7.
  45. ↑ Reynolds 2006.
  46. ↑ "Talking Heads biography". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  47. ↑ Yablon, Alex. "Devon's Mark Mothersbaugh's Art-Fueled Journey". Vulture. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  48. 1 2 Reynolds, Simon. "Kate Bush, the queen of art-pop who defied her critics". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  49. ↑ O'Mara, Jamie. "Grimes's star shines online". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  50. 1 2 "Björk's Been ARTPOP Since Before Gaga Was Born This Way". The Huffington Post. 17 July 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2016.
  51. ↑ Pareles, Jon. "Anohni: Embracing a New Name, and Sound". New York Times. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  52. ↑ Fisher 2014, p. 4.
  53. ↑ Plagenhoef, Scott (5 October 2003). "Belle and Sebastian: Dear Catastrophe Waitress". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 1 March 2016.
  54. ↑ Simon Reynolds. "Kate Bush, the queen of art-pop who defied her critics". the Guardian.
  55. ↑ Aston, Martin. "Devo: Where Are They Now?" Q, October 1995.
  56. ↑ "Grime's Star Shines Online". Montreal Gazette.
  57. ↑ BFI
  58. ↑ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/album-reviews/in-an-age-of-manufactured-artists-lorde-is-a-refreshing-change/article14678181/[]
  59. ↑ Hodges, Taylor (2015-04-02). "A Guide to Moloko Star Róisín Murphy's 10 Best Songs". Electronic Beats. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
  60. ↑ The Vinyl factory
  61. ↑ Exclaim!

Bibliography

Further reading

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