Art Versus Music History

 

 

There are times when I think artists have had more interesting lives when you look at them in retrospect. At least from a museum perspective, you get to view an artist’s work in a wing in a museum, curated with other works in the same period. You can’t do that with music because you have to experience each separately.

I’m also more fascinated by modern and contemporary art, or the contrasts between Picasso and Matisse than I am having anything to do with Mahler and Strauss.

Music history and art history are distinctly different, with art history being slightly more compelling, (perhaps partly because the history of modern and contemporary art is conflated with celebrity and wealth, whereas music history depicts composers in a more professorial image). Composers also have the stigma of being frozen in time as old men as busts on plinths. Why is this? With artists young enough, we have photographs, so we can see Picasso and Matisse as young men in Paris, the rock stars of the 1900s, similar to photos of the young Beatles and Stones the same age in the 60s.

Classical music would have a resurgence if we sexed-up music history more.

12/19/2015

[12/19/2024: Musical artists who would qualify for being “art history” because they are “artier” artists: David Bowie, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, David Byrne, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters (for the music and controversy), Robert Fripp, many producers because they have to consider how to package the work as Art. Who else?]