Double Lives in Art and Pop Music
by Jorg Heiser (Music 781.66 Hei)
As its title suggests, this book
explores musicians who have also worked in the field of art, or whose musical
practices sometimes expand into broader worlds. I suppose we should define some
terms up front to fully understand where this book is coming from: of course
music is a form of art, but generally when Heiser refers to “art” in the
context of his book, he is talking about non-musical forms of art: painting,
performance art, film or video work, installation art, and those kinds of
activities. And there’s another phrase that comes up a lot in the book, which
is “context switching,” around which revolves the crux of his observations.
Here’s his definition of context switching: “This denotes the movement of a
cultural producer from one art form to another—considered, crucially, in
connection with associated markets, milieus, media technologies, and
institutions (their contexts), which includes the social factors that shaped
the art forms in the first place.”
So ultimately we’re looking at how
artists choose to move between artistic disciplines, and the unique approaches
they take when doing so—some find lots of connections between such practices,
while others maintain fairly separate worlds of work. Some move back and forth
between disciplines regularly or are constantly working in both areas, while
others go through long stretches of focus in one area or the other. I think
that in many ways, the interest behind undertaking this analysis lies in the
notion that we’re looking at practices that are likely reaching their final
eras of remaining so discrete in terms of context. That is, the dividing lines
between art media are increasingly blurred, as are the dividing lines between
so-called “high” and “low” art forms, or arts made for academic or
institutional audiences versus the general public. In the hyperlinked internet
age, so much work in creative disciplines happens across all kinds of old lines
dividing types of media, and the consumption of the arts has become less
ordered, or at least less concerned with the old kinds of order that we looked
at like historical chronology or geography. Heiser looks at multidisciplinary
artist/musicians from roughly the 1960s to the 2010s, the modern golden age of
multidisciplinary practices, and perhaps as we go forward within increasingly
ahistorical and blended times, we can pick up valuable ideas from the working
habits of these artists.
Throughout the book, there is a
secondary theme at play, which has to do with the worldview under which these
artist/musicians operate, broadly divided into “utopian” and “dystopian”
approaches. Heiser sees these opposites as a framework through which to view
sociopolitical contexts related to various artist/musicians’ practices: some
are working in places or eras of social and/or political upheaval, while others
are working in more peaceful times and places. These differences inform their
work, of course, but sometimes it appears that they may also influence how or
even why they jump between artistic disciplines.
The first sections of the book deal
with well-known artists and musicians that help to establish what Heiser is
looking for. Starting with Andy Warhol and his involvement with the Velvet
Underground, we see how the Warhol’s Factory scene moved between the worlds of
art and pop music, with Warhol of course getting lots of attention from Fine
Art critics and art dealers and collectors, while the Velvet Underground became
a very influential pop act. Then we get to explore the artistic interactions
between Yoko Ono and John Lennon, who influenced one another from their diverse
backgrounds, Ono coming out of the Fluxus art movement and Lennon of course
being a working-class musician. After that, the book explores artists like
Brain Eno, Laurie Anderson, and some relatively lesser-known but very
interesting artists who also work with music.
It doesn’t seem that Double Lives in Art and Pop Music comes to any specific consensus about the behavior of
multidisciplinary artists as a whole, and that’s to be expected. It is
interesting to look at their work through various trends and polarities,
though, from the utopia/dystopia opposites mentioned before, to social and
political upheaval, to more practical issues like fluctuations in the economic
realities of different disciplines. Heiser observes, for example, that the art
world was going through rough times in the 1990s while pop music flourished,
and that by the late Oughts and early 2010s, it was music that was struggling
economically under the changing conditions of illegal downloading, while the
market for fine arts was exploding. There are probably as many reasons for
switching between disciplines as there are artist/musicians who do so, and it’s
fun to read about what brings them together, as well as their unique paths.
[If
you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Art of Noise: Destruction of Music by Futurist Machines
by Ferrucio Bersoni, American Art Song and American Poetry by Ruth Friedberg or The Music of Dada: A Lesson in Intermediality For Our Times
by Peter Dayan.]
[
publisher’s official Double Lives in Art and Pop Music web page ]
Recommended
by Scott
S.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Polley Music Library
Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!
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