Art Is Subversive Until It’s Not
How we made Van Gogh safe for field trips
The cleaning up of culture, the sanitizing of art and even of the lives of artists themselves is an ongoing part of the Disney-fication of our cultural heritage, our birthright. Musicians and other artists come along, transgress the limits of their chosen form and at some point they undergo an image reform so that their work can be consumed by the masses. Or, if not their work, the fictional hologram we have replaced them with.
Part of the argument of music historian Ted Gioia’s new book Music: A Subversive History is that this process is not an aberration, it IS the real history of our musical culture. He writes about how Beethoven was despised by the greatest composer of the previous generation, Handel. Yet Beethoven continued to gain in popularity, managing to influence the music of his time as well as generations following.
The outsider arrives, is persecuted, perseveres, and eventually succeeds in having their artistic vision validated.
Think Ornette.
Think electric Dylan.
Think Van Gogh.
In his classic liner notes to the Velvet Underground 1969 Live album Elliott Murphy writes:
