Art-Pop: Reflective or Reductive?
Our first guest article comes from writer & radio host Anna, giving her opinion on that big label.
About two years ago I created a playlist which inspired this article called “avant-garde pop? art-pop?” and that pretty much sums up the way I see the mystical and ambiguous music within this genre. As the way we generate and consume culture has been revolutionized by modern technology, the meaning of the popular has changed; the commonly made distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the ‘serious’ and the ‘popular’, has been radically erased. Arguably, the musical movement that catalysed and paved this change (at least in the Western world) was Art-pop and its embrace of the avant-garde, experimental and camp, fundamentally setting apart today's popular culture from any other in time. However, the baggage of this change in contemporary culture isn’t all that light, it comes with great complication and increased ambiguity of meanings and conceptions of artistic movements themselves. The question I’m asking is whether this is true for Art-pop. Why did I decide Talk Talk could be placed into the same playlist as Marina Herlop? How can a singular genre label group Billie Eilish and Arthur Russell together? Do these labels reduce artists and their music for the sake of simplicity or are the semantic ambiguities reflective of the multitude of sonic elements?
Art-pop originated from two main sources: firstly, the increased number of artists taking to music and performance in art schools, and secondly the birth of Pop-Art in the 1960s – both influencing the name. Art schools during the 1960s in the UK particularly offered artists a space to fully embrace their creativity, individuality, and art in their preferred manifestation, influenced by theories of fashion, fine art or even cinema. Parallel to the emergence of pop art in the US, art-pop took on an extravagant, experimental, and avant-garde attitude towards popular culture. Andy Warhol, the Factory, and the Velvet Underground show the symbiotic growth of these artistic mediums, demonstrating their goal of transforming art into a commodity. The nature of this new style of musical identity inferred a tension between ‘high’ culture and ‘mass’ culture; between creativity and commerce, breaking down historical myths made about contemporary art. Artists such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, David Bowie and Brian Eno first set the theatrical stage on which Art-pop could flourish on. These theatrical and camp performances and embodiments lend themselves to another enormously significant influence of Art-pop: queerness. A transcendental play of queer identity, gender and sexuality serve as foundational stones in the formation of Pop-art hence Art-pop (this will have to be a subject for volume 2). The 1980s and 1990s were for Art-pop it’s time to truly find its form. Artists like Kate Bush, Björk (the personification of Art-pop), Fiona Apple, Stereolab, Kraftwerk and many more subsequently began the critical journey of cementing a new musical genre. From the 2000s onwards, Art-pop has become an increasingly broader term, encapsulating artists like FKA Twigs, Charli XCX, and Animal Collective.
When David Byrne was asked whether what he makes is ‘art’ or a ‘product,’ he replied: “I feel I’m successful when I combine both together, when people forget the distinction between the two. If I can do a video which can be artistically successful and still get shown on TV, then I've got the best of both worlds.” This is the spirit of Art-pop. Inherently postmodernist because of its drawings on avant-garde and Romantic movements, Art-pop is essentially formalism made “socially acceptable in the pop world” as Nick Coleman wrote. In the simplest of terms, Art-pop bridges conventional popular music structures and styles with ‘high art’ and ambitious experimentation. This results in a sound that might initially seem daunting or intimidating, yet it is rendered accessible and grasped by mass appeal through the focus on commodifying ‘high’ forms of art. Due to its already long life, Art-pop has evolved and birthed multiple subgenres like dream pop, hyperpop, and certain contemporary forms of R&B. The plethora of albums that therefore fall into the Art-pop category is overwhelming. Importantly, since the birth of Art-pop, it has been inseparable from fashion and art, creating a sort of triangulation; the holy trinity of art, fashion and pop. Think Lady Gaga’s meat dress, Björk’s swan dress, or Ziggy Stardust. Because of this central influence, Art-pop is almost synonymous with the theatrical, the camp, and the glam in popular culture.
The label Art-pop does run into issues that most artistic labels must combat. Words can both intentionally yet inexplicitly pigeonhole artists into categories of sounds and themes that have little to nothing to do with each other. Labels inherently imply an assumption – whether rightful or not – that what falls under them is linked, whether that’s stylistically or thematically. There should be some sense in the label; some clear communication between the name, its meaning, and the object it claims to describe. However, it isn’t always clear what the connections between Billie Eilish and Arthur Russel are. You could potentially draw out a chart linking the two, it’s possible, but would this giant chart – as it would need to be pretty big - justify the ascription of these artists in the same category? Wouldn’t it just alienate them both from the category itself, and successively obfuscate the genre as a whole? Is one small aesthetic intersection enough? This homogenization of diverse sounds and innovations results in a nondescript term that no longer holds much meaning. Furthermore, through this homogenization, efforts made by artists, whether experimental or not, are diluted and their ambitions blurred into a big murky soup. Essentially their artistic individuality becomes obsolete. Labels like Art-pop homogenize artists who each have a deep individual conception of their music with an array of influences.
Although it might be supposed that the aforementioned triangulation of art, fashion and pop that Art-pop embraces is a physical reflection of its characteristics, art and fashion have arguably become hallmarks of subjectivity in any musical genre. The way that individuality and personality have become a sort of public good; the way in which ways of living have been commodified and how that is reflected through art, is something that isn’t unique to Art-pop as it may have once been. The curation of audiences, the consumer as the ‘product’ and subsequently the artist as the ‘producer,’ and consequently the reflection within the audience of a certain genre through fashion, art, and self-expression has now arguably become ubiquitous in the music world. Whether you’re an Avant-folk listener, rock musical fan, or death industrial enjoyer, we have come to embody to some extent the way we experience music as the self has been moulded to personality. However, this isn’t necessarily a reductive aspect of the genre label, on the contrary: it is a projection of how our egocentric capitalist world has changed the way we experience ourselves in relation to culture.
The nature of Art-pop is inherently contradictory on the foundations of our classical understanding of high and low culture/art; therefore, the presence of conflicting themes and styles should come as no surprise. The label itself is a step in our constant redefining of art and culture, in erasing the standards by which we have always judged art and, hence life. It is a genre made to put forward creative differences and fuse them into one tangible form. The concept itself suggests an ambiguity and undefinable characteristic of sound. It is defined in such a way that it gives artists absolute creativity, reduces all experiences to expression; and reduces it to a form unscathed by external forces as it is above all art. Art-pop deliberately blurs the lines of its borders, which is why – even though it might be hard to accept – Xiu Xiu and Frank Ocean fall under the same category. The term art in itself is one that we know is extremely contested, whether in asking what art is, or who gets to be part of this group. The intentional openness of the term reflects the varieties that fall within it. Moreover, the idea that Art-pop embraces all forms of experimentation is a greater demonstration of the justification for these seemingly random combinations, as experimentation enacts uniqueness.
There is an assumption that comes with labels and that is the sound’s strict coherence to the meaning. This is the way history has taught us to view cultural movements, from Baroque to Surrealism or Jazz to Eurodance. We have strict conditions for what makes one a brick in the wall. I have for too long assumed the meaning to be synonymous with the compositional elements of the music, however, Art-pop is far more than that. It’s a philosophy at heart. A philosophy which merges the self with the commercial to the point of individual obliteration, simultaneously philosophy of aesthetic autonomy. Its paradoxical and fragmented nature is a consequence of our fragmented postmodern life. This in itself is a movement in our cultural world that has spread across genres, blurring the lines of genre isolation as a whole.
Suggestions:
- Joanne Robertson
- Marina Herlop
- Sheena Ringo
- Satanicpornocultshop
- The Residents
- Deakin
- Gustavo Cerati
- Jun Togawa
- Faye Wong
- Juana Molina
- Saya Gray
- Feu! Chatterton
- Waterbaby