How Much Art Can You Take? (Or There's Something About That Blue)

Published Tuesday, July 11, 2006 by Jeff | E-mail this post

The Thermals - No Culture Icons
Cursive - Art is Hard
Art Brut - Modern Art

As I'm sure you've realized by now, I place a tremendous importance on music in my life. I gain strength through solidarity, learn lessons vicariously and internalize and empathize with the similar ideas and emotions. My first google after being released from a two week stay in the hospital and discovering I had diabetes was "diabetic punk." There had to be some sort of anthem out there from a garage band sans working pancreas. I mean, Keith Morris, what are you doing nowadays anyhow? But I never found one and had to write it myself. ["(Who Put) The Beat (In Diabetes)"]

So when I hear a new song that is about or references something I'm into, my ears prick up and sometimes I fall in love. And while I've never heard a song about Graphic Design, I get excited when I hear Maximo Park reference A4 paper because I'm a big design nerd and know that's the equivalent of Letter size, or 8 1/2 x 11, in the UK. Perhaps I'm easy to please or am totally willing to admit that I enjoy a self-serve ego stroke time and again.

But when a band manages to write a great song about something I'm thoroughly passionate about, like Art, I usually have to change pants. Luckily, I have Cacophony and Coffee as an outlet or I would have to make sneak appearances to my art school alum and hand out mixtapes with accompanying essays. There could probably be scores of more posts from me in the future about art school bands, or even just RISD bands, but I'm not talking about artists making music or music as art, or anything like that. I'm talking about songs discussing art in the same way there are countless songs about love or being in love or being loved or the one that you love. Sure there are some classics like "Pablo Picasso" by The Modern Lovers, or maybe "Good Sculptures" by The Rezillos, but those don't really address the subject like I had in mind.

I discovered The Thermals "No Culture Icons" via Yahoo! Messenger when a friend of mine back in NYC (whose blog was recently condemned by AP official policy) recommended, neigh implored, that I go out and at least get the No Culture Icons EP. Well, since she's responsible for me and my Black Eyes (on a few levels?) I had to take her recommendation seriously and even shelled out the four or five bucks and the hours of download time to get the EP from iTunes that night. And I wasn't disappointed; I was even more impressed than she probably anticipated.

Not only does "No Culture Icons" possess a priceless 4-track-D.I.Y. warmth and charisma, it has some of the sharpest, layered and clever lyrics of all of The Thermals material. Subtle changes in phrasing create new meanings and often phrases mean two things at once. It's like taking all your art professor's rhetoric, all the post-modern academic buzz, and distilling into a perfect melody. But The Thermals don't just regurgitate their critique-speak professors; they offer commentary on the whole experience and question the whole notion. What is art besides "more stained paper"? And half of the song is dedicated to Thou Shalt Nots; it's hard to know where the sarcasm ends and where the artist's voice begins. The message is far from stable and open to the viewer just like good art. Maybe I've become too entrenched with academic art to realize how much of this song needs explanation to those outside our little niche, but I'm pretty sure you can at least recognize the word play if not grasp the full level of art references. And who knows, maybe I'm totally reading it wrong, but it's a catchy little number full of lo-fi charm even for you MBAs out there.

Cursive's "Art is Hard" doesn't neatly fit into my narrow category I specified earlier. It's pretty close to being the thesis of Cursive's The Ugly Organ, a self-referencing album about a tragic 'emo' singer. But the idea of sacrificing one's own happiness and hurting those near and dear in the wake for the sake of some "art" or "success," is a fascinating and important theme. The mythical iconoclastic artist with his black t-shirt and jeans, maybe even a beret, knows that HE must suffer for his art in some stoic pity party. And even in this age of "pluralism" the artist myth continues to thrive. How many times have you heard that you must suffer for your art? It's a cliché now, right? And yet, these tragic figures manage to find success in not only the mainstream-emo scene or TRL but also in the hallowed halls of the white cube: the art gallery.

Can you detect a note of personal bitterness? Maybe that's why I'm able to stretch Cursive's tale of a singer who sabotages his own life for some notion of success. Sure, I fall under the lure of the masculine-art-hero and think, 'oh I can't do that, normal people do that,' or 'nobody understands what's like to be an artist,’ But I have to wonder what I'm missing out on... and remember to be grateful for what I'm getting instead. I love how Cursive calls bullshit on the whole game. And I can sing it to my self in bitter protest and strange reassurance about all those 'successful' artists who just keep playing the same song over and over.

And in my opinion, Cursive (and The Thermals really) deserve their own post to really elaborate on their instrumentation and strange use of sounds. I first heard Cursive when a friend and I were exchanging mass numbers of CDs. He brought over his laptop to rip my collection and I rifled through his 100+ booklet with complete glee. What's Cursive like, I asked. Of course I got the obligatory, "You haven't heard Cursive?!", but then he said, "It's sort of like hardcore... but the have a cello." I grabbed the CD instantly.

Maybe strings are the go-to for musicians to feel more established or complex, but Cursive doesn’t arrange their songs in any typical fashion. The cello isn't simply tacked on; it's an integral part of the composition. And in the case of "Art is Hard" the strings are used as a pretty dissonant texture creating some serious tension. (Critique-speak: "Push-and-Pull;" "Melody/Dissonance" "Order/Entropy")

And finally, "Modern Art" from Art Brut. I encountered Art Brut somewhere in the blogosphere a few semesters back. I can remember distinctly because we were coincidentally covering the Art Brut movement in my Contemporary Art History class that week. This early modernist movement advocated the use of children's drawings, art by the mentally ill, and 'amateur' art as inspiration and insisted that every person was able to create art. What a great reference point for a band name. Of course most people just think it's a clever juxtaposition of disparate terms, like a soft explosion or hard water. But if you wikipedia 'Art Brut' you'll get a whole new level to the band's name. (Okay, Art Brut doesn't have it's own proper page, but read up on Outsider Art, Dubuffet or even Breton if you're interested.)

And this quote from the Art Brut Movement's founder, Dubuffet, might just change your mind about the band. They could be a lot smarter than you thought:

"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade." - Jean Dubuffet.

Art Brut is a strange band and I'm not even sure if I really 'enjoy' them so much as they interest me. Their songs are hard to pull out of context because the album sort of sums up the band as a manifesto. Again, we have tons of self-reference... but taken to a new extreme. Art Brut is aware of being a band, an entertainment product, a potential cash cow for a music conglomerate, like Modern Art is aware of being paint on a surface. Without the need to recreate reality through paint and canvas, Modern Art is allowed to explore a huge range of subject matter, including itself. The Abstract Expressionists, like Jackson Pollock, were championed by the art scene and media, and most notably Clement Greenberg who managed to dictate the flat, pure color and 'contentless' work done by AbExers and Neo-AbExers. The reason we have to add the "Modern" instead of just calling it "Art," is mainly due to this distinction of art being 'allowed' to be paint-on-a-canvas, to reject tradition.

Is Art Brut that important? Probably not, but the way they carry the all-too-self-aware bit clear through the entire album, from lyrics to delivery to instrumentation, is quite impressive, if not revolutionary. And perhaps their song "Modern Art" is the only one in music history to sing about getting SO excited about Hockney of any art in general, but it has got to be the only one about reacting so viscerally that one dashes themselves into a Matisse. Modern art makes me rock out, too.

(Buy The Thermals No Culture Icons EP at Amazon.)
(Buy Cursive The Ugly Organ at Amazon.)
(Buy Art Brut Bang Bang Rock and Roll at Amazon.)

19 Responses to “How Much Art Can You Take? (Or There's Something About That Blue)”

Anonymous on 6:06 AM

Hello, strange I came across this post today, I used to be the guitarist in Art Brut, I wrote many of the songs, including Modern Art...

Just wanted to tell you about my new music, see the link above, or my band's website - www.macacamulatta.com

Tried to find your email address but couldn't :-(
Anonymous on 6:08 AM

Hello, strange I came across this post today, I used to be the guitarist in Art Brut, I wrote many of the songs, including Modern Art...

Just wanted to tell you about my new music, see the link above, or my band's website - www.macacamulatta.com

Tried to find your email address but couldn't :-(
Anonymous on 3:24 AM

Your back...
with the goods also.
yeah art brut, i can't understand the lyrics
i am haveing a hard time understanding them
well i only gave it one listen, but ill give it a couple
more trys.
as far as the Cursive and thermals
both are great songs
i think that the way Tim Kashir
writes lyrics (in a self analyzeing way)
is and always will be very intresting

the thermals, no culture icon
is the best out of the batch of these songs
i burn my self out on cursive, art brut never
really did anything for me even stuff i got from
gorilla vs bear.
but Thermals...
No culture icon
is fresh even after the 689th listen and counting.
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