Visual artists love music and musicians sometimes love visual art. But which visual artists make music themselves and which musicians also make visual art? With this question S.M.A.K.-colleague Hidde van Schie ferreted out Spotify and made up a list of personal favourites: Art & Music / Music & Art! Read below to find out more.
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He started with the classics: Karel Appel experimented in the studio of Philips. Jean Dubuffet worked together with Asger Jorn and wrote that his recordings ‘had no beginning and no end’. Hidde also found a recording by Marcel Duchamps. Then follows a big leap in time and closer to home: he did not find a direct link with Alex van Warmerdam, who himself plays a nice bit of guitar, but in Hauser Orkater everything was mixed up, so with a bit of luck it is Alex himself on guitar here, and not his brother Vincent.
dEUS with Rudy Trouvé and Stef Kamil Carlens cannot be left out either: ‘Great American Nude’ is the title of a painting by Tom Wesselmann. Which is a direct link to our Pop Art exhibition this autumn.
A more local representation is found in the form of artists Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (Club Moral), Peter Klashorst (Soviet Sex), John Cees Smit (Scram C Baby), Peter Fengler (Coolhaven) en Peter Jacquemyn (The Singing Painters). This last band was at some time co-founded by Michaël Borremans.
Then we jump to international names: Captain Beefheart, the alias of Don van Vliet, was also an abstract-expressionist, who in later life looked more like an artist than a musician.
SQÜRL is the band of filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Nam June Paik, Hermann Nitsch and Charlemagne Palestine are all somewhat more piano-orientated.
The recently deceased Genesis P-Orridge appears twice in the list, with Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and band member Cosey Fanni Tutti also pops up several times in different guises.
William S Burroughs not only had a big influence on COUM Transmissions, the group of artists which later turned into Throbbing Gristle, but also comes up in this list with a one-off collaboration with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.
Spotify clearly does not hold everything, so we have to make do with what is available. For that reason these examples are missing: Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw (Destroy All Monsters), Paul McCarthy (Los Angeles Free Music Society) and Raymond Pettibon (Panic/Black Flag). But with Extended Organ and Tom Recchion we do end up – at least a bit - in the same area. Bob Dylan surprised friends and enemies in 2013, with a first exhibition of his sculptures and therefore he closes the list with the classic ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’.
Keep an eye on S.M.A.K.’s Spotify, more to come. Another list with interesting concept albums is being worked on too.
