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Rebel Rebel
Art + Rock
ISBN: 9789462301498
(HB - F)
€
Since the 1960s, rock music, together with other pop phenomena like science fiction, has been one of the sources of inspiration and of reflection that visual artists have drawn on and reinterpreted. Derived from blues and country music, two rural genres in America, rock music, which emerged in the late 1950s, presents itself as a typically adolescent culture of which the history oscillates between industrial entertainment and suburban revolt. Celebrated with nostalgia or parodied with virulence, its 'religion' has haunted, since pop art, an entire section of contemporary art with its electric distortions and diabolical refrains. Associated with art, it has broadened the spectrum of a sensitivity that is now shared: from political rebellion to identity crisis via artistic nihilism.
Published on the occasion of Rebel Rebel (Art + Rock), a major exhibition programmed by the MAC's at Grand-Hornu in 2016, this work proposes a journey across contemporary art through the prism of rock and its three principal facets. Tinted among others by the songs of Hank Williams and Patti Smith, the first facet highlights artists who, like Dan Graham, Allen Ruppersberg and David Askevold, were interested in the vernacular roots of rock music. The second, an iconic facet in the image of Elvis Presley, Deborah Harry or Kurt Cobain, selects works that tackle the vanities of stardom and its glamorous aesthetics, after the fashion of Mimmo Rotella, Douglas Gordon and General Idea. Lastly, shaded by the darkness of punk groups like The Stooges and Ramones, the third facet of rock presents iconoclastic artists who, like Art & Language, Steven Parrino and Jonathan Monk, deconstruct the modernist myth of the author of genius. Each of these facets corresponds to a chapter in the book which, starting out from 'art-rock' duos (Andy Warhol + Bob Dylan, Tony Oursler + Sonic Youth, Jeremy Deller + New Order, etc.), is organized according to various iconographic plates. Enriched with biographies, a chronology and a glossary, these three parts, respectively entitled 'Roots', 'Looks' and 'Fools', form the core of a publishing project in which rock music and contemporary art come together in a hybrid, rebellious combo.
MAC's, Grand Hornu, 23 OKTOBER 2016 TOT 22 JANUARI 2017
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