How Artists Invented Pop Music surveys the intertwined histories of pop music and visual art from the 1950s to the present, and even more broadly—from Dada to Lady Gaga and beyond. Mike Roberts details the vibrant and fruitful exchange of ideas between art colleges and the musicians they nurtured (whether or not the future pop stars completed their art training).
Visual art and its associated subcultures have played a prominent role in every major turning point in pop music history. The unprecedented growth of art education in the late 1950s and early 1960s led to a surge in young people who would have previously chosen more traditional careers in manufacturing or service industries to enter the cultural sphere. By enrolling in art colleges, they, including future pop stars, gained access to the alluring world of bohemian romanticism, the latest aesthetic ideas, avant-garde styles, and creative individualism. All of this left its mark on those who became musicians and on the music they listened to and later performed. Whereas previously they would have seen their musical vocation as purely entertaining, they now considered themselves artists. So what they did became art, not least because they believed it to be.
Tracing a winding path through the various fields of artistic practice that intersected such diverse individuals and collectives as Marcel Duchamp, The Beatles, Yoko Ono, The Who, John Cage, Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Gilbert & George, Kraftwerk, Richard Hamilton, Roxy Music, Malcolm McLaren, Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Blondie, Factory Records, Jean-Michel Basquiat, The KLF, Jeremy Deller, Riot grrrl, Jay-Z, and many others, Mike Roberts traces the history of art college rock, clarifies the lineage of pop culture trends, and places the work of artists who draw inspiration from an inexhaustible vital energy in their original historical context. pop music.'