Do I have to like Captain Beefheart?

I’m no art historian, but it strikes me that the “art” of modern art takes place at some point after its creation. You paint a skyscraper-size donut, say, and then spend years talking about it: what it symbolizes, how it comments on what came before it, what it’s trying to say.

Successive modern movements upended the traditional “pretty picture” aesthetic established during the Renaissance, and in the process traditional formal skills became irrelevant. It’s all about the concept.

But in popular music, it wasn’t that simple. Ornette Coleman brought an avant-garde approach to jazz music, and at the time people thought he was just playing out of tune. Why the difference?

Unlike visual art, it takes time to... Read More