Songs about art?

...and many many more

In fact, fuck it, just do a Dada compilation

Nurse With Wound - Merzbild Schwet
Merzbow - anything
Merz - anything

I don't understand this comment. Yes, they're named after a German art movement, but they'd plenty of songs that had fuck-all to do about art in the slightest.

Something off Rachels' Music For Egon Shiele?

http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/terryallen/truckloadofartlyr.html

By the same token - anything by the Rembrants!

”Got me a movie, I want’chu to know, slicein’ up eyeballs, I want’cha ta know, girlie so groovy I want’chu to know, don’t know about’chu, but I am Un Chien Andalusia… want to grow, up to be, be a Debaser”

via the film from Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel

... writing a song about Max Ernst is an exceedingly cool thing to have done
-- Dadaismus

Ah, you two beat me to it!

Don't forget Mission of Burma's This is Not a Photograph...ok, maybe that's stretching the reference of This is Not a Pipe or sumsuch for your purposes.

Roger Miller also has a new Mission of Burma song worked up: Max Ernst's Dream which sounds slightly more painterly and very burmesque.

Here's hoping they play it at the Irving Plaza, NYC show in January 2004.

Basically a list of all the futurists, followed by the chorus: "Fewwww-cher-ist! Manifesto!'

:) must hear!

my picks
the fall ... prole art threat
minutemen ... futurism restated (whose lyric is taken from the artiest book i can name, mcluhan's TMITM)
wings ... picasso's last words

burmakitty that adam ant song is on dirk wears white sox

in penance i offer prince ... all the critics luv u in new york
and yeah yeah yeahs ... art star
and isn't björk's "cocoon" about shaggin matthew barney?

Maybe.

They were made by beret wearing, Gittane smoking, onion eating frenchman sometime in the 20's though.

first you don't, you don't succeed
you gotta recreate your misery
you all know art is hard
yeah, the artists have gotta starve
try and fail and try again
the comforts of repetition
keep churning out those hits
till it's all the same old shit

oh, a second verse
well, color me fatigued
i'm hiding in the leaves of the cd jacket sleeves
tired of entertaining some double-deaf meaning
a soft served analogy
those drunken, angry slurs
yeah, thirty one letters

gotta sink, gotta sink, gotta sink to swim
emerse yourself in rejection
regurgitate some sorry tale
about a boy who sells his love affairs
gotta fake fake fake the pain
gotta make make make the scene
gotta break break break a leg when you get on stage
and they scream your name:
oh kasher, he's so cool

gotta sink gotta sink gotta sink to swim
the person the grave to exist
cuz we all know art is hard
and we don't know who we are

Once upon a time
Sometime ago back on the east coast
In New York City, to be exact
A bunch of artists and painters and
sculptors and musicians and
poets and writers and dancers
and architects
Started feeling real superior
to their ego-counter-parts
Out on the West Coast…so,
They all got together and decided
They would show those snotty surfer upstarts
A thing or two about the Big Apple
And…they hired themselves a truck
It was a big, spanking new white-shiny
Chrome-plated cab-over
Peterbilt
With mudflaps, stereo, tv, AM & FM radio,
Leather seats and a naugahide sleeper
All fresh
With new American Flag decals and "ART ARK"
Printed on the side of the door
With solid 24 karat gold leaf type
And they filled up this truck
With the most significant piles
And influential heaps of Art Work
To ever be assembled in Modern Times,
And it sent it West…to chide
Cajole, humble and humiliate…the Golden Bear.
And this is the true story of that truck
A Truckload of Art
From New York City
Came rollin down the road
Yeah the driver was singing
And the sunset was pretty
But the truck turned over
And she rolled off the road
Yeah a Truckload of Art
is burning near the highway
Precious objects are scattered
All over the ground
And it's a terrible sight
If a person were to see it
But there weren't nobody around
(Yodel)
Yeah the driver went sailing
High in the sky
Landing in the gold lap of the Lord
Who smiled and then said
"Son, you're better off dead
Than haulin a truckload
full of hot avant-garde
(chorus)
Yes…an important artwork
Was thrown burning to the ground
Tragically…landing in the weeds
And the smoke could be seen
Ahhh for miles all around
Yeah but nobody…knows what it means
Yes…a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's a tough job for the highway patrol
Ahhh they'll soon see the smoke
An come runnin to poke
Then dig a deep ditch
And throw the arts in a hole
(Yodel)
Yeah a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's raging far-out of control
And what the critics have cheered
Is now shattered and queered
And their noble reviews
Have been stewed on the road

Is Fennesz's Endless Summer inspired by the '66 film?

Bowie does a good cover of 'Pablo Picasso'. Put that on.

also:

Television Personalities - Salvador Dali's Garden Party

("Miro, Miro, on my wall, you're the fairest of them all"... *groan*!)

Bowie - Joe the Lionel (about Chris Burden)
Stephen Malkmus - Post-Paint Boy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBJlUWDy9c

A RIVER IN FRANCE, A STATUE IN THE GUGGENHEIM

Not a song about art, but the Who's destruction was inspired by Gustav Metzger's theories of Auto-Destructive Art (Townshend was a student of Metzger's in the early 60s).

i always thought the Who's destruction was inspired by competing egos and loads of cocaine.....

As the story goes, many of Townshend's art school friends were in attendance one night where he happened to be banging the headstock of his guitar on the ceiling, as it made an interesting noise. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the neck broke off the guitar and stuck in the ceiling, prompting Townshend to finish the job to make it look intentional. He told his art school friends, "See? That it was Auto-Destructive Art, just like we learned from Metzger's lectures!" The next week, a bigger crowd expected more of the same, but he didn't smash anything, so everyone in the club left, prompting Keith Moon to demolish his drum kit (for a nearly-empty club). Moon was less influenced by Metzger than he was by amphetamines and booze.

Bob Dylan - When I Paint My Masterpiece

Art Brut - Modern Art

mccarthy - frans hals
smiths - schiele take a bow (jokes!)

Donovan - Season of the Nitsch
Family - No Muehl's Fool
Natasha Bedingfiel - I Brus Easily

Jonathan Richman's Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso have been mentioned, but he's also done one called No One Was Like Vermeer.

Peter Hammill, "Painting By Numbers":

It's not that complicated,
it's simple as can be:
she wants to paint her heart out,
they want a programme for the BBC
where academic critics can talk of art that's fine
like holy wine - the Blessed Intellectuals!

Pizzicato Five - Action Painting

XTC - The Art Song (Something Good With Your Life)

is catchy but lyrics are ridiculous

book of love - modigliani

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycKvGHia5Ms

Neil Young - The Painter

biff bang pow - she paints

(or, as our database at work had it, She Pants)