Music about Art/Artists

Television Personalities have a few: David Hockney's Diary (two very different versions), Salvador Dali's Garden Party, Lichtenstein Painting, I Remember Bridget Riley. Also, Painter Man, Painting by Numbers, Picture of Dorian Gray, The Painted Word, The Man Who Paints Rainbows, Sad Mona Lisa.

Jonathan Richman: Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh

Again, NON-"art-school bands" would be ideal. (And that's nothing against art-school bands, just that I've got too many in that vein already.)

(Also overrepresented is Destroyer: Modern Painters, The Bad Arts, Painter in Your Pocket, European Oils, Looters' Follies, Watercolours into the Ocean and, best of all, What Road, with the priceless line, "Able, willing, ready/ Fuck the Spiral Jetty - / Tonight we work large!")

Not like you.

"Art Lover" - The Kinks

"Isabel" by Unrest -- A lovely song about Isabel Bishop.

"Vincent (Starry Starry Night)" by Don McLean -- A pretty but somewhat gratingly saccharine song about Vincent Van Gogh and "that painting."

"Mona Lisa" -- A famous song about the still-more-famous famous painting, written by Ray Evans & Jay Livingstone. Covered by everybody on god's green earth. You could probably just play different people doing this song all night and never have to repeat yourself...

"Mapplethorpe Grey" by Pig Destroyer -- A brief hail of boulders that, perhaps, peripherally concerns the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

"Francis Bacon" by John S. Hall & Kramer -- An ostensibly amusing spoken word fragment about the artist.

"Paint the White House Black" is a great suggestion - and the idea of Gorillaz makes me think that on similar grounds I could get away with M.I.A., since she's (contentiously famously) an art-school grad, whose visuals are of a piece with her music.

That Takka Takka stuff isn't so bad. I was expecting much worse.

The Smithes - Paint A Vulgar Picture
Peter Gabriel - Fourteen Black Paintings
The Dandy Warhols - Nothing (Lifestyle of A Tortured Artist For Sale)
Barbara Fairchild - Vincent (Starry Starry Night) [for the love of god don't use Don Mclean's original]
Shadow Men From A Shadowy Planet - Who Painted Whistler's Mother?
Rheostatics album Music Inspired By The Group Of Seven

(the all caps thing is due to gamma ray exposure on I Love Comics)

Like I said, they're a good band. I don't know why you were expecting much worse, unless it's due to my own sparkly rep on ilm.

Speaking of which, do we think zines are an art form? Can I get away with the Hidden Cameras' "Ode to Self-Publishing (Fear of Zine Failure)"?

By the way, I haven't seen anyone in any of these sorts of threads mention Momus's audio portrait of Jeff Koons on Stars Forever.

Just ran into this quote from Michael Gira about the Angels of Light album New Mother:

"The Man With The Silver Tongue" is based on the images of the Viennese artist Rudolph Schwartzkoggler. "The Garden Hides The Jewel" is sort of an homage to Marcel Duchamp; "Inner Female" is an homage to Francis Bacon. There's actually a lot of songs about art on New Mother.

Feldman - Rothko Chapel / For Philip Guston / For Franz Kline / De Kooning

Are there notable Tropicalia songs about art, for instance?

1. Pablo Picasso - John Cale
2. Don't Stop Now - Christian Marclay (solo)
3. Comic Strip - Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot
4. Smash The Beauty Machine - Future Bible Heroes
5. Ambergris March - Björk (from the soundtrack to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9)
6. The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton - The Mountain Goats
7. Art Class (Song For Yayoi Kusama) - Superchunk
8. Painter In Your Pocket - Destroyer
9. Art For Art's Sake - 10CC
10. Artistiya - Amadou & Mariam
11. Portrait of the Artist as a Fountain - Simon Bookish
12. He Poos Clouds - Final Fantasy
13. The Death of the Composer Was in 1962 - Tony Conrad with Faust
14. Race Track - Albatross Note (Marcel Dzama's band)
15. Abstract Art - The Flying Colours
16. Truckload of Art - Cracker (covering Terry Allen)
17. What About Me? - The Nihilist Spasm Band
18. Painting And Kissing - Hefner
19. Kule Kule Reprise - Konono Nº1
20. Max Ernst - Mission Of Burma
21. Fluxus - Chicago Underground Duo
22. U-J3RK5 Work For Police - U-J3RK5
23. Jacques Derrida - Scritti Politti
24. Random Rules - The Silver Jews
25. 15 Years - Veda Hille (lyrics from diaries of Emily Carr)
26. Groupmegroup - Liquid, Liquid
27. The Beautiful Ones - Prince
28. Amazing Backgrounds - Michelle McAdorey & Eric Chenaux
29. Edallab Indelibile - Michael Snow
30. Catholic Fashion - Ninja High School
31. Every Work of Art is an Uncommitted Crime - “Theodor Adorno” (aka Toronto artist Brian Joseph Davis)
32. Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan - Matmos
33. Abstract Nympho - Chrome
34. Gepetto - Vic Chesnutt
35. Mona Lisa - Slick Rick
36. Obscene And Pornographic Art - Bongwater
37. Jeff Koons - Momus
38. Art Star - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
39. Run Run Run to the Centre Pompidou - Grant Hart
40. Salvador Dali's Garden Party - Television Personalities
41. Masters of Our Feelings - Barcelona Pavilion
42. Yarn And Glue - Joanna Newsom
43. Mapplethorpe Grey - Pig Destroyer
44. Mario Y Maria - Butch Hancock
45. Transformer - Gnarls Barkley
46. What Road? - Destroyer
47. Elaeu - Tom Zé
48. Approaching the Minimal With Spray Guns - X-X
49. Galang - MIA
50. Cut Your Hair - Casey Deinel (Pavement cover)
51. Artists Only - Talking Heads
52. (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures - The Revillos (live)
53. All This Useless Beauty - Elvis Costello
54. Story Of An Artist - Daniel Johnston
55. Musical Sculpture - S.E.M. Ensemble (composed by Marcel Duchamp)

Steve Barnes and Riley Reinhold - Mondrian.