How Art Made Pop

This fascinating new title explores the exhilarating exchange between art schools and the pop stars that they nurtured (or, occasionally, expelled). Roberts's remarkable survey encompasses the worldwide history of art school rock, and brings the story right up to date by considering recent trends and the current practices contemporary of artist-musicians.

The individuals that populate How Art Made Pop may still have become successful musicians if they hadn t studied art, but the kind of musicians that they became, and the kind of music that they became interested in that was predominantly informed and modified by art school attendance. Where once these musicians would have considered themselves entertainers, they now became artists. And hence what they practiced i.e. popular music became an art form, not least because they said it was.