Fuck Art Let's Dance - Production & Contact Info (original) (raw)

"Fuck art let's dance!" proclaimed the famous slogan on a post-punk T-shirt, expressing the rebellious musical spirit that thrived in art colleges at the time. Ironically it was precisely this spirit that had led to British art colleges ...See more"Fuck art let's dance!" proclaimed the famous slogan on a post-punk T-shirt, expressing the rebellious musical spirit that thrived in art colleges at the time. Ironically it was precisely this spirit that had led to British art colleges contributing to pop music culture on a scale unmatched elsewhere. The new role of art schools as a social melting pot in the 1960s, and their policy that everyone had to study a broad-based arts curriculum before being allowed to specialise, resulted in a new cultural playground where musical passions and fresh ideas flourished. Every British pop band contained at least one art school graduate and many, from Roxy Music and Wire to Franz Ferdinand, formed entirely at art school. Pete Townshend's legendary Union Jack jacket - often misinterpreted as patriotism - was a pure pop art statement, deconstructing the national flag as fashion, and the band's clever conceptual collection The Who Sell Out was the result of manager Kit Lambert "encouraging my art school ambitions". Even scruffy rebels like The Sex Pistols owed their aesthetic to art college graduates Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid's love of the Situationist and Dadaist movements, and every band that hadn't met at art college boasted an art college graduate, or found itself steered, styled, sloganised, photographed and reported on by their like. This opening episode examines the reasons behind this phenomenon, and asks if this uniquely British impulse has run its course. Written by Simon Witter See less