Bleeding Rock on Canvas

Rock is simple to enjoy, not to explain. Dissecting its arcane nature becomes a matter of visual art at Sympathy for the Devil: Rock and Roll Since 1967.
There are no delicate confections, no vase of flowers to be found here. There are money shots and pieces of other nefarious notions. Rock’s sinful but good-natured ethos is transmitted visually. Most works scream defiant rebellion in that characteristic rock star manner.
The inaugural piece Sympathy for the Devil by Adam Pendleton gives a wall-covering taste of the expo’s thematic: rock and art’s rebellious soul. Using the simple medium of acrylic on canvas, a punk aesthetic is created. Fragmented images of vaguely familiar shapes and people embody rock’s unruly psyche, while trying to adapt them to a newfound reflexive purpose.
Thomas Zipp’s The Blimp and Mathilda Mother take Adam and Eve and twists them into a nightmarish reality. Other works, like Pedro Bell’s artwork for Funkadelic’s album The Electric Spanking of War Babies, play out like a garish comic bent on raising brows and funking with your values.
Mark Flores juxtaposes a colorless photo of Jayne County, a transvestite famous for a harrowing brand of aggressive femininity, with Iggy Pop in the heat of the moment, emphasizing his trademark raw-yet-fragile masculinity.
Through works like these, the ideas that fuel rock and roll are explained. Sympathy for the Devil does it name proud.
Shockingly, one staunch pencil-on-ink drawing, Hand by Daniel Guzman, points the wedding finger instead of the middle one with a sense of refreshed rebellion, reaffirming the idea that rock’s rebellious ostinato is based on a child-like naivety.
Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests from 1967 is an intrinsic part of the exposition. The four-minute films capture members of the Velvet Underground sitting still, in a simple aesthetic test for the camera. These films offer a point of clarity from which the rest of the exhibition delves off in multiple tangents. All works balance on the fulcrum that rock music is all about a manufactured image.
Over 150 pieces make up the exhibitions, ranging from simple sketches to album artwork to oil canvas and sculpture. The exhibition was easier to understand than most contemporary art installations. It doesn’t fail to connect with the viewer due to its clear point of reference.
At its best rock and roll is a coy challenge that exhilarates a generation in search of depth and meaning. At its worst, it borrows symbolically and phonetically from proven successes, simply re-varnishing itself with the promise of youth.
This exposition is about rock and roll’s most cherished ideas. On display are the visual equivalents of rock’s finest movements. What’s missing at the exhibition is the fame and glory, be it a bad or good thing. One can cultivate a newfound appreciation for rock, or a re-evaluated disdain for its na’ve and exploratory soul at this installation.

Sympathy for the Devil: Rock and Roll Since 1967 is at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art until Jan. 11.

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