Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967. Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami

May 29th - September 7th, 2008

By Sean McCaughan

With each show, the newish Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami keeps getting better.  About a decade old (young for art museums), and despite its distance from most things artistic in our city, the place has conquered. Their summer exhibition on tour from MCA Chicago and curated by Dominic Molon, “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967″ was a good example of MoCA’s rise in the Miami art world. The show can perhaps best be described as kinetic, with its combination and comparison of popular music and high art. You enter the show and, on first impression, you are in awe and you are happy. After their much talked about Jorge Pardo presentation for Art Basel last year, “Sympathy for the Devil” proclaims that MoCA NoMi can consistently turn out good stuff.

“Sympathy for the Devil” is about how the visual arts and rock-and-roll, two of the biggest swaths of human culture, have inspired, influenced, and leeched off of each other for the past four decades.  Apparently, this show is also the most comprehensive look at the cross-play to date. Coffee table books and MTV documentaries may stand as the only competition.

There are the obvious inclusions for such a thing: album art by Raymond Pettibon and others for art/rock bands is significant, art on LP labels, art inspired by music, and music inspired by other music that is played in a space containing coordinating art. This is where you wonder if things have faltered. Without some ability to transcend mediums, how can the connection between art and music be more than skin deep? A few clichés are also available: In a piece by Christian Marclay, vinyl records cover the floor of one room like tiles, and Jack Pierson hangs a particularly legendary music mogul’s name on a wall, in old mismatched billboard letters, as a personal shrine. Worshiping Phil Spector as a god might be successful in irony, but here everything is sincere.

Along with rock-inspired work of recent history, there was a surprising amount of new art that interprets whatever past rock persuasion the artist desired to elicit in his own way. Marnie Weber has a video done in 2007, and Adam Pendleton has a piece taking the same name as the show, done in 2006, among lots of others. Visually it works, but academically these pieces - however good they may be and are - do not seem to be in keeping with the overall purpose here. Should a show presenting itself as a documentary account allow its contributors to create their own history?

One recent piece that does belong, however, is the plexiglass recording studio (which is exactly what it sounds like) by Rirkrit Tiravanija. Rirkrit doesn’t reinterpret, he doesn’t re-imagine, he merely provides a vessel that isolates music, allowing the outside observer to contemplate on his own terms what lies within. Separation and presentation are the key here, all very scientific.

Was “Sympathy for the Devil” successful? Well, maybe. Or was it so successful (or off the mark) that it exposed how shallow the connection has been between the worlds of high art and popular music. Much more likely. Obscure musicians often have a greater affinity for good art, and were well represented here.

“Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967″ shows art and music both as artifacts - as tools - of a global cultural history. They are more important as elements in history, than as solitary works themselves. The entirety is greater than the sum of its artifacts.