As a fledgling formalist in an undergraduate aesthetics course, I once said something stupid like "Art doesn't mean anything—when Andy Warhol painted a picture of a soup can, it was just a picture of a soup can." Prof gave me a lesson in cultural context that was my most humiliating classroom experience since Sister Maria Butch savaged my ass with a yardstick. So while I've always thought rock critics overindulge in the biographical and intentional fallacies, I understand that persona is constitutional in popular culture, and that for many artists celebrity is half the work. Which is... More >>>