Radical 1960s artists attacked European art music as imperialist ideology

Evidence

The Voice, not unsympathetic, reported that a “stylishly designed flyer” urged “ ‘radical intellectuals’ to give up art and spend their time instead exposing and fighting the worldwide domination of ‘white plutocratic’ culture.” The AACI targeted Stockhausen because, more than “rich US cretins Leonard Bernstein and Benny Goodman,” the German was “a fountainhead of ‘ideas’ to shore up the doctrine of white plutocratic European Art’s supremacy.” Designed by Maciunas and written by Flynt, the leaflet held “art music” accountable for Europe’s imperialist claim to global supremacy through the “Laws of Music,” including Common-Practice Harmony, 12-Tone, and Concert Etiquette. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 557

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the reader’s broader shelf interest in how avant-gardes are produced by conditions; the AACI’s flyer is both identity politics and aesthetic protest.