IMHO, artists fall into three catagories: Those who would be famous at any time in history (Wolfgang Mozart and John Lennon), those born too early (Vincent Van Gogh and Jack Kerouac), and those born at exactly the right time in history for their talents.
Someone told me Michelanglo is a prime historical example of this. I thought the best modern example was Kurt Vonnegut, until I told someone else and he shot back one word “Dylan.” And he didn’t mean Thomas, but Bob.
I find Rothko’s work enduring, yes. But that type of luminous simplicity would not have been understood until right around his lifetime; that is what I meant.
If John Lennon and Bob Dylan make the cut in pop music, then Elvis has to. He would have been invented if he hadn’t just appeared on the scene.
But standing well above and apart from those guys, I second panache45’s selection of George Gershwin. If there is even a second place in his category (and it would have to be broadened to include him) it would be Cole Porter.
What you’re really trying to identify is people whose fame is highly context sensitive, rather than based upon some innate or otherwise non-context-sensitive talent. So a lot of what got Lennon attention after and outside of the Beatles was part of the political climate, you could also argue.
Napster… OK, it’s probably a stretch to say Shawn Fanning created something. But the Google guys changed the very structure of web searching and Facebook rules the Internet. These are tech-savvy geniuses that would have knocked off Gates and Jobs if they had been born in the late 50s.
