A comparion between silent-film comedians and sixties bands – and the memory of a similar comparison between those bands and Impressionists

In an article on Buster Keaton in the 31 January 2022 issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik considers who was better: Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. He also mentions a third silent-film comedian and makes a comparison: "Harold Lloyd [gets] dragged into these arguments in much the same way that the Kinks get dragged into arguments about the Beatles and the Stones." This echoes a long-ago New Yorker article on Impressionism (perhaps by Gopnik but perhaps by Peter Schjeldahl – I haven't found it): Impressionist painters working outdoors together pushed each other the way the bands did from single to single. That striking juxtaposition of painting and pop music stuck with me. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 12 February 2022)