But still the Rodin and Goya pieces are disturbing. The Goya wrecks a piece of art; the Rodin takes one out of circulation. And yes, we're meant to be disturbed, but what does the disturbance tell us? Compared to photos from Iraq, a scrawled-on Goya -- which the Chapmans think (in Mr. Gibson's words) will "demonstrate the inadequacy of art in the face of war" -- just seems childish.
And it isn't easy to be shocking. As I write, I'm listening to "Let It Be." Not the Beatles album we all know, but a 1987 release by Laibach, an industrial band from Slovenia, which -- to demonstrate how empty pop idols are -- stomps through nearly all the songs from the Beatles original.
When I first heard this, shortly after it came out, I liked it; it could have been a darkly pompous military mustache looming on a tired Mona Lisa. But as I listened now, I thought about my Beatles CDs, which melted three months ago in a fire that destroyed the country house my wife and I had, almost taking us with it.
I thought about the way the fire started, flames flaring up from our Christmas tree, then all at once everywhere. The fire seemed more real than Laibach. So what if pop icons aren't all we think they are? Granted, I don't know what Slovenians endure, living in the former Yugoslavia, but for me this album, with its marches and its growls -- and even with its ideology -- is as harmless as anything the Beatles ever did. I revisit it, and smile.

Music, though, lends itself more naturally to these reimaginings than visual art, in part because musicians often rearrange their own or other people's work. Beethoven rewrote his violin concerto for the piano; Mozart added flourishes to Handel's "Messiah"; Otis Redding fashioned "Satisfaction," by the Rolling Stones, into something eager and naive; Joni Mitchell reupholstered many of her songs just last year, singing them with plush assistance from a big jazz band.
These are harmless renderings, never done to prove a point. But the constant restless practice of musicians, who are always doing things like this, prepares the way for more substantial alterations, which then can seem quite natural. I like Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia," a thoroughly modernist orchestral piece from 1968, whose third movement takes off from the third movement of Mahler's Second Symphony. The Mahler rushes through it like a ghostly river, splitting into fragments, rippling with singing, other instrumental music and a voice reading Samuel Beckett. The past and present seem to flow along each other, never touching, never sure they haven't touched.
And then (unknown outside the deepest depths of alternative rock) there's the postpunk band Pussy Galore, which in 1986 rerecorded the Rolling Stones double album "Exile on Main Street," on what's now a very rare cassette. "I can't play this," says one of the group near the start (though I don't remember the exact words, and my copy was lost in our fire). "I'll play my own ----ing music." Then she falls backward into the Stones, who end up bludgeoned, splintered, pulverized. Vandalism? How can it be, when you still can buy the Stones in any record store? To me, this is desperation, however stylized, the work of people buried under cultural debris who listen for their own authentic voice but (like so many of us) hear only echoes from the stifling world around them.

Eric Gibson, I'd like to add, is my editor for everything I currently write in the Journal. This piece was his own idea.

Another reason why music so naturally suits these reworkings: It has to be performed, so any rendering of it is a recreation.

Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2003