Long considered a “distant cousin” to more accepted art forms, concert art is big. So big, in fact, that it’s hard to find a New York gallery that isn’t displaying such paintings as Family Pays $20 for Parking at a Janet Jackson Concert, or Booking Agent Negotiating The Contract Rider for Static-X. And who hasn’t heard of the Post-Impressionism Radio classic, Play Our Concert or We Won’t Play Your Song? Yes, concert art is definitely on the upswing.

“People can’t get enough of paintings like the minimalism displayed in D12 Booted From Vans Warped Tour 01 or the Dada-like surrealism found in Florida Fans Aghast at 2nd Postponement of *NSYNC Show,” says renowned concert art collector, R. Bert Sillerman. “Especially interesting is the massurrealism as expressed in the painting, Michael Jackson Throws Tribute For Himself at $2,500 Per Ticket.”

But painting is only one of the many sub-genres of the newly popular art form. Sculpture is also playing a big part, with the Michelangelo-like work, Long Island Resident Eats Publicist’s Back Bumper, drawing rave reviews in London, while wood carvings like Australia Warns Eminem to Behave packs them in at the Louvre. And then there’s the current project by bigger-than-life artist Christo, who is attempting to stretch an unbroken, continuous red ribbon from New York to Los Angeles that lists the names of every man, woman and child on the planet. The working title? Recording Industry Sues Napster Users For Music Piracy.

Will the popularity of concert art force critics to accept the genre as a legitimately serious art form? Or will it go the way of past pop art experiments such as Eight-Track Music Sculpturing or the series of paintings depicting music industry execs as dogs playing poker? “There’s a lot of people out there that will buy anything that they think will be popular, “says Sillerman. “Ask any of them and they’ll tell you that they may not know what they like, but they know it’s art.”