Punk art rocks Rome in new exhibition
The Sex Pistols music blares out incongruously from Rome’s stately Villa Medici.
ROME:
The Sex Pistols music blares out incongruously from Rome’s stately Villa Medici, once home to powerful aristocracy and now the prestigious French Academy which is staging the first ever retrospective into Punk visual art.
The exhibition takes a unique look at Punk Rock art, which developed as a counter-culture in Britain, the United States and elsewhere in Europe in the 1970s and is famous for a style reminiscent of ransom notes written in letters cut from newspapers.
“Europunk, Visual Punk Culture in Europe from 1976-1980”, as the exhibition is entitled, aims to show how the movement continues to have an influence on visual arts and fashion, according to Eric de Chassey, director of the French Academy in Rome.
De Chassey said the Villa Medici, which has housed French artists for the past 200 years, often plays on links between the “past, present and future which is a very important element in this exhibition.”
The 500 or so items included in the exhibition come from private collections and museums across Europe, including posters, tee-shirts and flyers which were created by many anonymous artists.
The exhibition also boasts some iconic Punk images such as the British artist Jamie Reid’s “God Save The Queen” canvas for a Sex Pistols single, and Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s “Destroy Shirt.”
“Europunk” opens with a rare video of the first television appearance in 1976 of the Sex Pistols, the English group credited with initiating the punk movement in Britain, and ends with a spot by another English rock band, Joy Division, on the BBC in 1979.
The exhibition dedicates an entire room to the French art group Bazooka, founded in 1974 by five students from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the elite fine arts school in Paris, whose revolutionary graphics influenced post-punk artists, particularly in Britain and the US.
Though the exhibition comes too late for the members of Bazooka — forced to disband and get real jobs — after years of derision, the French Academy says it hopes that Punk visual art has finally begun to gain the recognition it deserves.
The show runs until March 20 and will move to the Mamco Museum of Modern Art in Geneva from June 8 to September 18.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 31st, 2011.
The Sex Pistols music blares out incongruously from Rome’s stately Villa Medici, once home to powerful aristocracy and now the prestigious French Academy which is staging the first ever retrospective into Punk visual art.
The exhibition takes a unique look at Punk Rock art, which developed as a counter-culture in Britain, the United States and elsewhere in Europe in the 1970s and is famous for a style reminiscent of ransom notes written in letters cut from newspapers.
“Europunk, Visual Punk Culture in Europe from 1976-1980”, as the exhibition is entitled, aims to show how the movement continues to have an influence on visual arts and fashion, according to Eric de Chassey, director of the French Academy in Rome.
De Chassey said the Villa Medici, which has housed French artists for the past 200 years, often plays on links between the “past, present and future which is a very important element in this exhibition.”
The 500 or so items included in the exhibition come from private collections and museums across Europe, including posters, tee-shirts and flyers which were created by many anonymous artists.
The exhibition also boasts some iconic Punk images such as the British artist Jamie Reid’s “God Save The Queen” canvas for a Sex Pistols single, and Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s “Destroy Shirt.”
“Europunk” opens with a rare video of the first television appearance in 1976 of the Sex Pistols, the English group credited with initiating the punk movement in Britain, and ends with a spot by another English rock band, Joy Division, on the BBC in 1979.
The exhibition dedicates an entire room to the French art group Bazooka, founded in 1974 by five students from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the elite fine arts school in Paris, whose revolutionary graphics influenced post-punk artists, particularly in Britain and the US.
Though the exhibition comes too late for the members of Bazooka — forced to disband and get real jobs — after years of derision, the French Academy says it hopes that Punk visual art has finally begun to gain the recognition it deserves.
The show runs until March 20 and will move to the Mamco Museum of Modern Art in Geneva from June 8 to September 18.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 31st, 2011.