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PUNK RIZZOLI’S NEW PUNK: AN AESTHETIC GIVES A HIGHIMPACT SURVEY OF PUNK ROCK’S VISUAL LEGACY. text SHANA NYS DAMBROT
Graphic violence and violent graphics are the order of the day in
This lavish eye-feast of expertly archived and contextualized
Punk: An Aesthetic. Rizzoli’s hefty new tome revisits the proliferation and
culture is framed by suitably pop-academic texts from, among others, post-
perfidy of the punk era, roughly 1975-84, and in the process illuminates
modern science-fiction luminary William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and
the enduring, fresher-than-ever legacy of those years not only on our
All Tomorrow’s Parties (yes, like the song). His essay is called 1977, and is
music, but on our film, visual art, and design.
centered on the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, and xeroxing. “Punk was
The visual art associated with the punk movement was just as
the last pre-digital counterculture. The last thing I thought about punk, in
important as the music and the clothes; embodying the same raw rush for
1977, was how amazingly old-fashioned the technologies it took for granted
total freedom of expression and reckless disregard for authority that exploded
would seem. I’d never seen a fax machine, or a PC.” Ironically, the dead sexy,
on stages and in back alleys from London to Los Angeles and the Lower East
high production value of the book is, itself, about as far from a DIY object
Side. Intertwined and inextricable, the incendiary painted, photographed,
as punk can ever get, with a fineness of reproduction the 70’s could only
and printed matter was frequently made by the same people that made the
dream about. Yet this poshness is only fitting, as the occasion for the book
music—especially when it came to concert posters and fan zines. Raymond
is the official creation of the Cornell University Punk Archive, founded on
Pettibon’s early work for Black Flag is legendary and he is well represented in
the extensive collections of punk-era art and ephemera bestowed by Johan
B
the book, alongside other artists who went on to become fine-art giants, like
Kugelberg and Jon Savage, the book’s editors. High-end irony aside, crushed
O
Larry Clark, Malcolm McLaren, and Gary Panter.
beer cans and spiked boots never looked so good on your coffee table.
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