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Aside from painting, in the early 1980s Jean-Michel Basquiat was active in various fields: graffiti artist, actor in the film “Downtown 81” in which he plays himself as a figure of New York’s SoHo scene, and member of the No Wave band “Grey”. For several years Basquiat was a key figure in the New York punk scene, a nightly regular at CBGB and the Mudd Club, and appeared on the “Party TV” program hosted by Chris Stein, founder of Blondie. Beast is a self-portrait in which he clenches his teeth with the anger of grinding his teeth and like in his painting it reflects the intensity he experienced in those years.
Brice Dellsperger Body Double 16, 2003 Video In the series with the overall title Body Double made since 1995, Brice Dellsperger has refilmed scenes from various films with low quality production methods. The same author usually interprets various characters, underlining the intersexual condition. In Body Double 16, Jean-Luc Verna, similarly an artist and musician, repeats scenes from “Clockwork Orange” by Kubrick, a film that prefigured many of the aesthetic elements of violence of punk.
Jimmie Durham Self-Portrait With Black Eye and Bruises, 2006 Photograph In many of his photographs the artist appears in selfportraits. In this work Jimmie Durham took a photograph of himself after having received a beating.
Jordi Mitjà Retrat de l’artista adolescent (amb ull de vellut), 1991 Photograph A self-portrait of Jordi Mitjà after having been punched. Violence as the result of beatings was common for many punks.
Nan Goldin Self-Portrait With Eyes Turned Inward, 1989 Photograph Self-portrait of Nan Goldin hiding her eyes in the shadow. The photographs by Nan Goldin from the 1980s, in which she occasionally appears portrayed after having received blows, belongs to the same countercultural context in which No Wave bands were born that continued some of the strategies of punk. An artistic context marked by sexuality and addictions as an intent of escape and of confrontation against the censure of the conservative senator Jesse Helms.
Chris Burden You’ll Never See My Face in Kansas City, 1971 Photograph and text In contrast to actions such as shooting himself in the arm, electrocuting himself, or crucifying himself on a Volkswagen in the early 1970s, this performance by Chris Burden is less harmful. Although concealing his face for two days during the duration of the performance involved a certain amount of suffering, above it all alluded to a more symbolic violence, linked to the terrorism that would be one of the key themes of the punk scene some years later in New York.
Chris Burden 747, 1973 Photograph and text Compared to the performances that Chris Burden realized at the beginning of the 1960s, shooting at an airplane in Los Angeles’ airport did not imply a risk of physical harm or death to himself. Nevertheless, it included an element of violence that characterizes all of his actions. Like a sort of punk prelude, the violence of Chris Burden imitates the terrorist and anti-systemic violence that was to come, yet ends up being ineffective, essentially demonstrating an attitude.
Claire Fontaine La Société du Spectacle Brickbat, 2006 Brick and printed paper Guy Debord and Situationism represent one of the fundamental strategies of punk, they appear as one of the traces explored by Greil Marcus, while Malcolm McLaren cites them as the specific precedent for the subversive strategies he followed as manager or as the owner of a clothes shop. The group of French artists Claire Fontaine recuperates Guy Debord, reinterpreting the violence against the capitalist system in a literal manner, transforming Debord’s book Society of Spectacle into a weapon to be thrown.
João Louro Blind Image #46, 2003 Acrylic on linen and varnish on Plexiglas The image of a reproduction of a painting by Barnett Newman taken from an art magazine has been enlarged and erased, transforming it into a blind, black image, with only the caption left. Joâo Louro employs the strategy of the negation of the image characteristic of Situationism: specifically, the film by Guy Debord, Hurlements en faveur de Sade, alternates a completely black screen with a white one against a background of noise.
Matt Mullican Untitled (God), 1990 Flag The flags by Matt Mullican take up the punk strategy of emptying symbols of their content. They are the flags of no places, so that they continue the black flag of anarchism: an empty sign, eliminating national identities.
vIOLENCIA / THE CLASH / NO FUN / EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN / CONFRONTACIÓN / RABIA / THE FILTH AND THE FURY / VOID
Jean-Michel Basquiat Beast, 1983 Acrylic on cloth