2023-08-19 21:57:01
Artist, iconoclast, anarchist, punk, hippie, rebellious and romantic. This is how gallery owner John Marchant described Jamie Reid in a statement announcing his death on August 9. Reid was a key figure, along with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, in understanding the visual side of the birth of punk in the United Kingdom at the hands of the Sex Pistols, and one of the greatest exponents of artistic design.
The year Queen Elizabeth II became a punk icon
Further
Jamie Macgregor Reid was born in London in 1947. His almost obsessive interest in the works of Jackson Pollock, McLuhan’s philosophy, Situationism, and jazz led him to devote his career to the visual arts with a community edge, and to activism. politician at the center of his work. Reid’s work shows the importance of the image in the radical struggles and the process of resignification that they have experienced in recent decades. And, beyond something as iconic as the cover of the single God Save the Queen of the Sex Pistols, the evolution of his most unknown work remained in the path of workers’ struggles, collaborating in his last years with protest groups such as Occupy or Extinction Rebellion
Reid grew up in Croydon and came from a politically active family. During his time at Croydon Art College he participated in the 1968 student movement, in which he met Malcolm McLaren, with whom he organized an occupation of the university. In 1970 he co-founded the radical political magazine Suburban Press, where he developed his unique style of cut-out graphics and slogans around anarchist situationism, in which they made messages in favor of the movement for the liberation of racialized people, illegal immigrants or women’s rights. Her style and her dadaist influences allowed her to generate a deconstructive graphic with photocopiers and an effect of rugged typography based on cutouts, ramson-note (ransom note), since it could not be afforded Letraset (dry glue typefaces). One day, McLaren invited him to take part in an intriguing new project that turned out to be the Sex Pistols, and it was a huge cultural leap for Reid.
The arrival of punk and the Sex Pistols: an opportunity for Reid
What happened next we know, more or less. In our retinas a familiar image is quickly identified every time we come across said cover of the Sex Pistols, that of “the queen”. God Save The Queen is published in 1977 and for this Reid had prepared a collage with three main ingredients: a background with the Union Jack flag, a black and white cutout of the portrait that Peter Grugeon, Elizabeth II’s official photographer, had made of her. The icing on the cake was placing the words “God Save The Queen” over her gaze and “Sex Pistols” over her mouth. He singlethe third of Never Mind the Bollocks, the only LP of the Sex Pistols, was a success that reflected the anti-monarchy sentiment of a large part of society at the time. It was published on the 25th anniversary of the reign of Elizabeth II, and there was a less popular but more controversial version; one in which the queen’s mouth was pinned shut, and her pupils were two swastikas. A more accurate view of Reid’s opinion on the English royal family, motivated by her connections with Nazi Germany, recently rescued in the series The Crown from Netflix, with the photograph of Prince Edward, the Duke of Windsor, next to Hitler.
It is irremediable to focus on how the punk movement has evolved, and its visual imagery in all these years, because in addition to its revolutionary and dissident character, it reveals the importance of the image as one more device of the struggle, one that formed part of this movement. The intervention of technology on the visual has led to the disidentification of these artifacts.
Today it is easy to find a Sex Pistols t-shirt in any of the Inditex stores, but they no longer carry this feeling of liberation against the monarchy, for example. “I think at that time there was a real distrust of the working class about the Royal Family. But I think this taught them the art of the media, and every time I see the royal family’s brand of gold coasters and colored pencils, I think we’re under complete suppression.” It’s been a year since Verse published one of the last interviews with the artistwhich stressed the importance of noting the imperialist history of the Commonwealth.
When art penetrates and connects with the public, the cultural milestone is produced. At the time when consumption began to distort many of these images, the user did not process the message. “The medium is the message” was precisely one of the maxims of the Canadian McLuhan, one of Reid’s great influences. Soviet art, the impressionists, war photography, the great images of the history of political struggles have maintained this simple approach that at times fades.
A professional life dedicated to activism
Jamie Reid’s work and career transcended far beyond his work doing all the Sex Pistols covers; His beliefs, linked to criticism of the system, continued to draw on the absurd, satire and mockery, although there were concessions to other types of more abstract pieces in the artistic field. Margaret Thatcher was one of the political targets of this and other social movements, and in support of the labor movement in the face of imminent elections she published the lithograph Vote For Light (1987), noting Thatcher’s ‘dark’ policies. A few years later, she produced the illustration Boy George As Putto (1988), for the single the George No Clause 28a blow to Thatcher’s Local Government Act, clause 28 of which specifically prohibited the promotion of homosexuality by councils.
His most subversive line has been emphasized in recent years with works such as Stop Demonising Our Future (2006), commissioned by The Guardian, and which pointed out the criminalization of the media towards young people of recent generations in difficult social contexts, the so-called chavs. Regarding ‘colleagues’ by profession in an interview with Paul Moody For the British newspaper in 2018, Reid recounted: “I find it ironic that people like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin talk about punk as a great influence. There is nothing remotely scandalous about what they do.” The comment was prompted by their collaboration with the gallery of Charles Saatchi, whose brother Maurice was in charge of the British Conservative Party’s advertising campaign.
In a narrative of revulsion at Putin’s policies, Jamie Reid worked to support Pussy Riot with collage Free Pussy Riot (2012), in which he rescued his own style; he had already “hooded” billionaire businessman Richard Branson, among others, in 1989. The artistic work never gave in to criticism of the institutions, and it was evidenced with the macro-poster Be Afraid (2020). In this way, the artist pointed out the policies of the British Government during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, which according to him consisted more of promoting control than cooperation and care.
The image as a fighting device
Reid’s work marked the beginning of an artistic and provocative fabric to challenge the oppression of authority and the institution, and stimulate critical thinking for a more just society, and these latest works confirm this. “I wanted to show the extent to which show business is an exaggeration. He was trying to say that ideas are more important than personalities and the product ”, Reid describes in Up The Risehis compilation essay of his “incomplete” works, written with John Savage and published in 1987.
The legacy of a visual artist lives beyond the medium, it lives thanks to its message, and Reid’s knew how to touch the key of a generation and a cultural movement essential to understand activism. His work was one to return to in those necessary restorative observations of the past because his commitments to social life came from his humanity. We needed Reid now more than ever to understand a world of Mr. Wonderful mugs, Pinterest houses and Kaws works.
The role that Artificial Intelligence will play in this is disturbing, not so much because of its potential to break into the corporatist market, but precisely because of the possibility that images at some point exist without existing, are without being, and each time have less humanity. . Maybe it’s time to pull out the scissors in tribute to Jamie Reid and his way of making collages because, certainly, there is a lot of fabric to cut.
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