** This post is dedicated to the New York design thinker and doer Jim Walrod, who has passed away. Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned my intention to post about On 1st to Jim over dinner. Of course, he knew about the store but was excited to see what fresh info I might have turned up. I’ll write about Jim when I have collected my thoughts; wherever he is, I am sure Jim will join us all in the necessary proclamation: Fuck Trump**

//At the entrance to 1159 1st Avenue at 63rd was Sven Lukin’s two-tonne illuminated sign. Photo: Bert Stern//

//On 1st interior including displays of Roy Lichtenstein wallpaper and Gerald Laing plates. Photo: Bert Stern//

In conversation this summer, British artist Duggie Fields revealed to me that, during a sojourn in the US in 1968, he had been in line to work at photographer Bert Stern’s “architecturally mind-blowing” art store/publishing house On 1st in Manhattan’s east side.

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Tags: Alden Projects, Alice Pollock, Bert Stern, Bill Cunningham, Billy Apple, Chicago Tribune, Duggie Fields, Earl's Court, Gerald Laing, Isadore Seltzer, James Lee Byars, Jim Walrod, Julie Baumgold, Kenneth Jay Lane, Marilyn Monroe, Milton Glaser, New York magazine, On 1st, Ossie Clark, Pink Floyd, Roy Lichtenstein, Sven Lukin, Syd Barrett, Todd Alden, Walter Bernard

//When they met, Bowie was scrutinising this portrait of Sex, Seditionaries and Jubilee superstar Jordan Mooney at Bell’s exhibition Larger Than Life//

“I, too, had to maintain a certain degree of detachment, and indeed to want and expect nothing of him; the paradox will always remain that, if David Bowie had not been David Bowie, then David Bowie and I could have been friends.”

Edward Bell, 2017

Edward Bell first encountered David Bowie when the rock chameleon turned up unexpectedly at a private view for the British visual artist’s first exhibition in 1980.

They last spoke in 2013, a few years before the musician/performer’s untimely demise. In the intervening period Bell and Bowie hung out in London, Venice and Los Angeles, collaborated on record sleeve projects and maintained sometimes sporadic contact, via a Swiss letter drop address and out-of-the-blue phone calls.

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Tags: Ashes To Ashes, Brian Duffy, Chelsea Arts Club, Coco Schwab, Edward Bell, Jonathan Ross, Jordan Mooney, Lodger, Marcus Thompson, Neal Street Gallery, Royal College Of Art, Scary Monsters... And Super Creeps, Steve Strange, Tin Machine, Unmade Up...

//Duggie Fields at home, late 1970s. © Brian Griffin. No reproduction without permission//

//Duggie Fields’ apartment, late 1970s. © Brian Griffin. No reproduction without permission//

Among my current projects is an article for Apartamento about the great British artist Duggie Fields and his flat in London’s Earl’s Court.

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Tags: Apartamento, Brian Griffin, Duggie Fields, Earl's Court, Grenfell Tower, Kensington & Chelsea Borough Council, Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett

//Jean Shrimpton in Mr Freedom Minnie Mouse top, Hans Feurer, Fancy Dressing, Nova, December 1970, with the original design on tracing paper by Refna. No reproduction without permission//

Exciting news: Elizabeth Hamey, who signs her work ‘Refna’, has granted me access to her amazing archive of work at the cross-hatches of art, design and fashion in the 1960s and 70s.

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Tags: Adrian Mann, Alkasura, Elizabeth Hamey, Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John, English Boy, Goofy, Hans Feurer, Jean Shrimpton, Jimmy Page, John Lloyd, Kleptomania, Mick Jagger, Mick Rock, Mickey Mouse, Ossie Clark, Paul Reeves, Refna, Richard Burton, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, The Universal Witness, The Venus Of Urbino, The Yardbirds, Titian, Trevor myles, Twen, Walt Disney Co

I once asked gallery owner Angela Flowers for her definition of an artist. Without hesitating she said: “That’s easy. An artist is someone who simply has to paint every day.” Caroline is the personification of that description.

Charlotte Metcalf from her editor’s note, Laid Bare Dairy 1983-1984

A fascinating and frank document of the period of the artist’s personal life conveyed by the title, Caroline Coon’s Laid Bare Diary 1983-1984 is also a  lovingly realised bookwork.

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Tags: Angela Flowers, Caroline Coon, Charlotte Metcalf, Cunst Art, Laid Bare Diary 1983-1984

//Le Macabre, 23 Meard Street, London W1. Photo: Unknown//

“When I started working as the Saturday boy at Let It Rock (in 1973), Malcolm McLaren used to take me around these strange places which played a part in early rock & roll. One time we went to Le Macabre. I don’t know how he knew about it, but it was the real thing. The tables were coffin lids and the jukebox only had songs to do with death.”

Glen Matlock, interview transcript for The Look, 2000.

A chance encounter on eBay spurred artist Robert Rubbish into creating one of the key elements of his current exhibition Spiritus Soho Volume Zero.

Rubbish – who is one of many mourning the recent death of his friend and documentary subject, the poet Jock Scot – is known for deep associations with central London’s Soho, and has celebrated its sleazy past and uneasy present in his own work and with the other members of the art collective Le Gun.

//Dilly Boys, Robert Rubbish, 2016//

//The Sailor And The Mermaid, Robert Rubbish, 2016//

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Tags: Ancien, Dead In England, Glen Matlock, Jock Scot, Le Gun, Le Macabre, Look At Life, Robert Rubbish, Society Club

//Dinah Adams and friend, Eastbourne, Sussex, summer 1971. Photo: David Parkinson. No reproduction without permission//

//From Men Only, Vol 36, No 8, 1971//

Thanks to artist Paul Kindersley for alerting me to the fact that images from an audacious photo-shoot by the late photographer David Parkinson were featured in an early 70s issue of Paul Raymond’s adult magazine Men Only.

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Tags: Andrei Luca, Club International, Dinah Adams, Glam! The Performance Of Style, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Men Only, Paradise Garage, Paul Kindersley, Paul Raymond, Tate Liverpool, Trevor myles

//From The Observer, December 6, 2015//

Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry – the artist monograph I edited – has been picked as one of the best art books of 2015 by British broadsheet The Observer.

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Tags: David Hockney, Diego Rivera, Peter Conrad, Thames & Hudson, The Observer

“It didn’t matter what side of the bed you were lying on, as long as you were lying on it. Everybody from (author/actress) Anne Lambton to (Sex Pistols guitarist) Kutie Jones to (socialite and writer) Anthony Haden-Guest – they were all flattered. Just goes to show how everyone loves to have their moment – good, bad or indifferent.”

Malcolm McLaren, The Look, 2006

It’s coming up to five years since I posted my marathon dissection – including extensively researched links to sources and references – of the divisive 1970s punk manifesto t-shirt design You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!

Here is a new version of that post, revised and updated with fresh links.

Enjoy!

Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up list t-shirt adopted a similarly truculent tone in an attempt to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream.

You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974 – was conceived by fellow traveller and soon-to-be manager of The Clash Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from McLaren and their friend Gerry Goldstein.

Of course, it is best known for carrying the band name McLaren had recently granted to a bunch of teenagers hanging around the shop: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.

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Tags: Alexander Cockburn, Alfred Bester, Anne Lambton, Anthony Haden-Guest, Bernard Wolfe, bernie Rhodes, COUM Transmission, David Cooper, David Holmes, Elton John, George Dangerfield, John Gunni Busck, John Lacey, Konstantin Paustovsky, Mal Huff, Marian and Doloures Price, Mel Ramos, Mervin Jones, New Statesman, pat Arrowsmith, Patrick heron, The Clash, Victor Lownes, You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On!

//Front and back cover designs//

//Pages on McLaren including image of the 1977 God Save The Queen muslin top designed with Vivienne Westwood and featuring Jamie Reid’s graphic and lyrics for the Sex Pistols track//

//Vermorel’s memoir includes images of McLaren’s student work such as this mixed media piece produced while on a fine art course at Goldsmith’s College in 1969//

Considered as an artwork, a two-and-a-half year project, and in its own terms, McLaren’s Sex Pistols’ was as seminal and resonant as Picasso’s Guernica.

Only this was a masterpiece made not of paint and canvas but of headlines and scandal, scams and factoids, rumour and fashion, slogans, fantasies and images and (I almost forgot) songs, all in a headlong scramble to auto-destruction.

For it was equally a Situationist treatise-by-example, the unremitting and obdurate core being McLaren’s grasp of the theory of situations as proposed by the SI.

Indeed, the story of the Pistols is a Situationist textbook of how to create situations from which there is no return. You refuse to negotiate, to compromise, to be co-opted, you exacerbate every crisis and recklessly play loser wins and then you blow up all the bridges so then there is no way back.

We are then forced to invent another future. Or maybe simply relish the mess, “the ecstasy of making things worse”.
From Fred Vermorel’s memoir which appears exclusively in the new exhibition catalogue.

The catalogue for the exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges is now available.

The lavishly illustrated 100-page book includes a foreword by John Hansard Gallery’s Ros Carter and Stephen Foster, my introduction, an essay by co-curator David Thorp and a specially commissioned memoir of Malcolm McLaren and his connections to post-war radicals by his art-school friend and collaborator Fred Vermorel.

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Tags: Adrian hunt, Alexander Trocchi, Cornerhouse Books, David Thorp, Fred Vermorel, Guernica, Guy Debord, John Hansard Gallery, King Mob, Lewis Leathers, Peel + Lift, Picasso, Ros Carter, Sex Pistols, Situationist International, Situationist International: John McCready Archive, Stephen Foster