Paul Gorman is…

27 acknowledgements: Vivienne Westwood, Ian Kelly + Picador’s defence collapses as they accept The Look as a primary source for the designer’s 2014 biography

Aug 31st, 2015

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There has been a breakthrough in my challenge to Dame Vivienne Westwood, her co-author Ian Kelly and publisher Picador over their lifting of substantial amounts of material from my book The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion for the designer’s 2014 “authorised biography”.

The paperback edition of Vivienne Westwood published last week contains a whopping 27 acknowledgements citing me and The Look.

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Derek Boshier: Specially-commissioned BBC Four ident running all week

Aug 26th, 2015

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As part of the BBC Four Goes Pop season, the British TV channel is running a 45-sec ident commissioned from Derek Boshier.

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Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry – Works of the 1970s/Recent films & collages at Flowers Cork Street this autumn

Aug 25th, 2015
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//The Dance, from the series News From The Metropolis, Derek Boshier, 2014. Ink and collage on paper//

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//From Best Foot Forward, Derek Boshier, 2014. Film//

To coincide with the publication of the Derek Boshier monograph Rethink/Re-entry, writer/curator Guy Brett and I are putting together an exhibition of the same name which will be held at Flowers Gallery in Cork Street, Central London this autumn.

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‘Art is the capital of capitalism’: Derek Boshier’s What Do Artists Do All Day? on BBC iPlayer

Aug 25th, 2015

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Film-maker Zara Hayes has captured the British artist Derek Boshier’s wit, intelligence and apparently boundless creative energy in her documentary for the BBC strand What Do Artists Do All Day?.

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Rock, Rock, Rock! Roots of Let It Rock’s Chuck Berry t-shirt in 50s movie ephemera

Aug 24th, 2015
Movie poster advertises the Italian release of Alan Freed's musical 'Rock, Rock, Rock', starring Chuck Berry, 1956. (Photo by John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images)

//Poster for Italian release of Alan Freed’s 1956 musical Rock, Rock, Rock!. Photo: John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive/Getty Images//

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//Left: Chuck Berry image isolated and bleached out. Right: As it appeared on the t-shirt, worn in this 1973 photograph of singer/songwriter Simon Fisher Turner. Photographer: Unknown//

When they were setting up Let It Rock in 1971, Malcolm McLaren and his original partner in the boutique at 430 King’s Road – Patrick Casey – acquired a cache of posters, showcards and ephemera for 50s rocksploitation movies, including many Continental-language variants.

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RIP Robyn Beeche, 1945 – 2015

Aug 20th, 2015
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//Top: The photographer in A Life Exposed; above: One of Beeche’s arresting images from the show for the McLaren/Westwood collection Nostalgia Of Mud, March 1982//

I’m saddened by the news of the death last week of the great Australian photographer Robyn Beeche.

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From Vive la Commune! in 1881 to Vive le Rock! in 1972: How a Chinese Communist Party pamphlet inspired one of the great Malcolm McLaren designs

Aug 20th, 2015

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//From top left: Chinese Communist Party pamphlet, 1971; McLaren in Let It Rock 1972; Proclamation by Engels and Marx, 1881; Title lettering, Belgian film poster, 1958//

A year or so ago I established the source material for one of the first designs generated by Malcolm McLaren in the fashion partnership he conducted with Vivienne Westwood in the 70s and early 80s.

Now I can reveal the inspiration: text contained in an unprepossessing Communist booklet celebrating the short-lived “Paris Commune” government of 19th Century revolutionary France.

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Man + painter, genius + pervert, ‘lesbienne’ + gun lover: Pierre Molinier at Richard Saltoun Gallery

Aug 19th, 2015
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//Autoportrait, Pierre Molinier, 1962//

At all times, my acts and my actions in life have stemmed from love or eroticism, as you like it.
Pierre Molinier, The Shaman And Its Creatures

Pierre Molinier, “the man and the painter, the genius and the pervert, the ‘lesbienne’ and the guns lover” is not an easy figure to pin down.

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Derek Boshier is the subject of What Do Artists Do All Day? on BBC Four next Monday (August 24)

Aug 19th, 2015
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//Artwork: Derek Boshier 2015//

Derek Boshier is the next subject of the BBC strand What Do Artists Do All Day? – Zara Hayes’ film, which was shot in Los Angeles and shadows Boshier on his daily routine, will be screened at 10.30pm UK time on BBC Four next Monday (August 24).

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Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Exhibition joining the dots between a group of supreme troublemakers

Aug 18th, 2015

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Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges* is the title of the forthcoming exhibition about the creative interplay between a group of remarkable radical artists, poets, writers and activists who initiated, perpetrated and influenced a range of post-war alternatives.

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