Global Punk- Punk Art History

Pop, pain, poetry, presence, and a ‘no future’ generation refusing to be the next artworld avant-garde, choosing instead to be the rear-guard. The punk movement of the 1970s to early 1980s is examined as an art movement, combining archival research, interviews, and analysis.

Marie Arleth Skov draws on personal interviews with punk art protagonists from London, New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Berlin, including Die Tödliche Doris (The Deadly Doris), members of Værkstedet Værst (The Workshop Called Worst), Nina Sten-Knudsen, Marc Miller, Diana Ozon, Hugo Kaagman, as well as email correspondence with Jon Savage, Anna Banana, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Many of the artists shared their private archives with Skov, including paintings, drawings, bricolages, collages, booklets, posters, zines, installations, sculptures, Super 8 films, documentation of performances and happenings, Body Art, and street art. Scandalous and spectacular public events are also discussed, like the Prostitution exhibition in London and Die Große Untergangsshow (The Grand Downfall Show) in West-Berlin.

What emerges is how crucial the concept of history was in punk. The punks saw themselves as the rear-guards, not the avant-gardes. Behind the rear-guard watchword was the rejection of the inherent notion of progress that the term avant-garde brings with it; how could a ‘no future’ movement want to lead the way for a culture they saw as doomed?