The Queen Said I’m Aghast
The Queen Said I’m Aghast:
Punk as Fashion had reemerged in 1994 in a way that seemed ironic at first;
Chanel safety pins, Versace bondage trousers, etc.,
until one reexamined the stylistic basis for the London movement in the first place:
rebellious STYLE at 430 The King’s Road.
As a young teenager,
the Punk graphics of Jamie Reid excited me;
they were raw, visceral, and the antithesis
of the slick Modernism that disco/dance music was purveying.
I liked both, though.
One was full of style and violence,
the other full of….well…gay desire.
Later, in the early 1980s,
as that same bored teenager from a suburban bedroom,
I fell in love with the maudlin Smith’s.
This show of prints and paintings and color copies of color copies
referenced all of the aforementioned.
Queens were obliterated and enlarged;
graphics and lyrics stolen, not borrowed, from 1978-1985.
A retro-trip as an antidote to the times.
Pretty, and pretty vacant
those buses — headed to Nowhere, or Boredom.