Punk visual art is artwork associated with the

punk subculture The punk subculture includes a diverse and widely known array of ideologies, fashion, and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature, and film. Largely characterised by anti-establishment views, the promotion of individual freedom ...

and the No wave movement. It is prevalent in punk rock

album cover An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

s, flyers for punk concerts and

punk zine A punk zine (or punkzine) is a zine related to the punk subculture and hardcore punk music genre. Often primitively or casually produced, they feature punk literature, such as social commentary, punk poetry, news, gossip, music reviews and art ...

s, but has also been prolific in other mediums, such as the visual arts, the performing arts, literature and cinema. Punk manifested itself "differently but consistently" in different cultural spheres. Punk also led to the birth of several movements: new wave, no wave, dark wave, industrial, hardcore, queercore, etc., which are sometimes showcased in art galleries and exhibition spaces. The punk aesthetic was a dominant strand from 1982 to 1986 in the many art galleries of the East Village of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

History

In his book, '' Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century'', cultural critic

Greil Marcus Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. Biography Marcus wa ...

expands upon the historical influence of

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

Lettrism Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture ...

and

Situationism The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

on punk aesthetics in the art and music of the 1980s and early 90s. Marcus argues that artists in the 1960s and 70s, particularly those surrounding the Situationist International artist and theorist

Guy Debord Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationis ...

spearheaded a movement fueled by alienation and "angry, absolute demands" on society and art that gave rise to the punk sensibility. At its core was a subculture of artistic rebellion.

Aesthetics

Characteristics associated with punk visual art is the usage of black or gray colors, and letters cut out from newspapers and magazines: a device previously associated with

collage and kidnap ransom notes. A prominent example of that style is the cover of the

Sex Pistols The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band formed in London in 1975. Although their initial career lasted just two and a half years, they were one of the most groundbreaking acts in the history of popular music. They were responsible for ...

Never Mind the Bollocks ''Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols'' is the only studio album by English punk rock band the Sex Pistols, released on 28 October 1977 by Virgin Records in the UK and on 11 November 1977 by Warner Records, Warner Bros. Records in th ...

'' album designed by

Jamie Reid Jamie Reid (born 16 January 1947 in London, United Kingdom) is an English artist and anarchist. Career His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note, came close to defining the image of punk rock, pa ...

. Images and figures are also sometimes cut and pasted from magazines and newspapers to create

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

s, album covers and paste-ups for posters that were often reproduced using copy machines. Punk visual art often conveys a rejection of traditionalist values with self-derision that can be compared to

Punk art in New York

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in the mid-1970s, there was much overlap between the punk music and the No wave downtown art scene. In

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...

, many of the visual artists who were regulars at Tier 3,

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...

and other punk-related music venues participated in punk art exhibitions in New York. Early punk art exhibits included the

Colab Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. History Colab members came together as a collective in ...

organized ''

The Times Square Show ''The Times Square Show'' was an influential collaborative, self-curated, and self-generated art exhibition held by New York artists' group Colab (aka Collaborative Projects, Inc) in Times Square in a shuttered massage parlor at 201 W. 41st and 7t ...

'' (1980) and ''New York New Wave'' at PS1 (1981). Punk art found an ongoing home on the New York's lower east side with the establishment of several artist-run galleries such as

ABC No Rio ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art gal ...

FUN Gallery The Fun Gallery was an art gallery founded by Patti Astor and Bill Stelling in 1981. The Fun Gallery had a cultural impact until it closed in 1985. As the first art gallery in Manhattan's East Village, Manhattan, East Village, it exposed New York t ...

, Civilian Warfare, Nature Morte and

Gracie Mansion Gallery Gracie Mansion Gallery was an art gallery in New York City founded by artist and dealer Gracie Mansion (née Joanne Mayhew-Young). It is known an important site for the Lower East Side art scene of the 1980s. History Joanne Mayhew-Young changed h ...

. The art critic

Carlo McCormick Carlo McCormick is an American culture critic and curator living in New York City. He is the author of numerous books, monographs and catalogues on contemporary art and artists. Pedagogic and art writing activities McCormick was Senior Edito ...

reviewed numerous exhibitions from this time in the

East Village Eye The ''East Village Eye'' was a cultural magazine, published by editor-in-chief Leonard Abrams, in circulation from May, 1979 until January, 1987. Based in the East Village section of New York City, the publication covered a range of locally focus ...

. In the early 1980s, New York was on the verge of bankruptcy; the punk protest of the mid-1970s was transformed into a new artistic sensibility. It is in this context that

Richard Hambleton Richard Art Hambleton (June 23, 1952 – October 29, 2017) was a Canadian artist known for his work as a street artist A street artist is a person who makes art in public places. Street artists include portrait artists, caricaturists, graffiti ...

arrives in New York. Drawing on the most visceral aspects of punk, he created "

urban art Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

" with the aim of constructing real experiences that provoke sensations of fear. Drawing on the poetic terrorism conceptualized by the Situationist movement, the creation of over 450 life-size black male figures in half-lit doorways and on the walls of dilapidated Manhattan buildings sought to provoke fear in passersby. Hambleton worked in the middle of the night and was never caught red-handed. His approach sought to confront preconceived notions of what art is and where it should be presented. "People expect to see art in galleries. The work I do outside is somewhere between art and life,"

Notable artists

References

External links

98 Bowery: 1969-1989
- catalogue for a 1978 exhibition at the Washington Project for the Arts
Everything's Punk in This Pop-Up Art Show
- review of the 2016 exhibition at the Invisible Dog {{DEFAULTSORT:Punk Visual Art Artist groups and collectives Contemporary art movements Visual arts genres Punk es:Movimiento punk