//From Poster, 1977. Note Ford signed the front of the shirt//

I am indebted to IG pal and fan of this blog Kjell Magnusson for this 1977 magazine photo of The Runaways’ guitarist Lita Ford presenting her I Groaned With Pain t-shirt for a raffle in Swedish teen title Poster.

//The Runaways on the cover of Poster No 8, 1977//

//The panel offering the raffle prizes for Poster readers//

In the light of the revelations about the abusive nature of the group’s relationship with the late, unwholesome manager Kim Fowley, Ford’s choice of item for the Poster magazine raffle was less seamy than those made for vocalist Cherie Currie and bass-player Jackie Fox, whose knickers were donated (guitarist Joan Jett sensibly chose a bracelet and drummer Sandy West a miniature drumstick).

//T-shirt with central tear on mint jersey with exterior seaming, unlabelled, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, 1974. 380mm x 365mm. © Malcolm McLaren Estate. Photo: Adrian Hunt//

//I Groaned With Pain t-shirt on pink with twin ball-and-chain chest zip inserts. © Malcolm McLaren Estate//

The I Groaned shirt is one of the series with zips designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and sold through their outlet Sex at 430 King’s Road between 1974 and 1976. The shirt was favoured by female performers of the period, including Viv Albertine, Little Nell Campbell and Chrissie Hynde.

There are two variants of the design in the current exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery. One is a very early deliberately ripped example produced in mid-1974 when 430 King’s Road was between names (the decision had been taken to abandon the previous title Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die).

This is why it doesn’t have a label. McLaren had yet to design the distinctive “SEX Original’ woven blue-on-pink tag, which was manufactured under his instructions by a supplier in Portugal.

The other shirt is the same type as Ford’s and does have a label.

I wrote about the genesis and realisation of I Groaned With Pain here.

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren is at John Hansard Gallery until November 14. Find out more here.

Tags: Adrian hunt, Cherie Currie, Chrissie Hynde, Jackie Fox, Joan Jett, John Hansard Gallery, Kim Fowley, Kjell Magnusson, Lia Ford, Little Nell, Poster, Poster magazine, Sandy West, SEX, Situationist International, The Runaways, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Viv Albertine

//Viewing exhibits in Gallery 2 at John Hansard Gallery. Pic JHG//

The opening of new exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren at the weekend was a great success.

//Visitors Nick Abrahams + Suze Malyon with their dog Mrs Shufflewick//

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Tags: Alexander Trocchi, Asger Jorn, Barry Martin, Cath Slessor, David Thorp, Derek Harris, Guy Debord, Jean Francois Carly, John Hansard Gallery, King Mob, Mrs Shufflewick, Nick Abrahams, Richard Cabut, Saaya Nohara, Stephen Foster, Suze Malyon, Tony Drayton, William Burroughs

To celebrate today’s opening of the exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren, this rare footage of McLaren talking about the genesis of the bondage trousers design has been issued by the Malcolm McLaren Estate through Dazed Digital.

The film is entitled Subversive Trousers and is from Being Malcolm, which was written and performed by McLaren and produced with Première Heure for Canal Jimmy. The series won a prestigious French TV award.

//From today’s Guardian Guide//

Among the many rare items in the exhibition are materials related to McLaren’s collaboration with graphic artist Jamie Reid, as demonstrated by the exhibits below.

// Sex Pistols -Fuck Forever. Design by Jamie Reid for Great Rock N Swindle, 1979, produced as t-shirt by Reid 1987, with source of image, front cover of Picturegoer, January 1959, and original copy of Leaving The 20th Century, Christopher Gray’s collection of Situationist texts designed by Reid, 1974//

Read Dazed Digital on the show is here .

The Guardian Guide’s preview here.

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges opens today (September 26) and runs until November 14.

Find out more here.

Tags: Being Malcolm, Canal JImmy, Christopher Gray, Great Rock N Swindle, Jamie Reid, John Hansard Gallery, Leaving The 20th Century, Picturegoer, Sex Pistols Fuck Forever

DÉTOURNÉD PAINTING

Intended for the public. Easy reading

Collectors and museums,
be modern
If you have old paintings,
do not despair.
Keep your memories
But detourne them
So they correspond to your time
Why reject the old [paintings]
If one can modernize them?
With a few brushstrokes
Modernize your old culture
Be up to date
and distinguished at the same time
Painting is over
Better give it the final blow
Detourne
Long live painting

Asger Jorn, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris, May 1959. Translation: Young Kim.

Among the pertinent exhibits of our forthcoming show Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges is the statement disavowing traditional approaches to artistic creation made by the Danish artist and writer Asger Jorn in the late 50s.

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Tags: Alexander Trocchi, Asger Jorn, Fin de Copenhague, Gallery International, Guy Brett, Internationale Lettriste, John McCready Archive, Let It Rock, Mémoires, New Musical Express, Parade, Peel + Lift, Ten Gauge City, Vivienne Westwood, William Burroughs, Worlds End

//Model wears studded and accessorised Let It Rock ‘Gene’ glitter print shirt, Musik Express, November 1972. Photo: Unknown//

Thanks to Mr Mondo for turning me onto Glam Idols, a goldmine of early 70s music and fashion images.

Lovingly presented and well credited, many of the photographs on the feed derive from continental European publications, like the 1972 shot above of a German model in a glitter t-shirt from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s 50s outlet Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road.

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Tags: Glam Idols, James Dean, Let It Rock, Paradise Garage, Rebel Without A Cause, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Trevor myles

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

//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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Tags: After School Session, Alan Freed, Don't Knock The Twist, Golden Hour Of Rock N' Roll, Harry Foster, Jayne Mansfield, L'Amour Frénétique, Le Cavalier Du Crepuscule, Let's Rock, London Rock N Roll Show, Loving You), Mister Rock And Roll, Patrick Casey, Peter Clifton, Rock, Simon Fisher Turner, Wembley Stadium, You Can't Catch Me

//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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Tags: Abbie Hoffman, Chuck Berry, Friedrich Engels, Jerry Lee Lewis, Karl Marx, Let It Rock, Let's Rock, Little Richard, New York Dolls, Paris Commune, Patrick Casey, Peter Clifton, Steal This Book, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Little Red Book, The London Rock N Roll Show, Vive le Rock!, Vivienne Westwood, William Powell, Yvonne Gold

//Front and back of Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco and the radical political and military texts used as source material for the design//

There were T-shirts left over from the Wembley Rock & Roll revival festival in our cupboards in South Clapham; we had to do something with them. Sid Vicious liked them just the way they were and was often photographed in the original Vive Le Rock! design. But I needed to throw a few messages across them and reinvent them. So, I married the slogan and images of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis with words and drawings from various texts, using the title of The Anarchist Cookbook as well as the famous phrase of the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durutti.

Malcolm McLaren 2008

Imogen Hunt is a recent graduate from London College Of Fashion who tells me she was inspired by my work to write her thesis for the college’s history of fashion and culture course.

Part of Hunt’s dissertation – on the importance of the Situationist International and King Mob to the development of punk style – is dedicated to an examination of the influences and source material for the double-sided design Vive Le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, which was printed on the front and back of t-shirts and tops first sold in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road store Seditionaries in 1978.

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Tags: Abbie Hoffman, Buenaventura Durruti, Christopher Gray, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Imogen Hunt, Internationale Situationniste, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ken Knabb, King Mob, Leaving The 20th Century, Little Richard, London College Of Fashion, Pierre van Paassen, Seditionaries, Steal This Book, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Return of the Durruti Column, The Toronto Daily Star, US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, Vivienne Westwood, William Powell

//The t-shirts show the deliberate production of variants within the limited edition designed and written by McLaren and printed on the simple square pattern produced by Vivienne Westwood in 1974. © Malcolm McLaren Estate//

Two of Malcolm McLaren’s t-shirts from the very first production run of I Groaned With Pain – the notorious text design produced with Vivienne Westwood in 1974 – will be featured in Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges, the exhibition I am co-curating with David Thorp at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery this autumn.

//T-shirt with central tear on light blue jersey with exterior seaming, labelled, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, 1974. 360mm x 375mm. © Malcolm McLaren Estate//

I Groaned With Pain is named after the first four words of the paragraph of text McLaren lifted from beat writer Alexander Trocchi’s erotic novel Helen And Desire (published in 1954 by Olympia Press under the pseudonym Francis Lengel).

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Tags: Alexander Trocchi, Antiquarius, Asger Jorn, bernie Rhodes, David Thorp, FRancis Lengel, Guy Debord, Helen And Desire, I Groaned With Pain, John Hansard Gallery, King Mob, Let It Rock, Olympia Press, Parade, The Clash, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Vivienne Westwood, William Burroughs

//Left: Detail of photo of model posing in leather Sex hood, autumn 1974. Photo: © David Parkinson. Right: David Bowie in leather hood, summer 1974, Sherry Netherland Hotel, New York. Photo: Dana Gillespie//

My recent post about David Bowie’s visits in 1974 to 430 King’s Road when it was in its Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die incarnation prompted Facebook friend and DJ Graham “Sugarlump” Evans to alert me to Polaroid photographs of David Bowie trying out make-up, hair and styling options in preparation for his Diamond Dogs tour of the US that year.

// Polaroid taken by Dana Gillespie in New York in 1974//

In one, as Evans points out, Bowie posed in a leather hood of similar style to the model sold at 430 as it was transformed over a period of six months from TFTL to fetish emporium Sex.

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Tags: Anarchy In The UK, Brian Epstein, Cambridge Rapist, Dana Gillespie, David Bowie, David May, Henry Edwards, James Dean, Jamie Reid, Kevin Cann, Michael Collins, Peter Cook, Robert Fraser, Sex Pistols, Susan Shaw, The London Leatherman, Tony Zanetta, Vivienne Westwood