Paul Gorman

Books

Post-Pistol – a timely look at Malcolm McLaren’s London at Fora Soho tonight

What with Pistol and all, it seems timely to discuss Malcolm McLaren’s place in the scheme of things so tonight journalist Helen Barrett and I will be in conversation at a London Society event about the late cultural iconoclast’s relationship with the city of his birth. Here is a selection of visuals from this evening’s presentation.

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Malcolm McLaren’s London Life with Helen Barrett at the London Society on June 9

In the evening June 9 I’ll be in Soho for a London Society event about the London life of the late cultural provocateur Malcolm McLaren.

At workplace venue Fora in Broadwick Street writer Helen Barrett and I will be discussing the ways in which the man born in Stoke Newington and buried in Highgate Cemetery used the city as the springboard for his dizzying range of creative and subversive activities.

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A selection from my archive in Subscribe, the exhibition about artists and alternative magazines at the Art Institute of Chicago

//Subscribe exhibition ident//
//Artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (right) featured in The Uniform Backlash, The i-D Bible Part 2, 1989. Photography Daniel Kohlbacher, styling Simon Foxton. Paul Gorman Archive//

Beginning in the early 1970s—as under-represented groups were demanding new forms of visibility following the emergence of political movements such as Black Power and the Stonewall Rebellion—a handful of British and American photo-driven alternative magazines came on the scene.

The Face, i-D, Rags, Out/Look, and other new publications amplified marginalized voices, especially those of queer makers and makers of colour, and made room for those makers to question who and what was accepted as mainstream. These publications introduced a hybrid model within the magazine industry: combining the high production standards and engagement with fashion of “powerhouse” publications such as Vogue and Life with the use of collage in zines and the text/image provocations of underground newspapers. In the end, these alternative magazines transformed their industry.

From the introduction to Subscribe.

Two years ago, just as the enormity of the pandemic was emerging, I met American curators Solveig Nelson and Michal Raz-Russo in London to discuss making a contribution to an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago about the significance of alternative magazines to Western culture.

Continue reading A selection from my archive in Subscribe, the exhibition about artists and alternative magazines at the Art Institute of Chicago

Too Too Utterly: Malcolm McLaren’s film pitch by fax to James Bond scriptwriters

//Fax of treatment sent by Malcolm McLaren to Neal Purvis and Robert Wade on January 9, 1991//

These faded pages constitute a film pitch Malcolm McLaren sent by fax to screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade way back in 1991.

//The first page of the fax shows that this treatment was completed a couple of weeks before it was sent, on December 20, 1990//
//From my transcription of the now-very faded fax//

Purvis and Wade are responsible for many  film successes including the astounding run of screenplays for the seven James Bond movies from 1999’s The World Is Not Enough to the recently released No Time To Die. I’ve known them for a  while and Neal has mentioned their contact with McLaren during preparations for their first feature Let Him Have It, so made sure it was covered  in the hardback edition of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren.

Continue reading Too Too Utterly: Malcolm McLaren’s film pitch by fax to James Bond scriptwriters