Jamie Reid possessed an uncanny ability to anticipate the rise of punk before it even happened. His 1972 painting, “Monster on a Nice Roof,” depicts a gigantic green beast perched atop a suburban home, with brooding storm clouds looming overhead. Looking back, it seems as though this artwork was a foreshadowing of the monstrous force that would become punk.
The events that unfolded in Britain in 1977, particularly with Reid’s iconic cover for the Sex Pistols’ single “God Save the Queen,” have been extensively analyzed by cultural theorists and pop historians. The meaning behind the image, which features Elizabeth II with her eyes covered by the title in cut-out lettering and her mouth covered by the band’s name, has been interpreted in various ways. Some view it as a raw expression of working-class honesty, a sentiment that John Lydon himself embraced, while others see it as a culmination of the avant-garde ideas of the 20th century.
Regardless of the interpretation, there’s no denying that it was a real moment in time that created an atmosphere of rebellion and violence. I recall my father, who served as the vice principal of a Welsh sixth form college, warning a student that he would forcibly remove his safety pin if he didn’t take it out of his ear. Personally, I knew that I could never sneak the Sex Pistols album into our home, mainly due to Reid’s eye-catching design of “Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols” in eye-popping pink and black on a bright yellow sleeve. It was an unmissable sight in the vinyl era, where album covers measured 31.4cm square.
As I reflect on my teenage years and my vast collection of records, I now realize that it was my way of trying to obtain “Never Mind the Bollocks” through alternative means. This, according to Freud’s theory of repression leading to perversion, eventually led me to discover the more decadent pleasures of the Velvet Underground.
The first and most crucial thing to recognize about Reid’s art is his mastery of coarseness. He captured the raucous spirit of the Pistols’ music through designs like the V sign, an equivalent of daring authority figures to take action. The police promptly did so when they raided a record shop in Nottingham for displaying the controversial cover.
Reid’s ability to cultivate calculated crudeness remained throughout his career. His poster, “Free Pussy Riot,” created to support the Russian feminist punk group following the conviction of three members in 2012, depicts Vladimir Putin wearing a black balaclava and lipstick. The bold lettering boldly states, “Putin says he’s seen the light / And he sold his soul for punk.” More than ever, Reid’s gender-bending critique of Putin’s oppressive regime carries immense urgency. It exemplifies how seriously Reid regarded punk as a genuine revolutionary force, whether it was directed at a stagnant British establishment or Putin’s bigoted reign.
While the Sex Pistols have referred to “God Save the Queen” as “camp,” Reid’s parody of the queen’s face undoubtedly possesses a sense of lethal intent, similar to his emasculation of the seemingly manly Putin. He genuinely desired to live in anarchy, and he learned about it through art, or rather, anti-art.
Some reports on Reid’s passing have likened his distinctive lettering to a “ransom note,” as if he were one of the notorious Great Train Robbers. However, its true origins can be traced back to Dadaism, an art movement formed by a group of German youths seeking refuge from World War I conscription in Switzerland. They named it “dada” precisely because it was childishly raw, primitive, and nonsensical. It was a direct attack on art itself and the false civilized ideals of a Europe that was sacrificing its young men in trench warfare. In 1919 Berlin, Dada intertwined with Marxist revolution, resulting in collages of torn images and texts by notable artists like Hannah Höch. Like Reid, she would deconstruct and manipulate images of politicians, as well as incorporate words cut out from newspapers. This criminal-looking aggression of Dada was also championed by her comrades George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, and John Heartfield.
Although Reid’s aesthetic may appear innocently spontaneous and threatening, it cleverly resurrects the manic anti-art nature of Dada. Astonishingly, those British figures of authority who were provoked to curse at the Pistols, raid record stores, or threaten to remove safety pins from kids’ ears were unknowingly reacting to a revival, at least in Reid’s art, of the original subversive cabaret of Dada.
Can art truly change the world? Jamie Reid made you believe it could.
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