Punk Art

I am not an artist, but it seems to me that the best way to approach art is the way the punk movement approached their art.

I have been watching a lot of documentaries lately about the original punk movement from 1976 (such as this, this and this) and a number of things the interviewees (mostly John Lydon) said appealed to me.

The first idea is that "you have to do it for yourself because no one is going to do it for you". This fits very well with my belief that art is not handed down to us by great artists any more than political ideas are handed down to us by great thinkers or laws are handed down to us by great men (politicians and judges are still overwhelmingly male). My approach to art is the same as my approach to politics; it is something we all can and should engage with. It should be open and democratic and my truth should be as valuable as your truth regardless of the fact that I did not spend years at art school.


The second idea is that art should be about holding a mirror up to society. The working class should not be ashamed of the conditions they are forced to live in as a result of the policies of the government; their art should reflect those conditions and if middle class people are shocked by that, so much the better. Art should be the truth, it should be transparent, honest; it should not be selective, censored or falsified in a dishonest way. This ties is in with what I said in the last post that about contextualising a scene; but it goes beyond that. I think a picture of a CCTV camera or a pile of discarded beer cans is a better subject matter for a rendering of Penzance than St. Michael's Mount for example. It is the real story of Penzance that is usually air-brushed out.


It seems to me that punk may have largely ceased to exist as a genre of music, but the ideas live on in a variety of places and individuals.