Jamie Reid dies at 76; anarchist artist designed iconic Intercourse Pistols covers

By Scottie Andrew | CNN

 Jamie Reid, the British artist and political activist whose iconic designs for the Intercourse Pistols turned synonymous with the punk aesthetic and anarchist motion, has died, his gallerist John Marchant introduced Wednesday. Reid was 76.

Reid’s “ransom notice” graphics and political boldness helped cement the Pistols’ celeb and gave punk rock a transparent, enduring visible fashion. His work stays extremely in style and immediately recognizable, even amongst artwork world elites whose approval he rejected all through his life.

“When folks get drawn into the mainstream they lose their radicalism and their spirit,” he mentioned in a 2018 interview with One other Man journal. “I by no means wished to get drawn into that incestuous world.”

CNN has reached out to Marchant for remark.

Reid’s political roots ran deep

Reid was born within the South London city of Croydon in 1947 and spent a lot of his youth there. His dad and mom had been socialist activists, and he was deeply influenced by his household’s lengthy involvement with Druidism, a non secular follow that champions nature and environmental causes. Reid marched with them in opposition to nuclear weaponry and radical causes, in response to the John Marchant Gallery.

Whereas at Croydon Artwork School, Reid was a compatriot of Malcolm McLaren, who went on to handle the Intercourse Pistols. In 1968, the 2 organized an “occupation of the faculty,” per the Marchant Gallery, impressed by wider protests throughout arts establishments within the UK amongst college students who felt their instruction was missing and that college and workers had been stymying their factors of view. Reid was additionally closely influenced by the Situationist Worldwide, a bunch of artists and political activists who espoused Marxist philosophies as a rebuke of conservative management throughout Europe.

From 1970 to 1975, Reid ran an anti-capitalist various journal known as the “Suburban Press,” the place he perfected his signature DIY punk aesthetic, reducing up preexisting graphics and textual content and collaging them in a method that evoked a “weird ransom notice,” mentioned the artwork collector useful resource Widewalls.

Inside its pages, he decried the South London city’s rising commercialization: One cowl of the Suburban Press learn “Lo! A monster is born” over a picture of highways and towering buildings.

“We’re left dwarfed within the streets by enormous towers of forms,” learn one article in a 1972 version. “The folks … have been made to carry out in an city atmosphere of commerce and administration.”

Reid made the Intercourse Pistols immediately recognizable

That ethos of rebelling in opposition to the capitalist-driven, conventional establishment was adopted, too, by the Intercourse Pistols, fashioned by McLaren in 1975 (although he created the band partly to assist promote Intercourse, the boutique he ran together with his then-partner Vivienne Westwood). McLaren introduced Reid on board to concoct graphics for his group, lots of which appeared on clothes made and offered by Westwood.

Reid reduce up letters in a mishmash of fonts and letter sizes for the Pistols’ brand. His easy however arresting artwork for the Intercourse Pistols’ first and solely album, “By no means Thoughts the Bollocks, Right here’s the Intercourse Pistols,” was named among the best album covers of all time by Billboard. The album’s title was printed on a shiny yellow background in black typeface (three fonts — Reid formatted “THE BOLLOCKS” in a stately serif) earlier than the pink Intercourse Pistols brand lit up the quilt’s backside third.

One in all his most iconic — and, on the time, extremely controversial — works was the quilt for the Intercourse Pistols single “God Save the Queen,” a tune which condemned the monarchy and Queen Elizabeth II’s reign as a “fascist regime.” The one’s art work featured textual content of the tune’s title within the font Reid created superimposed over a black-and-white portrait of the monarch.

He remained a politically motivated artist post-Pistols

The Pistols imploded initially of 1978, and anarchic punk went with them. Reid instructed The Guardian that he was “determined for cash” by the mid-Nineteen Eighties. Throughout this time, he began portray once more, per the John Marchant Gallery, and devoted himself to works that took years to finish, resembling his work portray the inside of Strongroom Studios in London. He additionally launched the 1987 guide, “Up They Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid,” with the music journalist Jon Savage.

He was disinterested by the favored artists who adopted him within the ‘90s, from Younger British Artist poster little one Damien Hirst to Banksy. He discovered their “shock ways” to be low-cost and with out political function, he instructed The Guardian in 2018.

“There’s nothing remotely stunning about what they do,” he instructed The Guardian.

Reid additionally deeply resented makes an attempt from company artwork corporations and artists like Hirst and Banksy claiming the punk motion and his work as inspiration.

“The commodification of artwork has turn into a illness,” he instructed the Barnsley Civic, an arts middle within the North England city of Barnsley, in 2021.

Curiosity in his work revived broadly within the late ‘90s when Reid began designing album covers for the Afro Celt Sound System, a band whose members fused West African and Gaelic musical kinds.

In 1997, Reid met Marchant, who was tasked with curating a retrospective of Reid’s work in New York tied to the anniversary of punk. The 2 turned quick buddies and longtime collaborators, with Marchant sustaining the archive of many years of Reid’s work.

“It shortly struck me how this was a person of conviction and knowledge, possessing a large breadth of information that encompassed social politics, esoteric spirituality, astronomy, free jazz and Fulham FC,” Marchant wrote about his longtime pal.

Reid continued to create politically related work within the 2010s and 2020s, with posters calling for Pussy Riot, the Russian all-women punk band to be freed (that includes a feminized portrait of Vladimir Putin in a balaclava, worn steadily by the members of the group) and criticizing former US President Donald Trump, together with a bit that positioned swastikas over Trump’s eyes. He felt radical artwork remained an vital instrument of protest, simply because it had in his youth, he instructed The Guardian.

“The institution will rob the whole lot they will, as a result of they lack the flexibility to be artistic,” he mentioned. “That’s why you all the time need to maintain shifting.”