Naked Punk

From Naked Punk ::

Contrary to the prevailing idea that punk was exclusively a musical event, Naked Punk offers a new genealogy of the phenomenon, situated in the world of art, particularly in extreme aesthetic forms that propose a erasure of boundaries between ways of life and expressive practices. Viewed from this visual and existential perspective, punk takes on the character of an artistic movement of rupture, similar to Dada and Situationism. At the heart of punk’s becoming as a general condition of the young urban proletariat of the late 20th century in the West, there is a widespread core of visual influence, an explosive focus of artist thought, and an anti-cultural recklessness that draws nourishment from both the historical and performative avant-gardes of the 20th century and the pop world of graphics and fashion. Punk’s transformation into art, with its anti-intellectual poses, calculated nonchalance, parresiastic manifestations, and amoral insolence, thus brings to fruition a trajectory already evident in the disruptive figures of modern art in which the performative event emancipates art from the artwork itself.

The artists featured in the book, including Alan Bermowitz (Alan Vega and Suicide), Roberta Bayley (Ramones and Richard Hell), Arturo Vega (Ramones), Helen Wellington-Lloyd and Jamie Reid (Sex Pistols), Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood (Sex and Seditionaries), Gee Vaucher (Crass), Linder Sterling (Buzzcocks, Ludus), Barney Bubbles (Generation X, Damned), have bent, counterfeited, and reworked the art of the 20th century to transform it into the precious aesthetic ally of the punk attack on forms of knowledge and forces of power.

BOOK IN ITALIAN LANGUAGE :: AVAILABLE ONLY FOR ITALY 

“Why talk and write about punk today? When, for many, it has been considered a culturally and socially important phenomenon, but now relegated to something related to the history (of fashion and culture) of the last century? Or, for others, a kind of commercial product that occasionally reappears in the form of neo-punk revivals or worse. Or, at best, a subcultural niche good for a few local hardcore venues or festivals around the world. But is it really so? Is Punk dead? Or, rather, ‘Punk’s not Dead,’ as the slogan from a few decades ago proclaimed? We lean toward the latter hypothesis, following the beautiful, even graphic and poetic lines of this book, curated by Gabriele Fantuzzi and Paolo Davoli.”

Federico Montanari (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Professor of Visual and Media Studies)

“The splendid collage that characterizes this publication confirms that the punk way of life manifested itself through clothing, album covers, images, graphics, and an overall aesthetic that became one with the music, the screams, the dissonance, and the chaos that characterized the 1977 revolution. Naked Punk explicitly offers a kind of ‘genealogical’ reevaluation of the punk phenomenon through the images and statements of some of its protagonists, through snippets from fanzines and quotes from graphic designers who contributed to making aesthetics a way of interpreting and living existence. An explosion of creativity with historical references to Situationism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.”

Giovanni Catellani (Author of ‘Philosophy of the Sex Pistols’)

“Is it possible to see a different world with free eyes? Naked Punk tells through images and testimonies the primordial punk of the 1970s through the eyes and words of its protagonists, who were not only musicians but also painters, graphic designers, photographers, stylists, and visual artists who conveyed its expressive urgency. Whether it was album covers, fanzines, posters, flyers, photographic reports, logos, T-shirts, or clothing, the artists of Naked Punk captured the impact and wonder of a new type of beauty and aesthetics for the world to come.”

Paolo Davoli (Co-author of ‘Naked Punk’)

Naked Punk Band:
concept, selezione e curatela testi e immagini: Gabriele Fantuzzi e Paolo Davoli
prefazione: Federico Montanari
postafazione: Giovanni Catellani
traduzioni: Letizia Rustichelli
editing: Paolo Davoli
grafica: Gabriele Fantuzzi
immagini e disegni: Sara Vezzadini
collage tipografici: Federico Strozzi