The punk movement of the 1970s to early 1980s is examined as an art movement through archive research, interviews, and art historical analysis. It is about pop, pain, poetry, presence, and about a ‘no future’ generation refusing to be the next artworld avant-garde, instead choosing to be the ‘rear-guard’.
Skov draws on personal interviews with punk art protagonists from London, New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Berlin, among others the members Die Tödliche Doris (The Deadly Doris), members of Værkstedet Værst (The Workshop Called Worst), Nina Sten-Knudsen, Marc Miller, Diana Ozon, Hugo Kaagman, as well as email correspondence with Jon Savage, Anna Banana, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
A large portion of the discussed materials stem from the protagonists' private archives, while some very public―scandalous and spectacular―events are discussed, too, such as the Prostitution exhibition at the ICA in London in 1976 and Die Große Untergangsshow (The Grand Downfall Show) in West-Berlin in 1981. The examined materials cover almost all media: paintings, drawings, bricolages, collages, booklets, posters, zines, installations, sculptures, Super 8 films, documentation of performances and happenings, body art, street art.
What emerges is how crucial the concept of history was in punk at that point in time. The punk movement's rejection of the tale of progress and prosperity, as it was being propagated on both sides of the iron curtain, evidently manifested itself in punk visual art too. Central to the book is the thesis that punks placed themselves as the rear-guards, not the avant-gardes, a statement which was in made by Danish punks in 1981, when they called themselves “bagtropperne". Behind the rear-guard watchword was the rejection of the inherent notion of progress that the avant-garde name brings with it; how could a "no future" movement want to lead the way?
Although aimed at students and scholars of art, design, music and performance history, the subject as well as the author’s accessible, occasionally playful style will no doubt draw readers with an interest in punk, music, and urban histories.
Dr Marie Arleth Skov is a Danish art historian, curator, and writer based in Berlin. She works at the crossroads of art, sexuality, and music, with a historical focus on surrealism and the punk movement of the 1970s–80s. Her texts and interviews with artists have been published, e.g. in Museumsjournal, DIY, Alternative Cultures & Society, Punk & Post-Punk, Siegessäule Magazin, RIHA Journal, Texte zur Kunst as well as in edited volumes, such as Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2022). She has curated exhibitions in New York and Berlin e.g. Claudia Skoda: Dressed to Thrill (2021) at Kulturforum. She is the author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect, 2023). Currently, Skov is working as a postdoc curator in a collaboration between ARoS art museum and Aarhus University, which will result in a major exhibition on the topic of the body in punk culture in 2026.
Contact: ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aros Allé 2, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Web address: www.aros.dk
