The Ten Lessons / The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle; Sex Pistols. Circa 1980. Chromogenic print, the image measuring 162x330 mm; 6⅜x13 inches, with the collaged typeface title and list "The Ten Lessons" on the mount measuring 381x521 mm; 15x20½ inches, with Reid's signature in pencil on mount recto, and his credit with a notation in pencil on mount verso.
Jamie Reid was a British artist who, alongside Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, helped manufacture the iconic leather-and-safety-pins look of punk rock. Reid's work epitomized early British punk, using collage to bastardize and subvert iconic English imagery and symbols.
In designing the sleeves for "Anarchy in the UK" (1976) and "God Save the Queen" (1977), Reid cemented the visual language for punk. Tears, safety pins, patchworked construction, and crass debasement of national symbols quickly became recognizable traits of the punk subculture across art and fashion.
This collage references The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, a 1980 satirical film about the formation, rise, and fall of the Sex Pistols. The film was directed by Julien Temple in collaboration with McLaren, whose character lays out the ten lessons to creating a rock sensation. Among these commandments are "Sell the swindle," "Become the world's greatest tourist attraction," and "Cultivate hatred."
The image features a photograph of the centerfold of the album released in 1979, (a montage of images from the film itself), and a listing of McLaren's aggressively punk, exploitative, hyperbolic and ironically (or not) successful, "10 Lessons" from the film.
The movie was released after the band had already broken up and more than a year after the death of Sid Vicious.
The Ten Lessons was exhibited and originally acquired at a 20-year retrospective of Reid's work titled (please wash your hands before) Leaving the 20th Century at the Josh Baer Gallery in the mid-1980s. Scarce, Reid's collages, let alone original sex Pistol's art, rarely come to market.
Provenance Josh Baer Gallery; to the Present Owner.
