subscribe to style file blog via RSSmalcolm mclaren gets shallow
June 16, 2008 12:48 pm
Malcolm McLaren has made misbehavior his specialty ever since he turned the Sex Pistols into a worldwide music and style phenomenon back in the mid-1970’s. But though his bad-boy antics are well known in the areas of music and fashion, McLaren has spent little time in the art world. That might be about to change thanks to “Shallow (1-21),” an installation he created that consists of 21 “sound paintings” (think film snippets of everything from Jayne Mansfield discussing fashion to William S. Burroughs reading from “Naked Lunch,” with a soundtrack of pop classics such as Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” and Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). It’s scheduled to be screened in Times Square starting June 26 as part of an artist video series under the auspices of Creative Time, a New York public arts organization (it will also be included in London’s Royal Academy of Arts exhibit on William Burroughs at the end of the year). Style.com caught up with McLaren last week in Paris, where “Shallow” was showing at his old friend Martine Sitbon’s Rue du Mail space on Friday.
“Shallow (1-21)” started with a group show held last year at Paul Judelson’s 1-20 Gallery in New York. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
The curator, artist Stefan Brüggemann, insisted I take part. “Do whatever,” he said, “but do something that is inspired by, or a comment on, the word ’shallow.’ ” All my life and times as an artist have been driven by pop culture, its outlaw spirit, its glory in the amateur, its sexual liberation, and its group psychology. So I thought, what if I grabbed chunks of pop music and stuck them together in a way to describe those feelings? The shallow experience in regard to pop culture seemed to be a good place to start. The next stage was simply to choose certain portraits of people imagining, anticipating, wishing, hoping, wanting, contriving to have sex. I plowed through an archive of sex movies. Then I spliced, slowed down, and focused in to make the portraits, and then slapped music onto the picture in a cut-up way. The portraits couldn’t speak and didn’t have any narrative. This is determined by the music, so that their feelings and my feelings are the same. I showed just a few of these last year.
What attracted you to cut-ups?
I was first exposed to cut-ups by William Burroughs and “Naked Lunch.” That certainly had a major impact on pop culture and art, and eventually fashion, via punk. This is consistent with my style and way of working for the past 30 years—using both an aural and visual language. It’s what the media once labeled “punk,” “deconstruction,” or “appropriation.” Jayne Mansfield’s thoughts on fashion was just one of many pieces from a pop archive of trivia that I found on a CD when trawling for all kinds of material to cut up. In this instance, I cut Jayne’s interview with William Burroughs reading from “Naked Lunch” and put both to a mambo beat.
What has the interest from collectors been?
There has been a lot of serious interest since the work was shown two weeks ago at Basel, and we are now in discussions with a number of collectors, and gallerists and museums.
What else are you working on?
I’m writing my first musical for the stage. It will be about music and fashion.
You live in Paris. What do you like about it?
I live part of the year in Paris. I have a studio with an extraordinary north-facing window, high up on the rooftops behind the Folies Bergère. It once belonged to the painter Kees van Dongen. I like it here because you can work, research, and think clearly here without too much interference. Nothing changes and very little happens in Paris. This is a great place to work without distraction—and then I run away to New York, where I have a life!
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