Philadelphia Weekly

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Before he became the godfather of punk Malcolm McLaren—former manager of the Sex Pistols—was an art student and a mischief-maker. McLaren’s new video at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts proves he’s still out to make trouble as well as art.

“Shallow 1-21,” a mash-up of ’70s porn imagery and pop love songs, is deeper than it may appear on the surface. With dated visuals that are campy, funny and sad, and dance-beat updates of classics like “Foxy Lady,” “She’s Not There,” “I Want to be Loved By You” and “My Funny Valentine,” the piece could easily be dismissed as simply eye (and ear) candy. But McLaren’s embrace of pop culture is more than that. The 63-year-old artist is also commenting on the lies we love to hear perpetuated by pop culture.

PW spoke with McLaren in August when he visited Philadelphia to meet with PAFA curator Julien Robson and see Morris Gallery where “Shallow 1-21” would screen. This was his first trip to Philadelphia. Or so he thought. McLaren admits he could’ve been here with the Sex Pistols, but just doesn’t remember. He’d certainly never been to PAFA, though. He found it to be “adorable.”

“It reminded me of going to museums in the ’60s. It’s anti-corporate, not packaged,” says McLaren—and he knows about aesthetics and packaging. McLaren and then-girlfriend Vivienne Westwood are credited with inventing the ripped-pants-and-safety-pin style of punk.
McLaren is a first-class raconteur. And when he turned on the juice and stared at a place on the wall behind and began telling his tale, it was clear he was channeling another time and place. The words flowed out of him without stopping, a stream of spicy colors, characters and scenes a bit too rich—but totally captivating.

As a young impressionable teenager in London, McLaren had a classical art education, drawing from life and from plaster casts like those in the Academy. He listened to lectures on poetry while surrounded by the art of romantic visionary William Blake. One teacher in particular shaped his future by telling him art was not a career but “the noble pursuit of failure.”

“[The teacher told me] it’s better to be a magnificent failure than a benign success,” McLaren recalls. “That was my ground rule and that changed my life. At 17, you’re vulnerable to this indoctrination. It took me eight years of art school to digest it. It gave you a new perspective,” he said, adding it sparked his “art into action” style of thinking, which resulted in punk rock.

After art school, McLaren had a crisis of confidence, unsure of what to do next. He was depressed and desperate.

Inspired by Elvis, one day he made “a sparkling blue lame jumpsuit and walked the walk on King’s Road” in hopes of getting noticed.
“A man dressed in black crossed my path. He was tall, big, handsome. He spoke like an American. He said, ‘What are you doing around here?’ I was dumbstruck,” recalls McLaren. “He pointed to a tin shack. Inside, the room was painted black and had a mirror ball. A guitar-shaped mirror and ripped blue jeans were on the wall. A free jukebox played ’50s music. It was a rock memorabilia den. I thought, ‘This is marvelous. I want to stay here.’”

The American—who McLaren refers to as “Brad”—asked the young artist if he had “stuff” and offered him a spot to sell his wares. “I ran home and phoned my friends. We brought flea market stuff to the man’s shop and hung around the jukebox.”

Brad disappeared and put McLaren in charge, warning him not to sell any of his things. But McLaren did just the opposite and sold a bunch of Brad’s torn jeans and T-shirts. He later became worried and made replicas by distressing, tearing and dying new items until they looked old and dirty. It was the birth of the punk look.

One of McLaren’s customers was advertising mogul Charles Saatchi. He purchased a Chuck Berry single “Let It Rock” and then came back to buy out “85 percent of the store.”

When McLaren opened his next shop on King’s Road he called it Let It Rock in memory of those early days. He began calling himself “a tradesman in rock and roll.”

A few years later, McLaren expanded and opened a new boutique with a decidedly punk rock twist. “I decided to have a shop that was all about what 13-year-old boys wanted: sex.” McLaren and his associates created sex clothes with one guideline: “everything should fit Vivienne, who had the body of a 13-year-old.” The shop became a hangout for local teenagers and young adults. The Sex Pistols was an outgrowth of that time and McLaren became the band’s manager.

Through all this, McLaren says, he’d accomplished the romantic, artistic goal of achieving success outside traditional capitalism.

Speaking of his new video, McLaren said he was inspired by Mexican artist Stefan Bruggemann who was curating a show at Gallery 1-20 and wanted him in the show. “He [Bruggemann] said, ‘The title of my show is shallow.’ The way he said it almost frightened me. It’s a word used to describe pop culture and pop rock. I’ve been called shallow,” says McLaren.

“I rarely look at video art. I’m not interested. It bores me,” he explains. He sees his own video vignettes in “Shallow 1-21” as “magical portraits” or “musical paintings,” something more like an updated William Blake, who “is all about sex and death in the most symbolic manner.”