BEYOND THE STREETS LONDON

BEYOND THE STREETS LONDON, the monumental street art show conceived by graffiti historian Roger Gastman arriving after successful runs in Los Angeles and New York, will feature Malcolm McLaren among 100 international artists in the London iteration which will take over the entire Saatchi Gallery.

The exhibition will focus on McLaren’s legendary shops at 430 King’s Road between 1971-1984 (Let it Rock, Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex, Seditionaries, Worlds End and at St. Christopher’s Place, Nostalgia of Mud) and his first solo album, DUCK ROCK (1983) along with the fashion inspired by it (which were sold at Worlds End and Nostalgia of Mud.)

Born in London 1946 and raised by his maternal family of Sephardic Jews in the fashion business, Malcolm McLaren was a visionary of pop culture and a pop cultural icon.  An artist in the most post-modern sense of the word, he created art in traditional and non-traditional (commercial) media.  Time and time again, he was at the forefront breaking boundaries whether as visual artist, fashion designer, music composer and producer, art director, band manager, shop conceptualist, writer, screenwriter, film producer, film director, singer, actor, philosopher, marketing guru, and even politician when he ran for Mayor of London in 2000 during the first Mayoral race.

He is best recognized for his obsession: “the look of music and the sound of fashion,” the apotheosis of which was Punk.  He masterminded the politics and aesthetics including designing the fashion and managing the Sex Pistols.

Throughout his life, McLaren’s work drew equally on his fashion background and his art school education as well as inspiration from the streets—whether of London, Paris, New York, South Africa, South America or the Appalachian Mountains.  Wherever he went, again and again, he had a preternatural ability to sniff out emerging trends and engage with them in completely original and unexpected ways, overturning established customs, and creating new work that pushed culture forward.  He was one of the past century’s key disruptors.

He did this with his legendary shops at 430 King’s Road, possibly the world’s first pop up shops.  These shops were living Gesamtkunstwerke conceived and designed by McLaren and sold the fashions he created with his then-partner Vivienne Westwood.

After managing the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow, he embarked upon his solo music career with his seminal album, Duck Rock, which features the hit single, “Buffalo Girls.”  This album, a 40-minute round-the-world tour of varied musical cultures was McLaren’s first album where he was not only the conceptualist, composer, producer and art director but also the artist.  Its concept was dance music from around the world.

Only McLaren could interpret this idea as African tribal beats mixed with South American melodies, the traditional Square Dance from Appalachia, Double Dutch competitions in New York City schools and the nascent music found in the streets of New York City played on boom boxes and turntables performed with Break Dancing that came to be called Hip Hop and Rap.

By deliberately combining the mountain music of rural Tennessee with the urban street beats of the “scratch” D.J.’s of New York City in the song “Buffalo Girls,” we see the link between the square dance “calls” and the “rap” of the M.C.’s of New York’s Hip Hop scene.

Duck Rock introduced Hip Hop, Rap, and World Music to a wider audience and inspired several fashion collections for Worlds End and Nostalgia of Mud.  He worked with emerging graffiti artists Richard Hambleton, Dondi White and Keith Haring on the artwork for the record and also for the clothes.  He mixed up the New York street look of athletic wear (hoodies, sweatshirts, high-top sneakers) along with tribal and traditional imagery and style whether African beads and textiles, the peasant skirt and Buffalo Hat (worn most famously in recent years by Pharrell), shearling and ethnic prints taken literally off of old record covers.

Duck Rock was another cry to DIY, just as much as punk, as McLaren declared:

            Two manual decks and a rhythm box is all you need.  Get a bunch of good rhythm records, choose your favorite parts and groove along with the rhythm machine.  Using your hands, scratch the record into the other and keep that rhythm box going.  Now start talking and singing over the record with your own microphone.  Now you’re making your own music out of other people’s records.  That’s what scratching is.

There you have it in black and white.  Join the fight!

—Malcolm McLaren, 1982

For more information: malcolmmclarenestate@icloud.com