“Torn Apart” at the orlando museum of art punches you right in the face, right from the start.
And this is fitting for a show celebrating the print works, fashion, memorabilia and design of punk and new wave music. From start to finish, the exhibit is a visual delight with hundreds of delicious remnants of a bygone era whose influence is still very much felt in some fashion and music circles. From posters and concert promotions to magazines, song book and album covers, tee shirts, buttons, stickers and fashion, this is largely an incredible assembly of what I would call marketing and what fans might call the stuff of a movement, an obsession, a generation.
The only problem with this exhibit is that it is, well, an exhibit.
Here, trapped in the stark off-white walls, quietly and symmetrically mounted, neon green lines reminding us not to get too close, these decidedly ‘fuck you’ materials seem quite out of place. What a throwback to my youth, one when concert posters could be bought at Wal-Mart or Tower Records, to see dozens of crinkled, creased, torn, pin-push-holed music posters. These had been loved, nay, worshiped once upon a time only to land here in their grand-father’s museum out of reach. I wonder how their souls feel.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous as a survey of a historical period of design, music and culture. But punk, oh punk, you wanted us to riot!
You wanted us to rage, to feel, to let it all out. But, this space did not. I can’t help but imagine how the OMA might have been truly infected with the spirit. One simple choice might have been to pound out the Spotify playlist over the sound system instead of bury it in a solitary and unassuming QR code. The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols and maybe add in some Grace Jones and Patti Smith. One cannot experience punk without hearing the raucous cacophony itself. After all, the music WAS the thing.
Looking at the large format reproductions of Sheila Rock’s radically young and free photos resting under the gallery’s namesake I couldn’t help but feel these two kids were trying almost to escape. And sensing the hypocrisy in a strategically placed trigger warning hovered just under a seventies parental advisory notice caught in the background of a delicious black and white band image.
Were these intentional ironies? Is the OMA being cheeky in their self-awareness of the awkwardness of caging punk inside polished wood floors and climate-controlled silence? Maybe so or maybe not, but this is the trouble with the museum, now, isn’t it? Getting here means you’ve made it. Being here means you’ve become some kind of an insider and get exposed to the whole darn world. But punk never would have wanted that, right?
It was always trying to remind us of the beauty of the outside, of the misfit, the un-belonging, the resistor, the naysayer, the trouble maker, the rebel. The art was on the edges, not the center. Perhaps the most punk thing about the whole space is a curatorial reminder that for musicians and fans punk was just the starting point, the stepping stone that freed all that might have been pent-up. It was a start of a movement that led to post-punk, romanticism, prog rock, hardcore and more. It was never one thing and inspired much that followed.
The key is to retain your attitude, not your bondage pants. – oma curatorial
So, would punk have protested this collection of itself or reveled in it? If personified and singularized, maybe punk would know that it was a spark that ushered in new things and had the power to jolt people and spaces into interrogation and thus, the future. Maybe it would have seen OMA as a trojan space to ever-so demurely spark new generations with its irreverence and insistence. Instead of being a let-down maybe punk’s entrée into the museum is simply its next stage, maturing in the rich, cavernous way great scholarship, great poets and great writers do.
Perhaps the museum didn’t ruin punk. Maybe punk’s just all grown up.
“Torn apart: Punk + new wave graphics, fashion & culture 1976 – 86” at the orlando museum of art september 21, 2024 – january 5, 2025. also check out young punks photography by sheila rock.
