The nasty, nasty punk aesthetic gets an incongruously
attractive presentation in Russ Bestley and Alex Ogg’s new book The Art of Punk. The writers, given to
waxing academic about a bunch of righteous screaming and guitar punishing, do
their best work as interviewers of such scene-defining visual artists as Mick
Farren of The Deviants, John Holmstrom of Punk
magazine, Ramones crony Arturo Vega, and Jamie Reed, whose work for The Sex
Pistols solidified the look of punk like no other. Bestley and Ogg are also ace
image compilers, largely striding past the most well known album covers,
flyers, ’zines, and posters to present a richer picture of the punk era from
those primordial days when the MC5 first crawled out of the muck to the more
recent days of Germ Attak and The Gaggers. While our faves The Clash, The
Damned, The Ramones, etc. are all represented, The Art of Punk most fascinates when flying internationally to show
how punk imagery manifested in Australia and New Zealand, where striking line
drawings were prominent, and Germany, where Nazi symbolism was still
disturbingly in play. Bestley and Ogg certainly don’t shy from the most
offensive images punk had to offer, but for better or worse, that stuff is a
very real part of the genre’s long history of rankling the masses. The Art of Punk’s inclusiveness makes it
as essential a representation of the genre’s look as Leave Home or Another Music
in a Different Kitchen represent its sound.
