Bonhams
Lot 187
Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McLaren: An 'Anarchist Punk Gang' Seditionaries Muslin Shirtc.1979/80,in white muslin, front with black, green and red printed design, Malcolm McLaren Vivienne Westwood Seditionaries Personal Collection label stitched within the fabric lower right (now moved due to stitching coming away), with D-ring to each shoulder, and D-ring and dog-clip to each long sleeve, accompanied by a letter of provenanceFootnotes:ProvenanceOffered by the vendor who purchased it at the time of creation.'Anarchist Punk Gang', or as it is also known 'The One Per Centers', is one of the final, and darkest, designs by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood to be introduced at Seditionaries. In 1979 McLaren regularly spent time away from London in Paris and later said that while he approved the design, Westwood was principally responsible for the genesis and realisation. The bleakness of the artwork not only reflects the beleaguered state of affairs experienced by the pair and their coterie but also acts as a memoriam for Sex Pistols bass-player Sid Vicious, who had died in February 1979 from a heroin overdose. The Pistols, around whom McLaren and Westwood's design work revolved from 1976, split up at the beginning of 1978 and in October that year, Vicious had been arrested in New York for the murder of his partner Nancy Spungen. His death four months later coincided with the commencement of an extremely acrimonious court case brought against Pistols manager McLaren by the surviving members of the group with the backing of Richard Branson's record company Virgin Records. Since Punk had gone overground, Seditionaries was by this time regularly closed as a result of it being vandalised and graffiti-ed by passing punks and football hooligans, while members of the staff pilfered stock to fund their drug habits. The appropriately death-cult design takes its text and imagery from Hell's Angels biker gangs, and features a skull at the centre surrounded by the phrase 'As You Were I Was As I Am You Will Be.' This derives from a graffiti scrawl attributed to Heinrich Himmler the gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson included as a chapter heading in his 1966 book Hell's Angels. The skull is positioned between two banners, with all text in so-called 'blackmail' lettering as if cut out of newspaper headlines, just as in the Sex Pistols band logo, 3 and both feature the encircled capital 'A' anarchy sign which first appeared as a radical political symbol in the 1860s as a protest design of the International Workingmen's' Association of Spain. One flagpole is emblazoned '1%' above the statement 'Anarchist Punk Gang'; in contrast, the other carries a quote from a recording of Vicious in an interview circulated after his death: '99% is shit.' This appears above the slogan: 'Create hell and get away with it.' Underneath the red, green and black vector bearing the skull is the statement: 'The barrier between friend and foe is thin 'At certain times of day there are only us.' This is from a quote by a biker in Raymond C. Morgan's book Angels Do Not Forget, which was published in the summer of 1979. The final statement in the design announces: 'We're the 1% who don't fit and don't care.' As well as looping back to Vicious's original statement, this quotes from the chorus of the Pistols' anthem Pretty Vacant, which ends with Johnny Rotten declaring: 'And we don't care.' Note: the opposing texts '1%' and '99% is shit' are absent from this shirt due to the shoulder insets of the muslin design.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
