1. HR2690E - transmitted Nov 2, 2006 HR2700E
BUSINESS & CULTURE
60 YEARS OF HEROES
SHAPE SHIFTER:
Moore, here with
a plaster mold for
John Lydon his Family Group,
changed public
perceptions of
L
sculpture
ondoners watching a local early-
As the frontman of definitive British punk evening TV chat show dropped their forks. It
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band the Sex Pistols, he inspired a new was 1976 and they had expected the usual,
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easily digestible broadcast. Instead, they were
generation—and terrified an old one served up musical revolution with their beans on
toast. “They are punk rockers. The new craze, they
tell me,” announced veteran presenter Bill Grundy
of his guests, the Sex Pistols. Grundy couldn’t hide
his contempt, goading the band to increasingly
expletive-strewn responses. Viewers were witnessing
a clash of generations, but the Pistols flipped a bird
not only at their conservative elders but at
mainstream rock and its enduring hippie influences.
As the Pistols’ lead singer, John Lydon—a.k.a.
Johnny Rotten—wore the very heart of punk on his
torn sleeve. He meant it then. He still does. Mid-’70s
Britain was strike-bound and divided, and happy Henry Moore
songs about love and sunshine seemed hopelessly out
of tune with the times. The country needed punk, and
it couldn’t have happened without Lydon. He had the Reclining figures,
attitude and the look, and he was also articulate. His
lyrics, delivered with a snarl, were social commen- abstract forms, bronzes
taries, often witty, often nasty. It made him as and stone—whatever the
threatening to some as he was inspiring to others.
Always the outsider, Lydon was born to Irish par-
shape or the medium, his
ents in a north London slum, surviving spinal menin- sculptures pull in the
gitis as a 7-year-old—which left his memory wiped—
and then enduring a strict Catholic schooling. In
crowds
August 1975, now a scrawny youth with green locks, BY ANTHONY CARO
KARSH OF OTTOWA—CAMERA PRESS
he was spotted on the King’s Road and asked to audi-
H
tion for pop impresario Malcolm McLaren’s band.
Lydon became Rotten, the TV clash ensured enry moore put modern sculpture on the map. Moore’s work is never cold. Whether figurative or abstract,
notoriety and terrified town councils banned the Everybody has heard of him; a first in our field. But it always shows warm human feeling. His bronzes seem to echo
Pistols from performing. By the summer of 1977, they it’s not just about fame—he changed public the landscape, and he placed them superbly. The smooth
had taken on their head of state. Their alternative an- perceptions of art. organic surfaces—and in particular the holes in them—made his
them, God Save the Queen—with its reference to “her In the 1930s his sculptures were highly original carvings, works easily recognizable as his own. Natural forms gave him
fascist regime” and “no future” refrain—was released mostly in stone. They were a radical break from what had gone freedom of expression.
as the country celebrated the 25th anniversary of the before; he had learned from pre-Columbian carvings the Despite his burgeoning fame—his work was exhibited all
Queen’s reign. “We had declared war on the entire lessons of distortion in order to achieve simplicity and mass. over the world—he remained down-to-earth and
country—without meaning to,” said Lydon. Although he was in touch with the world of avant-garde Paris unpretentious. A retrospective show of his sculpture in New
Six months later it was all over: the Pistols had and his work sometimes has a surrealist nuance, he always paid Zealand as early as 1956 was seen by tens of thousands of
split up in rancor and punk was beginning to be close attention to the art of the past, whether in the Western Aucklanders; it was a wake-up call. Initial shock was followed
adopted by the mainstream. “It became acceptable tradition or from primitive cultures. by acceptance and affection.
and absorbed back into the system,” said Lydon. He In the 1950s I was working as his studio assistant and he His pieces in important sites in European and American
instantly rejected his insider status by forming a had turned to modeling for casting in bronze. Starting from cities accustomed the general public to nonrealistic sculpture
new band, Public Image Ltd, whose postpunk notebook drawings, he often worked in plaster on a tiny scale, in urban settings. Moore’s breaking of the barriers around the
experimentation with dub reggae and electronica incorporating pebbles or bones into his maquettes. When he art of sculpture granted to younger sculptors the confidence to
was massively influential and produced eight albums was modeling in wax he cut the sheets like a tailor, bending experiment. His vision is one of the factors that has led to
over 14 years. These days Lydon, perhaps inspired by them and dipping parts into boiling water to soften them. sculpture’s primacy among the visual arts of our time.
his early encounter with Grundy, is a frequent TV Enlarged to life size or over, these works became the Family
presence, his gift for profanity undimmed by the Group, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, the Sir Anthony Caro is among the world’s most influential living
passing years. —By Hugh Porter King and Queen and the well-known reclining figures. sculptors; his work has been the subject of many major exhibitions
ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY ANITA KUNZ
TIME, NOVEMBER 13, 2006 TIME, NOVEMBER 13, 2006