The MOCAtv web series "The Art of Punk" we told you about is underway and the first installment on Black Flag and Raymond Pettibon is up. Pettibon's album art and logo were key bits of iconography for his brother Greg Ginn's hardcore act in the '80s. Pettibon's often captioned, often disturbing hand-drawn black and white images undercut the return to a golden age that the Reagan years promised mainstream America. Pettibon's work also turned up on Minutemen albums, and later Sonic Youth's major label record Goo. As great and lasting as Pettibon's work (he also named the band, we learn) has been on American punks, his Black Flag logo remains a masterpiece of underground artwork, expressing an attitude in a visual code that's both rebellious, mysterious, and incredibly powerful. The video features Keith Morris, Henry Rollins, and Flea as well as Pettibon himself talking about the Black Flag band name, logo, flyers, and album art.
The Middle Mind Project, Gus Gavino's independent motion picture studio based in Chicago's Logan Square, takes an unusual approach to documenting artists, experimenting with the narrative format, and producing something contemporary and original. Today, we're debuting MMP's video on Debbie Carlos.
See more of the Middle Mind Project online in its archives Tumblr.
See more of Carlos's work online at debbiecarlos.com
TFBTDC from Middle Mind Project on Vimeo.
In 2010 Chicago singer Willis Earl Beal published an autobiographical novella in the form of a few issues of a zine. For his contribution to Nowness' "Shorts on Sundays" series, he adapted elements of that original zine into the short film, "Principles of a Protagonist." In the six-and-a-half minute film using the same hand-drawn line aesthetic as his Acousmatic Sorcery album cover, Beal outlines the character traits that every protagonist requires. One of those principles, he explains, is the reason for his "Nobody" T-shirt and tattoo.
The Hill-Side and Gitman Bros. Vintage continue a healthy collab with these summer shirts, a special collection for the Hill-Side made by Gitman. The Hill-Side collection uses seven floral-printed fabrics (four from Japan, three from the States) in short-sleeve button-down summer shirts.
The video is something special, too. It features menswear blogger James WIlson of Secret Forts trying on (or peeling off) all seven shirts in photos taken with disposable cameras.
The Hill-Side x Gitman Bros. Vintage summer shirts are available at hickorees.com and online menswear retailers such as shoppenelopes.com and unionmadegoods.com or needsupply.com
The Hill-Side + Gitman Vintage Summer Shirts from The Hill-Side on Vimeo.
Bryan Ray Turcotte, founder of Kill Your Idols which published the authoritative volume on punk flyers, Fucked Up + Photocopied, has collaborated with Los Angeles MOCA for a new web series called "The Art of Punk." The episodes feature interviews with Raymond Pettibon, who created the bars logo and album cover art for his brother Greg Ginn's band Black Flag, as well as punk luminaries Flea, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, Keith Morris, and more.
The three-part series begins with Black Flag on June 11, but in the meantime check out the trailer below to see Flea on the toilet talking about art and action coming together, as well as details about the L.A. premiere at MOCA this Thursday, June 6.
