The Surrealist and the Sex Pistol:
André Masson and Malcolm McLaren
Photos by Man Ray (c. 1930) and Joe Stevens (1976)
I.
When asked shortly before his death: Which living artist do you most admire?
Malcolm McLaren answered:
"When I was 18, I studied for three months under the automatist painter André Masson in France. Every day I would buy him tomatoes, a baguette and a bottle of côtes du rhône, but he never spoke. On my last day he bought me a drink and wished me well. He's dead now, but I remain haunted by him." [1]
I don't know how true that is, but it's an amusing story [2] and forms an interesting connection with an artist whose relation to surrealism is much discussed, but whose influence on punk is - as far as I know - rarely mentioned.
II.
My knowledge of Masson is mostly limited to the period when he worked on the journal founded by Georges Bataille - Acéphale (1936-39).
His cover design for the first issue featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organ should be, has resonated with me ever since I first saw it in the mid-1990s and I'm disappointed that Malcolm didn't ask Jamie or Vivienne to adapt this pagan image on a design for the Sex Pistols.
To identify as an anti-Christ is an important start. But equally important is to declare oneself in opposition to the ideal figure of the Vitruvian Man embodying all that is Good, True, and Beautiful - and to repeat after Bataille: "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être." [3]
Wouldn't that have made a great punk slogan?
I think so.
And I think also that the sacred conspiracy involving Bataille, Masson, Klossowski and others, anticipates McLaren's idea for SEX as a place which might bring together those sovereign individuals who didn't belong to mainstream society or wish to conform to the dictates of fashion, but wanted to violently affirm their singular being above all else.
And so, again, I think it a pity that the dark surrealism of Bataille and Masson - which not only set itself in opposition to all forms of fascism but also all forms of humanism, including André Breton's surrealism - wasn't explored (and exploited) by McLaren; especially as, in Sid Vicious, punk rock had discovered its very own Dionysian superstar [4]; someone who, as Malcolm liked to say, never saw a red light and enacted the primordial powers of instinct and irrationality.
And, like Masson's acéphalic figure, Vicious even had a penchant for carrying a (sacrificial) knife ... [5]
Notes
[1] Amy Fleming, 'Portrait of the artist: Malcolm McLaren, musician', in The Guardian (10 Aug 2009): click here.
This is an interesting short question and answer piece, which also reveals McLaren's favourite film to be David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). However, I don't think the description of McLaren in the title as a musician is one he would recognise. Sadly, McLaren died eight months after the piece was published (on 8 April 2010).
[2] McLaren's biographer, Paul Gorman, tells us that prior to beginning life as a student at Harrow Technical College &
School of Art, Malcolm was "sent by his mother to a summer school in the
south of France" and that this (apparently) involved an internship with André Masson and not just enjoying life on the beach at Cannes.
See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 45.
[3] I would translate this into English as: "Secretly or not, it is necessary to become wholly other, or cease to be." Often the original French phrase tout autres is translated as 'completely different'.
The line is from Bataille's essay 'The Sacred Conspiracy', which can be found in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 179. Masson's Acéphale can also be found in this book, illustrating the essay on p. 180.
[4] See ' Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified' (3 Feb 2024) where I develop this idea: click here.
[5] See 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You: Notes on the Case of Sid and Nancy' (30 Dec 2020): click here.
This post is dedicated to the Danish art historian and curator Marie Arleth Skov, author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023). Her paper at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication (20 March 2024) - 'Berlin Calling: The Dark, Dramatic, and Dazzling Punk Art Praxes of a Divided City' - was inspirational.
