Sex Pistols Graphic Designer Jamie Reid Dies at 76, Rolling Stones Statues Installed in England, and More: Morning Links for August 10, 2023

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The Headlines

ARTIST JAMIE REID, who created the art for key Sex Pistols records and posters in the 1970s, shaping the visual language of the nascent punk movement, died on Tuesday at the age of 76, the Los Angeles Times reports. For the group’s single “God Save the Queen,” Reid used a photo of Queen Elizabeth,covering her eyes and mouth with text. That image sparked tremendous controversy. Walking down the street with it emblazoned on his shirt, the artist was attacked by a gang and his leg was broken, according to BBC News. In the ensuing decades, Reid remained committed to anti-establishment art and politics, and collaborated with Pussy Riot and Shepard Fairey. In a statement, his dealer, John Marchant, termed him an “artist, iconoclast, anarchist, punk, hippie, rebel, and romantic,” the Guardian writes.

ITALIAN DISPATCH. Graffiti artists in Milan tagged the stone entrance to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a storied shopping arcade, on Monday night, Reuters reports. The nation’s deputy prime minister said that the vandals should be “taught a lesson they will never forget.” A bill is moving through the Italian legislature that would impose fines of €10,000 (about $11,000) or more against anyone who damages or destroys a “cultural asset,” Euronews reports. The proposal could be used to prosecute climate activists who have been targeting historic artworks. Italy’s minister of culture expects it to pass. Meanwhile, CNN reports, the chief of the Colosseum in Rome said that concerts should be banned at the Circus Maximus since they could damage the site. Huge crowds attended a Travis Scott concert at the former chariot-racing grounds in the capital on Monday (wild night in Italy); their jumping led to reports of an earthquake.

The Digest

Amos Badertscher, who photographed underground figures like sex workers and drag queens in Baltimore beginning in the 1960s, died on July 24 at 86. He had solo shows at places like the Schwules Museum in Berlin in 2020 and the Duke University Museum of Art in 1995. [The New York Times]

The estate of pioneering Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner will now be repped in Asia by the Pace Gallery. (Lisson, Marian Goodman Gallery, Mai 36, and Regen Projects will continue to represent the artist.) A show of Weiner’s work opens at the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul later this month. [ARTnews]

The board of the Detroit Institute of Arts elected its first new chair in more than two decades: Lane Coleman, the founder and CEO of a logistics company called Strike Group LLC. Coleman succeeds Gene Gargaro, who is retiring from the leadership post. [Crain’s Detroit Business]

Dartford, England, the hometown of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, has installed public sculptures of those Rolling Stones as they appeared in the 1980s. Jagger struts and Richards jams on his guitar in the bronzes, which are the work of artist Amy Goodman. [The Guardian]

At the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, artist Jaq Grantford’s bracingly realistic portrait of actor and broadcaster Noni Hazlehurst won the people’s choice award in the 2023 Archibald Prize competition. It comes with AU$5,000, about US$3,300. [The Guardian]

Flying to Seoul for Frieze in a couple weeks? Art exhibitions will be on view at the metropolis’s two main airports, Incheon International Airport and Gimpo International Airport. [South China Morning Post]

ARTISTS SPACE. The inquisitive, incisive Gala Porras-Kim, who has a show up at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, and the late Andy Warhol superstar Brigid Berlin, now the focus of a Vito Schnabel Gallery exhibition in New York, got the close-up in the Times of London.

The Kicker

YOU CAN’T SPELL GUBERNATORIAL WITHOUT A, R, T. One of America’s finest painters, Lois Dodd, 96, first visited Maine in the summer of 1951, coming up from New York. She bought a place with friends in 1954, and has spent time in the state ever since. On July 31, Maine’s governor, Janet T. Mills, honored Dodd with an official proclamation, which states that the artist’s “works highlight the beauty and way of life here in Maine” and that “we are grateful she has made Maine her summer home for so many decades.” It concludes: “I encourage all Maine people to view her incredible works and recognize her contributions to Maine and the nation’s art scene.” That is good advice. Congratulations, Lois Dodd!