Friday, March 3, 2023

One Thing Leads to Another

Recently, when browsing on Boo-Hooray, an online underground movement archive, to my surprise, I noticed that they featured my art created in 1979 in their "Record Dreams" catalogue.

I created that art on my kitchen table as the LP cover for the then-unknown Croatian punk band Dirty Theater (Prljavo kazaliste). I came up with the idea for this cover partly because the band was very young and didn't know exactly how to play. They wanted to sound like The Rolling Stones, but they sounded punk because of their lack of skills. Also, referencing The Rolling Stone's song "Some Girls", Dirty Theater had a song named "Some Boys". Because of all these elements, I created this image. The record became an instant hit in Yugoslavia. 

After that, I did many other things. I moved to the US and almost forgot about that project. 

Suddenly, in 2012, the Hayward Gallery in London created "Someday All the Adults Will Die": Punk Graphics 1971—1984 show.
Among others, they exhibited my cover.

In the review of their show, The Huffington Post featured my art with the caption "One of the revolutionary graphics on show"

Soon after that, Rizzoli published the book "Punk: An Aesthetic", in which they featured Dirty Theater's LP. I was extremely pleased because Dirty Theater's LP was featured on a spread with one of my favourite records, "No Exist" by The Clash.

In 2018, Jens Muller and Julius Wiedemann featured the cover art in a spread about my work in their monumental 2-volume book "The History of Graphic Design" published by Taschen.

Then, the cherry on the cake, in 2023, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) included that cover in their collection. 

Not bad for a 2-day work on a kitchen table.

 

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