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