Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket
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Title Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket Type The sis URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/12036/ Dat e 2 0 1 7 Citation Cardwell, Thomas (2017) Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London. Cr e a to rs Cardwell, Thomas Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket By Thomas Robert Cardwell Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Supervision Team: Mark Fairnington (Director of Studies) David Cross / James Faure Walker University of the Arts London CCW January 2017 Tom Cardwell, CCW Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket Abstract This thesis aims to conduct a study of battle jackets using painting as a recording and analytical tool. A battle jacket is a customised garment worn in heavy metal subcultures that features decorative patches, band insignia, studs and other embellishments Battle jackets are significant in the expression of subcultural identity for those that wear them, and constitute a global phenomenon dating back at least to the 1970s. The art practice juxtaposes and re-contextualises cultural artefacts in order to explore the narratives and traditions that they are a part of. As such, the work is situated within the genre of contemporary still life and appropriative painting. The paintings presented with the written thesis document a series of jackets and creatively explore the jacket form and related imagery. The study uses a number of interrelated critical perspectives to explore the meaning and significance of the jackets. Intertextual approaches explore the relationship of the jackets to other cultural forms. David Muggleton’s ‘distinctive individuality’ and Sarah Thornton’s ‘subcultural capital’ are used to emphasise the importance of jacket making practices for expressions of personal and corporate subcultural identity. Italo Calvino’s use of postmodern semiotic structures gives a tool for placing battle jacket practice within a shifting network of meanings, whilst Richard Sennett’s ‘material consciousness’ helps to understand the importance of DIY making practices used by fans. The project refers extensively to a series of interviews conducted with battle jacket makers between 2014 and 2016. Recent art historical studies of still life painting have used a materialist critique of historic works to demonstrate the uniqueness of painting as a method of analysis. The context for my practice involves historical references such as seventeenth century Dutch still life painting. The work of contemporary artists who are exploring the themes and imagery of extreme metal music is also reviewed. 2 Tom Cardwell, CCW Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket Contents Chapter 1: Introduction.……………………………………………….Page 4 Chapter 2: Painting as a methodology…………………………….Page 31 Chapter 3: The importance of battle Jackets within metal subcultures……………………………………………………………..Page 60 Chapter 4: ‘Somewhere back in time’, or a speculative history of the battle Jacket……………….………………………...Page 101 Chapter 5: Contextualising images on battle Jackets…………Page 127 Chapter 6: An explanation and analysis of three paintings….Page 183 Chapter 7: Conclusion………………………………………………Page 216 Image List……………………………………………………………..Page 222 Bibliography…………………………………………………………..Page 237 Appendix 1: Watercolour paintings of battle Jackets………....Page 251 Appendix 2: Large paintings………………………………………Page 261 Appendix 3: Painting produced following Viva Voce………....Page 268 Appendix 4: Photographs of metal fans interviewed..……......Page 270 Appendix 5: Interview transcripts………………………………..Page 280 3 Tom Cardwell, CCW Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket Chapter 1: Introduction Portrait of the artist as a young metalhead An animated skeleton squeezes the life from a dove which clutches a mimosa branch. The skull’s eye and ear sockets are covered with metal plates and its jaw is wired shut, in a reference to the injunction to ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’. The figure is dressed in a business suit to identify him as a ghoulish parody of a governmental or corporate figure. In the background, F14 fighter jets strafe his shoulder with gunfire. The skeleton’s name is Vic Rattlehead – the mascot of thrash metal band Megadeth – and he features in this artwork for their 1987–1988 tour by graphic artist Ed Repka. The slogan reads ‘Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying?’ which, together with the image, communicates the band’s concerns with contemporary threats of nuclear war and the corruption of power. Whilst the lyrics and general opinions of the band would seem to oppose these horrors, by an irony common to much heavy metal music the artworks, slogans and lyrics revel in the aggression and destruction, albeit in an exaggerated, pantomime way. This artwork featured on the first back patch I bought as a young metal fan, aged about eleven. I bought it, along with some metal studs and smaller patches, in a tiny, hidden-away shop upstairs from a newsagent’s in Salisbury. After taking this haul home, I spent hours sewing them on to my hitherto very un-cool dark blue denim jacket. I remember being captivated by the crude chiaroscuro of the image, and the use of the dark background to heighten the drama of the theatrical figure. I was also struck by the physical properties of the screenprint by which the picture was reproduced. The rubberised ink had a tactile quality and a distinct smell that still has powerful associations for me, like Proust’s madeleines (the small cakes which famously evoked powerful childhood associations for the writer) transposed to a very different milieu. 4 Tom Cardwell, CCW Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket The rendering of the original painting through computerised pixellation gave it a somewhat harsh, ersatz quality – the graining of the shaded areas replaced any painterly qualities or eidetic trace that the original might have had. I found the image thrillingly grotesque, and whilst I was a very non-threatening middle-class child growing up in an idyllic Hampshire village, I thought that by donning my jacket emblazoned with the exoticness of the American band I might look a bit cooler in the eyes of the older, tougher kids on the school bus. I went on to create several more jackets based on denim or cut-off army shirts. I began to hand-paint designs straight on to the fabric, using acrylic model paints. By the time I was fifteen I had acquired my first black leather jacket, on to which I proudly transcribed a copy of Joolz Denby’s artwork for the post-punk rock band New Model Army’s album The Ghost of Cain. I soon realised the advantages of painting on to leather – the less porous surface did not soak up the paint like fabric did, meaning the paint would flow more easily. The smoothness of leather also allowed much greater refinement of line and detail, although painting on to black brought other challenges. Most colours needed underpainting in white, and it wasn’t so easy to pre-draw designs. One of the things I found so fascinating about Denby’s design was that it was a scheme for the entire jacket, not just an isolated patch. Its strength lay in its simplicity – the pared-down white and red on the black background and the conjunction of image and text. This in part reflected the lyrical concerns of New Model Army, a post-punk rock band with strongly held left-wing views (Biography, 2016). They had sympathies with the ideals of the DDR, and the predominant use of red, black and white in much of their early artwork was not just stylistic. By the time I went to art school I was no longer wearing my customised jackets, and sadly I don’t have any record of them to show today. However, my formative love of 5 Tom Cardwell, CCW Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket Figure 1.1: Artwork for Megadeth’s Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying? by Ed Repka, screen print on patch, 1987. © Capitol Records. Available at photobucket.com Figure 1.2: Artwork for New Model Army’s The Ghost of Cain by Joolz Denby, photograph of hand-painted leather jacket, 1986. Available at newmodelarmy.org 6 Tom Cardwell, CCW Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket metal album artworks and my instinctive practice of re-creating them as jacket paintings and the endless inevitable doodles on school books had left me with an enduring fascination for the symbolism of these images and the way that they could be combined with text to give them new meanings.1 I developed an interest in still life painting, and in particular the ways that objects could be used to communicate more abstract ideas. The poignant interplay between the material and non-material worlds fascinated me and informed a painting practice based around studies of objects and images that act as interfaces for layers of cultural and subcultural meaning. ‘They should represent your life … in bands’ – The contemporary significance of battle Jackets The practice of creating customised jackets displaying collections of band logos probably began in the late 1970s and is now widespread in metal subcultures.2 Particularly prominent in the heavy metal and thrash scenes of the 1980s, battle jackets became an external marker of the serious metal fan or band member. Recently the jackets have risen in popularity once more, with the renaissance of metal styles and bands from this era. The battle jacket (also known as a battle vest, cut-off, patch jacket or kutte) is usually a denim jacket, often with the sleeves removed and worn 1 The practice of doodling might be thought of as an adolescent resistance to the authority of the education system – the pupil who doodles in a lesson is in a sense subversive as they are using their time and educational materials in ways that are considered wasteful in relation to the programme of the lesson.