I meant to put up something about this exhibit -- which I first cited here -- a little while back, but certain recent events basically turned my life upside down and I’m only now trying to regain my footing. In any case, if your tastes run even slightly parallel to mine, you really need to get your ass down to the Stephen Kasher Gallery at 521 West 23rd street (just a few steps to the west of Sebastian Junger’s Half-King bar) to check out Rude & Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-1982 . It’s only up for the rest of this week – again, I meant to post this review earlier – but it’s completely awesome, albeit in sort of a heartbreaking way.
I’ve always been an appreciator/collector of rock ephemera, be they t-shirts, photographs, badges, posters or whatever. Walking into this show was, in a way, like finding pictures from my family album hung up on a museum wall. I don’t mean to suggest that the members of the Ramones, the Circle Jerks or XTC (however much I love them) are like my family members, but some of the very artwork currently hanging on this gallery’s walls (and fetching ludicrously high prices in their accompanying guide) has adorned my own walls for decades. It almost felt like walking into my dorm room in Huffman Hall at Denison University circa 1985.
Sharing the Kasher Gallery space with Rude & Reckless is the truly amazing photography of Laura Levine (whose work I’ve highlighted here before). Among iconic portraits of hers of Flaming Pablum favorites like The Misfits, Bad Brains, The Clash and more (including a cool shot of Johnny Feedback from NYC’s own KRAUT), there’s a cool shot of the Violent Femmes snapped on the same pointed, downtown corner where she shot that DNA photo I waxed rhapsodic about back on this quiz. For fans of punk, post-punk and the vanishing cool of New York City (often captured together in a single photograph), this is a truly awesome collection.
Both of these shows are so goddamn cool and so worth checking out, so get moving.
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