LES CRIMES DE L'AMOUR
NANCY SPUNGEN as SEX MURDER
DRAWING, BLOOD, on PAPER
APPROX.19" X 23" © 2006

Click For Musical Accompaniment

 

This series began late last May when I had a dream that Nancy was still alive and living in the rural American Southwest with other former members of the late 1970's American punk rock scene. Why I was there I still don't know and it was a very out of place dream to have had at the time for me, but the Sex Pistols have been one of my favourite groups since early 1996 and that dream played a role in reinvigorating that interest that has waned in the years since.

The entire ethos, history and scene of that time period in the late 70's of the Sex Pistols, Sex/Seditionaries, like nouveau Dada of anti-fashion and anti-music being the root of what today is ironically now in vogue, is one which I've always found incredibly exciting and one which sadly I cannot say much similar exists today at that same level of collective creative rebellion, at least in the sense that I've always envisioned it to be.

Likewise with Nancy and Sid in terms of that level of that abysmal chaos, decadence and "no future" excitement which history has painted them post-mortem, even if the reality being much bleaker, self inflicted and hopeless. The album "Nevermind The Reunion Here's Sid Vicious" (also released as "Sid Dead Live") is likewise one of the most powerful and bleakest albums I've ever heard. But the reality is that history is very fond of Love/Tragedy partners-in-crime no matter how much they're loathed during their present lives because it's always the legend which is more exciting and this series is a depiction of that legend. This truism is in no small part one reason that Shakespeare is so romantically esteemed. There have been examples of this but Sid and Nancy is however the one I've always held a fascination with. I don't actually believe that Sid murdered Nancy but she was murdered regardless of who the actual murderer may have been and it was that death and Sid's which followed that signaled the end of that era.

According to Jon Savage and Sex Pistols lore, to pay for legal fees in the pending murder trial Malcolm McLaren had arranged for Steve Jones to play guitar on a would be new Sid Vicious album. The songs were to be a continuation of the string of Rock 'n' Roll 50's covers and other industry standard. Allegedly one of those covers was slated to the classic 'Mack the Knife', which in the context of Sid in vocals whilst on trial for murder is a scathing irony in itself given that the very is about none other than a murderer. Several hidden allusions to Nancy are also subtly hidden within Sid's portrait.

Idealization and glamourous rebellion often inserted into their story notwithstanding, their legend is what drawn and painted here, that era and end thereof.

 

 

 

A few "coincidental" parallels between Nancy and myself in the past year:

Visiting Nancy was something I had long wanted to do. A month after beginning her portrait I by chance had to run an errand to upper Philadelphia, which happened to be not four miles away from her grave, while drawing her post-mortem.

The following September I moved to New York City with the first webdesign job I took was on 23rd Street, the very street and seven avenues east of the Hotel Chelsea where she was murdered.

After petitioning several people who are fluent in Hebrew in regard to what the script on her grave reads, I was brought a printout of the translation on the morning on October 12, the anniversary of her death.

And lastly, after moving in with my fiance in Brooklyn, the tiling of her bathroom floor is in the exact style of the tiling of the bathroom where Nancy died.

 

 

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