Europunk

Eric de Chassey director of the Academy of France at Rome, with Europunk exhibition proposes a trip into the artistic movements during the seventies which brought through alternative, transversal and out of a tradition languages, a tingle of vitality among countries like United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Netherlands. It starts with the Sex Pistols television debut during 1976 first official show date for the Punk movement through the programme So It Goes for the Granada Television of Manchester -- and finishes with the first passage on BBC of Joy Division during 1979. Introducing the catalogue, the Director points out the lack of attention between the marginality of some visual creativities and the worldwide fame for the music of Punk Groups which have proposed with remarkable originality an artistic performance to break with any concept of fashion, style, tradition. The musical history of Punk Groups has been in the glare all over Europe and United States through literature and Internet. The images divulged by different media, fit in the exhibition projects for the strong visual impact, have been considered as an art somehow different. The Punk music has been able to negotiate the traditional language barriers and spread its message out and the active and open people welcomed the emergent expressions during those years. Villa Medici underlines the Punk merits as a form of art through the objects to be seen and understood, and the Punk culture can be considered a primary form of art interconnecting larger creative forms among visual art, music and performance for its lust to research and for its vitality. The Punk phenomenon has been musically historicized by Jerry Goossens a member of the Hollander punk movement and by Jon Savage who composed the well-known England's Dreaming: both offer their contribute to the Europunk catalogue.