Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation

by David Ensminger

Visual The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation is a vibrant, in-depth, and visually appealing history of punk, which reveals punk concert flyers as urban folk art. David Ensminger exposes the movement's deeply participatory street art, including flyers, stencils, and graffiti. This discovery leads him to an examination of the often-overlooked presence of African Americans, Latinos, women, and gays and lesbians who have widely impacted the worldviews and music of this subculture. Then Ensminger, the former editor of fanzine Left of the Dial , looks at how mainstream and punk media shape the public's outlook on the music's history and significance. Often derided as litter or a nuisance, punk posters have been called instant art, Xerox art, or DIY street art. For marginalized communities, they carve out spaces for resistance. Made by hand in a vernacular tradition, this art highlights deep-seated tendencies among musicians and fans. Instead of presenting punk as a predominately middle-class, white-male phenomenon, the book describes a convergence culture that mixes people, gender, and sexualities. This detailed account reveals how members conceptualize their attitudes, express their aesthetics, and talk to each other about complicated issues. Ensminger incorporates an important array of scholarship, ranging from sociology and feminism to musicology and folklore, in an accessible style. Grounded in fieldwork, Visual Vitriol includes over a dozen interviews completed over the last several years with some of the most recognized and important members of groups such as Minor Threat, The Minutemen, The Dils, Chelsea, Membranes, 999, Youth Brigade, Black Flag, Pere Ubu, the Descendents, the Buzzcocks, and others.

Genres: Art, Music

359 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

So: I think this is a fantastic text on cultures, but not a great text about art. After the first three chapters, the examination turns from physical art to visual culture. After a while, it barely becomes an analysis of visual culture and becomes a cultural exploration with interspersed with mentions of visual culture. The "and" of the title means here that this is a survey of both, not one with the other, and that's a bit unfortunate, because I found it exciting as a prospect.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art.

[Frederic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lot's of information here, but the writing really turned me off. The author is clearly well connected, talked to lots of key people, has lots of stories, but they don't really come together to much more and the dropping in of cultural studies theory adds little to nothing (IMO). If you like Dick Hebdige, if you like academic cultural studies, you might like this more than I did. But it does have a bunch of classic posters...

[Mills College Library]

751.73 E599 2011

[Aaron the Pink Donut · Rating 3 out of 5]

not the best out there via the visual materials but the text is very good.