Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm McLaren was a visionary of pop culture and a pop cultural icon for over thirty years.  An artist in the most post-modern sense of the word, time and time again, he was at the forefront.  He is probably best recognized for his work in melding fashion with music: “the look of music and the sound of fashion”.

He started in the early 1970s when he opened his legendary shop on the King’s Road in London with his then partner, Vivienne Westwood, creating fashion that would dress the Punk Generation and inspire legions of fashion designers.  Alongside the fashion, McLaren founded, managed and art directed the iconic band, the Sex Pistols and went on to work with such artists as Boy George, Adam Ant and Bow Wow Wow, before becoming a recording artist in his own right.  His film of the Sex Pistols, THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE is a Punk classic today.  McLaren’s solo albums DUCK ROCK (1981), FANS (1984), WALTZ DARLING (1989) and PARIS (1993) were major breakthroughs of musical genres: Hip Hop, Opera & R&B, lounge music, etc.  In 2004, Quentin Tarantino chose McLaren’s track, “About Her” for his film, KILL BILL2.

In 1985 McLaren went to Hollywood where he worked as a development executive for Columbia Pictures and Steven Spielberg.  In 1999, he ran for Mayor of London, gaining 10% of the popular vote. 

In 2003, McLaren discovered yet another new musical genre, the first of the 21st century: Micromusic, or Chip Music. 

In 2006, FAST FOOD NATION, a film which McLaren conceived and co-produced débuted at the Cannes Film festival main competition.  Based on the best-selling book by Eric Schlosser, and directed by Richard Linklater it was released in Fall 2006. 

McLaren’s “radio films” which he scripted and presented for the BBC garnered critical acclaim and 2 Sony Gold (“Radio Oscars”) awards: “Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of London” (Best Music Special) in 2007 and “Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of Los Angeles” (Best Feature) in 2008.  He featured in a 3-hour reality-documentary program called The Baron on ITV-1 in Spring 2008 to much acclaim and has also played Big Brother in the revamped version of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK: Celebrity Hijack.

Finally, returning to his roots as an artist, in June 2008 at Art Basel 39, McLaren premiered SHALLOW 1-21, a series of twenty-one “Musical Paintings”—short films set around music that he composed.  SHALLOW 1-21 was included in a special exhibition as part of Art Basel Projects, a new section curated by the Art Basel committee at the Art Basel 39 fair in Basel, Switzerland.  Thereafter, SHALLOW was shown by Creative Time (New York’s leading public arts organization) in Times Square Summer 2008, the Royal Academy of Arts London Winter 2008-2009, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia Winter 2009-2010.  In early 2010, McLaren finished a new set of projections entitled, PARIS, CAPITAL OF THE XXIST CENTURY which has had screenings at the Baltic (2009), the Swiss Institute (2010), Art Basel (2013) and the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, UK (2015). 

Until his death in 2010, he continued to write a regular “Diary” column for the weekend edition of the Financial Times and was developing a stage musical about fashion which he conceived.