God Save the Queen

Jamie Reid made this poster in 1977, for the album cover of the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols were a British Punk Rock band. Jamie Reid is British artist who mainly uses, cut up letters from newspaper headlines that resembled from a ransom note, he’s one of the artist who defined the punk rock image.

This album cover is based on a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II by photographer Cecil Beaton. It’s a very iconic image as it defaces the Queen’s face with this cut out letters from newspapers, which covers the mouth and the eyes of the Queen in the photograph. At the time this was very shocking and controversial, as nobody would have thought to deface the Queen’s face, the content of the song was also as controversial, which meant that the BBC and Independent Broadcasting Agency had refused to play the song by the Sex Pistols. I think the purpose for defacing the Queen’s face was to show how the punk era, was very unique, stubborn and uncontrollable. Almost like the music genre, and the teenagers who may have been rebelliously following the punk culture. The use of a cut out letters from newspapers being spelt out in a famous anthem ‘God save the Queen’ which is normally sang by the British Commonwealths was used to defaced the Queen, although it wasn’t intentioned to shock and revolt against the Queen or Britain, it was actually said to praise and sympathised with the British people, mainly aimed at the British working class.  I think the media used was a British flag with a photograph of the Queen, with the newspaper letter cut outs collaged into the picture of the Queen. Then it was captured on photograph from a birds eye view, I can guess this was the process as there’s still folds and shadows seen on the flag.

I think this piece has historical links to the punk culture during the late 70s and early 80s, during which there were many people against the Government and poverty and unemployment were at an increase, especially with the working classes of Britain. The piece emphasises on the rebellious side of punk and how openly they expressed their opinions on the World around the time.