We went to Dangerous Curve on Saturday for the Bruce Licher retrospective. This is a fantastic show of a great designer. So it got me thinking, you see, because Licher established a reputation in design and yet – as this show displays – is so much an artist.
I thought of him, there surrounded by his ouvre, and his most street-cred accomplishment – a founder of the band Savage Republic (as important an industrial band as the West Coast has produced) — and I thought of another designer – Shepard Fairey – whose purpose in life has been to simulate street credibility by punk placement of his posters. Bruce Licher’s survey show was a small, respectful, beautiful show of the letterpress masterpieces of this artistic force of nature who has more punk and street in his pinkie than all the media celebutantes drizzling their cartoon bullshit nothings onto city walls in the desperate attempt to market themselves into a cool corporate niche will ever have.
I didn’t talk to Bruce about these notions, was just happy to shake his hand, chat for a while with his wife Karen, an artist in her own right, and buy one of the few remaining prints from his once-endless trove. I wore a Savage Republic teeshirt in the 80s until the thing was 7 threads held together by the shirt tag and the crusty silkscreen ink remnants, so I didn’t yearn for an extended conversation, it had all been said, in letterpress and noise a lifetime ago and just yesterday.