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Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976–1986

Cranbrook Art Museum
, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
June 16–October 7, 2018

Museum of Arts and Design, New York
April 9–August 18, 2019

Brussels Design Museum, Belgium
November 20, 2019–August 30, 2020

Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976-1986 (2018), was the first major museum exhibition to consider the influence of this musical genre on graphic design—from its anarchic disregard of design and typographic principles of modernism to the parallel emergence of "de-skilling" in the thousands of amateur garage bands. Arranged thematically, the project considers visual strategies in the graphic language of punk, including its use of parody and pastiche in acts of cultural appropriation; the influence of comics, horror, and science fiction genres; a revival of early twentieth-century techniques of collage and montage; the do-it-yourself ethos of flyers and zines; the ascent of new wave graphics and experimental typography of the 1980s; and the influence of agit-prop graphics on an increasingly socially-conscious punk addressing issues such as anti-racism and gay liberation. Curatorial assistance from Steffi Duarte. 

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