Jamie Reid | Pretty Vacant, preliminary layout drawing for back sleeve and poster

Jamie Reid

Pretty Vacant, preliminary layout drawing for back sleeve and poster

black felt tip on paper (295 x 210mm.), framed

ORIGINAL PRELIMINARY ARTWORK FOR THE WIDELY REPRODUCED COVER FOR PRETTY VACANT. The bus to nowhere, and its twin destined for boredom, is one of the great punk images. It was not, however, originally created for the Sex Pistols. Reid's cover for 'Pretty Vacant' reworks earlier graphics that he had made for his situationist Suburban Press. The image of the ‘Nowhere’ and ‘Boredom’ buses was then produced in 1973 for the pamphlet ‘Space Travel, an unofficial guide for San Francisco commuters’ produced by the American Situationist group Point-Blank! That stated ‘We are all going nowhere. No matter where we travel…’ – evidence of the rich cross-fertilisation of ideas from which the visual identity of the Sex Pistols was formed.