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At dawn on the Summer Solstice of 1914 (the beginning of World War I) Dr. George Watson MacGregor-Reid was head of the Druid Order. Although he had previously stood for Parliament as one of the first Labour Party candidates, he was also an advanced Magickian. It is frequently cited that the Sect of the Druids were responsible for conducting human-sacrifices, but this fact pales into insignificance when in the same year a huge, mad, ritualistic blood sacrifice swept Europe. Dr. MacGregor-Reid, the `Anointed Chosen Chief`, sternly defended the tradition of a Druidic ceremonial rite at Stonehenge on Midsummer morning, and declined all requests by the authorities to desist in carrying out the ancient ceremony. He was then forcibly ejected from the sacred site (as have many others since). It can be clearly seen from the photo provided that Dr. MacGregor-Reid wore a sigil of a Swastika whilst at Stonehenge (due to it`s solar aspects and in no way connected to it`s later Occult use as adopted by the Nazis). Dr. MacGregor-Reid is in fact the great-uncle of anarchist artist Jamie Reid. Jamie Reid, punk plagiarist and arch anarchist artist designed the popular punk band The Sex Pistols graphics and produced the original _Anarchy in the U.K._ artwork.  In his autobiography _UP THEY RISE: The Incomplete Works Of Jamie Reid_ his poignant picture of Parliamentary power incorporates potent imagery of Swastikas instead of a clock-face on Albert Tower. (This artwork has also appeared on the back-cover of _VAGUE_ #21 and the front-cover of Heartbreak Hotel #4). Perhaps, this is an unintentional subconsciously inherited aspect of his ancestor`s past coming back to haunt him as prophecy?

The challenge to the modern artist is not to create, but to use what has already been created. This would seem to be a reduction or a narrowing of the scope of modern art, but it isn't. To find a way of using what has already been created -- and there is a lot of all kinds of things that have been and continue to be created by this wasteful society -- to say something that is really new, you have to widen your field of awareness to the point that you can see what is NOT being done, and what COULD BE done, with these creations. This clearly isn't easy. What makes Jamie Reid a great artist is that he sees what could be done, but isn't being done, with both the images and the productive forces that made these images possible. Lesser artists see the aesthetic usefulness of appropriating mass-produced images and the techniques of juxtaposition and collage, or they see that the very proliferation of images in contemporary society says something about this society's fundamental possibilities and limits, but they don't bring these two visions together into a single coherent perspective in the way that Jamie Reid does. By consistently making emotionally compelling and socially relevant art out of such unlikely and potentially hackneyed things as collages of appropriated images, Jamie Reid dares his viewers to believe that constructing an architecture of the impossible is not only possible, but necessary as well.

• Situationism

 

• Croyden Art College
• Co-founded Suburban Press
• Druids
• Anarchy
• Shamanarchy
• Malcolm McLaren
• Reid now does artwork with the excellent Afro-Celt Sound System
• _Lipstick Traces_   by Greil Marcus

pOrtal:
Jamie Reid

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