God Save the Ready Made

The swastika eyeballs design was first put forward for the “God Save The Queen” seven inch single and subsequently banned for obvious reasons - ‘there were a lot of swastikas used in early punk, maybe rather indiscriminately. I think the joke was overplayed, not so much about the Queen but her as a representative of the British establishment’ (Reid, Savage, 1987). The safety pin through the Queen’s lip instantly demotes her to being nothing less than a working class punk. This is incredibly effective, but done very simply. “When Jamie Reid took a Cecil Beaton silver jubilee portrait of the Queen and superimposed a safety pin through her bottom lip, he created one of the most iconic pop cultural images of the late 20th century; a simple visual statement that in terms of its universal familiarity, stands alongside Andy Warhol’s soup can and the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album cover”. (Nude magazine, Issue 4, 2004). I think the contrast of the rough, sketchy handwriting with the formal, upperclass Beaton photo is successful because again it removes the Queen from her royal stature. This is also reflected in the fact that the Sex Pistols feel they have the right to target the Queen in the song as if she’s just another individual who doesn’t deserve any more respect than the next person. This version of the poster is very reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made ‘Mona Lisa’ in which Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee on a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting.