Filming The Punk Painter of the Art World

Online arts and culture magazine, NOWNESS, is featuring a stunning film, ‘Wot No Bike’, edited by Claire McGonigal and directed by Baillie Walsh. It follows the subject of the recent ICA Show, former Clash bassist Paul Simonon, on how he’s swapping the guitar for the paintbrush. Below is the film and accompanying text.

Few musical movements have had a look as memorable as punk. For the Sex Pistols it was Vivienne Westwood, wife of their manager, who masterminded the visual side; for the Clash it was their charismatic, art student bass player, Paul Simonon. His love of leathers, military gear and stenciled slogans gave the Clash a political edge: they weren’t just a band – they were guerrillas.

The photograph of Simonon smashing his bass into the stage on the cover of their 1979 album London Calling is one of the most potent in music history. Today the shattered instrument sits in a glass case in the west London studio where the 59-year-old devotes his time to his first love: painting. Along one wall an enviable collection of vinyl is the only other nod to his musical side; meanwhile canvases large and small, finished and pending, are propped on all three floors of the mews house. Keeping things toasty is a little Aga.

“As you get older you learn to control your temper, although I have punched paintings across the room”

Un-punk the cast-iron cooker may be, but its utter Englishness is in keeping with Simonon’s artistic tastes. The romantic Suffolk landscapes of John Constable; the seamy London nudes of Walter Sickert; the gritty Kitchen Sink painters of 1950s Britain. These are the reference points for the oils and lino-cuts that he works on every morning. There’s a hint of Jackson Pollock, too, in his white t-shirt and jeans, and the DIY splatter paint-job visible on that splintered bass. “As you get older you learn to control your temper, although I have punched paintings across the room,” reflects Simonon during his day spent with filmmaker Baillie Walsh.

Simonon describes Wot No Bike, his show at London’s ICA which opened this week as: “self-portraits through objects that belong to me.” The jackets, boots, books and biker paraphernalia that are displayed around the studio. “I went to Byam Shaw college to learn life drawing,” he says of the days before he joined The Clash, aged 21. “But the teachers thought figurative art was old hat—too traditional—and so I lost interest. I did two months and ran away to join the circus.”

Paul Simonon’s Wot No Bike runs at the ICA, London, through February 6.

Tom Horan is Culture Editor-at-Large at NOWNESS.