Return of the Repressed

The influential Detroit "anti-rock" group Destroy All Monsters made raucous music, irreverent art and legendary zines, performing and disseminating their activities through an elaborate self-mythology. Two of its members--Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw--went on to become renowned artists. The Destroy All [...]
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The influential Detroit "anti-rock" group Destroy All Monsters made raucous music, irreverent art and legendary zines, performing and disseminating their activities through an elaborate self-mythology. Two of its members--Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw--went on to become renowned artists. The Destroy All Monsters zines have been reprinted in facsimile editions, but the art objects made by the members have never been examined as independent works. "Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters 1974-1977" is the first retrospective of the artwork itself, as well as a DAM overview. Produced in collaboration with the artists, it collects the work of the collective between circa 1974-77, almost all of which is previously unpublished. Included are dozens of candid photographs of the group and their environs by DAM member Carey Loren, which serve as both documents of a proto-punk group at its height and snapshots of the collective's often hilarious attempts to construct identities as characters in the larger Destroy All Monsters mythology; early prints and drawings by Jim Shaw that show the seeds of his later work, and remain powerful images; and a voluminous quantity of drawings and etching by Mike Kelley, often of monsters and political personalities, that indicate the artist's anarchic roots.