Puppets, Punks and Party Animals: A Brief Introduction to the Wonderful World of Cheap Art

From guerrilla style puppet shows, to punk rockers and club kids, subcultures have always sought avenues that allow for a more fiscally conservative approach. Whether it be to circumnavigate the pressures of arts funding, to rally against a capital driven society, or simply to try and create something out of nothing, there are many examples of cheap art that have fundamentally diverted art history.

With online mediums such as YouTube and Instagram dominating the amateur arts field, there has never been such a huge pressure on artists to spend a pretty penny in order to be seen. We aren’t just talking about the raw materials here, though that it is certainly a concern — the very nuts and bolts of online content (cameras, lighting set ups, editing equipment) demand that artists shell out top dollar if they want to compete in an oversaturated, perfection-obsessed market. For an amateur artist, this can seem incredibly frustrating, and at times disillusioning. Especially now, as we all continue hurtling ever further down an economic rollercoaster, the inbuilt prejudice towards technically flawless and exquisitely created work has never seemed more imbalanced, a comprehensive metaphor for the wealth inequality at even this most supposedly democratic end of the art world. But this is not the first time in history that artists have been under pressure to create eye catching work on a meagre budget. From guerrilla style puppet shows, to punk rockers and club kids, subcultures have always sought avenues that allow for a more fiscally conservative approach. Whether it be to circumnavigate the pressures of arts funding, to rally against a capital driven society, or simply to try and create something out of nothing, there are many examples of cheap art that have not only littered art history, but fundamentally diverted it. They shall provide new inspiration in financially uncertain times.

If we are to talk about the history of cheap art, then immediate kudos has to go to Bread and Puppet, and their founder Peter Schumann. Bread and Puppet are a phenomenally successful and seminal political theatre troupe — one of the oldest in the Western World, having soldiered on continuously since the early 1960’s. As their name may suggest, they are a puppet group, creating huge puppets out of found materials and putting on shows in open public spaces. But their name also gives some clue as to their political manifesto: their name is a thinly veiled reference to the Roman idiom ‘bread and circus’, a deference to the meagre provisions given to Roman lower classes by the social elite, in an attempt to divert their attentions away from the huge economic inequality of Ancient Rome. Bread and Puppet similarly make use of meagre provisions for political ends, but with quite the opposite intent — the company has a long history of exposing the darker side of American culture. Over the course of their history, the company has tackled many an American institution or government policy — from the Vietnam war, to climate change deniers, to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to the election of Donald Trump. Bread and Puppet’s unflinching (yet often hilarious) social critique is fundamentally attached to their economic approach to construction and performance; as a company, they have never had to rely on funding from any external body. And just as well, because it is hard to imagine that the NEA would approve of their staunchly and unambiguously green-socialist stance.

For Bread and Puppet, art is not only democratic — it is one of the central tenets of life. It should be available and easily accessible to all, and it should always be truthful. It should be like good bread — easy to make, and made to share. In fact, the company’s name takes on yet another meaning — the company director Peter Schumann bakes dozens of fresh sourdough loaves to be shared at every performance. In this instance, cheap art is not only economical from the company’s perspective — it is a vital element of democracy, in art as in life. When Schumann arrived on the scene in the early 60’s, his fresh and open approach to art would have been shocking to a New York cultural elite that mooched around private galleries and auctions. Finding his work unsuited to such restrictions, Schumann took the streets before taking his performances everywhere that art is not normally found — countryside’s, communes, abandoned buildings. It seems almost quaint, now that site specific performance is an accepted part of the theatrical cannon. But Schumann was leading the charge — taking the play to the people, and making only small concessions each time. In this way, Schumann did more to spread theatre and political art to the populace than perhaps any other artist of his time. He also perhaps embedded the theory of cheap art into Western arts history more than anyone else — cheap art as democratic, honest work outside of the mainstream.

Cheap art saw a far more mainstream resurgence against the grim backdrop of 1970’s Britain. When Malcom McLaren came back from New York in 1975, he was reeling from experiencing a fabulously trashy rock’n’roll band in New York known as the New York Dolls. Inspired by their streetwise lyrics and trash-glam aesthetic, he ventured to curate a band that would embody a similarly huge middle finger to middle class values. The climate could not have been more accommodating — youth culture in the UK was already stirring with adrenaline, against a backdrop of widening inequality and rampant nationalism. His pet project, The Sex Pistols, immediately shocked — but they were but one piece of a burgeoning youth movement that eschewed traditional values both on and off the stage. The movement entitled punk (at first, pejoratively) was a kickback against all sorts of traditions — both the musical zeitgeist of stodgy, overblown prog rock, and a cultural and political climate that shunned the voices of working class people.

Punk’s breakthrough moment may have been the Sex Pistols explosive appearance on the Bill Grundy Show, but the countries youth were already clamouring for a new cultural shift. The most recognisable visual signifiers of punk — ripped clothes, held together with safety pins and always second hand — suggested that the anti-consumerist ethos of Bread and Puppet had found a foothold in popular music and youth working class culture. When Vivienne Westwood opened her infamous shop Sex, she may have consolidated the trends of the time and stuck a huge price tag on it, but she was only responding to a feeling in the air. Working class kids without money for clothes or instruments were welcomed into the fray of punk rock, as both a musical genre and an ethos. This ethos encompassed more than just looks or songs — punks often lived in squats, shirked traditional 9–5’s and were outward in their socialist and anti-racist political leanings. Cheapness wasn’t just part of the look — it was a manifesto. In its combination of youthful rebellion, anarchist politics and thrifty fashion, the punk movement dragged the concept of cheap art out of the art world and onto the main stage. Like all youth movements, punk’s death knell was rung once an idea became a trend. But to this day, to describe something as punk means something homegrown, grassroots and outside the mainstream — a definition unbounded by medium, geography or image.

Cheap art hasn’t just arisen out of a national oppression — sometimes the need for new ideas comes out of inequalities that are far more centralised. Against the backdrop of widespread gentrification, a small band of queer artists in late 1980’s New York were hitting the clubs in some very unusual ensembles. The Club Kids, as they became known, were loosely speaking drag artists, but theirs was a style of drag disconnected from the extravagant opulence of the Legendary Children walking in the balls. Whereas the Legendary Children may have spent a month’s rent on a new dress, the Club Kids revelled in the low-rent and the off kilter: they were sloppy, not sublime. This new approach to drag stirred a revolution, one that is still felt today — even in a world where queens routinely send their bank balances into the red putting together their Drag Race audition tapes. The Club Kids represent an approach to cheap art that is less staunchly political, than political by proxy. For these queer kids and artists, the money simply did not exist, even when living within the business hub of New York city. They made use of what was available to them, which could run the gamut from gorgeous gowns to Halloween costumes, prosthetic noses and elf ears on headbands. This kitchen sink approach to fashion was born of one key fact — there was no money to spend on costumes, yet the need for new queer aesthetics was absolutely imperative. The significance of this bold new approach to queer experiences is significant when contextualised to late 1980’s New York queer nightlife. HIV and AIDS were by this point was well documented, and used as a convenient excuse to close all of New York City’s most non-normative queer venues in an effort to clear up the city. By their very presence, the Club Kids made a simple point: we cannot be hidden away, nor can we be removed.

If the heteronormative mainstream American public was shocked by what little they saw of New York’s legendary S&M bar culture (clubs like the Mineshaft, closed down at the dawn of the AIDS crisis) then their mouths were positively agape at the sight of the Club Kids. New York drag already held some national credibility — acts such as Lady Bunny and Coco Peru had a cult following, and Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi found some level of mainstream exposure performing with David Bowie on SNL. But the Club Kids were a different beast — strange, lopsided looks without an aesthetic reference point that the straight world could latch onto. The relatively shoddy execution of their garb was part of the point — it was wilfully confrontational to a straight perspective, a sardonic response to the charge that drag queens were just ‘playing dress up’. Some of the looks the Club Kids were turning out were really only just beyond children’s dress-up, so economically were they made. Beyond the relative thriftiness of the look, Club Kid fashions were hugely expansive, with each Club Kid favouring a different aesthetic. It was a style born of pure imagination, regardless of finances. The Club Kid look was so disarmingly fresh that it was adopted by high fashion — most notably, Alexander McQueen aped Leigh Bowery’s signature makeup for his Horn of Plenty collection. It’s yet another example of artists working within meagre means forging the charge — art that punches up from below, rather than trickling down from above. Another example of fresh, innovative ideas erupting from an economically disadvantaged underground.

This is but a few examples of cheap art throughout history. Look hard enough, and you are bound to find thrifty art existing an almost any point in human history, across the globe in nearly any community. The need to create art is a fundamentally human trait, one that cannot be bound by structural and economic inequalities. For far too long, art has been a field dominated and defined by the cultural elite, with all their financial privilege. In a world where the means of sharing our art holds the possibility to be fully democratised, we should be careful not to replicate the limitations that have plagued the history of conservative art. As long as one has some means of putting art out into the worldwide web, we should be able to foster communities where art can be created, shared and enjoyed by all. The history of cheap art shows us that there is always a way of making our voices heard.