MALCOLM MCLAREN 1946-2010

Malcolm McLaren and Milena Muzquiz from Los Super Eleganes, photographed by Pablo Leon de la Barra in London, November 2005


"I was born just after the war. I grew up in the 50´s. I lived in a culture of necessity and saw it slowly replaced by a culture of desire. Much much later, after Punk, this culture began to crumble. Art would no longer be necessary. No longer be something to acquire self-knowledge, to be humbled by, as once was the role of the church. Just something to desire. To consume. I was a student at art school during those winds of change. Many of my generation were confused. We had entered art school and had been taught an old world philosophy. The practice of failure. Our professors would teach us how the art of failure was a noble one, an everlasting journey, a quest that would never end, a struggle to enjoy an impossible job but as that professor would say, helps take the pillow off your head in the morning, allows you to get up, roll up your sleeves, muck in, do the job. The messy process of creativity. “Don’t just think you can fail”, he said, "learn how to fail magnificently!" You’ve got to learn how to be the most brilliant failure because it’s better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success. That’s the point. This was the philosophy."
from a "Conversation between Malcolm McLaren and Stefan Brüggemann, December 4, 2006 Paris" in 'Obliterations', Stefan Bruggemann Exhibtion Catalogue, Blow de la Barra, London, 2007