Jamie Reid's cut-and-paste aesthetic developed from his interest in radical politics. His artistic style developed while at art college in Croydon, where he was influenced by the ideas of the avant-garde political group, the Situationist International. The political slant to his art was aroused by the May 1968 Paris student riots, which inspired fraternal protests organised by Reid at the Croydon College of Art. These were directed with fellow student Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010), later to become the manager of the Sex Pistols.
Reid followed art college by starting his own left-wing small press publisher, Suburban Press, unearthing political intrigue and spreading the ideas of the Situationists through his graphics, employing their ideas of détournement, lettrism and sloganeering.
Détournement, a method using well-known media to create a new work with a different message, is central to Reid’s Sex Pistols work, epitomised in his use of images of the Queen defaced with safety pins and swastikas. Lettrism – the incorporation of letters, numerals and non-Western calligraphy into painting to fuse art with poetry, is also abundant, as is his use of sloganeering in repeated statements such as ‘Never Trust a Hippie’, and ‘Anarchy Is The Key’.