How PUNK Magazine Helped Shape a Global Movement

New York’s fabled punk scene is alive and kicking at Ki Smith Gallery, where “50 years of PUNK” is honoring the rag that started it all through January 11—the very day that the first issue of PUNK Magazine went on sale at CBGB’s, with Lou Reed on its cover. The exhibition opened on November 28, marking 50 years since PUNK interviewed Reed and the Ramones at the storied Bowery music venue. “50 years of PUNK” has plenty of ephemera, but don’t get it twisted, this isn’t a mausoleum. The show will also debut new artworks, as well as PUNK issues 24 and 25. In true DIY spirit, PUNK never maintained a rigid publishing schedule anyway.

“You think of such a prolific magazine, and there’s only ever been, to date, 23 issues,” Smith told me over the phone. PUNK dropped six of those issues in 1976 alone. The next nine came out in 1977 (the year founding publisher Ged Dunn and ‘resident punk’ Legs McNeil left) through 1979, with a special edition in 1981. PUNK took a hiatus until 2001, then dropped three issues in 2007, one in 2023, and one in 2024. Blondie guitarist Chris Stein contributed photos those first three years. R. Crumb drew illustrations. John Holmstrom, the co-founder who’s still in charge, is a cartoonist too. Female writers found an outlet. PUNK made a New York splash, then became a global social movement.

“There were punk bands in New York City, London, and Sydney, Australia, but the phenomenon of being a ‘punk’ was our doing,” Holmstrom told me over email. “Punk rock music would have happened without PUNK Magazine, but some rock critic would have come up with a different name.”

Ki Smith is steeped in the punk lifestyle, and often carries its mantle. He’s banned from the Whitney, and grew up “right around the corner from CBGBs,” he said. “My neighbor growing up was Arturo Vega, who was the Ramones creative director, who made their logo and everything,” Smith recalled.  “When I was little, he was just a cool guy with a dog.” Smith’s mom is artist Sono Kuwayama, and his father is filmmaker Chuck Smith. When Smith got kicked out of high school, his parents said he could either find another one, or get a job. So, he started interning at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. In 2012, at 21, Smith and his brother founded Apostrophe, a beloved gallery and illegal Bushwick nightclub that got shut down in 2014—then went mobile.

“Having art and music intersect is, I think, really important, because music is one of the artistic forms that is consistently in pop culture,” Smith said. Fine art, meanwhile, has historically remained more remote. Most people think you have to study art to enjoy it. You can’t dance to it, either. But without artists, some of culture’s most exciting moments wouldn’t exist. “Even if you look back to an era like PUNK magazine, this is the time when art and music are really collaborating,” Smith said.

His gallery moved into its current Forsyth Street digs in 2022. Last February, it hosted “Poetry & Pose: Screen Tests by Andy Warhol” in collaboration with Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum. As a local, Smith felt responsible to exhibit the scores of screentests undergone by undersung downtown denizens, as opposed to stars like Bob Dylan or Salvador Dalí, who featured heavily throughout Klaus Biesenbach’s exhibition honoring the series at MoMA in 2003.

Smith asked photographer Bob Krasner, who was in that show, to organize “a little hang of folks that were part of that factory scene”—which, it turned out, overlapped significantly with the punks. A year later, Smith held a show for iconic New York photographer Bobby Grossman, who he met at that chill session—and through him, met Holmstrom.

Smith and Holmstrom began co-curating this exhibition soon after. Together, they poured over PUNK’s archives, pulling photographs by legends like Stein and Roberta Bailey. They narrowed down their favorite comic panels, too, many of which were drawn by Holmstrom. His favorite? “The short photo comic strip I made with Ron Asheton and Moe Howard, recreating the time a Stooge called one of The Three Stooges to get permission to call his band ‘The Stooges,’” Holmstrom said. The work appeared in PUNK 23, an ode to Iggy Pop. “Being a cartoonist, I love sneaking something as lowbrow as The Three Stooges in a high-class event like this.”

Many of the original drawings, sculptures, and contact sheets in this show have appeared in PUNK, but never in a gallery. The magazine has had anniversary shows before, but never on this scale. The occasion even inspired Smith to create new works, proof that punk’s still alive. He recruited famed printer Gary Lichtenstein to enlarge and colorize ten of his and Holmstrom’s favorite PUNK comics—then spent the last few months running from Los Angeles to London to get them signed by the likes of Brian Eno and DEVO. Countercultural spirit brand Illegal Mezcal helped fund the project.

Six months ago, Smith invited Nicolai Malvaldi, the founder of contemporary punk magazine Mani, into his collaboration with Holmstrom. The two did a joint Mani/PUNK issue that’ll count as PUNK 24.5. Malvaldi also helped design PUNK 25, an ode to the exhibition at Ki Smith Gallery, with Shepard Fairey’s portrait of Debbie Harry on the cover. Holmstrom assembled PUNK 24 himself—it’s a more classic edition. Both issues will drop with a party at the gallery on December 10.

The show will have a closing party on January 11—which is also Holmstrom’s birthday. There will be bands, like Dallas-based rock outfit Labretta Suede & the Motel Six, playing in the gallery’s subterranean, 65-person music venue. After that begins the next 50 years of PUNK—which was never just about the music.

“It’s that attitude of making the best of what you can with what you can,” Smith said. “It’s the attitude of being passionate about something, whether you are doing it at a local scale or a world scale.”