A part to play in music and art.

After researching closely into the different artwork of Peter Saville that was used for the well known band Joy Division/ New Order it's clear to see that the album artwork can most definitely create persona.  There's a definite relationship between music and art in terms of influence and expression of emotions. This can be seen in all of the artworks that I have closely looked at and researched into. We can see pattern that most of the images have meaning either obviously or metaphorically. Many of them are to do with the band's personal experiences and things they would like to portray as a band. Perhaps a certain image is a visual culmination of the band's intentions and  progression of emotions throughout the creation of each album.

Low-Life

I'M A MASSIVE LOW-LIFE . 
Out of all of the bands sleeve's, this is the only one that has any form of the band on it. The expected thing to do would be to use and image of the whole band, or the lead singer . However for New Order, using images of the band was an unusual thing to do. The  reason for this cover  featuring a band member, is because Saville didn't have anything conceptual at the time that he wanted to put forward.   The band weren't  keen on the idea of a photo shoot, therefore they were photographed individually so that none of them would feel self-concious. The photo's were taken with a polaroid film, so that as soon as the pictures were taken the individuals could see them.

I find this cover by Saville the least interesting. To me, it portrays a totally different image for the band and the sound of their music. The monochromatic colour scheme is simple along with the typography too. The thing i find strange about the typography is that the word "new" has not been capitalised. The initial letter is in lower case form. Whereas the second word "order" has been given an uppercase letter. Maybe this pragmatically means that the band are no longer "new".

Fantin Latour , You cunning little devil.

A Basket Of Roses by Fantin-Latour.

So why was it that Savville chose this still life painting for the band's most famous album to date? He tells The Guardian that " The title seemed Machiavellian" (which means to be cunning) 

The painting is amazing in it's detail . I like how the colours are bright but somehow the painting still looks dark. The flowers in the painting are drooping slightly, this shows lack of life . The grey tones in the picture enhance this. The flowers are painted in pastel shades of pinks and peaches, except from one blood red flower at the back of the bunch. The background colour of greyish brown looks sponged or sprayed. Latour allied himself to the Dutch school. This style of painting is kind of old-fashioned and dated. The paintings are about possesion and reminiscence. 

After a lot of research I finally found that Fantin-Latour preferred to paint imaginative compositions as opposed to still life's.  This evidences the possibility about the truth of the painting. I think that this could most definitely be the "machiavellian" message that Saville is trying to get at. In essence the painting is a blatent lie, we are seduced to believe that the image is a real still life painting, when in fact it isn't. This message would show power, in the sense that the image is so strong we believe that it's real. Corruption between what we believe and lies because the painting is pragmatically a lie. 

Power, Corruption and Lies.

The cover of Power,Corruption and Lies (1983),is another well known (if not the most well known) album by New Order,and it's cover is again by Peter Saville.  It features an amazing still-life painting by french artist Henri Fantin- Latour from 1890 and one of Saville's 'colour codes'. 

               
  Saville explains how his idea  was created and how he thinks the painting fits the title perfectly:

"The title seemed Machiavellian. So I went to the National Gallery looking for a Renaissance portrait of a dark prince. In the end, it was too obvious and I gave up for the day and bought some postcards from the shop. I was with my girlfriend at the time, who saw me holding the postcard of the Fantin-Latour painting of flowers and said " You're not thinking of  that for the cover?" It was a wonderfull idea. Flowers suggested the means by which power, corruption and lies infiltrate our lives." Peter Saville - quoted in the Guardian  29th May 2011

I like Saville's thought process behind this picture however, this is not the only aspect of the sleeve. Again,it is another of Saville's designs which has a colour based code that represents the band's name. The words (the band's name)were not written on the cover itself, (apart from on the North American sleeve), just the assortment of block colour, almost like a foreign language, asking the audience of the cover " what does this mean?".

This element of the cover links to 'Blue Monday', also with a colour based code. The decoder for these codes were featured on the back of this album cover and can this decoder can be used for  " Confusion" and "Blue Monday" singles too.

I like this cover more so than others of Saville's work. The pastel colours of pink , peach and yellow  complement  the darker tones of lilac and blue. Although the colours are painted quite brightly, the image on a whole somehow looks dark. The flowers are drooping which suggests that they are dying and lifeless, the grey tones in the picture enhance this.

According to the Factory website, the cover artwork is reputedly Saville's favourite work for the band. Flowers could link to power , corruption and lies. They are almost seductive which is a way that each of these words could be " power, corruption and lies" could each be described. They are all a little seductive. it also links to this quote from something i posted earlier on ..." The title seemed Machiavellian" (which means to be cunning) 
Also i feel it links to this which is again repeated however links to and earlier post... 


"After a lot of research I finally found that Fantin-Latour preferred to paint imaginative compositions as opposed to still life's.  This evidences the possibility about the truth of the painting. I think that this could most definitely be the "machiavellian" message that Saville is trying to get at. In essence the painting is a blatent lie, we are seduced to believe that the image is a real still life painting, when in fact it isn't. This message would show power, in the sense that the image is so strong we believe that it's real. Corruption between what we believe and lies because the painting is pragmatically a lie." (taken from earlier post)


    As suggested above, he lifted the image of 'Roses' by Henri Fantin-Latour from the National Gallery, however,

"The story goes that when they asked for permission to use the image it was not on the premises but out on loan. Tony Wilson argued that the British taxpayer owned the painting and that he had a right to see it. Amazingly they complied and we were able to see the inspired juxtaposition of the lovely still life oil painting and Saville's colour code denoting the album details."

As mentioned in a previous post, a similar codes was also used for Blue Monday. Saville also devised codes for subsequent covers, namely Confusion and Section 25's FACT 90 From The Hip. 

Blue Monday. (I)

Ian curtis the lead singer of Joy Division was extremely ill with epilepsy at the time the band were recording the "closer" album. Peter Hook , the bassist of the band explains that there was was awful time when the band were recording that Ian went missing for two hours. It was only when Peter went to the toilet that he discovered Ian sparked out on the floor with his head split. He had suffered from a fit and had hit his head on the sink on his way down. There were many occasions like this during the making of the album "closer" as they were only in the recording studio for two weeks, so under pressure they were.  

" We didn't help by taking the piss all the time"

The album was made in March and Curtis' first suicide attempt was in April.  Ian enjoyed working with the bands producer Martin Hannett, who insisted on working through the night . Fellow band members say that Curtis liked to do this because he enjoyed the peace and quiet.

The band didn't have much money, they weren't eating properly and they were too skint to spend money on drink. 

"We played three nights at the Moonlight club in West Hampstead and supported the Stranglers at the Rainbow – four gigs in three days. Ian's illness was getting worse and we didn't help him, through ignorance really. But also, Ian was his own worst enemy – he never wanted to upset you, so he'd tell you what you wanted to hear. So we never knew what he was suffering or thinking." (  Peter Hook - The guardian - 1980)

Ian Curtis made two unsuccessful attempts, before he got where he wanted to be. The first time he had intoxicated himself with alcohol and had hacked into himself with a kitchen knife. The second time, he took an overdose. The boss of the factory label Tony Wilson, had brought him straight from the hospital to rehearsal.  As expected his band mates asked him how he was and if everything was ok. 

As an adult and a father now, I feel guiltier than I ever did then. If that had been my son, I'd have gone round there and headbutted Rob Gretton, our manager, and taken him home. But there were doctors, consultants, psychiatrists, and not one of them was able to sort it out. Unbelievable.( The Guardian - 1980-Peter Hook)

Rob Gretten, the bands manager had booked a gig in Bury which Ian had decided he couldn't go to. Simon Topping and Alan Hempsall had been arranged to cover for him but for one reason or another Ian was delivered to the gig. Curtis insisted that he would sing a couple of the songs, it was when he couldn't do anymore because of his serious illness that the audience started to riot. This destroyed him, it was what he had fought for his whole life and his illness was bringing him down. 

"I heard what happened when I got a call from a policeman. It was horrible. Mind-numbing shock, and it's very difficult to live with as a memory. I can remember it like it was yesterday.
After something like that, you don't know what to do. The only thing constant in our lives was practice. When we left Ian's funeral we said: "See you at practice." That Sunday afternoon I got the six-string riff to Dreams Never End, which we recorded as New Order. We just put Joy Division in a box and closed the lid, but it enabled the remaining three of us to establish ourselves as New Order. Through New Order people continued to become aware of Joy Division." (Peter Hook - The Guardian - 1980)

"I had to view the death of Joy Division as a new start. All the battles we went through in Joy Division, we had to go through once again." ( Peter Hook- The Guardian - 1980)

R.I.P

Blue Monday. (II)

Another intriguing cover by Saville, this time for New Order is Blue Monday (1983). When I first looked at this cover, truthfully I had no clue to what it was...

 If I knew a little more about computers, then maybe I would have. However, I did not. So, I set out to do some more research. Again, this album cover is minimalistic, in the sense that the  focus of this image is three different sized, simple shapes along with minimum colour, another linking factor to the music. This being New Order, the album has a somewhat different sound in comparison with Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. Something that stands out to me about this cover is the strip of mixed colours that runs down the right hand side.These colours can in fact be de-coded to represent the name of the band. This is not obvious,and perhaps it relates again to minimalism in the sense that it is kind of similar to the series' so popular with minimalist artists. The main section of the cover represents a floppy disk which was given to Saville by the band to take home. 

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. Minimalism is any design or style in which the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.

"I thought it was a beautiful object. At the time, computers were in offices, not art studios. The floppy disk informs the design and the colour coding was from my interest in aesthetics determined by machines . It reflected the hieroglyphical  visual language of the machine world. For example, the numbers in your cheque book aren't really for you, they're for a machine to read." Peter Saville (quoted in the Guardian (29.5.2011)

           BLUE MONDAY 

Unknown Pleasures.

This is not a review.

What is pleasure without it being known? Oxymoronic?

The first relationship that I am going to look at is between Peter Saville's cover for Unknown Pleasures(1979) and Joy Division. This artwork was the only instance in the working relationship where the band gave Saville something to work with as opposed to Saville having carte blanche with the design. Rob Gretten the manager of the band, gave Saville a folder of material to work with.

Not only was this the first time that the band had given material, they had also given the title. The now famous wave image on the cover had come  from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy; something that, until researched I did not know. From CP 1919, it was the first pulsar*. It's imaginable that the linear  sketch came from Jodrell Bank**,the centre for astrophysics which is local to Joy Division and Manchester. At the time that Saville had been given this job, he was moving  from Manchester to London, which in a sense has an attatchment to this as perhaps the waves also suggest a sort of journey from one place to the next, the lines are directional and they also have a sense of time, which again relates to the thought of some sort of journey. 

Many observers of this album cover I'm sure will also not be aware of where it  came from, leading them to question what it is and what it means. Personally, when I first saw the image I thought that it was mountains. On reading the title and looking at this artwork, it made me question more. 

Perhaps it was a pulse of blood circulation at some place in the body? A heartbeat? Showing emotion through the jittered lines. 

Joy Devision and New Order are both recognised for is a post-punk feel. The melodies of many songs are repeated over and over again. This is very similar to this album cover. The thin lines are simple and repeated, layered on top of one another. The lines give a cold impersonal impact. Along with the monochromatic theme, which seems to be a re-occuring pattern through much of New Order and Joy Division's photo shoots and artworks produced by Saville, all reflect a certain bleakness. I might put this down to essentialism - the sound that the band's needed to play at this point is perhaps mirrored in the cover's artwork and its depiction of repetitive yet simple line.

Unknown Pleasures - Disorder

  

"It's both technical and sensual. it's tight like Stephen Morris' drumming, but it's also fluid: lots of people think it's a heartbeat. Having the title on the front just didn't seem necessary. I asked Rob about it and between us, we felt it wasn't a cool thing to do. It was the post- punk moment and we were against stardom. The band didn't want to be popstars." - Peter Saville quoted in the Guardian (29.5.2011)

Both New Order and Joy Division had a minimal sound. The same band - just an Ian Curtis down after Joy Division's lead singers suicide in 1980.

The sound and the artwork both reflect a kind of Northern, Manchester, black and white, bleak world. Along with other post-punk bands, the image reflected how young people felt under the Thatcher Government of the day; mass unemployment, strikes and civil unrest echoed the Sex Pistol's late 1970's epitaph of 'No Future'.


 *Pulsar - " A Pulsar is a highly magnetised , rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation" This kind of radiation can only be seen when a beam of emission is pointing towards earth.Neutron stars are extremely dense and they have short rotational periods, this makes a precise break between pulses that range from millisecond to seconds, for each individual pulsar. 

"Observations of a pulsar in a binary neutron star system were used to indirectly confirm the existence of gravitational radiation. The first extrasolar planets were discovered around a pulsar,PSR B1257+12." 

I think that this image could represent the existence of something new. A new band with a new sound.

The Jodrell Bank Observatory - A british observatory which holds a number of radio telescopes at the university of Manchester. An observatory is a place used to watch terrestrial or astronomical phenomenon. (celestial events) Examples being the moon, comets and meteor showers. 

24 Hour Party People. 

24 Hour Party People is a film about the popular music scene , set in Manchester from 1976 -1992 and tells the story of Factory Records. The film starts with the punk-rock era , it goes through the 1980's and into the early 1990's. The films main character is Tony Wilson the record label owner (played by Steve Coogan), a news reporter for Granada television and the head of factory records. The film goes along the story of Tony Wilson's career really, following some of the major factory artists such as Joy Division and New Order. The film is subtext, it's the North, in particular,  Manchester,  a  black and white, bleak world. Arguably the right place and the right time for Factory records to happen. 

"The film is a dramatisation based on a combination of real events, rumours, urban legends, and the imaginings of the scriptwriter - as the film makes clear. In one scene, one-time Buzzcocks member Howard Devoto, played by Martin Hancock, is shown having sex with Wilson's first wife in the toilets of a club; the real Devoto, an extra in the scene, turns to the camera and says "I definitely don't remember this happening". Thefourth wall is frequently broken, with Wilson (who also acts as the narrator) frequently commenting on events directly to camera as they occur, at one point declaring that he is "being postmodern, before it's fashionable". The actors are often intercut with real contemporary concert footage, including the Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade " ( wikipedia) 

The way that the film has been recorded gives it a very nostalgic feel. We can see in the imagery above that the camera that has been used to take these pictures is either and old camera or an effect has been put on top of the images to give them a kind of grainy look.They do not look high definition as most cameras are today. The original images have also been  written on top with the words, " Genius, Poet" and "twat" have been hand illustrated. The word "Genius" looks like it has just been scribbled on with biro pen, which gives the image a hand-drawn appearance. This almost fits with the word that has been written, as some people establish "genius'" to be in some way a little eccentric refers to Howard Devoto. The word "poet" has been written in  neon pink and sunshine yellow ,  suggests to me some kind of psychedelic  feel, and refers to Shaun Ryder (singer with the Happy Mondays)  and linking to the music of The Happy Mondays and drug culture of the time. Arguably, the bands exploration of Factory Records ( including drug use) was instrumental in the downfall of the label. And "twat" refers to Tony Wilson. 




contextualise - how it relates to art of the period - ie minimalism - formalistic, basic structure, reduced, abstract, repetitive

My Intent.

In this blog I intend to investigate relationships between artists and the imagery that bands have used for their album sleeves, and the music and the bands themselves.  

At this point I am curious to discover whether  the images chosen are for promotional purposes or whether they may have underlying meaning or simply give the band a certain image. I think that all of these ideas have a part to play in the music and art industry. 

Listening to music now, makes it clear to me that the sound of the music creates images in our head and also creates nostalgic memories and perhaps hope for  the future. The images that we create in our heads are completely personal to us and  most likely unexplainable. So, perhaps the images on the album sleeves we see are designs of artists' memories or how bands might  like to be portrayed. Musicians and artists together have always gone hand in hand, well known examples include Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, Tinhed and Foals and John Squire and The Stone Roses.Some bands might have their own artist within the group who will most likely at some stage design a sleeve, like John Squire did for The Stone Roses before becoming something of a painter himself. I want to research into why it is that bands employ certain artists to create their imagery and a bit more about those relationships.