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.
