Ever since the dawn of modernism, visual and music production have enjoyed a particularly close relationship. From Luigi Russolo's 1913 Futurist manifesto L'Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Marcel Duchamp's 1925 double-sided discs Rotoreliefs, the 20th century witnessed an increasingly fertile exchange between sounds and shapes, marks and melodies, and diverse fields of composition and performance.
In Francesco Spampinato's unique anthology of artists' record covers, we uncover the rhythm of this specific cultural history. The book presents 500 covers and records created by visual artists from the 1950s to the present day, exploring how modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, postmodernism, and various forms of contemporary art practice have all informed this related field of visual production and supported the mass distribution of music with defining imagery that swiftly and suggestively evokes an aural experience.
Along the way, we encounter Jean-Michel Basquiat's urban hieroglyphs for his own Tartown record label, Banksy's stencilled graffiti for Blur, Damien Hirst's symbolic skull for the Hours, and a skewered Salvador Dalí butterfly on Jackie Gleason's Lonesome Echo. Insightful analyses and fact sheets accompany the covers, listing the artist, performer, album name, label, year of release, and information on the original artwork. Interviews with Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey, Kim Gordon, Christian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, and Raymond Pettibon add personal perspectives on the collaborative relationship between artists and musicians.
