Rationale
I chose the history of album covers as a project concept because my enjoyment of music is very important to me and artwork in the music industry had given me inspiration for a project idea early last year just before the beginning this course. I was hoping of achieving 2 ideas in total first a couple recreated albums around 3 to 5 all selected from personal taste then producing a self-interpreted album which related to my persona and way of life. The second objective was mention by a teacher whilst doing the mind map near starting the FMP so I considered adding it as a side project because I felt it would fit alongside my original album cover idea. Also, if I became frustrated with the progress of recreating album covers this would allow me to have enough images that fit together.
Project Concept
The project I have ultimately decided to do is about the connection between the music industry and art; dating back over eighty-one years through the invention of album artwork by Alex Sweinweiss (Berman, R. 2008). The theme of this project is how most, if not all, albums have a distinctive message derived from the artists perspective. From recreating album covers pushed me towards inventing my own album with an individual message from my own experiences. During the process of filling out the proposal form, there was a section, project title, which is where I conclude on Album Art Work as my title.
I started for inspiration, researching different photographers who had captured iconic album pieces. The ones I decided most appropriate are:
David Bailey’s ‘The Rolling Stones’ no. 2 (1965)
David Bowie Aladdin Sane Photographed by Brain Duffy (1973)
Fleetwood Mac Rumours Photographed by Herbert W. Worthington the 3rd
After discussion with a teacher, we both agreed that surrealism played a big part in all of my practical work and the whole concept of album covers. From this, I then discovered surrealist in art and photograph such as Dora Maar, Salvador Dali and Philippe Halsman.
Evaluation
Whilst planning the original idea through conversations I added another project which was a project to fall back on if the album covers concept didn’t go to plan. However, I felt that this would enhance the original project as both ideas fit well together.
After researching various photographers, other discussions with staff lead me to further research into Surrealism which I found related to the mental picture.
To start I found that the activity of recreating the albums was the trickiest part of the idea as it is impossible to get it exactly identical. This was very frustrating and made me lose faith in the whole project. However, I realised during the editing process that some of the recreations worked much better than I had previously believed. This gave encouragement in the other ideas of lyric transformation and especially inventing my own album.
Originally I had set out to do five out of ten chosen albums:
The album covers were:
- Tom Waits – Closing time
- Bob Dylan – Nashville Skyline
- David Bowie – Low
- Smiths – The Queen is dead
- Thundercat – Drunk
- Jamie T – PANIC PREVENTION
- Ten years after – A SPACE IN TIME
- Placebo – Placebo
- Childish Gambino – Because Of The Internet
- Shed Seven – Let It Ride
However, after attempting three, two of these turned out reasonable.
The two lyric songs:
1. Tom Waits – Tango Till They’re Sore Song Lyric: Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair.
2. The Smiths – Cemetry Gates Song Lyric: All those people, all those lives, Where are they now?
Although I attempted both of these I was only happy with one, The Smiths.
The five images that I produced I pleased that these were close to what I was setting out to achieve in terms of my theme of how music is related to art.
Looking back at my five images I feel that the cemetery gates idea was my least favourite, due to confusion on how I should implate the lyrics into the surrounding area through photoshop. I was not unsure of the placement and the colour of the text.
The image that I feel was the most effective, which concept was to define myself, was the model in the bedroom surrounded a collection of material items that I have a major interest in. The concept was to show how I and many other people can feel trapped and scared to go anywhere but having the sense of security within my own personal space allowing different aspects of creativity to be explored. The reasons I feel that this shot went well because I had 1:1 with the only subject in the image. This made for a more relaxed atmosphere. The subject involved was someone I knew really well and also has experience in photography, which contributed to the shoot. I found being with just one person made it more simple to direct and explain without having others interfering.
Bibliography of references
Websites
Archive, H. (2015) Image categories dali . [Online] Available from: http://philippehalsman.com/?image=dali [accessed 13 May 2019].
Berman, R. (2008) Alex Sweinweiss: CREATOR OF THE ALBUM COVER. [Online] Available from: http://www.alexsteinweiss.com/as_index.html [accessed 08 April 2019].
Cain, A. (2017) Surrealist Photographer Dora Maar Was More Than Picasso’s Muse. [Online] Available from: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-surrealist-photographer-picassos-muse [accessed 13 May 2019].
Carey, J. (2008) “Pere Ubu” by Dora Maar, 1936. [Online] Available from: https://germanmodernism.org/2008/07/03/pere-ubu-by-dora-maar-1936/ [accessed 14 May 2019].
Chilton, M. (2018) Cover Story: A History Of Album Artwork. [Online] Available from: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/history-album-artwork/ [accessed 08 April 2019].
Huxley-Parlour, G. (2019) Brian Duffy. [Online] Available from: https://huxleyparlour.com/artists/brian-duffy/ [accessed 12 May 2019].
Lebowitz, R. (2018) 8 Surrealist Photographers You Should Know, from Dora Maar to Man Ray. [Online] Available from: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-8-surrealist-photographers-dora-maar-man-ray [accessed 12 May 2019].
Palumbo, J. (2018) The Story behind the Surreal Photograph of Salvador Dalí and Three Flying Cats. [Online] Available from: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-story-surreal-photograph-salvador-dali-three-flying-cats [accessed 11 May 2019].
Shah, D. (2016) The Importance of Album Artwork Considering the relationship between art and music in a digital age. [Online] Available from: https://humanhuman.com/articles/the-importance-of-album-artwork [accessed 12 April 2019].
Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis. (2019) The Art Story. [Online] Available from: https://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm [accessed 11 May 2019].
THE ART STORY FOUNDATION. (2019) IMPORTANT ART BY DORA MAAR. [Online] Available from: https://www.theartstory.org/artist-maar-dora.htm [accessed 14 May 2019].
Typography, P. (Date unknown) Fancy > Distorted. [Online] Available from: https://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=108 [accessed 28 May 2019].
UDiscover Team. (2015) The 100 Greatest Album Covers. [Online] Available from: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/the-100-greatest-album-covers/ [accessed 14 April 2019].
UDiscover Team. (2018) The 25 Most Iconic Album Covers Of All Time. [Online] Available from: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/25-iconic-album-covers/ [accessed 12 May 2019].
Waddell, J. (2005) Père Ubu,1936. [Online] Available from: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/286239 [accessed 14 May 2019].
Walsh, J. (2016) Dali’s Moustache. [Online] Available from: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/dalis-moustache-philippe-halsman/ [accessed 13 May 2019].
Future ambitious
Since after writing my first draft proposal and thinking on the future enterprises I would still like to study or work in any of these areas previously mentioned such as the film, photography, music, and literature. However, I also have a desire to travel to different countries where I would hope to continue on my educational journey.
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