Analysis of album art of the 20th Century

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Music has always had a strong influence on people everywhere in the world and nothing points to this ever changing. There is an enormous amount of genres and sub genres, new hits and old classics, songs and compositions for everyone and this number is forever increasing. It is virtually impossible to listen to all songs ever written and hardly anyone would try to attempt that, yet each band and singer would want to have their music noticed. This is why album art is an essential part of any music CD, an eye catcher that can make a consumer purchase a piece of music that they might not even like.

Nowadays the graphics still exist, so do music shops, CD’s and CD covers but due to development of technology with each year more and more people buy music online. But let’s go back to pre internet times and look at CD covers of the late 60’s and 70’s – decades of the revolution of music and graphics, among other things.

The two pieces of album art that are going to be looked at are The Velvet Underground’s first record The Velvet Undergound and Nico cover made by Andy Warhol in 1967 and Pink Floyd’s album Atom Heart Mother by art design group Hipgnosis in 1970.

Nineteen sixties and seventies were the time of of psychedelia, music and images were either made under drug influence or in a way to resemble it. Psychedelic art typically had vivid colours, geometrical shapes and fractals used together to create an out of this world experience effect. Despite the time when both covers have been made and the type of music both bands played, the chosen pieces of album art are not typical to the era. But this is probably the greatest charm about them and certainly the main reason for being the subjects of this essay.

These days the main phys...

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...ess.com/2010/02/andy-warhol-banana-velvet-underground.jpg?w=468. (24th January 2011)

Bibliography

THORGERSON, S. 1997. Mind Over Matter. London: Sanctuary Publishing Limited.

THORGERSON, S. and POWELL, A. 2008. For the Love of Vinyl. Brooklyn NY: Picturebox.

MATSUI, T. 2001. In Search of the Lost Record. British Album Cover Art of 50’s to 80’s. Tokyo: Graphic-sha Publishing Co.

DE VILLE, N. 2003. Album. Classic Sleeve Design. London: Octopus Publishing Group.

WANCZURA, D. 2001. Andy Warhol Biography – artelino. [WWW] http://www.artelino.com/articles/andy_warhol.asp (23rd January 2011)

WILSON, W. 2009. Recalling Andy Warhol’s 1967 Visit. [WWW] http://www.wes-wilson.com/?p=308 (17th January 2011)

Andy Warhol. [WWW] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol (17th January 2011)

Hipgnosis. [WWW] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis (18th January 2011)

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