Я тут недавно для Оксфорда писала большую работу по арту Сторма Торгерсона для альбома Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here", там я делаю обзор обертки, обложек (передней и задней) и всех внутренних вкладышей + связь с творчеством Магритта.
Решила выложить сюда, вдруг кому-то будет интересно. Написано на английском языке, конечно же.
Приготовлено для устного выступления, так что есть обращения к залу.


The work of art I am going to talk about is rather unconventional. It is the album cover of the music album. Unfortunately, such modern field of art is sometimes overlooked though in my opinion it can create an immense visual impact and in some cases is even deeper and more interesting that the music it represents. And today I am going to present you a back cover for the album "Wish You Were Here" which was done in 1975 by a famous graphic designer Storm Thorgerson for the music album of Pink Floyd.
After prolonged conversations with all of the band it seemed to Thorgerson that 'absence' was a recurring theme, especially absence of commitment - either to relationships or to work. The figures of the artwork were supposed to be 'here' in the flesh but not in the spirit. Thorgerson and his team went through the motions, until perchance they stumbled upon the notion of traces, for instance, shadows, footsteps, things that indicate presence but are in themselves insubstantial or not very present. These ideas became intermingled with empty gestures, when people grip your hand warmly but don't mean too much. From there they went to absent emotions and thence to people who are absent for fear of being hurt or even burnt.



читать дальшеThus the back cover I am focused on depicts a faceless businessman who according to Thorgerson is "selling his soul" in the desert. The image is strongly linked with the subject matter of the album which is the absence of humanity and the ambiguity of the "seen" world which hides something behind its surface. The absence of some human parts of the salesman embodies the idea of the man being empty inside and in reality being nothing but just a pile of clothes. His expressionless face is practically "divided" into two parts by the shadow which reinforces the idea of secretiveness of human's personality and deceitfulness of reality as the man is not just faceless but also hidden behind the shadow.
The colourscheme of the image is also significant for the right interpretation of the back cover as the vivid blue sky and the yellow-ish landscape of Yuma Desert (California) where the photo was shot goes in contrast with the black and even blank figure of the salesman. Thorgerson breaks with the convention of making the focal point of the image the lightest and the brightest one and instead makes the salesman the darkest part of the image. Complimentary colours such as blue and yellow behind the man create a contrast making them really eye catching while the black suit of the salesman serves nearly as a background for the outstanding scenery. Colourful stickers on his suitcase, a pale left part of the salesman's face and a light vinyl disc that he holds in his right hand lead the eyes of the observers around the image.
Although the facial expression of the salesman is not seen he is positioned in the way that he is "facing" his observers. Th eye contact is not established but the man's right hand is reaching out towards the observers as if he is holding us the vinyl disc or even persuading us to buy it. Lack of the actual human features such as wrists, ankles and the face turns him into a lifeless object, a machine created for a mechanical sale of certain goods. Due to the fact that this image was placed on the back cover of the music album adds an oxymoronic hint to it as the salesman could be seen as the person who is selling us the vinyl disc on the back cover of which he is depicted.
Although I have to present only one work of art I feel that it will be unfair not to display other art works which are included in the inner sleeve of the album. The whole album "Wish You Were Here" is an allegory of the absence. It is conceptual and it deals with the themes of isolation, ruthlessness of musical industry and yearning for the past, therefore the artwork done by Storm Thorgerson is centered around these themes too.

The idea of presenting all four elements, fire, air, water and earth, dominates the art works. The front cover presents two men in an empty alleyway, one of them is leaning towards another one in an attempt to shake hands with him. At the same time he is on fire that symbolizes a human fear of “getting burned” by the contact with another human being that shows his deep insecurity. The people presented on the cover are anonymous, their origin or names are completely irrelevant for the meaning of the cover as the art work itself is a metaphor for the freight of people to communicate with each other and establish close relationships.

Both the diver swimming in the sand and the men taking a deep in the water having no splashes around him symbolise the lack of physicality of the human's presence on earth which comes from human's detachment from one another. The so-called emotional deprivation that leads to human's physical disappearance which is seen on both art pieces.

The red veil blowing in the breeze in the field conveys a very fragile feeling. Thorgerson on one of his interviews claimed that people are more and more becoming not tangible for each other, therefore becoming more distant.

Two men with their faces hidden behind the fish-tanks embody the idea of their complete inner emptiness, moreover, people are not just reduced to still objects holding the fish-tanks but the fish-tanks themselves are empty and contain nothing but water. Only the grotesque, gigantic eyes are inquisitively are looking at us conveying really uncomfortable and disturbing feeling.
As the vinyl albums are not extremely huge in their size such material does not allow lots of detail but what Thorgerson does masterfully in all his art works is his choice of colours. All the artworks that I have just shown you look rather bland but practically all of them have the focal points which are highlighted with vivid splashes of colour. Such as red veil on floating in the air with blueish and greenish background, fire burning the businessman's clothes and the suitcase full of vinyl discs for sale.

One of the most intriguing facts about the album itself is Thorgerson's decision to cover the album with the shrink wrap, black (U.K) or blue (U.S.) so that we could not see the album cover before we buy "Wish You Were Here". This is also linked to the theme of absence, the idea of people being not able to see beyond the surface of things. Thorgerson attached a round mechanical handshake sticker on the shrink wrap. The mechanical handshake traverses a circle divided into four quadrants consisting of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The elements are mystical and alchemical references that firstly, reflect different aspects of Pink Floyd’s music and secondly, are all depicted on all the pieces of the artwork that I have just shown you.
As I have already noted all the pictures on the album refer to a theme of absence. The burning man, who is too frightened to establish physical contact with his interlocutor lest he will be burned, The diver as his splash is absent. The swimmer in the sand symbolises an absence of water, an absence of awareness, an absence of purpose. The veil is a symbol of absence or departure at funerals, and a way of hiding a face or making it absent. Some of the pictures are framed like postcards on which people usually write "Wish you were here" but not truly meaning it. And of course my main center focus, the picture of the faceless salesman without a body that indicates his lack of humanity.

One of the most astonishing features of these pieces of art is the evidence of its Magritte's influence and the innovative and unexpected way in which Thorgerson refreshes the well-known artistic concepts of Magritte. Faceless people is a recurring image in Magritte's work, they appear on a big range of his paintings from "The Lovers" whose faces are covered with a piece of cloth to "Man In the Bowler Hat" whose face is obscured by a bird. The back cover of "Wish You Were Here"" is certainly related to the second type of Magritte's paintings the most famous one of which is "The Son Of Man" on which the man's face is obscured by an apple. Thorgerson depicted a faceless man dressed in a suit and in a bowler hat, the absence of his wrists, ankles and facial expression symbolises his presence as an empty suit. With such surrealist portrayal of a man Thorgerson confronts preconditioned perceptions of reality by the audience and he literally follows Magritte's philosophy word for word, "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us."
Concluding, this example of Thorgerson's work could be interpreted in different ways, firstly, as a challenge of our perceptions of what is real or not, secondly as a an artistic suggestion to the observers to look behind the surface of things in order to find their true nature and thirdly, as a certain homage to Magritte and his layered, ambiguous portraits of people. In Thorgerson's own words, "I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality ... to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not?"