Posted by FIFTY24SF Gallery
With Stanley Donwood’s US premier here at the gallery in September, we decided to go back and look at some of his early work with Radiohead. This was one of Donwood’s first collaborations with Thom Yorke. It’s classic and we love it. We’ll have more album cover’s by Donwood in preparation for the show.
You probably remember this up here as the cover to Radiohead‘s 2003 album, Hail to the Thief. Well, Stanley Donwood did the artwork for it, and he has done all the artwork for Radiohead since 1995, and he will be showing his art at our FIFTY24SF Gallery in San Francisco this September—October. We are proud to say this will be his first exhibition in the United Staes.
Mr Donwood has also begun to explain what it is he is working on for said SF show.
Forgive me if you’ve heard some of this before.
This starts in L.A. I found myself there once, trying to make artwork. It was the first time I had been to the west coast of America.
Part of the massive scale of Los Angeles involves the many advertising materials employed along the multilane highways that dissect the built environment.
I was in the car with my notebook, and for something to do I was writing down what all these signs and advertisements had to say. I realised that they only used a very few colours, and the colours were bold, brash, and used in very visually compelling combinations. About ninety per cent of the messages that flicked past my retinas were using seven colours.
I noted these colours down; red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. All, I think, made from pigments derived from the petrochemical industry, the same hydrocarbon trade that has made modern Los Angeles possible. The colours were red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. I decided to paint using these colours, straight from the tub.
This was some time ago, back in 2003, I think.
I made the paintings for Radiohead’s album called ‘Hail to the Thief’ with these colours, and I continued to use them for several projects afterwards. I find them, in combination, both deeply attractive and subtly distressing.
Posted from The Citrus Report
FIFTY24SF Gallery just posted a new update about Stanley Donwood and his upcoming show at the gallery in San Francisco this Fall. For those of you who don’t know, Stanley can write. Here is a little piece from his site:
Beginning to explain
Forgive me if you’ve heard some of this before.
This starts in L.A. I found myself there once, trying to make artwork. It was the first time I had been to the west coast of America.
Part of the massive scale of Los Angeles involves the many advertising materials employed along the multilane highways that dissect the built environment.
I was in the car with my notebook, and for something to do I was writing down what all these signs and advertisements had to say. I realised that they only used a very few colours, and the colours were bold, brash, and used in very visually compelling combinations. About ninety per cent of the messages that flicked past my retinas were using seven colours.
I noted these colours down; red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. All, I think, made from pigments derived from the petrochemical industry, the same hydrocarbon trade that has made modern Los Angeles possible. The colours were red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. I decided to paint using these colours, straight from the tub.
This was some time ago, back in 2003, I think.
I made the paintings for Radiohead’s album called ‘Hail to the Thief’ with these colours, and I continued to use them for several projects afterwards. I find them, in combination, both deeply attractive and subtly distressing.
More recently (although, to my sorrow, no longer) I received several spam emails promising me a better sex life, a bigger penis and something called polynominal slosh prowess. I collected these emails. When they inexplicably stopped, they were replaced with spam emails offering me the chance to buy foreclosed homes as bargain prices. A cheap property from other peoples’ misery, you could say. I collected these emails too. And emails that purported to come from the impoverished relatives of African presidents.
What interested me about the emails (apart from the promise of wealth, cheap luxury housing and the life of a porn star) was the way that the words in them functioned; just a glance at the title of an email was enough to tell what sort of contents it would hold; much as the colours of L.A. grabbed the visual cortex these words seemed intended to grab the linguistic cortex.
I have seven colours, and I have a lot of words.
9th June 2010
Stanley Donwood just posted some hints of what’s to come on his website. Stay tuned for more about his U.S. premiere opening September at FIFTY24SF
Forgive me if you’ve heard some of this before.
This starts in L.A. I found myself there once, trying to make artwork. It was the first time I had been to the west coast of America.
Part of the massive scale of Los Angeles involves the many advertising materials employed along the multilane highways that dissect the built environment.
I was in the car with my notebook, and for something to do I was writing down what all these signs and advertisements had to say. I realised that they only used a very few colours, and the colours were bold, brash, and used in very visually compelling combinations. About ninety per cent of the messages that flicked past my retinas were using seven colours.
I noted these colours down; red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. All, I think, made from pigments derived from the petrochemical industry, the same hydrocarbon trade that has made modern Los Angeles possible. The colours were red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. I decided to paint using these colours, straight from the tub.
This was some time ago, back in 2003, I think.
Read on at Slowly Downward
