From the dawn of modernism, the relationship between visual and musical production has been particularly close. From Luigi Russolo's Futuristic manifesto in 1913, "L’Arte dei Rumori" (The Art of Noises), to Marcel Duchamp's double-sided Rotorelief records in 1925, the 20th century witnessed an increasingly fruitful exchange between sounds and shapes, signs and melodies, as well as different fields of composition and performance. In Francesco Spampinato's unique anthology of artist record covers, we discover the rhythm of this extraordinary cultural history. The book showcases 500 covers and records from visual artists from the 1950s to today, exploring how modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and various forms of contemporary artistic practice have influenced this subcultural field of visual production and supported the mass distribution of music with defining visual representation. Along the way, we encounter Jean-Michel Basquiat's urban hieroglyphics for his own record label Tartown, Banksy's stencil graphics for Blur, Damien Hirst's symbolic skull for The Hours, and a blackened butterfly by Salvador Dalí on Jackie Gleason's Lonesome Echo. There are detailed information and fact sheets alongside the covers that mention the artist, performer, album name, label, year of release, and information about the original artwork. Interviews with Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey, Kim Gordon, Christian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, and Raymond Pettibon provide personal testimonials about the collaborative relationship between artists and musicians.
