Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers

For discussion of all aspects of the New York legends.
User avatar
Sheila Klein
Head held high
Posts: 705
Joined: 15 Feb 2010 20:16

Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers

Post by Sheila Klein » 13 Apr 2016 17:39

http://tinyurl.com/ha6k7q7

This is a really cool book, and an interesting twist on the traditional "record cover art" book. Each album is accompanied by a text that details the story behind the art and the relation of the music to the cover concept.

The most surprising section is of a 1963 album titled Giant Size $1.57 Each, with the audio artists attributed to a long list of pop-art painters, including Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist and Warhol. (Come to think of it, that sounds more like the name of an NYC law firm.) According to the text
This record was released in conjunction with the exhibition The Popular Image, presented at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art from April 18 to June 2, 1962, and curated by Alice Denney. The record is a collection of interviews with the major artists of the Pop art movement ... The sometimes inaudible sound and the background party noises are proof of the spontaneity of this recording. ...

Through his numerous contacts in the record industry [due to his LP cover commissions], Warhol managed to obtain a few hunded blank record cover [sleeves] in order to create the limited edition prints of this record cover. ... According to the catalogue raisonné by Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, Warhol printed the covers in a variety of colors (aerosol paint background of red, yellow, green, orange and white -- the hardest to find today), not numbered nor signed, which would help with record sales during the exhibition.
It sounds to me like the Dollar Fifty-Seven (as it is nicknamed here) album was something of a precursor to the Index record (which is itself depicted in this book).

Pictured here are several of the cover variations, with the white one given main-entry status:

Image
Image

In an interesting note in the section on White Light/White Heat, Billy Linich says that
We were at the Factory, Lou Reed and I, looking for a photograph for the cover of the upcoming Velvet Underground album. Lou Reed chose that photograph and suggested I use it because he thought it was interesting and it would make a nice cover.
I hadn't realized that Reed was involved with that design at all. Although Warhol himself was credited for "cover concept" on some pressings of the album, Linich mentions that Andy's only involvement with it was that the movie (Bike Boy) that the skull tattoo photo was a still from was a Factory production, "and Warhol was the Factory".

--Phil M.