Tag: illustration

Squaring The Circle:
(The Story Of
Hipgnosis)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 10 July 2023
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(The Story Of
Hipgnosis)
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Director – Anton Corbijn – 2022 – UK – Cert. – 101m

*****

The story of the visual creatives behind album sleeves, for Pink Floyd and others, who revolutionised the field from the late 1960s and through the 1970s – now out on Blu-ray/DVD combo and various streaming services plus BFI Player following its release in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, July 14th

Everyone who bought LP records from the late 1960s through to the very end of the 1970s knows the name Hipgnosis. As one interviewee points out, you would go in to the centre of your town to buy the latest album and mull over all the written information on the sleeve on the bus coming home to find out who played on it and who was responsible for the cover. Many of the most memorable sleeves were designed by Hipgnosis, the name coming from ‘hip’, meaning ‘cool’, and ‘gnosis’ meaning ‘secret wisdom’.

Director Corbijn made his name in black and white photography and album sleeves for such bands as U2 and Depeche Mode in the 1980s, so has a background in the album cover world in a later decade. He is therefore extremely well placed to tackle the subject and chooses to film many of his interviewees in trademark black and white.… Read the rest

Tags 10cc, 1960s, 1970s, 6 Denmark Street, A Saucerful Of Secrets, album, album sleeve, animals, anti-establishment, Anton Corbijn, art, artist, Atom Heart Mother, Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, bankrupt, bankruptcy, Battersea Power Station, Beatles, boring, burning man, Cambridge, camera, Coil, cow, darkroom, David Gilmour, drugs, Elegy, Emerson, fire, Genesis, giant pig, Giant’s Causeway, Graham Gouldman, hand-coloured photograph, Hipgnosis, Houses Of The Holy, Humphrey Ocean Roger Dean, iconic, illustration, Ireland, Jill Furmanovsky, Jimmy Page, Keith Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Led Zeppelin, Legerton Court, light, London, LP, LP sleeve, LSD, manager, monolith, music video, Nick Mason, Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney, Peter Christopherson, Peter Gabriel, Peter Grant, photographer, photography, Pink Floyd, presence, prism, record, record sleeve, red balls, refraction, Repulsion, Rick Wright, Robert Plant, Roger Waters, Roman Polanski, Royal College of Art, South Kensington, space rock, statue, Storm Thorgerson, stuntman, The Dark Side Of The Moon, The Nice, The Original Soundtrack, Throbbing Gristle, throwaway, Tottenham Court Road, UK, Wings Greatest, Wish You Were Here

Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Hopper:
an American Love Story

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 October 2022
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Hopper:
an American Love Story
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Director – Phil Grabsky – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 94m

*****

The story of American painter Edward Hopper, and how his artistic career was facilitated by his fellow artist wife Jo – originally out in UK cinemas on Tuesday, October 18th 2022, now available on home video (see bottom of review)

The latest entry in Grabsky’s generally excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art and artists covers the career of Edward Hopper to tie in with a major Hopper exhibition (Edward Hopper’s New York) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The big (and most welcome) surprise is that it charts not just Hopper’s life and work but also that of fellow artist Josephine Nivison, later his wife Josephine Nivison Hopper, whose career was largely eclipsed by his during his lifetime. To be fair, it doesn’t really go into her life before the point at which she became involved in his.

Hopper was born in 1882 and raised in the Nyack, New York house his parents had built (an enviable state, indicative of their and his time, which must surely influence one’s outlook on life). Religion and church were important to the Hoppers, but theirs was the brand of Christianity unafraid to engage with the outside world which at that time meant vast quantities of books and periodicals; the young Edward acquired a love of books from his avid reader father.… Read the rest

Tags architecture, art, art student, avid reader, Bob Dylan, books, buildings, business manager, Cape Cod, Christianity, church, Church Mission, creativity, Cubism, David Lynch, description, Edward Hopper, Exhibition On Screen, First World War, fleshpots, France, Greenwich village, Hitchcock, House by the Railroad, houses, husbands and wives, hustle and bustle, illustration, Jo Hopper, Josephine Nivison, Josephine Nivison Hopper, light, light and shade, Manhattan, mass, Montmatre, Montparnasse, New York, Nighthawks, painting, Paris, partnership, periodicals, Picasso, plein air, psycho, reader, religion, sexual trauma, shade, shadow, sketch outside, still image narrative, Truro, twentieth century, UK, urban landscapes, US, verbal description, Washington Square, watercolour, Whitney Museum of American Art, WW1

Animation Movies Shorts

The Fox
And The Pigeon

Director – Michelle Chua – 2019 – Canada – 6m

*****

From the Annecy 2020 Online Animation Festival

This starts off opening a children’s book cover for a tale about, you’ve guessed it, a fox and a pigeon. In the time honoured tradition of such books, there are illustrations and words (in rhyming couplets) on the page. And like so many animated films, the characters move and come to life while the author acts as a narrator and reads the words.

What’s different about The Fox And The Pigeon is that while the characters want to live their own story – screenwriters often say that as they write they feel their characters talking to them and dictating the direction things should go – the narrator has other ideas and tries to impose his own narrative upon them. The fox finds a coin and buys an ice cream cone. Sitting on a park bench, he’s aware of the pigeon, who clearly wants to share the ice cream. But, intones the author reading his words, “why would a fox want to share with a pigeon?”

As the tale plays out, the author becomes increasingly vindictive, wanting the two characters to conflict with one another, to the point of one killing the other.… Read the rest

Tags animals, Annecy, Annecy 2020, author, book, Canada, children, children’s book, family, illustration, narrative, narrator, postmodernism, struggle, text, words