AN ARTIST who created some of the defining album covers of the 70s – including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon – will show off his greatest triumphs in a new solo exhibition.
Taken by Storm: The Album Cover Art of Storm Thorgerson opens on Monday at Opus Fine Art in Newcastle and promises a colourful trip down memory lane for music fans.
England-born Thorgerson, whose parents were Norwegian, has worked with top rock bands throughout his career in graphic design.
As well as creating Pink Floyd’s classic covers, other albums bearing his stamp are by Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath and Paul McCartney.
Talking about Dark Side of the Moon, Floyd’s massively successful 1973 concept album featuring the prism graphic, Thorgerson revealed in an interview with The Journal in 2002 that the group gave his artwork the nod without much thought.
“We went to see the band when they were recording the album in the basement of Abbey Road Studios,” he recalled.
“We had six ideas, but they were short of time so they saw the prism and said ‘Right, that’ll do’. They didn’t even look at the others.”
The ‘we’ he referred to was Hipgnosis, the graphic art group Thorgerson co-founded in 1968 with fellow photographer and designer Aubrey Powell to specialise in cover art.
That prism design – which will feature in the exhibition – has since been described as one of the greatest album covers of all time.
Other artists bearing his distinctive stamp are 10cc, Yes, The Cranberries, Muse, Styx and Paul Young.
Now 64, the artist, who also works as a film director and writer, has been in the business more than 40 years and still collaborates with musicians on eye-catching album covers. This solo exhibition will span his entire career.
But it was the early, pre-Photoshop days of Hipgnosis that broke new ground.
Photo trickery, such as airbrushing and multiple exposure, was deployed alongside paint and sculpture to produce surreal and stand-out imagery which was often infused with quirky humour.
The exhibition will showcase some of the most iconic images, including the ‘man on fire’ cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and the painted ladies seen above – each decorated with a stencilled image from a famous album cover – who posed on a Cape Town beach in front of Table Mountain.
The resulting shot, Beach Catalogue, created during a five-hour paint and shoot session, was one of six similar images. The first, Back Catalogue, was shot to promote the release of Pink Floyd’s back catalogue on CD.
The Cranberries’ Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and Mr Love Pants by Ian Dury & The Blockheads also feature.
Music and art fans will be able to take home a piece of history, too. The covers are all in limited editions with signed prints on sale from £295.
Following a collectors’ preview on Friday evening, Taken by Storm will open to the public on Monday and the exhibition will run until March 16.
Opus Fine Art is in Milburn House in Dean Street, Newcastle, and the gallery is open Monday to Friday from 9am until 5pm.
Barbara Hodgson
Thorgerson, whose parents were Norwegian, has worked with top rock bands throughout his career
