We have been told to look at one piece of work from an agency or artist, and then break the work down and look at what past artists have influenced this type of work.
The peice of work i have decided to check out is the 2001 album cover of new orders 'get ready' album which i find to be one of the most interesting and beautiful pieces of work to have seen. Peter Hook said of the album's title, "The title of the album is 'Get Ready' so it could mean anything or nothing. I thought it was just nice, New Order, 'Get Ready', 'cos we are, we're getting ready for the next phase of our musical lives both physically and mentally so it's quite a simple thing but it's very pertinent." From that i think this album cover suites it perfectly, it leaves the viewer to wonder what the album actually is, what does it mean, what is it called??
The album features a cover art which is designed by the one and only Peter Saville and Howard Wakefield who have also designed covers for New Order and Joy Division albums.
Peter Saville is one of the true greats within the visual communication era, he has pioneered various ways of communicating to the viewer through subtle codes and colors. He was one of the first to do it on 'joy divisions' album covers, he placed a color coded sequence to create this image behind his style of work. He designed a color code to use on several releases circa-83. The decoder was the wheel design on the reverse of the cover to Power, Corruption and Lies. The color wheel describes the meaning of the colored squares on Power Corruption & Lies & Blue Monday and Confusion.The code on the albums were 'FACT 75' which is the Factory number for this release and the code for the CD front cover is 'FACD 75'.
From this album cover you can tell that they wanted to branch out into something else and try something different by not using the color coded theory but using just one color in a certain composition, which i find beautiful. This type of style was so original and never been used or seen during this era, or was it. Obviously Peter saville took various influences from other people to create this gorgeous style of work.
My first opinion of it, is how minimal it looks, which in my mind MAKES the artwork. The pure simplicity of it works so so well. I would say that the like of Malevich and Duchamp who were the major two artists that pushed the Minimalist art movement during the 20th century were a major influence of this piece. Firstly the simple form of the picture and the rectangle was a huge style with minimalism, as well as geometric forms. Work such as 'Black Square and Red Square' & 'Black Square' scream out to me in this cover art. Another good key element of this which is why i believe minimalism had such a huge influence on this was, because it allows you to loose yourself within the artwork, that's what minimalism done, it allowed you to view it more intensely without no distractions around you and completely focus on the image. You could say other than minimalism being such a huge influence on this piece, it would be hard to deny constructivism, Bauhaus and Suprematisim having a part as well, as these art movements were integrated along the rise of minimalism. Mainly Bauhaus due to the geometric shape sitting across the artwork.
Another influence was the art movement Suprematism which was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms (in particular the square and circle) which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations. It was founded by Kasimir Malevich.
Theo van Doesburg was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.
The Cubist art movement which began in Paris around 1907. Main movers of the movement were people like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the Cubists broke from centuries of tradition in their painting by rejecting the single viewpoint. Instead they used an analytical system in which three-dimensional subjects were fragmented and redefined from several different points of view simultaneously.
Influence of minimalisim was Abstract Expressionist movement, like all art movements Minimalism did not emerge out of nowhere. This influenced such factors as the structure of the canvas surface and nature of the medium, over those of representation, paved the way for the Minimalists. Willem de Kooning & Franz Kline.
Another major influence that i believe has helped create this artwork would be a man called Henri Mattise. Born in 1869, he was a french artist known for his use of color in his paintings. He was originally an draftsman, print maker and sculptor but is known worldwide as one of the most influential painters when it came to color. He has influenced many designers around the world in various different industry's such as Fashion, Architecture, Art & Drama. He is known to be one of 3 artists (along with Picasso & Duchamp) who defined the and help introduce painting and sculpturing to the 20th century. He had such an eye for color and drawing and believed that the colors within a painting should be the true force which at that time was outrageously bold and very frowned upon. But i believe that this was one of the major influences in art movements leading up to our generation. Matisse's theory's for color had such a knock on effect they would influence various art movements Pop Art, Bauhaus, Dada, Expressionism. I believe that all of these would in some what way use the color theory that Matisse created. This would then eventually lead back and have a knock on effect to Peter Saville & Howard Wakefield. I believe that they would use the color theory used by Matisse in choosing various colors they believed worked well together and then the minimalist approach that they believed would work toward the whole 'vibe' of new orders album.
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