Category Archives: Andy Warhol’s record cover art

Andy Warhol's record cover art, Appropriation Art, Record cover art, Richard Prince

Appropriational Art — To Copy or Not to Copy?

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I consider myself to be a graphic designer as opposed to an artist. And as a collector of record cover art I quite ofren remake a rare cover or create covers for records that never existed, but for which cover art exists. Examples are my creation of covers for a proposed RCA Victor jazz album entitled Progressive Piano that was scheduled for release some time in the 1950s but, despite being allocated a catalogue number, was never actually released. The Warhol Museum has lithographs of Andy Warhol’s proposed designs for the covers of a 10-inch and a 7-inch version of the record. I created full-sized covers from photos of these lithographs and even made record labels to look like fifites RCA Victor labels.

Progressive Piano 10″ covere.
Progressive Paino 7-inch cover.

Warhol also made collages for a projected Billie Holiday album to be called Volume 3. He made four versions and pictures have circulated on the Internet , so I decided to make actual covers and include records suggesting that the album would have been released by COlumbia records, though Warhol’s designs do not include a record label or catalogue number.

Four designs for a projected Billie Holiday album.

I consider these to be appropriations of Warhol’s art not dissimilar to those made by Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014) who painted versions of Warhol’s Flower paintings — wnd was even given a silkscreen by Warhol to make further prints!

And then there are my paintings of posters and record sleeves.

There is a fine line between appropriation and copyright infringement. Warhol, or the Andy Warhol Foundation, was sued on at least three occasions. The first was in 1966. when Patricia Caulfield (1932-2023) sued Andy Warho for his use of her photograph of hibiscus flowers photographed in a Barbados restaurant as the basis for his series of Flowers paintings and prints. The case was settled out of court with Warhol paying Caulfield $6000 (from the sale of two Flowers paintings plus 25% of the royalties from the sale of the Flowers prints.) Warhol had, apparently, offered to licence the use of the photogeaph from the Modern Photography magazine, but was unwilling to pay the price quoted.

In 2011 the Andy Warhol Foundation intended to licence the use of Warhol’s Banana design for use for ipod and iPad ancillary products. However, the Velvet Underground threatend to sue as the band considered the design “to represent a symbol, truly an icon of them Velvet Undergound”. The matter was settled out of court with the Foundation publishing a letter stating that the matter had been resolved by a confidential settlement.

In 2021 photographer Lynn Goldsmith sued the Andy Warhol Foundation for licencing Warhol’s portrait of Prince to Condé Nast Publishers without credit to Goldsmith. She eventually won in the Supreme Court which decided that the Warhol version of her photograph was not sufficiently “transformative” to justify “fair use”, a legal term used to exempt use of copyright materal without having to pay the creator. Such use could be in reviews, criticisms or similar situations.

Other artists, ranging from the above-mentioned Sturtevant, to Jeff Koons, Richard Prince (who also lost a suit over his appropriation of five of Patrik Cariou’s photos of Rastafarians that Prince used in his 2008 exhibition Canal Zone at the Gagosian Gallery), and most recently, Eric Doeringer who makes “bootlegs” of other artists works, including Richard Prince’s! Apparently Prince has given Doeringer his blessing but Takashi Murakami was not so impressed with Doeringer’s work and issued a “stop and desist” order to prevent him from using Murakami’s work.

I have three examples of Richard Prince’s work in my collection: his 12-inch, limited edition , single sided vinyl Loud Song (with cover art by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon), a 7-inch flexidisc of Loud Song that is included in his High Times! monograph published by Gagosian, and the limited edition, picture disc It’s a Free Concert Now. I recently saw that Eric Doeringer has made a 7-inch version of Loud Song with two other songs (Catherine and My Way) and made a new version of Kim Gordon’s cover art. This EP has been pressed in a limited edition of just twenty-six copies, numbered from A to Z. I got number J.

Doeringer (born 1974) has achieved serious acceptance for his art by being awarded gallery exhibitions and thus a degree of fame. I find his story encouraging and a stimulus for my own continuing appropriation of other artists’/designers’ work. Hopefully my works will be suffiently “transformative” to be considered “fair use”.

There is a lot more to be said about appropriation art. There are several artists reproducing record covers commercially that could possible fall foul of copyright law. So far, though, they do not appear to have been challenged.

Album cover art, Andy Warhol's record cover art, Romain Beltrame, Vinylize!

Vinylizing Two Andy Warhol Covers.

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It’s probably a mortal sin, but I’ve allowed two of my Andy Warhol covers to be subjected to remakes by artist Romain Beltrame.

I have duplicates of a few Warhol covers and selected Aretha Franklin’s 1986 album Aretha together with Miguel Bosé’s 1983 Milano – Madrid album for Romain to ‘play’ with.

I left thecovers with him only a week ago and today he mailed me that he was ready. The results are amazing.

Beltrames Aretha
Romain Beltrame’s additional artwork on the Aretha LP cover.

Beltrames Bose
Romain Beltrame’s additional artwork on the Milano – Madrid LP cover.

I fully realise that collectors of Warhol’s record cover art might be horrified by these re-imagined covers, but I like them and welcome them as new additions to my cover art collection. After all, they are unique.

Andy Warhol's record cover art, Paul Desmond, Record cover art

A New Andy Warhol Record Cover

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From March 31st to September 8th, 2019, Moderna Museet in Malmö showed a major part of my collection of Andy Warhol’s record cover art advertised as the first time a complete selection of Warhol’s cover art production was on show. At a forum on record cover art at the Museum on 31st August, 2019, I suggested that we do not actually know if the sixty-eight covers on show are really all the covers produced during Warhol’s lifetime. I noted that new discoveries were still being made–coincidentally, often soon after and exhibition closed. And so it has turned out again!

Warhol expert and collector extraordinary, Guy Minnebach, recently visited The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and did some further research through Warhol’s letters and invoices collected at the Museum [https://warholcoverart.com/2019/10/13/the-bossa-nova-cover-no-one-knew-was-a-warhol-paul-desmonds-take-ten/]. he turned up an order from RCA Records dated May 1st, 1962 for cover art for an album with catalogue number LPM/LSP 2598. An invoice with the same date had a July 6th written on it, suggesting that that was when it was paid.

Guy didn’t recognise this catalogue number among currently identified Warhol covers and quickly discovered that the number belonged to Paul Desmond’s 1963 album “Take Ten”.

Pauk Desmond-Take Ten-fr
The cover of Paul Desmond’s 1963 album “Take Ten”.

In the nineteen fifties Andy Warhol designed or illustrated about twenty-eight record covers. By the mid- to late fifties he was one of the highest paid commercial artists in New York, but, surprisingly, only three record sleeves were known to have been produced during the sixties; the “Giant Size $1.57 Each”, the “John Wallowitch” covers, and–of course–the famous “banana” cover for the “Velvet Underground & Nico” album. So the discovery of a further cover released in the sixties is sensational.

This appears to be a silkscreen portrait of Desmond against a coloured background. This possibly could be Warhol’s first silkscreen portrait. He only began making silkscreens in August 1962, so he probably had no idea for the cover when the order arrived. There is a sweet story as to how Warhol hit upon the idea of using silkscreens to “mechanise” his art. In 1961, he met a couple of English teenagers, David and Sarah Dalton, at party and invited them to see his art at his home. The Daltons were regular visitors to The Factory and David would in 1966 co-produce the Aspen Magazine box set together with Warhol.

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The pop art edition of Aspen Magazine produced by David Dalton and Andy Warhol in December 1966.

David Dalton went on to a successful career as a writer. But I digress, When Warhol met the Daltons, David was 16 and his sister Sarah 14. In early 1962 Warhol was experimenting with ways to speed up the process of producing multiple images on a canvas. He tried using stampers made from various materials but found that he could only produce small images by this method. According to one story, Sarah Dalton was visiting the Factory in early 1962 and saw Andy at work and he complained about the problems of reproducing many images quickly. Sarah was attending art classes at the time and suggested to Andy that he should try silkscreening as she had tried the method in her classes. Sarah would be a regular visitor and When Andy had filmed his first major film “Sleep”, he asked Sarah to edit it. Sarah had no previous experience of film editing but took on the challenge. It was the start of her career as a film editor.

Warhol usually used photographs from which to make his drawings and silkscreens. Thus he used a publicity still from Marilyn Monroe’s film “Niagara” for his “Marilyn” portraits, and a photo of hibiscus flowers, taken by photographer Patricia Caulfield as the basis for his “Flowers” paintings and prints. I therefore suspect that he found a photo of Paul Desmond on which to base his cover portrait. I have been searching for the photo, but without success.

Warhol’s cover design was also used by RCA Italy for a slightly different Paul Desmond album called “The Artistry of Paul Desmond” also released in 1963 and containing six of the original eight tracks from “Take Ten” but substituted “The Night Has a Thouand Eyes” and “O Gato” for “El Prince” and “Samba de Orfeu” on the original US release.

Paul Desmond-Artistry
The cover of “The Artistry of Paul Desmond” album.

So, my collection of Andy Warhol covers on show at Moderna Museet in Malmö during the summer of 2019 was incorrectly advertised as being “complete”. The finding of the Paul Desmond album barely one month after the show closed proves the collection to have been incomplete. I wonder how many more Warhol covers will turn up in the future?

 

Andy Warhol's record cover art, Moderna Museet, Warhol 1968 Malmö

Warhol 1968–Exhibition at Moderna Museet, Malmö.

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Andy Warhol‘s first international retrospective exhibition was held at Moderna Museet in Stockholm from 10th February to 17th March 1968. The idea for the exhibition came from Pontus Hultén, Moderna’s legendary director, and his friend and former student colleague Billy Klüver a friend of Andy Warhol’s convinced Warhol to participate. Warhol visited Moderna Museet in December 1967 to reconnoiter and agreed to submit works including some Brillo boxes, “Marilyns“, an “Electric Chair” painting, and a 10 foot “Flowers” both made specially for the show. Pontus Hultén sent his young assistant Kasper König to finalise the arrangements together with Warhol and Billy Klüver. The catalogue, authored by Olle Granath, Kasper König and Pontus Hultén, with its “Flowers” cover became a cult item and several editions were produced.
Warhol-1968 Catalogue

First editions came in a cardboard box with “Andy Warhol” printed on it. There was also a limited edition of 100 copies in a perspex box (apparently few of these were sold!) Olle Granath was charged with going through Warhol’s papers to select quotes for inclusion in the catalogue. When he had submitted them for approval, Hultén phoned him and told him he had missed an important quote that “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes“. Granath replied that he hadn’t found that particular quote. but it was printed anyway. This caused a certain amount of anxiety as to what Warhol would say when he saw the quote in the catalogue–but Warhol simple shrugged and said that it was the sort of thing he might well have said. And it has since been ascribed to Warhol rather than to Pontus Hultén!

Moderna Museet decided to produce an exhibition in 2018 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the original exhibition. The new exhibition was not intended to reproduce the original show (which would have been impossible) but to emphasis the impact that Warhol’s art had in Sweden (and Europe, as the exhibition later travelled to Oslo and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam) at the time. This type of “exhibition study”, where a new show discusses a previous one, is becoming increasingly common in the museum world.

Interestingly, in 1968, the year of student revolt in Paris and elsewhere, the reaction in the Swedish press was divided with the more left wing papers mostly approving and the more conservative ones damning the show as “non art”!

I went to the opening of the Stockholm show, where  Kasper König was interviewed by Daniel Birnbaum, Moderna’s director, and Olle Granath held the opening speech. Then–as is my wont–I went through the show hoping to find some of Warhol‘s record covers and was rewarded just by the exhibition exit where eight covers were on show:
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As any nerd will note, one of these covers is not by Warhol. So I sought out John Peter Nilsson, the exhibition’s curator, and told him that the cover of the East Village Other‘s album was not by Warhol. I took the opportunity to tell him about my collection of Warhol (and other) covers. He saw to it the East Village Other cover was changed to Johnny Griffin’s “The Congregation“. He told me that Moderna had plans to show the exhibition at its sister museum in Malmö during 2019.

Some time later, John Peter made a home visit to inspect my collection of Warhol record covers and suggested that he include a selection of my Warhol cover collection in the new show in Malmö. We agreed to show all the covers with Warhol‘s art that were produced during his lifetime, but not showing every single variation, in all a total of 81 covers.

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John Peter Nilsson holding his favourite Warhol record cover–“The Nation’s Nightmare” from 1952.

In addition we decided to include some other items from my Warhol collection: the Aspen Magazine #3 from 1966, which includes the flexidisc with Peter Walker‘s “White Wind” and Velvet Underground‘s (in reality only John Cale) “Loop“,  Andy Warhol’s Index (book), Warhol‘s “The Beatles” from the cover of Geoffrey Stokes‘ 1980 book of the same name and magazine covers with portraits of Michael Jackson and Prince and the promotional book from Miguel Bosé‘s “Made in Spain” album.

The Warhol 1968 exhibition in Malmö was due to open on 30th March and run until 8th September 2019. I was invited to help oversee the final hanging of the record covers. These were framed with Wag the Wall‘s beautiful Magic Vinyl Display frames which really let the covers shine.

Warhol 68-lone viewer-1
One lone viewer in front of the record covers.

The exhibition was designed logically with a large room devoted to the art shown at the 1968 exhibition at Moderna museet in Stockholm with nine Marilyns borrowed from Louisiana, Moderna museets own “Electric Chair“, “Multiple silver Marilyns“, and the ten foot “Flowers“. Also in that room were Warhol‘s print of his plane ticket to Stockholm, December 1967 and a Warhol self portrait (both owned by Moderna). An adjacent room showed the history of Warhol‘s Brillo boxes along one wall, whilst another wall was devoted to Andy Warhol Enterprises and Warhol‘s commercial art including a portrait of “Scandinavian Beauty“. There were three exhibition cases in the middle of the room. One held two of Warhol‘s “Red books” of Polaroid pictures, another magazines with Warhol art covers and a bottle of Warhol‘s 1982 eau de toilette för men with dollar signs on the bottle. The third exhibition case contained more record-related stuff from my collection including Margarita Madrigal‘s book “Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish“, “Andy Warhol’s Index (Book)“, “FAB“, the Aspen Magazine box from December 1966, a booklet from Miguel Bosé‘s “Made in Spain” promotional package and the “Swan Lake” and “Daphnis & Chlöe “LP covers.

My record covers, 80 in all, were lined in five rows on the final wall, with some more in an exhibition case nearby.

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Exhibition case with Andy Warhol’s Index (Book), Aspen Magazine “FAB” issue, the program from the Concert of Mexican Music plus Miguel Bosé’s promo booklet from his “Made in Spain” album.

There was a massive turn out for the opening evening on 29th March with crowds gathering in front of the record covers. One visitor had a large collection of records by the Velvet Underground and by Lou Reed and admitted to owning eleven copies of the Velvet Underground & Nico! Others stood in front of the covers pointing out which ones they actually owned. Many simply admired the early covers from the 1950s and others were simply overwhelmed by the sight of 80 covers on the wall.

Warhol 68-Helene
Posing in front of the wall of record covers. Photo: Helene Toresdotter.

Moderna Museet’s director Iris Müller-Westermann held a welcome introduction followed by John Peter Nilsson who introduced the exhibition and described Warhol‘s art and philosophy after which the multitude could wander round the exhibition before a happening with a Swiss dance troupe took place. Then there was mingle in the cafeteria with shrimp cocktail and wine or beer and a DJ played Warhol-related music. A really warm and friendly meeting with what Iris Müller-Westermann judged to be one of the biggest crowds ever at an exhibition opening  at Moderna museet in Malmö.

The exhibition opened to the public on Saturday March 30th and curator, John Peter Nilsson, hosted two very popular guided tours of the exhibition. There were 1136 visitors to the show on the opening day–quite a turnout as the average number of visitors to openings at Moderna museet in Malmö is about 600. Even the curator’s tours were more popular than at previous shows.

Warhol 68-Guided tour-1
The guided tour Saturday 30th March. John Peter Nilsson beside the 25 Black & White Marilyns facing the crowd.

 

 

Andy Warhol's record cover art, Magic Vinyl Display, Moderna Museet

Warhol 1968 at Moderna Museet, Malmö, 30th March–8th September, 2019.

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Andy Warhol’s first ever retrospective exhibition opened on 15th January 1968 and ran until 17th February. This year, to mark the 50th anniversary of that groundbreaking show, Moderna Museet in Stockholm has created a new show, called “Warhol 1968” as a sort of rememberance of the earlier exhibition. This exhibition runs from 15th September 2018–17th February 2019. The exhibition will transfer to Moderna Museet’s Malmö site, opening on 30th March and running until 8th September.

The current exhibition in Stockholm includes eight record covers bearing Andy Warhol’s art. The exhibition’s curator John Peter Nilsson has decided to try to include all Warhol’s record covers produced during his lifetime in this new exhibition and has asked me if I would lend my record covers to the exhibition along with some other related pieces of Warhol art.

It will be a wonderful opportunity to show a total of seventy-seven record sleeves, LPs, EP boxes, 12″ and a few 7″ singles, some of which have never been shown in public before.

My friend, Lars Magnell, CEO of Wag the Wall has promised to lend his company’s fantastic Magic Vinyl Display frames in which to hang the covers to show them at their best .


"Voices and Events" box set, Andy Warhol's record cover art

“Voices and Events” — Warhol Cover Found.

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A year ago, in June 2017, I saw a picture of what I thought must be a previously unrecognised Warhol cover in the book “Adman–Warhol Before Pop”, the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2017.

Nicholas Chamber’s exhibition book published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Page 97 in “Adman-Warhol Before Pop” with a picture of the cover slick for an recording of an NBC radio programme called “Voices and Events”.

I saw that the picture had to be a slick for a box set like the elusive “Night Beat” box owned by renowned Warhol collector and author, Paul Maréchal. His copy of the “Night Beat” box, first shown at the “Warhol Live!” exhibition in Montreal in 2008, was thought to be the only one in existence.

Having previously made mock-ups of the “Night Beat” box, I knew how I could make similar mock-ups of the, as yet undiscovered, “Voices and Events” box pictured in the “Adman–Warhol Before Pop” book.

So I started a search for RCA EP boxes to use as the basis for the new set of boxes. It took several weeks to find a seller, but I finally managed to find a record store in Minneapolis that had many and was willing to sell them. I had photographed the slick from the “Adman” book and my local printer had printed ten slicks and within days of the arrival of the boxes I had made a limited edition of the “Voices and Events” box.

Voices box fr
The “Voices and Events” box set.

In March 2018 I was contacted by Lou Mancini, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, who said he had found a couple of rarities and wondered what they might be worth. He attached photos of the “Voices and Events” box and said the other rarity was the “Night Beat” box. I was stunned! I replied that I had no idea of the value of the boxes–they were the rarest of the rare!

Lou Mancini-June 2018
Lou Mancini with the “Voices and Events” and “Night Beat” boxes that he found.

Lou promised med photos of the “Voices and Events” box, so that I could verify the accuracy of my mock-up. They seemed identical! In addition Lou later sent a photo of the insert inside the lid of the box, which I also managed to copy.

The boxes are complete with records and all packaging intact. A fantastic find by Lou. They are now going to be added to Guy Minnebach’s magnificent Warhol collection.

I still have two of my facsimile copies of the “Voices and Events” box if anyone would like to buy one.

Album cover art, Andy Warhol's record cover art, Record collecting, Record cover art

Additions to My Collection of Andy Warhol’s Record Cover Art–A Review of 2017, Part One.

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2017 was one of my best for I don’t know how long–probably since the mid 2000s when I really started to seriously collect Andy Warhol’s record cover art and it saw the 50th Anniversary of the release of many albums that helped form my musical tastes, including “The Velvet Underground & Nico”–an album I still listen to as often as I do to The Who’s “Who’s Next” or Led Zepellin “II” or “Electric Ladyland”.

There were 16 separate titles added to my Warhol cover collection in 2017:
Miguel Bosé – Made in Spain promotional folder – LP, 12″ and 7″ singles + booklet
Latin Rhythms by The Boston Pops – 7″ single.
Aretha Franklin – Aretha – Original CD from 1986.
I’m Talking – Lead the Way – 7″ and 12″ singles.
Moondog – The Story of Moon Dog – Original Prestige LP.
Sergei Prokofiev – Alexander Nevsky – Two copies: Original 1949 turquoise cover and re-issue green cover.
Rolling Stones – Live in Laxington – Bootleg LP.
Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers (outtakes) with David Mongomery’s photo.
Diana Ross – So Close – 7″ single in calendar cover.
Diana Ross – Who – 7″ single.
Skyline – Skyline – 12″ bootleg EP – Original on Four Stars Records label.
Skyline – Skyline – 12″ bootleg EP – 2016 Reissue on Paint Noise Productions label.
Velvet Underground & Nico – 12″ LP with artist’s name and record title on cover.
Velvet Underground & Nico – 50th Anniversary black vinyl LP (2 copies)
Velvet Underground & Nico – 50th Anniversary pink vinyl LP
John Wallowitch – This Is the Other Side of John Wallowitch – 12″ LP

Perhaps the most important additions to my Warhol cover collection were the Moondog and John Wallowitch albums, particularly as most copies of the former that I have seen come up for sale have been badly yellowed or in otherwise poor condition. My copy is superbly near mint! John Wallowitch’s second album on the Serenus Records label is considerably rarer than his first and I was lucky to find a good copy.

The Story of Moondog with calligraphy by Julia Warhola.
The cover of “This Is the Other Side of John Wallowitch”.

The find that probably excited me most, however, was the Spanish promotional package for Miguel Bosé’s 1983 “Made in Spain” album, which came in a maroon folder and should have included the full album the 12″ and 7″ white label versions of the “Fuego” single as well as a booklet with a fold out poster of Warhol’s cover portrait of Bosé. Mt copy of the package, though, didn’t include the two singles, but they were relatively easy to findon Discogs, so I could completee the package.

The “Made In Spain” promotional folder.
The complete set, including the booklet, which contains a fold-out poster of Warhol’s Bosé portraits.
The “Made In Spain” promotional folder showing the “Made In Spain” LP, the white label 12″ and 7″ Fuego singles.”

Two “new” Warhol covers were discovered in 2017 . Warhol collector Kevin Kinney found the “Lead the Way” single by Australian group I’m Talking, which used a detail from Warhol’s “Marilyn’s Lips” print as its cover art. The single was released as a 7″ single and as a limited edition 12″.

Lead the Way-7"
I’m Talking’s “Lead the Way” 7″ single cover.

I found the second “new” Warhol cover in the catalogue of the “Adman – Warhol Before Pop” exhibition held in Melbourne in 2016. The catalogue had a picture of a print that I immediately recognised as a slick for a box set of 7″ EPs similar to the “Night Beat” set. I immediately set about making a replica box similar to the one I made for the “Night Beat” set.

The “Night BEat” and “Voices and Events” box sets.
The “Night Beat” and “Voices and Events” box sets.

Another cover I had had trouble finding was the “Skyline” album with the portrait of Suzanne de Maria taken from one of Warhol’s screen tests. Early in the year I saw a copy on Ebay which I managed to win only to find that it wasn’t the 1978 original but a 180g reissue, supposedly limited to fifty copies that included a photo of Suzanne de Maria numbered 49/50. The record was released on the Paint Noise Productions label, not the Four Stars label and the rear cover stated that the cover photo was by “A. Warhol”, the original 1978 album did not have this credit. Later I got hold of a copy of the original 1978 version and a comparison showed the cover photos to be very different. The original version had a clear picture of de Maria, while the reissue was fuzzy.

The cover of the original 1978 version of “Skyline”.
The cover of the 2016 reissue version.

The covers are almost two separate versions of the image.

And as if the Skyline albums weren’t nerdy enough, there were a couple of even nerdier additions to my collection: The original cover for “Latin Rhythms by The Boston Pops” EP as well as a second copy of Warhol’s design–one that without the A Hi-Fidelity Recording” text under the RCA logo on the front cover.

The original cover design which came in various colour variations.

I have reserved the final section to the 50th Anniversary reissues of “The Velvet Underground & Nico” album. I already had the 45th Anniversary LP and 6 CD sets and wondered when they came out why Universal Music had released them with the 50th anniversary so near. Obviously, to sell more copies–so I wasn’t too surprised to read that they would also release 50th Anniversary versions, too. I heard that there eas a very limited pink vinyl version as well as the standard the black vinyl version. I found two copies of the latter at HMV on Oxford Street but they had never heard of the pink vinyl version. It took a while to find a copy but that was added to my collection.
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I had also decided to collect other cover designs for the album and bought an eighties reissue with the artist and title on the front cover to add to my collection as well as a bootleg of the Norman Dolph Scepter Studios acetate

The latest bootleg version of The Velvet Underground & Nico’s Norman Dolph acetate superimposed the classic banana image over a photo from the 1966 film of the Velvets in concert.

I hope 2018 will allow me to find copies of the only two LPs with Warhol covers that I still need to complete my collection:
Keith Richards’s – Unknown Dreams – LP with Warhol’s Mercedes drawing,
Prokofiev’s – Alexander Nevsky – LP wit the pink variation of the cover.

In following posts I will list additions to my other collections: Banksy covers, Kate Moss covers, and newer collections including Karin “Mamma” Anderson, Suzan Philipsz, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jeff Koons, Klaus Voormann and Peter Blake as well as pastiches of “The VelvetUnderground & Nico” and “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” covers.

Wishing you a very Happy and successful 2018. See you next time!

Andy Warhol's record cover art, My Warhol collection

My Collection of Andy Warhol’s Record Cover Art — Is This as Far as I Can Go?

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I have been collecting Andy Warhol’s record cover art more seriously since about 1982. Once Ebay started I found research into Warhol’s 1950s cover art easier and in the early part of the 2000s could collect some rare covers quite reasonably. But, I suppose it was in about 2006 or 2007 that I got to know Warhol collector Guy Minnebach, who gave me amazing help to boost my collection.

In around 2007, I had the (not too original) idea of putting on an exhibition of ALL of Andy Warhol’s record covers and it came about in time for what would have been Warhol’s 80th Birthday in 2008. The exhibition, at Piteå Museum, in northern Sweden, wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Jan Wimander and, of course, Guy Minnebach–who lent me several extremely rare covers to photograph for the exhibition and who helped hang the covers. Little did I know at the time that the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was planning a major Warhol retrospective entitled “Warhol Live!” that concentrated on his connection to music and film and included what would have been the first properly curated exhibition of Warhol’s record cover art had we not pipped the Montreal Museum at the post, by opening a couple of months earlier!

Our exhibition included sixty-five covers. The Montreal exhibition showed Paul Maréchal’s wonderful cover collection that included the “Night Beat” box, that neither Guy nor I had seen. In addition, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts launched Paul Maréchal’s book “Andy Warhol – The Record Covers, 1949-1987. Catalogue Raisonné”, the first serious attempt to document Warhol’s record cover art.

The discovery of the “Night Beat” box, together with Guy Minnebach’s earlier discovery of the “Waltzes by Johann Strauss, Jr.” EP showed that there were probably more previously unrecognised Warhol covers out there, and, only a month after our exhibition in Piteå closed, I was tipped off about a cover by the Swedish band RATFAB (Roland and the Flying Albatross Band) that Warhol had drawn in 1984. Since then more covers have been found and motivated an updated version of Paul Maréchal’s catalogue raisonné, this time renamed “Andy Warhol–The Complete Commissioned Record Covers, 1949-1987”.

I have several times in blog posts warned against saying a collection is “complete”–as  new items usually turn up immediately one says a collection is complete. So, even with Paul Maréchal’s book!

My list of Warhol covers includes bootlegs and records and CDs released after Warhol’s death in 1987 and today has 248 separate items. 228 of them are currently in my collection, with only five of the twenty omissions that I would call “essential”–the pink version of Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky” (from 1949), the “Night Beat” box (1949 or 1950), the Japanese EP of Mendelsson’s “Scherzo” (with the “Cool Gabriels artwork) , an original “Giant Size $1.57 Each” cover (1963) and the limited edition Keith Richards bootleg LP “Unknown Dreams” (1977).

I have made facsimile editions of the “Night Beat” box, the five versions of the “Giant Size $1.57 Each” cover (with white, red, yellow, green & orange backgrounds) as well as a version of the unreleased “Progressive Piano” EP and 10″ LP and the recently “discovered” “Voices and Events” box. I’m toying with the idea of making a facsimile of the pink “Alexander Nevsky”, which shouldn’t be too difficult, but I don’t have a decent high resolution image for the “Unknown Dreams” album cover to be able to make one of those. So, is this as near completion as I can get?

Andy Warhol's Photography, Andy Warhol's record cover art, Record cover art, Rolling Stones

Andy Warhol’s “Biting” Photos on Record Covers and Elsewhere

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Finding details of where and when Andy Warhol took the nine famous “biting” photographs that were used on the “Love You Live” album cover and other items hasn’t been easy. In a recent interview (July 18th, 2017) in Interview Magazine about the origins of many of Warhol’s photographs Christopher Makos explains where many of Warhol’s photographs were taken. Towards the end of the interview, Makos mentions the photos for the “Love You Live” album.

Makos remembers that Andy was given a “point and shoot” camera sometime around 1975. And he used it constantly throughout the late 1970s, often replacing his Polaroid camera, which he primarily used for his portraits. However, the “biting” photos are nearly always shown as if they were Polaroid pictures, so I cannot be sure which type of camera they were taken with. However, the reproductions on posters and elsewhere suggest that Warhol used both Polaroids and his “point & shoot”camera.

During the summer of 1977, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards rented Peter Beard’s* house in Montauk (East Hamptons, New York State) and Andy took some of the photographs there and some additional ones at Warhol’s third Factory address at 860 Broadway in New York later. Obviously Jagger had brought his daughter Jade to Montauk as it is her hand Mick is “biting” on the “Love You Live” cover. There is also a photo of Jagger and Jade sticking their tongues out at each other.

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Andy Warhol’s photographs for the cover of “Love You Live”.

It seems eleven photographs were taken and a contact sheet produced. However the last picture int he second row shows Mick Jagger biting a child’s hand but this is  not the photo that appears on the front cover of “Love You Live“.

love-you-live fr
The Front cover of “Love You Live” showing Mick biting a child’s hand (Jade Jagger). Jade’s arm in a different position from that in the contact sheet photo.

There are also other pictures that do not appear on this contact sheet, in particular the picture of Mick and Jade  (born 21 October 1971) sticking their tongues out at each other.
RS-Stereo Baby_AWbild

…And here’s how it looked on the “El Mocambo 1977” box set cover.

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Mick and Jade Jagger in a picture from the “biting” session on the cover of a limited edition bootleg box set.

The photos were also used on the cover of a four-track promotional EP for the “Love You Live” album, entitled simply “The Rolling Stones” (Rolling Stones Records, EP-PR-287). In addition there was a picture disc (probably a bootleg) with the same four photos.

The “Rolling Stones” promotional single.
The bootleg picture disc.

A new bootleg of a Stones concert, presumably from Lexington, Kentucky, was released in 1978 with the title “Live in Laxington” with a fairly traditional front cover picture of Mick and Ronnie Wood. However, one of the “Biting” photos appeared on the back cover.

Front cover of “Live in Laxington” LP.
Rear cover of “Live in Laxington” LP.

The photographs were also used for other promotional items. The Rolling Stones threw a release party for the “Love You Live” album at the Trax club in New York on September 27, 1977 and the photos featured on the plastic tablecloths used at the reception. These measured 36″ x 48″ (91,4 x 121,9 cm). There were also similarly sized posters on paper. Carrier bags with the photos were also produced, I would guess as goodie bags for guests, though I don’t know if they were appeared at the launch party or later.

Poster and Tablecloth
Carrier bag

Andy Warhol was fastidious about typography and was annoyed by Mick Jagger’s addition of the record title and the Band’s name to the artwork for the “Love You Live” album cover and usually refused to sign the front cover, preferring to sign the inner spread.

“Love You Live” inner spread signed by Warhol.
Warhol’s signature on inner spread.

This autographed copy of “Love You Live” is from my collection of Andy Warhol’s record cover.

*Peter Beard (born 1938) is a photographer, film director, author and artist who has lead an adventurous life. He was friends with the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and other celebrities.

 

 

Album cover art, Andy Warhol's record cover art, Record collecting

Collecting Andy Warhol’s Record Cover Art. How to Credit Previously Unrecognised covers?

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I curated what I thought would be the first exhibition of Andy Warhol’s record covers in Piteå, Sweden, in July 2008 I enlisted the help of fellow collector Guy Minnebach to assemble as complete a collection of record Warhol’s record covers as possible. Only later did I find out that Warhol’s record covers had been shown before-usually as part of other exhibitions of his art, and then only exhibiting a few covers. My intention with the 2008 exhibition was to try to gather together all the covers he designed or illustrated.

Just two months after the exhibition in Piteå closed, the Museum of Art in Montreal, Canada, put on a major exhibition entitled “Warhol Live!” which showed the link between Warhol’s art and music. Many of the record covers shown came from the collection of Paul Maréchal and his book “Andy Warhol – The Record Covers 1949-1987: Catalogue Raisonné” was published to coincide with the “Warhol Live!” exhibition.

Just before the Piteå exhibition, Guy Minnebach had discovered the “Waltzes by Johann Strauss Jr.” EP and the “Warhol Live!” exhibition showed Paul Maréchal’s newly discovered “Night Beat” box set. Less than a month after the exhibition in Piteå closed, in September 2008, a friend of mine read an interview in a magazine with Tomas Alfredsson, a Swedish musician turned actor, who had been a member of a band called Roland and the Flying Albatros Band (known as RATFAB for short). In the interview he said that the cover of the Band’s second single had been designed by Andy Warhol. Thus started my search for this cover, and I quickly found three copies. The RATFAB single “Det brinner en eld / Mörka ögon” became the first Warhol cover NOT to be included in Maréchal’s 2008 book!

Since then, a number of covers, unrecognised in 2008, illustrated or designed by Andy Warhol have been identified.
1. Margarita Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish, Volume 2 (LP),
2. Vladimir Horowitz – Piano Music of Mendelssohn and Lizst (LP),
3. Mendelssohn – Wedding March / Scherzo (45 RPM EP)
4. Lew White – Melodic Magic (EP),
5. Erika Morini – Tchaikovsky–Violin Concerto
6. George Gershwin / Edvard Grieg – Porgy & Bess / Symphonic Dances (LP and EP box),
7. Curiosity Killed the Cat – Misfit / Man (7″ single).

And this list doesn’t include bootlegs or records and CDs that simply appropriated Warhol’s art for their covers. Nor does it include covers after 1987 that simply use or reuse Warhol’s art, such as Paul Anka’s “Amigos” or Skyline’s “Skyline” or even The Silver Apples’ “Fractal Flow / Lovefingers“.

There has been a problem in having new covers suggested to be by Warhol verified. An example is the rear cover drawing on Keely Smith’s 1957 Capitol Records LP “I Wish You Love“. By this date, Warhol was an acclaimed commercial artist and his “dot and blot” technique was being used by other illustrators. Warhol is not known to have worked with Capitol Records on any other projects, so this drawing cannot certainly be accredited to Warhol. There are similar discussions about the Tchaikovsky (No. 5 in the above list) and the Gershwin / Grieg (No. 6 in the list) designs also released in 1957, but these were at least released on the RCA Victor Bluebird label, and Warhol did many designs for RCA and its other subsidiary Camden Records. Maréchal has included the Tchaikovsky, but not the Gershwin / Grieg in the second edition of his book.

There are variations in some of the covers that Maréchal has described. There are various colour variants of the covers illustrated, starting with the first cover in the book, “A Program of Mexican Music” (Columbia Records – ML 2080). Maréchal includes the green cover variant but doesn’t mention the rarer pale blue coloured version. Similarly, there are five colour variations of the “Alexander Nevsky” (Columbia Records – ML 4247)–pale blue and a deeper, almost turquoise, blue that contained the original LP with dark blue labels. The album was re-released in the late fifties with the cover in green, orange and pink. These copies have records with Columbia 6-eye labels. Maréchal includes the green reissue cover, but not the original blue covers. Then there are minor variations such as the various printings of the “Latin Rhythms by the Boston Pops” EP. Friend and Warhol expert Guy Minnebach noticed that some copies had the text “A High Fidelity Recording” just beneath the RCA logo in the upper right of the cover. Some had this text in silver and some in green. There is a minor variation in the cover of the “Waltzes by Johann Strauss, Jr.” EP. Some copies have “Printed in U.S.A.” at bottom right while others do not (probably due to the way the slick was cut before being affixed to the cover.)

There are probably more cover designs by Andy Warhol waiting to be identified. A recent case in point is the sister box to NBC’s “Night Beat” entitled “Voices and Events“. As with the designs for the “Progressive Piano” EP set and 10″ LP a lithograph of the “Voices and Events” cover design exists in The Warhol Museum and was shown at the “Adman-Warhol Before Pop” exhibition in Australia early in 2017. It isn’t clear whether The Warhol Museum recognised this to be the design for an EP box set, but when I saw it I immediately saw the similarity to the “Night Beat” design with the dots on three sides. No one knows if the “Voices and Events” box was ever released. I suppose, like the “Night Beat” set, it was intended as a promotional teaser but the radio show it was intended to promote only lasted three episodes… so probably not.

By my reckoning, there are some 55 individual covers that can be attributed to Andy Warhol (I do not count different formats that use the same, or similar, designs), but there is no way that a newly identified cover can be given accreditation, other than being recognised by Paul Maréchal and included in future editions of his “Complete Commissioned Record Covers“.