Album art that matters
500 compelling artists' covers
One of the biggest losses of music going from LPs to digital—besides the comforting click and pop sounds of a needle on vinyl—is the shrinking size of the album cover art canvases, so often illustrated with the exquisite vision of an artist or photographer.
Author Francesco Spampinato is watching out for us record lovers with his newest book, Art Record Covers (Taschen Books), a collection of 500 album covers from the 1950s to today. In it, we get a broad stroke of contemporary art—pop art, conceptual art, postmodernism—all designed to intrigue music lovers as well as entice buyers to pick up the latest release by their favorite band.
Included in the archive are important artists like Salvador Dali, Damien Hirst, Banksy, Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol, along with interviews with creatives such as Kim Gordon, Raymond Pettibon, Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey, and Christian Marclay, talking about the collaborative relationships between the artist and the musician.
We suggest pulling out the old turntable, dusting off some of your favorite vinyl, and tripping down memory lane with this remarkable anthology of album art.
