The Album Art Music Left Behind
Two projects examine the visual art and design that shape our perception of music, from Raymond Pettibon’s Foo Fighters record covers to the ephemera of bygone bands.
It is a cold afternoon in New York when collector and photography critic Vince Aletti says, “I miss all that material. Not that I could house it anymore.” The material in question: album covers, flyers, zines, and posters from the 1970s disco scene he chronicled so meticulously, once held in hands and housed in homes. They float ephemerally on the corner of a screen behind Aletti, who is participating in a panel moderated by Matthew Higgs and hosted at the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, where three levels above us is the Art of Noise exhibition. An attendee asks the speakers if any album covers have influenced how the corresponding music sounds to their ears. Higgs cites the oft-quoted anecdote that Peter Saville did not listen to Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures (1979) before designing the iconic cover.
It’s now hard to imagine the music without the artwork, yet they were never truly connected in the first place.
