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Joined: July 01 2015
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Topic: Allusion to Visual Arts in Prog Posted: October 05 2016 at 18:12
Earlier today I was chatting with an artist friend of mine and we got around to talking about some of our favourite paintings and all that, and one piece that came up was Bosch's (in)famous The Garden of Earthly Delights. Intrigued by all the incredible detail, we loaded up a super high res image and began exploring. Two small excerpts of the triptych caught my eye in particular:
A flipped version of the top left, of course, is featured prominently as the cover art for Birds and Buildings' Bantam To Behemoth:
And the bottom right was cropped out and edited slightly for Deep Purple's self-titled album:
So this got me thinking: what are some other instances where prog has borrowed or taken inspiration from the visual arts? This can include album covers taken from famous paintings, as well as lyrical or musical allusions to artwork.
when i was a kid a doller was worth ten dollers - now a doller couldnt even buy you fifty cents
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Posted: October 05 2016 at 21:24
^ while Kin Crimson the song reference the Rembrandt painting the album cover illustrates a different kind of Nightwatch - I suspect this punning is deliberate. Ayreon's song "The Shooting Company of Captain Frans B. Cocq" from the Universal Migrator uses the full title of the painting.
Osanna's Palepoli uses a few different paintings if I'm not mistaken.
The front cover obviously uses a bit of Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel and the gatefold presents another painting of his, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent with what I see as an overall allusion to Bosch, showing the panoramic view of humanity. The back cover, I can't really recognize, but I'm sure it's something.
Death Walks Behind You by Atomic Rooster uses William Blake's painting.
Not exactly, prog, but Morgen's amazing psych (proto-prog IMHO) album uses The Scream by Edvard Munch.
There are also a lot of H. R. Giger works on Brain Salad Surgery, Biomechanoid by Joel Vandroogenberk or Island's Pictures to name a few.
Edited by ALotOfBottle - October 06 2016 at 00:33
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Posted: October 06 2016 at 08:44
^ didn't realise it was a race. Yeah, they probably win.
Staying in Prog Folk, Dead Can Dance also lifted a section of Bosch's Garden:
As did Celtic Frost on the album wot I like to call "Into the Pantomime" but I'll not bother searching for a pic, those that care have all seen it before.
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Posted: October 06 2016 at 09:25
Keep posting, gents, I'll be more than happy to add this interesting info to the particular albums page (as I've been already doing for sometime , which you can check on some of these here above)
How could I have forgotten? One of my favorite avant-garde albums, Kew. Rhone. by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad, uses C. W. Peale's Exhuming the First American Mastodon.
Also, Pentangle's Cruel Sister uses Albrecht Durer's The Men's Bath as a part of the album cover.
Edited by ALotOfBottle - October 06 2016 at 09:43
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