Every once in a while there comes along a really new style in art and rock, goth and metal bands have often been the first to pick up on the new art and commission the artist to produce a cover for their latest album. Very often the art is so associated with the band that more than one cover ends up being done with the same artist. This was not, in fact, the first cover commissioned by Paradise Lost from celebrated artist Dave McKeane but possibly it was the best. It was also the last one as they changed their style musically and artistically quite radically after this album. Probably the earliest artist-band symbiosis and also the most long-lived one was that between landscape surrealist Roger Dean and the progressive rock band YES (although Roger Dean did plenty of covers for many other bands too).

If you are looking at the cover for Draconian Times above and puzzling over the name of Dave McKeane and wondering why it seems familiar (possibly because you have been living on the planet Pluto for the last ten years or ended up on this blog by mistake whilst looking for knitting patterns) then Dave McKeane was the artistic genius behind the covers for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics and the designer for the incredible film Mirrormask. If you love McKeane’s art then you must see that film! It is to large extent Dave McKeane’s art come alive and it is wonderful to see his creatures come alive like that.

Returning to the Draconian Times cover, the music, providing it is a genre you are into, is excellent. The first track Enchantment has the most incredible melody that seems so familiar that you feel you must have heard it before. No-one here has managed to figure out where it comes from if it is not original though. Any guesses? There was a large poster of the artwork of the Draconian Tiomes cover produced by the record company but sadly they’d all disappeared before we could lay our hands on any of them. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all …

Dave McKeane art here

No, it’s not some kind of new exercise regime or new brand of cosmetic. It is the study of why art affects us the way it does … amongst other things. It is to do with appreciation of qualities like beauty and how to define these effects. There are some big puzzles. For instance, if a forger paints a copy of a Van Gogh that is indistinguishable from the original why is it of lesser value? Let’s say the difference can only be known by carbon-dating the materials used for instance. That means that the original and the fake as you look at them are absolutely identical and yet one is worth a fortune while the other one isn’t for reasons that have nothing to do with what it looks like. So; the aesthetic value of the painting is not just in the appearance of the art or even the technical merits of the artistic talent put into creating it but in the facts of the history of it. Now, isn’t that bizarre? Because it is the first one, painted by a particular person at a particular time it is worth much more, even if it looks identical to a copy. How can two pieces of art that look identical be of a different value? In the end, you see, it is all in the mind - the value we choose to give to something and the values by which we decide that even if they look identical they are not of identical value. It only goes to show how subjective the experience of art really is. Possibly there are as many versions of the Mona Lisa as the number of people who have looked at it

Way back in the hippy days of the sixties a monster of an album burst forth on an unsuspecting world in 1968. Robert Fripp, a guitarist of no small talent and a penchant for originality, had put together a new and unusual group fronted by a singer called Greg Lake who was destined to go on to dizzy heights later with ELP. The lyrics for the first album were oddly enough by someone who wasn’t in the band and whose own singing abilities (to be kind) were less than wonderful. But as a poet he was way ahead - reading the words to 21st Century Schizoid Man and then reading the newspapers today it is hard not to think of him as some kind of prophet. But we’re here to talk about art so here are both the outside cover and inside cover of ‘In The Court Of The Crimson King’ painted by Barry Godber -

The front is the schizoid man and the inside is the Crimson King with his jolly smile and very sad eyes. The artist Barry Godber was in fact a computer technician who the lyricist Pete Sinfield knew. In fact, he was the only artist he knew so the choice of who to ask was easy! Sadly, Barry Godber barely survived to see his artwork printed on the cover as he died in 1970 from a heart-attack at the tragically young age of 24. The cover and the album went on to become hugely venerated icons of art and music name-checked as influences countless times over the years. The raw emotion portrayed in the front cover and the way that the face is almost bursting out of the frame of the cover attracted many people to the album even if they hadn’t heard a single note of it. Strangely enough, given his tragic early death, the painting was based on a distorted reflection of the artist’s own face. The album itself was remastered for the final time in 2003 when they finally found the original master tapes, which is a bit like finally remembering you left the Rembrandt down in the cellar

From painting to photography. The first Black Sabbath album has this classic photo on it. The place is Mapledurham Watermill but the odd thing is that nobody knows who the woman was who modelled for the cover. Bit spooky eh? Not so spooky was the record company cashing in on the satanist hype in the media by putting a reversed cross on the inside cover much to the annoyance of the band who actually weren’t satanists. Made on a shoestring budget in a a couple of days it turned out to be one of the most influencial albums ever made. The title track is probably almost single-handedly responsible for the births of the genres of heavy metal and goth music. So now you know who to blame … or praise

We have a massive long list of unsolicited customer testimonials on our ecommerce website at www.artistsuk.co.uk but it isn’t that often we get to see our customers in these days of impersonal Internet ordering. One of our customers was so impressed with the Christmas gift he bought from us for his wife and how happy she was with it he emailed us with a photo of her with the framed print and thanked us for being there to provide it…..

“The print arrived in great shape and has already been framed. I attached a picture of my wife with her print. My wife really loved it and I wanted to thank you for your help in acquiring it. My wife said Alan Lee was a big inspiration for her in her art career. The only problem now is that she can’t decide what room of the house to put it in. She wants to be able to look at it all the time and doesn’t know what room is best. It will probably end up in her Art Studio so that she can look at it while she paints.”

It is nice to be appreciated! Thanks!