STANLEY DONWOOD

The Man Behind Your Favourite Albums Artwork

"There is no future. We have evicted ourselves from our own cities, rendered our agriculture poisonous, criminalized the poor, aggrandized the rich, honoured the stupid and ridiculed the intelligent... I have no solutions, no wisdom to offer... Whilst Rome burns, I take up my little chisel and I carve a panoramic apocalypse of my own... and if you want to see it, you’re more than welcome." – Stanley Donwood, 2012

His practice veers from propagandist graphics to introspective illustrations and paintings. In his recent woodcut, he depicts the renowned LA landscape being engulfed by fire, flood and meteor storm with the iconic Hollywood sign moments away from being submerged by the rising tides.

Inspired by the aesthetics of the woodcut illustrations found in the 15th century publication Nuremberg Chronicle, Donwood hand carves his doomsday scenarios into linoleum which is then hand burnished onto Japanese Kozo paper, a durable fibrous paper first developed in Japan over 1,300 years ago.

This recent body of work has developed from themes and subjects similar to Donwood’s 2006 work titled ‘London Views’, he began this piece after being shaken by the Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed more than 229,000 lives. His original drawings evolved from being visual recordings of the destruction into ruminations on the environmental repercussions of contemporary lifestyle. Inspired by the aesthetics of the woodcut illustrations in the 15th century publication Nuremberg Chronicle, Donwood carved scenes from his drawings into a 10 foot- long linoleum panorama. This visual narrative of London being consumed by natural disaster was then laboriously transferred onto rolls of Kozo Washi-a durable, fibrous paper first developed in Japan over 1,300 years ago.

In addition to his work with Radiohead, Donwood has exhibited across Europe, Asia and the US. Recent Exhibitions include; ‘Lost Angeles’ Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, USA (2012); ‘Minotaur’ Old Vic Tunnels, London, UK, (2011) ‘RED MAZE’ Schunck, Heerlen, Holland (2010); ‘Palimpsest’ Mondo Bizzarro Gallery, Rome, Italy, ‘OVER NORMAL’, Fifty24SF Gallery, San Francisco, USA (all 2010); ‘I LOVE THE MODERN WORLD’ Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, Tokyo (2008).

“Desire Enlargement” from Over Normal gallery show

Interview with TEMPO magazine

Notable album covers catch the eye, dribble it around a little, and then snap it back into place, forever skewed. They can be funny, gross, shocking, stunning, or just plain wrong. They can define artists.

We spoke with Stanley Donwood, the man responsible for all of Radiohead’s album covers from The Bends on, along with most of the band’s artwork. From the bare, bleak OK Computer cover to the vibrant shots of colour that spray over In Rainbows, Donwood has helped to capture all the alienation and intensity of one of the most celebrated bands of all time.

TM: I remember first seeing the Hail to the Thief artwork and thinking it felt ominous.

SD That word occurred to me this morning when I watched the sea fog of San Francisco descend from the sky, obscuring the city minute by minute. It was very beautiful but also ominous, like a shroud, and I really love it when you get that strange combination of feelings that play against each other.

It’s also ominous because all these colours that I’ve used are derived from the petrol-chemical industry. They’re only possible because of the fractioning of hydrocarbons. That’s how they get the pigments. None of it is natural. It essentially comes from black sludge. We’ve created this incredibly vibrant society, but we’re going to have to deal with the consequences sooner or later

TM: Looking through your Radiohead covers over the years-- comparing the pale OK Computer with the vibrant In Rainbows-- it seems like you may have become more comfortable accentuating the more beautiful aspects of technology and alienation.

SD: Or I’ve become more jaded and weary. We were doing that OK Computer stuff back in 1996 and I was in my mid-20s and much more distressed by everything and maybe more hopeful that something could be done about it. Now it’s just more hopeless, so I’m trying to be slightly happier with myself. No one really wants to be miserable all the time.

Growing up and living in England, I’m surrounded by grey skies and sarcasm, so when I came to America, my first impressions were bright, hopeful, cheerful. In America, the colours sing, they don’t just glower at you. The West Coast especially is fantastic. It seems like you can do whatever you want here, which is not the case where we come from.

TM: So is that British mindset behind the gloomier palette of something like OK Computer?

SD: Well, I remember we were trying to make something the colour of bleached bone. We had a rule that if we made a mistake we had to scribble over it – we couldn’t do the Apple-Z thing; we couldn’t undo. It was done on an early Apple Mac. But I got very fed up with using just computers, because you’re so restricted; you got a little mouse, a little light pen that you move about and you click and click and click. I wanted to use other things. I used paint a lot. For In Rainbows, I used hypodermic needles, syringes, ink, and molten wax. Especially after Kid A and Amnesiac, which were very dour and gloomy, I wanted some brightness.

TM: The artwork for Amok has so much energy but so little colour, brilliant stuff. What did you respond to?

SD: It has no colour as far as I remember, apart from silver foiling. I started that artwork in Los Angeles near to the beginning of the recording of the album, and essentially it’s an eighteen-foot long linocut of Los Angeles being destroyed by fire, flood and meteor storm (in a quasi-Mediaeval style). I didn’t plan the thing at all, so I just added to it and added to it until it was finished. It was an absolute fucker to print; it was so long it had to be hand-burnished to get a print from it. And when I exhibited the print it was so long I had to commission a special curved wall to display it.

In many ways it is a continuation of the work I did for Thom’s first solo record, The Eraser, which was a long linocut panorama of London being destroyed by fire and flood (in a quasi-Mediaeval style). Both were initially influenced by some poorly-done woodcuts in a book first published in 1492, the Liber Chronaricum. This book was published in Nuremberg and purported to be a history of the world. My resulting work is, in some ways, a sort of warning.

TM: Do you do work with a computer now?

SD: Yeah, but I enjoy making prints and things that are manual better. Computers don’t seem real to me because there’s a sheet of glass between you and whatever is happening. You never really get to touch anything that you’re doing unless you print it out. I don’t really enjoy making artwork on a computer because it doesn’t seem like I’ve done anything.

TM: It’s funny, you’re subverting advertising with Over Normal, but obviously a lot of your logos for Radiohead are really iconic and work well as ads.

SD: I grew up in the 80s and that was the first time advertising was considered seriously as anything resembling an art form. I was very influenced by that, but at the same time really resenting it and really hating commercialization.

TM: When you see something you’ve done on a t-shirt or a poster now are you still conflicted about it?

SD: Yeah, a bit. I come from a generation in England that considered making money or trying to promote yourself to be morally suspect. I love going somewhere like Japan where you can’t understand a word of the advertising-- you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you’re being sold something.

TM: Would you ever consider doing an actual ad for a company?

SD: It depends who they were or what it was. I wouldn’t be crazy about it unless I had to pay a huge tax bill or one of my kids broke their leg or something.

TM: Have you been approached?

SD: Not really, no. I don’t think they can find me. And I wouldn’t go out looking for it.