Chris Remy_Review of ‘Nothing you can see that isn’t Shown’
Ian Inglis wrties a short article in which he hopes to encompass album art as groundbreaking visual and aesthetic properties. His hopes are to be able to offer some observations to which may be applicable to an investigation of the dynamics of album art in general. He covers these grounds by introducing and discussing four main points. His first point is to address the basic role of album covers and that is to ensure the protection of the recording they contain. Secondly he argues that album covers are an advertisement for the recordings they contain. Thirdly album covers function as an accompaniment to the music. Finally he fosters the idea that the album sleeve can be seen as a commodity in its own right. In doing this Inglis focuses on 12 particular albums that were released from the Beatles. Also three assumptions about the covers are conveyed (85).
I first would like to say that I agree with this article and felt that iconography has a large part to do with the sales of LP’s, CD’s and other products. In this accord this article does present ideas about covers that I have never thought about and can see how this relates to other albums from different artists. The Beatles are portrayed as the ones who set the standard for other album covers and this makes complete sense. On that accord, the Beatles music and art not only had relevance in other bands but in fans as well. In the article entitled “Beatlemania”, fans increased their interest books of their good looks (Ehrenreich 525). All album covers had the pictures of the Beatles on them and well many placed them up as art in their rooms (Ian 84). Also the articles talks about the first song to be banned by the BBC- ‘A Day in the Life.” This can be directly related to the movie seen in class, “The US vs John Lennon.” This movie has many notions about being banned from certain areas, even from the United States.
Overall this article does contain a lot of interesting ideas about the art in album covers and even has significance in the lectures. In one of the weeks this semester, our instructor showed a series of Advertisements from Coca-Cola. These advertisements were imperative in the selling of coke products. This article shows that the selling of records was based on the advertisements that were on them. A direct link! Again, I agree with this article and think that it makes very good points of reference.