Saturday, April 30, 2016

85. Patti Smith - Horses


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On the square original cover art design, the artist is a a bit off-centre to the left. That image has been positioned a bit off-centre to the right above,
and the sides were extended with the addition of flipped images of the portions required to fill the spaces required to make an 18X10 resolution image.
The whole image was then toned to sepia and posterized. Finally, the texture was applied with the Craquelure and Angled Strokes filters. 

The peeled-off effect works nicely on the overall image including the figure of the artist and at the same time she is being set apart from the background.
The bonus is the figure of the head of a horse viewed up front which just happened to appear at left.


The cover photograph for Horses was taken using natural light by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, a close friend of Smith's, at the Greenwich
Village penthouse apartment of his partner Sam Wagstaff. Patti Smith is depicted wearing a plain white shirt which she had purchased at the Salvation Army
on the Bowery and slinging a black jacket over her shoulder and her favorrite black ribbon around her collar. Embedded on the jacket is a horse pin that Smith's
friend Allen Lanier had given her. Smith has described her pose on the cover as "a mix of Baudelaire and Sinatra." The record company wanted to make various
changes to the photo, but Smith overruled such attempts. The black and white treatment and unisex pose were a departure from the typical promotional images
of "girl singers" of the time, but Smith maintains that she "wasn't making a big statement. That's just the way I dressed."

Writer Camille Paglia described the album's cover as "one of the greatest pictures ever taken of a woman." wikipedia


This is the original album cover art design.


No. 44Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 84, Entertainment Weekly, The 100 Greatest Albums Ever;
No. 91, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 291, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

No. 26Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers; No. 45, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time 


Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe. Album produced by John Cale. Arista 1975.


The simple black and white portrait gracing the cover of Horses was taken by Smith’s good friend, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Smith had met
Mapplethorpe on her first day in New York City in 1967, when she accidentally wandered into his apartment looking for someone else. The two became close
friends, even sharing the smallest room at the Chelsea Hotel (as it was all they could afford), where they would stay up all night and work on their respective
art forms. Mapplethorpe has described his collaborations with Smith “like taking drugs; you’re in an abstract place and it’s perfect”. Lomography


(A) Gloria, Part I: In Excelcis Deo, Part II: Gloria - Redondo Beach - Birdland - Free Money

(B) Kimberly - Break It Up - Land, Part I: Horses, Part II: Land of a Thousand Dances, Part III: La Mer - Elegie


  
"Patti Smith "Land" (Horses/Land of 1000 Dances/La Mer(de))" music video from Singing Fools Video on YouTube.