Like all the Storm Thorgerson’s works, there’s an intricate story behind them and it couldn’t be an exception on his artwork for the Absolution album from Muse.
If you did not read my last post explaining Black Holes and Revelation cover art, I will explain who Storm is.
Storm Thorgerson is an English graphic designer best known for his work with Pink Floyd on the cover of The Dark Side of the Moon. His projects are always a little bit surrealist even though he doesn’t consider himself as a surrealist artist.
The artwork of Absolution was the first time Storm did a collaboration with Muse and it all started with the wonders of the internet. Dom Howard, the drummer of Muse, found the Storm’s website and decided to contact him. They had a meeting and decided to make the Storm’s sketch turn in something real.
“We met with Dom and agreed that we should try and render our pencil sketch as a real event: shadows of flying people spread across the ground as if cast by a squadron of flying craft, magical beings swooping over the Earth to the amazement of the viewer on the ground looking up. it is a though he is witnessing some mystical event, a visitation of strange beings, which can only be inferred by us, the viewers of the picture, because all we see is shadows, whereas the viewer of the picture seems them for real, gliding serenely overhead. He is deeply moved and experiences a kind of absolution as one might in the presence of a such a miraculous sight.”
Storm Thorgerson on his book “Taken by Storm - The Album Art by Storm Thorgerson”.
The flying beings was inspired on the strange creatures of the children’s story by Maurice Sendak, whose illustrator Storm admired.
One thing that Storm did want to do was that the pattern of the shadows in the picture had a symmetry, but not a meaningless repetition of wallpaper. It also seemed important to him to maintain a texture in the ground to provide a 3-D backcloth upon which the shadows could fall. (Using something flat wouldn’t have the same effect). The perfect place chosen to take these pictures seemed to be a chalk pit near London.
“A chalk pit was deemed appropriate since Muse had spent much of their teenage years hanging out in the chalk pits near their Devon homes. Doing what? I’d like to know.” – Storm Thorgerson
After all the concept finished, it was time to do the real thing. They cut-out the flying being shapes from cardboard and fixed them on top of tall poles. They took everything to London and photographed them in strong sunlight, hence to cast a definite shadow. But knowing the English weather, unpredictable yet gray, they had to shoot it three times.
“I felt ‘absolved’ through endeavour.“ – Storm Thorgerson
Geeky fact: The picture was taken by the photographer Robert Truman for Storm Thorgerson’s original concept and the cover was entirely un-photoshopped. Yes, they didn’t need to photoshopped the tall poles off the picture and how they did it, this remains a secret.
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