Subliminal Projects, Shepard Fairey’s multifunctional gallery in Echo Park was extremely crowded during the opening reception for’ LOST ANGELES’ By Stanley Donwood on Saturday night. It was a mix of Radiohead’s die-hard fans, hipsters still wearing their Coachella wristband (Come on! That was 2 weeks ago!), and art collectors.
I have to say that British artist Stanley Donwood has been designing album art for Radiohead since 1994 – you are looking at his art work on the covers of ‘The Bends’, ‘Kid A’, ‘OK Computer’, ‘Hail to the Thief’… – and he is the author of the famous Radiohead bear-head logo.
‘Lost Angeles’ is his new body of work, a series of drawings depicting apocalyptic views of the city of angels, very much in the same style than the cover of Thom Yorke’s solo album ‘The Eraser’, which was in display in its entirety. In the numerous black and white drawings, every single LA landmarks, the Hollywood sign, the Roosevelt hotel, the Pantages theater, the Chinese theater, LAX, Griffith Park observatory, the Capitol building, the City Hall, Disneyland castle,… are all sinking in water and chaos with cars, Shell and Mobil stations and other rests of civilization. There are flames and meteors at the top of this, as if there was definitively no escape from doom day.
This is what he wrote to explain his work:
'There is no future. We have evicted ourselves from our own cities, rendered our agriculture poisonous, criminalized the poor, aggrandized the rich, honored 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
It's as direct as his fluid and slick drawings! And the worst is that I think he is unfortunately right.
There was an impressive 18-foot apocalyptic panorama of LA being destroyed by fire, flood and meteor storm, and Donwood had already made similar views of London in 2004 after being shaken by the Indian Ocean tsunami. He describes his style as inspired by the ‘aesthetics of the woodcut illustrations in the 15th century publication Nuremberg Chronicle’.
But people, drinking and having a good time at the gallery, were not thinking too much about the apocalypse, too busy to ask Stanley to sign books and Radiohead albums.
Shepard Fairey was DJing and was feeding us with a diet of Sex Pistols, Johnny Cash, Bad Brains, Motörhead, Bowie, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, while generously giving away his famous Obey propaganda stickers.
Moby showed up and seemed to be interested by buying something, and I think I spotted Rose Mc Gowan, but I am not totally sure.
But super producer Nigel Godrich was there too, and I was kind of expecting God-Thom, but no, he did not showed up; anyway, he would have probably triggered the apocalypse, seeing how many fans were there, with their complete vinyl collection under their arms.
I asked Stanley Donwood if he thought Los Angeles was really doomed while he was signing me a card, ‘Like everything else’, he replied, ‘Everything is doomed!'
I am totally reassured now.
