Division Bell

From a pure photographic form ‘The Division Bell’ album, designed by Strom Thorgerson, released in 1994 is that of two huge metal half faces in an upright position in a ploughed field looking at each other but also creating a third face, both not viewed at the same time, as Thorgerson and Curzon state

“Two heads facing, or talking to each other (‘Keep Talking’), making up a third face, which would get in the way both visually and literally, seemed like a good idea. The single eyes of the two faces looking at each other become the two eyes of a single face looking at you, the viewer. It was intended that the viewer should not see both at the same time. One was the single face, or the two profiles. If one saw both it was alternating, like an optical illusion, which was even better because it meant that the viewer was interacting, or communicating with the image directly, viscerally” (1997, p.130).

Oddly enough, this image, which is also on the front of Storm Thorgersons’ book in not displayed on or within the cover of Division Bell album, the subtle difference is that on the album the reference to talking is that of four spotlights and the unpublished image has three red flags.

This image is discussing linguistics, the act of communication either to someone else or from someone to us. The eyes look like bulls eyes from a dart board and in turn can be connoted to that of talking to your targeted audience. When viewing as two faces talking to each other, we feel like a third person, an almost non-entity within that diologue, perhaps also infringing on their privacy, yet when viewed as a full face, the eyes look menacing, due to the slightly lower angle and our looking up give it a sense of domination, one can also see a switch from two people talking to combining into a single joint force about to reprimand the eavesdropper, us.

Thorgerson, S. & Curzon, P. (1997). Mind Over Matter, The Images Of Pink Floyd. London: Sanctuary Publishing Limited.

Giorgio de Chirico

The first time that I saw this I painting by Giorgio de Chirico the first thing for me that I thought was seeing the two men shaking hands, my immediate thought was that of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album cover of the two businessmen also shaking hands, though one is actually on fire, the reasoning of this as stated by Thorgerson

“People often shy away from emotional commitment for fear of rejection. Absent through fear of being hurt, of being ‘burnt’” (1997, p88)

Obviously this is not the case in Chirico’s painting, these are two people, perhaps friends meeting in a square, however one could argue that maybe Storm thorgerson has seen this painting and had been influenced, wittingly or not. I have, from looking at Chirico work online, obviously not originals, but copies of copies, see John Berger blog for more on that, but I have come to really enjoy these; one element is the re-emergence of the two figures shaking hands or standing next to each other with long shadows, this comes across as almost a signature motif, though not used extensively through his whole work. In contrast to the 35mm transparency that the album cover was shot on and giving it its light tones, de Chirico uses very strong colours, reds, oranges and greys turning to almost black in the shadows. His paintings and this one in particular, can be split up into the rule of thirds or golden thirds, if overlaid possibly even fitting into the rule of the Phi Spiral, in this case the inner most spiral finishing on the two figures. The composition leads the eye in both directions, if reading like a book from left to right one could follow the shadows from the fountain diagonally right to the figures, across the back and finishing down the arched building on the left, however if looking left to right the eye follows a slightly different track and lead up the building with the arches to the grey building at the back and then down to the figures finally resting on the fountain. Regarding the men in this painting you could assume that the two figures, instead of meeting are in fact departing company, denoted by the train top right, when we think of a train, it is always going somewhere as opposed to coming in from somewhere. The tapering sky, darkening quickly, again a recurring theme, lends depth as does the perspective of the train.

One other painting of de Chirico that most adolescents and adults alike maybe familiar with, is that of ‘Melancholy and Mystery of a Street’, used as a cover image for Philip Pullman's ‘The Subtle Knife’, part of His Dark Materials trilogy.