When the fantasy meets art and music
as Roger Dean might just say to fans of art, but it should say much (at least in theory) to fans of a certain type of rock.
The music complex, intellectual, redundant and often dictated the epic mode, and the rules at the beginning of the 70s (now called progressive ) is accompanied perfectly metaphorical and fantastic art by artists such as Paul Whitehead (illustrator of the covers of Genesis), Hypnosis (author of the graphic cover of Pink Floyd) and, above all, by Roger Dean who has linked his name ( and its success), especially that of Yes. Dean
In art, as well as progressive rock music, you can easily grasp the meeting between the remote past and future and cohabitation (often also antithesis) between tradition and innovation.
Many groups, in fact, combining sounds and instruments of ancestral origin in extreme forms of experimentation in electronics that were a source almost inexhaustible source of discoveries. No coincidence that the prog-rock was fishing with both hands from both classical music that the modern jazz.
The colors, characters and imaginary forms that populated the covers of those discs were then
depictions of fantastic worlds projected by music. Music that time has proven to be utopian and that, as in fantasy and science fiction, tells of worlds defined as "land of dreams." Roger Dean embodies the dream: its images are characterized by great harmony, a sense of peace and serenity and a purely fabulous.
His style, made of images and colors twilight soft embodies a search for content that recurs in all his work by giving him a real trademark (note that also earned him some criticism) and who often do not even have a deep rooted relationship with the disk even if it always manages to capture the essence.
Dean is English, born 1944, son of a soldier, his father's work meant he had to live for most of his childhood and his youth around the world, bringing environments to meet diverse and exotic landscapes that have, probably influenced his imagination and his vision of art.
Back home, he graduated as a designer at the Canterbury School of Art, while in 1968 graduated from the Royal College of Art London.
In those years he worked in the music industry making the album cover for a group called Gun, and soon after, one for Africans Osibisa. It was the latter work to attract the attention of the already popular Yes it took for the graphic representation of what would become their first masterpiece: Fragile . We
in 1972 and this work, which still remains one of the most beautiful and complex of its production, shows a sort of globe full of water and vegetation
action (two recurring elements in his works so much to do alongside the nascent New Age movement) by a flying object flew over the ancient and at the same time, post-modern invention that is very reminiscent of Leonardo Da Vinci , perhaps a hint of experimentation and invention that they were Yes trying with their music. Thereafter Dean will become almost a member of the group taking care of loved almost all of the covers of Yes, inventing the beautiful and famous logo and choreographing their many concerts. The world of progressive music should, however, much to the English artist who counted among his collaboration over time, even that of many other major groups such as Uriah Heep, Gentle Giant (how can we forget the spectacular octopus album "Octopus") and Asia.
Personally, one of the jobs that I appreciate most is the inside cover of the album poster (of Yes, but 70's rock, as well as that historical period) " Close to the Edge", which is opposed to disarming simplicity of the exterior, as if to underline that the most important aspect of this disc lies inside: music, indeed. Close to the Edge is a paradoxical landscape of a waterfall where the water rushes in all directions and where the rocks "float" suspended in the air.
A witness to the thoroughness and preparation this should be remembered as an artist engages in contemplating the use of different techniques of watercolor, the china, charcoal, collage and how it is distinct also in projects as an interior and exterior, where there is the harmony and anarchy forms of his paintings.
to admire his work is recommended to recover the volumes Views , 1975, and Magnetic Storm of 1984, or pay a visit to his website www.rogerdean.com
good trip at all.
David Battaglia
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