- Stanley Donwood
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Stanley Donwood Birth name Lexden Morant Field Painting
Graphic design
DrawingTraining University of Exeter Patrons Radiohead
Thom YorkeWebsite Slowly Downward Stanley Donwood is the pen name of English artist Dan Rickwood.[1] Donwood is known for his close association with the British rock group Radiohead, having created all their album and poster art. He has also collaborated with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and others on the band's website, and appeared in the occasional band webcast and the 2001 Grammy Awards ceremony.
Contents
Career
After graduating from the University of Exeter, Donwood worked as a freelance artist in Plymouth, England. Aside from his work for Radiohead, Donwood also maintains his own website, Slowly Downward, where short stories and various other writings are published.
Radiohead
Stanley Donwood and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke met as art students at the University of Exeter.[2] Donwood was asked by Yorke to produce the cover art for the 1995 album The Bends, which would begin a collaborative working relationship between the pair for various Radiohead art and promotional material. According to an interview, Donwood jestingly said his first impressions of Yorke were that he was "'Mouthy. Pissed off. Someone I could work with.'"[3] Yorke is credited alongside Donwood under the moniker "The White Chocolate Farm", "Dr. Tchock", "Tchocky" or similar abbreviations.
For Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A, Donwood produced a series of mountainous landscapes and a series of images centered around a minotaur. Donwood cites Caspar David Friedrich and Hieronymus Bosch,[2] as well as time spent in war museums and mountain landscapes as influences in its bleak, post-apocalyptic style.
In 2002, Donwood and Yorke won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package for the Special Edition for the album Amnesiac. Donwood's writings have also been used in his Radiohead album artwork, and frequently on Radiohead's official website.
Nine acrylic on canvas paintings, inspired by Paula Scher's map paintings, provided the basis for 2003's Hail to the Thief's look, creating maps of war torn cities like Kabul and Grozny out of brightly colored blocks with politically charged words or phrases.
In 2006, Donwood began creating and selling large screenprints. In an interview with antiMusic.com, he explained it as an effort to reconnect with the process of print making and as a means to share his art in a larger format than the small, low quality prints in album cover and insert art, "It's a way of getting pictures out in the way they should be seen; not as 4-colour litho on cheap paper, but as real pieces of artwork that have a much greater visual impact."[4]
In 2006, Donwood's exhibition, "London Views", consisted of a series of fourteen lino prints of various London landmarks being destroyed by fire and flood. The prints are being exhibited in Lazarides Gallery, in Soho, London. The prints are also used as the cover and insert art for Thom Yorke's solo album, The Eraser.
In November 2006, Donwood exhibited the original paintings and other artwork done by him and Yorke for Radiohead albums, at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona.[5] The exhibit focused on Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief as well as a companion art book called Dead Children Playing which was produced, credited to Donwood and Tchock.
Six Inch Records
In late 2006, Stanley Donwood, along with Richard Lawrence launched an independent record company, named Six Inch Records.
Only three albums were released on the record label, each with three hundred and thirty three copies of each release. The CD discs were packaged by hand into sleeves that were six inches square. All mechanised operations - printing, cutting and scoring were carried out using a 1965 Heidelberg platen press.
On 18 February 2009, Donwood announced on the Six Inch Record blog that the online shop was to be closed, as there were no more records to sell. Donwood stated on the matter: "Six Inch Records is no longer a going concern, and there will be no more musicians signed, records made, events held."[6]
List of works
Bibliography
- (1998) Small Thoughts - printed on eleven circular cards, housed in a tin
- (2001) Slowly Downward: A Collection of Miserable Stories (ISBN 978-0954417734)
- (2002) Catacombs of Terror!
- (2003) Tachistoscope
- (2005) My Giro - unpublished eight chapter story
- (2007) Dead Children Playing - with Thom Yorke (ISBN 978-1844671700)
Cover art
- Albums
- (1995) The Bends
- (1997) OK Computer
- (2000) Kid A
- (2001) Amnesiac
- (2001) Smalltown, Shining
- (2001) I Might Be Wrong
- (2003) You are here. (Accidental records compilation, reference AC07CD)
- (2003) Bodysong
- (2003) Hail to the Thief
- (2005) Plat du Jour
- (2006) The Eraser
- (2007) Jonny Greenwood Is the Controller
- (2007) In Rainbows
- (2011) The King of Limbs
- EPs
- (1995) Live Au Forum
- (1995) Live à l'Astoria
- (1995) Just for College EP
- (1996) The Bends Pinkpop
- (1997) No Surprises/Running from Demons
- (1998) Airbag/How Am I Driving?
- (2001) Amnesiac College EP
- (2004) COM LAG (2plus2isfive)
- (2006) Spitting Feathers
- Singles
- (1994) My Iron Lung
- (1995) High and Dry / Planet Telex
- (1995) Fake Plastic Trees
- (1995) Just
- (1996) Street Spirit (Fade Out)
- (1997) Paranoid Android
- (1997) Karma Police
- (1998) No Surprises
- (2001) Pyramid Song
- (2001) Knives Out
- (2003) There There
- (2003) Go to Sleep
- (2003) 2 + 2 = 5
- (2008) Jigsaw Falling into Place
- (2008) Nude
- (2008) Reckoner
- DVDs
- (1995) Live at the Astoria - DVD cover design
- (1998) 7 Television Commercials - DVD box design
- (1998) Meeting People Is Easy - DVD cover design
- (2004) The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time - DVD cover design
Paintings
- Snow Mistake
Other
- London Views jigsaw box
- London Views concertina viewbook
- Free posters of art work form the Radiohead albums Hail to the Thief, OK Computer and Amnesiac that came with NME Magazine
- Artist Series Oakley Jupiter sunglasses
Screenprint
- My Everyday Life
- Alarm
- Escape
- Pacific Coast
- Happy Family
- Such A Pretty House
- Operation Phantom Fury
- Grozny
- Kabul
- Cnut
- Dome
Linoprint
Promotions
References
- ^ Hasty, Katie (2006-06-15), Donwood Dresses Up Thom Yorke Solo Album, Nielsen Business Media, Inc, http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002689108, retrieved 2009-03-06[dead link][dead link]
- ^ a b Jardin, Xeni (2005-08-16), "Radiohead artist" Stanley Donwood's prints online, Boing Boing, http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/16/radiohead-artist-sta.html, retrieved 2009-03-07
- ^ Interview with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Guardian Unlimited, 2006-06-18, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jun/18/9, retrieved 2009-10-23
- ^ Stanley Donwood: Radiohead's Artist Interview, http://www.antimusic.com/features/05/radiohead/index.shtml, retrieved 2009-03-07
- ^ Radiohead's 'sixth man' reveals the secrets behind their covers, Guardian Unlimited, 2006-11-22, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/nov/22/popandrock2, retrieved 2009-03-06
- ^ Donwood, Stanley (February 18), Six Inch Records Web Log - 18.02.09, http://www.6inchrecords.com/6blog.html, retrieved 2009-03-08
External links
Categories:- English artists
- Grammy Award winners
- Alumni of the University of Exeter
- Living people
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