Art Record Covers (extract of the introduction for the book of the same title)

Andy Warhol’s peeling banana sticker and large signature on the cover of The Velvet Underground and Nico’s eponymous album is one of the most famous of fine artist/musicican record cover collaborations. It wasn’t however Warhol’s first cover, that was Program of Mexican Music by Carlos Chávez back in 1949, created when he first moved to New York as a jobbing designer, according to Francesco Spampinato. His book tracing how and why fine art infiltrated the world of the long player has just been published by Taschen. Here we reprint an extract of his introduction and some key covers.