9.For those of you out of the loop, the first single off of the album was Power ft. So, when retailers famously refused to accept the original album cover West utilised some of Condo’s other paintings, though a pixelated-censored version of the work West originally chose remains ubiquitous - making his publicity stunt a massive success. Condo ended up creating many other paintings for the album (seen above), five of which were made into covers that were illustrated in the sleeve materials. The artwork came about after West visited Condo’s New York studio for several hours, where they listened to his upcoming album and together found inspiration. Condo quickly delivered in the form of a primitive painting of a (presumably) nude Kanye West being straddled by a naked armless, winged woman with a polka-dot tail (bottom left on the gridded cover shown above). Reportedly Kanye West told artist George Condo that he wanted to have an album cover for his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that would get banned. “Yoooo they banned my album cover!!!!! Banned in the USA!!! They don’t want me chilling on the couch with my Phoenix!” Kanye West’s Twitter, October 2010 Though the cover that utilises Williams’ work is undeniably controversial, Guns ‘N’ Roses front man, Axl Rose, originally wanted the iconic photo of the infamous Space Shuttle Challenger explosion to grace the cover of the album instead, a choice that the record label refused. The original cover art was obviously extremely controversial and after many music retailers refused to stock the album the record label compromised by putting the original cover inside the album jacket, and replacing it with an image of a Celtic cross and five skulls representing each band member. Reproducing a work by Robert Williams, the legendary California counter-culture painter, illustrator and co-founder of Juxtapoz Magazine, Appetite for Destruction shares its title with the original painting depicting a robot rapist about to be attacked by a massive robot predator. The 1987 cover of Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction is arguably one of the most censored album covers of all time. “ a symbolic social statement, with the robot representing the industrial system that’s raping and polluting our environment.” Guns ‘N’ Roses The cover is now iconic and has been celebrated on everything from postage stamps to high fashion house productions. Though Saville was originally refused access to Henri-Latour’s painting due to its ownership by The National Heritage Trust, his and head of Factory Records Tony Wilson’s urging ultimately secured its rights to great acclaim they successfully argued that the painting belonged to the nation and as such could be reproduced and shared in this fashion.
The romantic and classical image was then paired with a hyper-modern colour-based code in the top right hand corner of the cover - a representation of the band’s name and title of the album which could be deciphered using the decoder featured on the album’s back cover. When visiting the gift shop of the gallery, Saville’s girlfriend mockingly asked him if he was admiring a postcard of Fantin-Latour’s painting because he was going to use it for the cover which he ultimately found to be a great idea though his original plan was to use a Renaissance portrait of a dark prince (in reference to the Machiavellian title). Designed by Peter Saville, the New Order’s Power, Corruption, and Lies album cover is a reproduction of French artist Henri Fantin-Latour’s painting A Basket of Roses, that belongs to the permanent collection of the National Gallery in London.