Before Brillo Box or Banana/ Various - Before Brillo Box Or Banana: Music With The Album Cover Art Of Andy Warhol / Various

Andy Warhol... Prince of Pop Art... Manager of the Velvet Underground... Cultural Icon. 4CD collection of music originally released with artwork by the legendary artist. In 1949, the ambitious young Andy Warhola moved to New York to pursue a career as a commercial artist. "The future is New York City," he told his sceptical mother. As an illustrator, it was the unusual quality of Andy's drawing that drew the attention of clients and other artists, including Peter Blake: "What attracted me was a certain fluid, broken line. Matisse draws in one line. Warhol made the pen stutter. ' Before transitioning into the internationally acclaimed artist of the serious avant-garde, Andy established himself as one of the most sought-after commercial artists of the decade. His clients included virtually every fashion magazine in the NYC and the record labels Columbia, RCA and Blue Note, for whom he designed a diversity of jazz and classical record album sleeves, sometimes collaborating with the brilliant graphic designer Reid Miles and often with Julia Warhola, his mother, whose ornate calligraphy is unmistakable in Andy's early art. The first three discs of this edition present selections of the music to be found on the albums Warhol designed for record companies in the years leading up to the Pop Art Explosion; from Chopin to Moondog, from George Gershwin to Thelonious Monk. Disc Four, 'Andy's New York', provides a suitably evocative backdrop to Warhol's rise to prominence, showcasing the work of many of the pioneering jazz and avant-garde artists in the NYC of those times, including such giants as Charles Mingus, John Cage and - in the vanguard of free form jazz - a personal favourite of Lou Reed, Ornette Coleman.