Wine and Cheese: How 3 Visual Artists Shape Today’s Music World

Music isn’t always heard with our ears — sometimes the visual art that accompanies the sound can be just as important to the music as the sound. Here are three long-term collaborations between visual and musical artists that are expanding our experience of both mediums.

It’s your dream collab. The artists you add back-to-back to the queue. The pairing you can’t get enough of. You know they sound good together, but why? Welcome to Wine and Cheese, a series investigating the why and telling you all about it.

Written by Glenn Rodgers

The image of classically famous people hanging out at Andy Warhol’s studio, The Factory, while Lou Reed fronts the house band, is the picture of an urban legend and fuel for iconography in pop culture. While people will argue the romantics of it, there’s no question that The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol's long relationship of collaboration is a prime example of what can happen when visual artists mingle with their musical counterparts. But what makes a good collaboration? Whether it be the yellow banana album cover, Jean-Michel Basquiat DJing Blondie’s “Rapture,” or Robert Maplethorpe’s images of Pattie Smith, these pairings make sense. In a world of visual albums, music videos, elaborate stage design, and even album covers, visual artists’ input can be just as important as the musician’s. Here are three examples of artists making this crossover today.

1. Frank Ocean and Tom Sachs

On August 1, 2016, a looped video of Frank Ocean building a staircase on an empty factory floor began playing — two weeks later, Ocean would release his visual album Endless. In the 45-minute video accompanying the album, the world would watch Ocean finish his staircase, but even though it’s common knowledge that Ocean is capable of anything, we’re still left asking ourselves: is he the woodworker behind it in reality? Though he may be in another life, Endless’ staircase was designed and built by New York artist Tom Sachs.

Few living artists have been able to break through into pop culture as thoroughly as Sachs — his collaborations with Ocean are just a blip on the radar of his contributions. Sachs’ limited release shoe, the Nike Mars Yard 2.0 “Tom Sachs' Shoe” is consistently one of the highest selling pairs of shoes on the shoe trading site StockX, and have been another place where Sachs and Ocean sent the “hypebeast” community into a whirlwind. Last November when Ocean’s instagram became public, the existence of an unrevealed “Mars Yard” was confirmed. Some of their smaller collaborations include images and writing from Sachs that appear in Ocean’s “Boys Don’t Cry” magazine, as well as Ocean appearing in Sachs’ short film “The Hero’s Journey” credited as the “Studio Master” and “Inspiration” for the film.

However, outside of these things, Sachs’ art isn’t exclusive. Sachs keeps his art simple and eliminates overthinking by adhering strictly to a set of studio rules of his own design. Sachs’ favorite medium is plywood, which he describes as a “delicious wood sandwich” in his short video “Love Letter to Plywood,” in which he defines his “rules” of working with plywood. In another video, “Color,” Sachs defines the only acceptable shades of color used in his studio. Ocean’s speaker system, built by Sachs and featured in Endless and Ocean’s live sets, is a perfect example of the style Sachs’ rules create. The speakers’ plywood design doesn’t feature paint on the edges or protruding screw heads, and its color is the default of Sachs’ studio: Benjamin Moore’s Decorators White in Flat Finish.

Beyond their actual collaborations, Sachs and Ocean are a perfect pair. Though they define their creativity in different ways, neither artists hide their influences or love for pop culture. Ocean’s music has never been shy about flexing the car he drives, whereas Sachs’ art tends to reimagine something that already exists. Sachs recreation of a chainsaw branded with the Chanel logo reflects his familiarity with high fashion, as Ocean’s song “Chanel” uses the company’s classic imagery as a way to explore duality.

2. King Krule and Jack Marshall

Jack Marshall has been collaborating with his younger brother Archy Marshall (best known as King Krule) long before the album cover of 6 Feet Beneath the Moon became recognizable or anything else under his brother’s ever-changing stage names had been produced. Due to what their mother described as their “a bit off the wall” upbringing, the boys have been bonding over and creating art for as long as she can remember.

Among Jack’s design of Archy’s album covers, the pair’s work together has produced a multimedia album, A New Place 2 Drown, and an immersive art exhibit, “Inner City Ooz,” at the Display Gallery in Holborn. A New Place 2 Drown found its form as a 208-page book of art, photography, and poetry as well as a 37-minute album that saw Archy exploring new styles of production less focussed on his guitar-heavy sound present on 6 Feet Beneath the Moon. Almost all of the photography comes from within a mile radius of the boys’ childhood home and residence at the time of the album’s production. The boys’ shared experience of growing up in south London unifies their art — their collaborative effort on “Inner City OOZ” as well as Archy’s record The OOZ, both named after the brother’s child-hood idea of “ooz,” defined by Archy as the “gunk” that holds us together and makes us human.The exhibit combines displays of Jack’s paintings and Archy’s poetry, set to the soundtrack of a four-hour loop of lo-fi music written by Archy.

Photo from “Inner City Ooz” courtesy of DAZED

With the recent release of King Krule’s upcoming tour and four new songs via Archy’s video “Hey World!,” we can guess that a new album is on the way — and this album will likely be accompanied by Jack’s art as well.

3. FKA Twigs and Mathew Stone

Matthew Stone and FKA Twigs first met via a chance interaction at a London nightclub, with Twigs laughing off his request to photograph her, since everyone asks her that. Twigs, however, would soon reach out to Stone to follow up on the offer after a mutual friend suggested the collaboration. From here, Stone would shoot Twigs 2012 “i-D Magazine” cover and the pair would start a seven-year-long string of collaborations, including the short film accompanying her 2015 album M3L155X, and the accompanying photography for her latest album, MAGDALENE.

As illustrated in M3L155X, Stone’s art features heavy post-processing in order to transform digital images into a painting of their own. M3L155X’s images features Twigs and another’s body parts existing through each other. In an interview for Art News Magazine, Stone said this was done to show a sense of intimacy and to make us question where our body ends and another begins. Stone said he and Twigs saw the body as raw material, as something to mend and mold to create art. This is similar in a sense to Twigs’ music, which features thickly layered vocals and synths.

Stone’s and Twigs’ collaboration rests on their mutual understanding of each other. The two know when to give the other their creative freedom. In doing so, Stone’s photography isn’t there to turn Twigs into an art piece — but to help achieve and realize her creative goal.

When artists collaborate, the lines separating their chosen mediums begin to blur. Whether it be through photography, sculpting, or painting, these collaborations help to redefine the notion that music is listened to with only our ears. Gone are the days of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground’s factory performances, but these three pairings show artists of our generation still follow in foot.

AESTHETICSAfterglow ATXDecember 2, 2019