Reduced in significance by the CD format and about to be obliterated altogether by the digital download, album art work is stuck in a vinyl groove.
In 1939, when Alex Steinweiss designed the first album cover, shellac-coated records were placed between plain pasteboard covers and stamped with the title of the work and the name of the recording artist. These were displayed in record shops with just the spines showing.
For a collection of songs by Rodgers and Hart, Steinweiss, the art director of Columbia Records, wanted something that would attract the eye and stand out from all the other competing titles. He put together a theatre marquee mock-up with the composers' names spelled out in lights. The album cover was born.
The art form didn't evolve much for 25 years or so - it was all just head-and-shoulder shots of the recording artist, usually in a garish array of colours. Then, in the mid 1960s, people started tuning in, turning on and dropping out.
Over a short period of years a succession of album covers by The Beatles ( Sgt Pepper's), Janis Joplin ( Cheap Thrills) and The Rolling Stones ( Sticky Fingers) upped the artistic ante. The artwork was treated as an idea in itself, usually independent of the music contained inside.
The shrinked format of the CD was the beginning of the end for album art. These days the only visual accompaniment most people get to their music is a stamp-sized image that shows up under "Cover Flow" on MP3 players.
However, a certain type of band still stubbornly insists on the importance of album art. They do up the artwork for the vinyl release and then just shrink it so it fits on all other formats. These bands are recognised in the annual Art Vinyl prize, which is presented to the best album artwork of the year. Fifty albums were shortlisted for the prize, and the entire collection will be travelling around UK art galleries over the next few months. (See them all at www.artvinyl.com.)
The winner this year was Fleet Foxes for their self-titled album, which features a reproduction of the 1559 painting Netherlandish Proverbsby Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Also scoring high were Coldplay (at third place), who used an 1830 painting by Eugene Delacroix ( Liberty Leading the People) for the cover of Viva la Vida.
Both are striking images, but both should have been disqualified from the prize. Flicking through a book and going "that would be a nice painting for our album" is hardly reason enough to win an award that's about rewarding originality, not just pressing a button on a photocopier. The winner should have been the album that came in at number two. Roots Manuva's Slime and Reasonfeatured a striking image of the rapper - minus half his head.
An online vote decided the order of winners. In an apparent dig at how unoriginal works by Fleet Foxes and Coldplay scored so highly, award director Andrew Heeps observed: "For the past four years, the Art Vinyl award has very much celebrated the work of new emerging artists and graphic designers. So, this year, it has been a real surprise to see how some past artistic works have proven to be so popular from 2008's record cover designs."
It does seem that voters were swayed by an album's profile rather than the imagery of the cover. Elbow featured at number five with an album cover that really did nothing - and the same argument applies to Metallica at six. Further down the list, however, you'll find genuinely good work by the likes of The Notwist (21), Fuck Buttons (25), Yult Koldmane (29) and Laurent Garnier (43).
The Art Vinyl prize is a very necessary and worthy award scheme that seeks to blow a bit of life back into the moribund album art world. If the organisers just stick the word "Original" in their title from next year on, they'll be doing everyone a favour.
