Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is co-curating an exhibition alongside Stanley Donwood, who has created the band’s apocalyptic album covers since 1996, for a forthcoming show at Christie’s.
Credit: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2021. HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY: STANLEY DONWOOD x THOM YORKE. STANLEY DONWOOD (B. 1968). Title: Hole. Signed and dated ‘Stanley Donwood 2001’ (on the reverse). Acrylic on canvas. 59 x 59in. (149.9 x 149.8cm.). Painted in 2001.
Six pieces, which were produced by Donwood between 1999 and 2001, are set to appear alongside drawings, lyrics, and digital art at an exhibition at Christie’s London headquarters from 9 to 15 October.
The paintings, which closely resemble the album art of the dystopian landscapes for ‘Kid A’, will also go up at auction for global bidding, with estimates beginning at £10,000 per painting.
Stanley Donwood, who first met Thom Yorke at Exeter University, described the creative process behind the album and its artwork ahead of the show: ‘Very late one night Thom and I were alone in the vast wastes of Oxfordshire, surrounded by darkness and trying to finish the artwork.
‘It was impossible – we had made too much, too many pictures, and it was like being in a storm of ideas and drawings, paintings and texts. We were exhausted and could no longer think clearly. We had lots of versions of the front cover, all with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces.
Credit: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2021. HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY: STANLEY DONWOOD x THOM YORKE. STANLEY DONWOOD (B. 1968). Title: Residential Nemesis. Acrylic and charcoal on canvas. 66 x 66in. (167.5 x 167.5cm.). Painted in 1999.
‘We couldn’t work out which was the right one so we took them all downstairs and used tape to stick them to the cupboards and the fridge in the kitchen, hoping that in the morning the right cover and the right title would be obvious. And it was, and it was called Kid A.’
Donwood also revealed how when working on each album sleeve, he immersed himself in the band’s music constantly, saying: ‘It gets under your skin and becomes like oxygen. I listen to it a lot, almost to the extent I need a breather by the time it comes out.’
The news comes just two weeks after Radiohead announced they will be dropping a new album, ‘KID A MNESIA’, through a series of typically cryptic messages on social media.
This new album, set to be released on 5th November, will accompany the 21st anniversary reissuing of ‘Kid A’ and will pull together unreleased works from both that album and ‘Amnesiac’, which was released the following year.
In the run-up to the album’s release, the band also unveiled a new single, ‘If You Say the Word’, which will feature on the full release.
The forthcoming show at Christie’s, entitled ‘How to Disappear Completely’ – named after the fourth track on ‘Kid A’, which in many ways embodies the album as a whole, for its anxiety-laden, meandering spirit – presents another round of unreleased material from the band and their collaborators, much to their fans’ delight.
How to Disappear Completely, curated by Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, will be on display in Christie’s London headquarters from 9th–15th October 2021. For more information, click here.
