Extra Credit Assignment Painting Review

For one of my extra credit assignments, I decided to review a piece by one of my favorite artists, Stanley Donwood, most recognizably, the artist for the band Radiohead. The piece is called ‘Manhattan’ and is similar to the painting on the cover of the “Hail to the Thief” album. The painting is composed of a black background, and depicts a cut out of what appears to be a cityscape filled in with words that suggest sensations within the human mind. There is almost a stream of thought like quality to the painting because of the spontaneity of the choice of words. The painting suggests an overall corruptness of society and living through simplifying the life of a human into little phrases—“TIME IS UP, CLEAN IT UP, SAD, EAT, NO WAY OUT, POWERCUT, CLEAN IT UP, STEAL, BUNKER, DISASTER, TRESPASSING, PHONE” etc. Each word is contained in its own little sector of a misshapen box, within the outline of the city. The color of the text and box varies in each sector and is colored sporadically utilizing a seven color palette—there might even be some boxes where the text appears as if it is missing because the box and text are the same color. The color scheme is very unique and vibrant, yet it still gives this overlying feeling of depression and pointlessness to everyday life. The colors used in the piece are grey, orange, yellow, blue, red, black, and white; they are extremely repetitious which adds to the feeling of isolation and being stuck in a pointless world. Donwood stated that the actual reason for him using these colors were because he explored the city and on logos, billboards, and whatever he saw he noticed a basic palette of seven colors. The words that he chose to put on the painting were taking both from the city, and from the Radiohead album itself. I believe he does an extremely good job of taking the complexity and vastness of the city and life in general, and simplifying it into simple shapes, words and colors. The series of works did a great job of carrying out its main purpose which is representing the “Hail to the Thief” album. The band’s lyrics tend to reflect a common theme of corruptness and complexity within politics and society through very vague statements. The propaganda - like piece and lyrics match well together and certainly are successful in their purpose of being on the cover. Additionally, the words are all written in capital letters, which greatly intensifies the effectiveness of the piece because they are so stagnant and strong—just like the ideas behind them.