Description
The title of the piece is an obvious pun on the French artist Edouard Manet, who painted the original ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe’(‘Luncheon On The Grass’) in 1863, of which the Bow Wow Wow – ‘See Jungle! See Jungle!’ album cover was based.
Malcolm McLaren, who I had just met up at EMI Records, asked me to art direct the new album cover for the group Bow Wow Wow (who he managed at the time) along with photographer Andy Earl. Malcolm and I had traipsed across London going to libraries and art galleries trying to find a suitable classic painting that would work as a cover, something with a little controversy.
The choice came down to, the Manet along with Eugene Delacroix’s ‘La Liberté guidant le peuple’ (‘Liberty Leading The People’) A flag bearing, bare breasted woman leading an army of revolutionaries across a pile of bodies and rubble and finally, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’ ‘Le Verrou’ (‘The Bolt’) depicting two lovers one of whom, the male, is stretching to lock the door preventing his lover from leaving. Malcolm liked that, the Manet was more pastoral and yet full of innuendo, so we went with that.
The idea from the beginning was to just have the photo on the front without any title so it evoked a painting more. The record label did the first run as I wanted it, complete with an unnoticed cigarette butt in frame (which I have included in my painting) but had been removed by the second run.
In 1986 Malcolm and I were invited to the Sydney Biennale to display the cover. While an enlarged photo of the cover was being hung on the wall of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, it struck both of us that it looked kind of soulless on the wall of a museum and we both felt a little awkward that neither of us were the artist responsible for what hung on the wall, yes Malcolm was the manager and it was his idea and I art directed the photo but this had none of my graphics on the cover, the only person who could truly be called the artist, responsible for the image hanging before us was Andy Earl, who took the photo.
This is when Malcolm came up with the idea of going anti-art and instead he decides it was not in fact a piece of art but what it really was an album cover for a rock’n’roll band. The pun ‘We’re only in it for the Manet’ was a reference to selling thousands of records and t-shirts and being blatant about it and turning it into a product, so we made t-shirts and other souvenirs which we set up directly in front of the photo.
I bought a can of dayglo pink aerosol spray and sprayed a baroque frame directly onto the museum wall, and it ended up being the biggest hit of the Biennale, receiving a lot of media coverage.
I always felt like I wanted to take the life imitating art imitating life concept and paint my own impressionistic version of the painting.
