{"id":19039,"date":"2019-03-01T01:07:03","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T01:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=19039"},"modified":"2019-03-01T01:07:03","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T01:07:03","slug":"the-art-of-james-marsh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2019\/03\/01\/the-art-of-james-marsh\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of James Marsh"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Laughing Stock (1991).<\/em><\/p>\n

The paintings of James Marsh came to mind this week following news of the death of Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis. Marsh’s art was a feature of all the Talk Talk releases, singles as well as albums, but his work was equally prominent throughout the 1980s on a range of book covers, particularly the series he produced for Angela Carter and JG Ballard. The hard-edged, post-Surrealist style favoured by Marsh was a popular one in the 70s and 80s (among British illustrators, Peter Goodfellow and the late John Holmes worked in a similar manner), and I’ve often had to look twice to see whether a cover is one of his. But while the Magritte-like visual games may be replicated elsewhere, Marsh has a preoccupation with animals\u2014birds and butterflies especially\u2014that sets his paintings apart.<\/p>\n

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The Bloody Chamber (1981).<\/em><\/p>\n

I never saw Mark Hollis discuss Marsh’s work but the use of the paintings across all the Talk Talk releases has given the group’s output a coherent look lacking in many of their fashion-chasing contemporaries. The consistency also meant that the cover art was unlikely to overly influence prior perception of their music; there was little warning in 1988 of the musical gulf separating The Colour Of Spring<\/em> from Spirit Of Eden<\/em> until stylus met vinyl. Mark Hollis was remembered this week by Rob Young<\/a> who interviewed him in 1998 when his one and only solo album was released. More from James Marsh’s prolific career may be seen at his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1982).<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Terminal Beach (1984).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Talk Talk (laserdisc, 1984).<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Omni, July 1985.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Crash (1985).<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Day of Forever (1985).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Life’s What You Make It (1986).<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Colour Of Spring (1986).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Omni, December 1986.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Being There (1991).<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Owl Service (1998).<\/em><\/p>\n

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London 1986 (1999).<\/em><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Spirit of Talk Talk by James Marsh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laughing Stock (1991). The paintings of James Marsh came to mind this week following news of the death of Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis. Marsh’s art was a feature of all the Talk Talk releases, singles as well as albums, but his work was equally prominent throughout the 1980s on a range of book covers, … Continue reading “The art of James Marsh”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,4,43,3,44,20,18],"tags":[3053,4508,137,3002,9944,1124,2423],"class_list":["post-19039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-design","category-magazines","category-music","category-painting","category-science-fiction","category-surrealism","tag-angela-carter","tag-james-marsh","tag-jg-ballard","tag-john-holmes","tag-mark-hollis","tag-rob-young","tag-talk-talk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4X5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}