Storm Thorgerson
Framed: H. 95 cm. x W. 75 cm. D. 2 cm.
The Division Bell Metal Heads limited edition print was one of the very first selection of Pink Floyd album cover designs to be revisited and re-envisaged as an art print by Storm Thorgerson at the very beginning of this century. The artwork for Pink Floyd's The Division Bell was executed in two versions: two heads, two covers. As tall as a double decker bus and weighing a ton, the metal heads were taken by flat-bed truck to a field near Cambridge, Pink Floyd's home town, close to Ely Cathedral, on the edge of the Fens. The sculptures present the idea of two heads in profile, facing or talking to each other, making up a third face, facing you. The metal heads were devised by Keith Breeden and built by John Robertson, scaled like the Aku Aku totems on Easter Island.
"The single eyes of the two faces looking at each other become the two eyes of a single face looking at you, the viewer. It was intended that the viewer should not see both at the same time. One saw the single face or the two profiles. If one saw both it was alternating, like an optical illusion, which was even better because it meant that the viewer was interacting, or communicating, with the image directly, viscerally". The album was released in 1994, reached no. 1 in the UK and the US, and has sold over 12 million copies. This print, a silkscreen in 19 colours on Somerset tub paper printed by Coriander Studios in London, is a beautiful record of the event and of the album itself. It makes a perfect companion, of course, for the Stone Heads print.