The “Machiavellian” painting that inspired a New Order album cover
Peter Saville, the graphic designer behind Joy Divion’s iconic Unknown Pleasures cover, somehow managed to create an image just as legendary with New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies. Following the tragic suicide of Ian Curtis, the band reformed as New Order but struggled to settle on a sound that felt uniquely theirs in the aftermath of grief. Their second album marked that point, and Saville’s cover was a fitting way to announce that. It was a huge departure from the stark black-and-white waveform and was instead inspired by the delicate flowers of Henri Fantin-Latour.
While working for Factory Records, Saville worked closely with Joy Divison and, tasked with creating New Order’s sophomore album cover, turned to gallery visits for inspiration for something that felt new. Thematically, the album charted the band’s move out of the shadows, employing a dazzling hybrid sound of synth-pop and post-punk. “The title seemed Machiavellian,” Saville recalled.
“So I went to the National Gallery looking for a Renaissance portrait of a dark prince. In the end, it was too obvious, and I gave up for the day and bought some postcards from the shop”.
Joined by his girlfriend at the time, she flicked through the pile and noticed that Saville seemed to be drawn to Basket of Roses by Henri Fantin-Latour. Fantin-Latour painted still-life scenes throughout his career and had such command of realism that every petal had its own perfect shadow.
Teasing him, Saville’s girlfriend asked him if he’d use it for a cover. He realised almost instantly it was actually a great idea. “Flowers suggested the means by which power, corruption, and lies infiltrate our lives,” he explained to the Guardian. “They’re seductive.” He told Factory co-founder Tony Wilson they’d need permission to use the image, so he called the director.
The snag was that the painting had been bequeathed to the gallery’s collection in 1923, effectively meaning everyone and no one owned it, which the director explained by saying: “It belongs to the people of Britain.” Wilson explained that if that was the case, he believed it was what the people would want. “If you put it like that, Mr Wilson,” the director replied, “I’m sure we can make an exception in this case.”
As well as Fantin-Latour’s artwork, Saville used a colour code on the top right of the album cover that detailed the title and the band’s name, with means to decode it on the back. “The colour alphabet came from the fact that I understood the floppy disk contained coded information, and I wanted to impart the title in a coded form,” Saville later explained. “Therefore, I converted the alphabet into a code using colours.”
Just as Unknown Pleasures became a cultural staple, the Power, Corruption & Lies cover was a visual feat in its own right, featuring on everything from Royal Mail Stamps to Supreme collections.
