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PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 12:05 pm 
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I thought it'd be fun to compile a list of PJ Harvey's visual influences and favourites that she mentioned in interviews. Let me kick things off.

Around White Chalk era she was waxing lyrical about Odilon Redon's charcoal sketches:

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For Let England Shake she found inspiration in Goya's Disasters of War series...

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...and Salvador's Dali Spanish Civil war works:

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Anything else that you guys remember?


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 4:48 pm 
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What a great idea!

She talked about Stanley Kubrick and Ken Loach's films around the time of Let England Shake, in particular Barry Lyndon and The Wind That Shakes the Barley (I guess film can count as a visual art), and there's that drawing of the head of Edvard Munch she did, so I suppose she's an admirer.


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 5:45 pm 
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It's a very good idea, certainly - and I'm sure (he says vaguely) that I remember her talking about thinking in filmic terms as much as musical
ones. Literary influences are perhaps easier to pick out as they work their way into particular lyrics, but visual influences may contribute more to a general feeling and atmosphere and so may be harder to identify unless she's actually mentioned them specifically. I hadn't read her remarks about Odilon Redon, yet I have a strange memory of having heard a song which made me *think* of Redon, but I can't remember what it is!

An excuse to listen to everything again ...


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PostPosted: Sat Apr 08, 2017 4:59 am 
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I love this idea! I love it when she speaks about her visual influences or favourite artists. I couldn't remember reading an interview where she mentioned Redon, so I googled it & here it is for anyone else who might not have read it...

http://www.newsweek.com/pj-harvey-follows-lieder-103351


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PostPosted: Sat Apr 08, 2017 4:31 pm 
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she wears William Blake's T-shirt so I guess she likes his drawings
near to him I see Fussli, but it's my feeling


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 5:20 pm 
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Random but I rewatched the White Chalk EPK after listening to the demos and noticed that back in 2007 Polly had this Halsman/Dalí photo hanging above her piano:

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 7:10 am 
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Well spotted! Below it and to the right looks very much like one of the many, many versions of Bocklin's 'Isle of the Dead', too.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 10:52 am 
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In this interview from 1993 Polly talks about her appreciation for Andres Serrano - I can definitely see the influence/parallels with his provocative body horror, especially in Rid Of Me era.

https://www.nme.com/features/dead-lambs ... arm-757152

Quote:
I ask Polly about studying art, and about her admiration for the work of Andres Serrano, the New York-based artist who got notoriety by suspending a plastic crucifix in a glass of his own urine. Following on from Piss Christ, there’s been a trend for artists such as Kiki Smith and Marc Quinn to devote themselves to making art from bodily fluids.

It’s not really a stretching point to see this trend in Polly’s songs, in ‘Dry’ for example, which is about her vaginal/emotional aridity, or on the excoriating ‘Rub ’Til It Bleeds’. So is she consciously echoing this stuff?

“Well, the last thing I saw was in New York. I went to see the Serrano exhibition of morgue photos. They made you feel a lot of things – one minute I’d feel really horrified and appalled and the next minute I’d think, this isn’t working at all, this looks really staged and I don’t feel anything for these people.

“He’s just done loads of ‘cum’ pictures. Do you find things like that really turn your stomach? I never feel physically sick by things like that, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve had to deliver lambs and stuff, when I was younger. I used to ring all the lamb’s tails and ring the testicles. I’d clear up dead lambs when they came out in bits – because sometimes they’d decompose inside the sheep and you’d’ take them out bit by bit. And I wonder if it’s hardened my stomach to things like that.”

Does it stop you getting sentimental?

“Yeah, it does.”


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 11:06 am 
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I also recalled her liking Bruce Nauman so i googled it - I couldn’t find the full interview online but this is the quote as published in ‘Sirens Rising’ book

Quote:
She remained as enthusiastic about the contemporary art scene as ever, expressing a particular admiration for the artist Bruce Nauman. “I find him very funny” she told Interview magazine “and that always appeals to me - that kind of balancing of heavy subjects. One of my favourite pieces of his is just two lines of writing. The top line says RUN FROM FEAR and the bottom line says FUN FROM REAR. That’s my kind of humour.”


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