Three years ago today, John Emr launched a blog with a single artist as its subject. That artist is Peter Schmidt, perhaps best known for his work with Brian Eno, most notably as co-collaborator on the Oblique Strategies cards, for his cover art to Eno’s 1974 album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), and for the watercolor prints that accompanied Eno’s 1977 album Before and After Science.
Schmidt live from 1931 through 1980, and Emr’s tribute site, peterschmidtweb.blogspot.com, is an ongoing survey of Schmidt’s work. If Emr has his way, Schmidt will be known more widely for far more than his association with Eno. Just yesterday, Emr made a post that exemplifies the rigor he brings to his pursuit. While watching the film And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), he spied a Schmidt work, “Cycloid V,” on a wall during this scene featuring Michael Palin — and promptly posted some screen shots:
Original post at peterschmidtweb.blogspot.com. Additional images and information at peterschmidtweb.com. (Emr apparently acquired “Cycloid V,” and “IV,” last year, according to another peterschmidtweb.blogspot.com post.)
Congrats on three years of excellent work, John. Here’s to many more.
This is the second reference to the Peter Schmidt tribute site I’ve seen today (found the other at http://inanindeterminateplace.com, where there’s a post and a gallery).
Schmidt’s work is beautiful, and it’s great to see so much of it. Aside from a few album covers I admit I didn’t know much about him. Having seen his stuff, I want to know more.
I am the same — I had overall limited sense of who he was or what he’d done. I knew far more about Tom Phillips, another artist of that era responsible for great album covers. The site dedicated to him is a tremendous service, not just to Schmidt, but to the rest of us.