Description

Miles Davis wanted the cover of his most radical record to sound like the music, so he asked the painter Mati Klarwein to listen to the recordings first and paint what he heard. Klarwein, born in Hamburg in 1932 and trained in Paris under Fernand Léger, worked in a slow Renaissance method of layered tempera and oil, and the result is a crowded, glowing fantasy: a couple gazing out to a stormy sea, a huge face split into black and white halves, interlaced hands, flowers and fire spread across a gatefold that turns from day to night.

Klarwein saw the image as more than a contrast of opposites. "While it's easy to see how the cover might represent dichotomies, it is really more about tandems and shared experiences," he said. That idea of fusion mirrored a double album that mixed jazz, rock, funk and electronics in long collective improvisations.

The title arrived late. According to accounts of the sleeve, Davis's working title was Witches Brew until his wife Betty suggested a sharper word, and Columbia's art director John Berg added the gothic lettering because he liked its rock-and-roll swagger. Released on 30 March 1970, the album became one of Davis's biggest sellers, and Klarwein went on to paint the cover of Santana's Abraxas the same year.

Credit

Cover painting by Mati Klarwein; title lettering by John Berg