The Last Poets – This Is Madness 1971

Abdul Mati Klarwein made this album cover, titled ‘This Is Madness’ with paint, and probably quite a lot of it, judging by the density of the image. He was clearly thinking through colour, the way it vibrates and throbs. I see a lot happening on this surface. Look at the skin tones, the way they shift from brown to pink and back again, like you're looking through a thermal camera. The colours are intense, right? Especially the background, a roiling, restless orange-red, like flames. The texture is dense, and everything seems to merge together in a kind of beautiful, chaotic dance. Look at the way the orange and red blend into each other, creating this kind of hazy, dreamlike effect. There are no clear boundaries here, everything is in motion, bleeding into everything else. I see echoes of Ernst and Dalí in this, but also hints of Basquiat and Haring, the way the figures are flattened and stylized. But maybe that's just me. In the end, this piece reminds us that art is a conversation, a dialogue between artists across time.