John squire, the “artist”

Anyone else think his art is very bland?

He just copied some pollock at first and then the celebrity art he did was just very basic and it really seems like he used celebrity names to sell the art.

I know his guitar playing was not totally original but it sounded good up until 2012, when he ran out of ideas.

I liked the stuff he did with tiles, probably not original but I liked it.

I don’t think he’s ever been overtly original artwise but even the lemons on the LP cover weren’t his idea.

Who’s idea were the lemons? The tiled stuff, I think was actually quite original in comparison to his other stuff, but don’t like the way he named them after celebrities or infamous people...


What about the “Marshall’s house” album! It’s an album which was inspired by paintings . I do actually like the music on the album.

Seahorses lp cover was great, SC was poor. Wasn't it Ians idea about the lemons on TSR album?

Anyone else think his art is very bland?

He just copied some pollock at first and then the celebrity art he did was just very basic and it really seems like he used celebrity names to sell the art.

I know his guitar playing was not totally original but it sounded good up until 2012, when he ran out of ideas.

Bland? Well, there's lfew things more subjective in the creative arts than fine art/painting. Particularly when you start wandering into abstract & conceptual art which Squire did around the time he became fixated on the likes of Cy Twombly.
I think his celebrity series of works was a clever little package with it's easy to get concept of the Islamic/icon juxtaposition, as well as having decorative appeal & celebrity reference points. But it - or him as an artist never really took off, which is the lottery of the contemporary art world for you - manipulated, fickle & cynical. Ironically, his fame as a musician didn't probably help much, despite being in a different league to Ronnie Wood, who's childish shitty painting sells for fuck knows what. Or Dylan & his lightweight offerings & you can chuck Paul Simonon in there too. Squire is far more sophisticated than all of them.

Personally, I prefer his figurative work - specifically the image of the dolphins that adorns this website. It's a nice example of a sort of pointillism & you really have to know what you're doing to pull that off. There's no question that he's a talented painter as well as having great visual ideas - his adaption of Pollock's abstract imagery was a brilliant stroke which fed so well into the homogeneous approach of the band at that time - & had he chosen the path of an artist earlier on, as opposed to a musician, I think he would have had a good a chance as any of succeeding. Luckily for us, he didn't.

G mate, I love the cover of Fools Gold, used to have the t-shirt back in the day but I'm pretty sure it's a shot of a painting through a frosted or obscure glass.

The best I found online is this

Ha ha, there goes my theory of Squire's pointillist technique if that's the case. Is the top half of that image the original painting - which I presume is his - prior to being distorted by the glass?
Either way, it's a nice idea & works well, I suppose.

Seahorses lp cover was great, SC was poor. Wasn't it Ians idea about the lemons on TSR album?

Simon Taylor, the photographer for the cover

Ha ha, there goes my theory of Squire's pointillist technique if that's the case. Is the top half of that image the original painting - which I presume is his - prior to being distorted by the glass?
Either way, it's a nice idea & works well, I suppose.

Your theory still stands though. It's still a pointillist technique he's using to create the effect, no matter how it is achieved.

I suppose so. And, let's face it, there's little time in the contemporary art world for traditional technique these days, sadly.
Squire, himself, doesn't appear to have much time for it either, judging by the later stuff he did. Which ironically stands in contrast to his approach to guitar playing which arguably, became increasingly focused on trad rock technique.