----------------------------------------------------- NOVEMBER 18, 2001 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: The Guardian Observer (London) http://www.observer.co.uk/cash/story/0,6903,596476,00.html Yes - album art close to edge Roger Dean's rock forms have outlived the Seventies By Andy Beven If you were a teenager or a student in the early 1970s, particularly if you sported long hair and faded denim, and even more so if you were a boy, you would almost certainly have owned examples of Roger Dean's artwork. He is the artist responsible for more than 100 album covers, perhaps most famously for the bands Yes, Uriah Heep and Pink Floyd but also for less well remembered outfits such as Osibisa. His highly individual style is instantly recognisable, mostly based on otherworldly landscapes and often featuring mystical or quasi-mythical figures, or some surreal element such as the fish swimming through the desert on Tales From Topographic Oceans (Yes, 1973). His first major British show for a quarter of a century opened last week in London. Originals on display range in price from £12,500 for the recent Rock Forms to £250,000 for Centre Of The Earth (as featured on the 1999 Rick Wakeman album). Somewhere in between you could pick up Octopus (Gentle Giant, 1973) or the oriental Hermit's Cave (Greenslade, 1973) for £35,000. But there are also limited edition fine art prints, each the product of up to 40 colour separations and some hand-finished by Dean. These start at £100 for the Yes Dragonfly logo and rise to £950 for the ubiquitous fishy Tales. Dean, 57, trained as an architect at the Royal College of Art and got into the album sleeve business by accident in 1968 when he was at Ronnie Scott's Soho jazz club presenting his drawings for the redesign of its upper room. The result was a cover for Race With The Devil by heavy rock outfit Gun. He agreed a fee of £150 but, Dean says, the chief accountant of CBS Records was unhappy. 'He said to me, "Mr Dean, for a price like this I could get real art." I had to point out to him that he wasn't buying it, merely renting it.' Dean has never sold the original artwork to the artistes commissioning album covers, only licensed it, and made much of his income from royalties on tour merchandising spinoffs such as T-shirts. When Views, a collection of his images, was published it sold over a million copies. Since 1980 he has spent most of his time - 'and money' - on architectural projects. 'Mostly they don't get built but they sometimes pay nevertheless.' His early experience of exhibiting his paintings was not entirely comfortable. At his first LA show in 1990 the promoter had to persuade him to agree to part with more than one picture but, having been coaxed by a bulk offer of $6 million from a Japanese museum, Dean arrived at the gallery the next morning to find it boarded up. The contact phone number he had was eventually answered by an FBI agent. He passed Dean on to the promoter who 'explained' that he had been sentenced to three years in prison for cocaine dealing and the gallery contents impounded. Retrieving the pictures from federal custody took some time. On his next foray he was successful in achieving lots of publicity from the American rock stations still enthusiastically playing Yes - but the LA gallery owners were horrified. It was situated on the tenth floor of an office block. 'We can't have people off the street in here.' Shows are now an established part of his life, however: he had three in the US last year and more are due there and in Japan. They are his two best markets. Germany, he reckons, is in third place, narrowly ahead of the UK. 'New England is the best place of all for selling but that's a social thing. There, if a guy comes to an exhibition and likes something he'll buy it there and then, whereas in Texas he'll bring his wife to have a look too. Halves your chances.' His pricing policy for original works is based not on their size or the relative notoriety of the albums on which they featured but on their irreplaceability. He explains: 'With some images you begin by pouring paint on to the canvas and letting it dry and then that texture is key to the painting. Some images I can paint again if I choose, but those I cannot ever repeat.' Hence the high price tag of Centre of the Earth . Do his pictures represent a good investment? He quotes the example of a piece he sold for £3,000, which is now back on the market for £50,000, but says that prints are his main interest. 'I think they will be a good investment in 18 months or so because I'm not going to repeat runs, so once they are gone they are gone. In particular, the Yes images are, because they were such a campus band in the US and the guys who bought those albums are now a serious part of corporate America.' Is there anything he's painted that he wouldn't sell? 'No, anything at a price, but it would be a price.' That, presumably, is why the 'irreplaceable' Relayer (Yes, 1974) sits in Dean's studio with a price tag of £600,000 - a perfect instance of a seller's market. The Roger Dean exhibition is at the Gallery, 28, Cork Street, London W1X 1HB until Saturday 24 November. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com