ABBA On The Web – December 2007
The ABBA members all professed to be art lovers. In 1977 ABBA, through
Polar Music International, invested in
A number of renowned artists collaborated with ABBA for the group’s visual appearance, and the website ABBA – The Art celebrates that artistic connection.
Appropriately for a site dedicated to art, it is an attractive, well designed site. It is easy to navigate, with links to all sections at the top left of every page.
Unfortunately the site has not been updated for a couple of years. I asked Webmaster Joe Boeckholt about this, and tells me that he intends to keep the site going and hopes he will be able to add more in the future.
The main page currently discusses the resemblance between artwork seen in the background in the 2004 short film ‘The Last Video’ and op artist Victor Vasarely (and you probably thought it was just Seventies tacky wallpaper!). There is also a comment on the obvious influence of pop artist Andy Warhol’s famous silkscreen portraits on the image used on the music folio ‘It’s Easy to Play Abba’, and information about Gripsolm, the castle where the cover photographs for ABBA’s Waterloo album were taken and which now houses the National Portrait Gallery of Sweden.
On this page there are links to four “photomosaics” of the individual ABBA members created by Joe. This is a technique that uses hundreds of very small photos create the illusion of one large image.
There is also an animated gif created by Joe of what the ABBA puppets
from ‘The Last Video’ might look if they’d been produced as bobble-head
dolls. Very cute and a possible future merchandising opportunity
The ‘Artists’ page gives information and examples of art of many artists that contributed to ABBA. The most prominent names include:
- Han Arnold, who created the
painting used on the cover of the Swedish
Greatest Hits album in 1975.
- Rune Söderqvist, one of the best known names among fans, who designed all of ABBA’s album sleeves from 1975’s Greatest Hits to 1982’s The Singles – The First Ten Years and created the ABBA logo. Söderqvist is also a painter, though a link to his art is no longer functioning.
- Owe Sandström, the designer responsible for ABBA’s memorable costumes. Think what you like of those costumes, but there is an element of art involved, especially in the hand painting of 1975’s blue and yellow “cat” dresses and 1978’s animal costumes (seen in the ‘Eagle’ and ‘Thank You For The Music’ videos). Sandström also collaborated with Söderqvist on the stage design and costumes for ABBA’s 1979 tour.
- Lasse Hallström, who made most of ABBA’s promotional films and of course directed the feature film ABBA – The Movie.
- Julius Kronberg, whose studio and huge painting Eros feature on the sleeve of The Visitors album.
The ‘Xmas Drawings’ page features four large drawings that Björn, Agnetha, Benny and Frida drew for Bravo magazine in 1980.
‘ABBA in 3D’ is one of the sections with images created by Joe. Here, with a bit of eye trickery, you can see 3D versions of ABBA album covers. It takes practice to see the 3D effect, but it can be done.
There’s much more to ABBA – The Art than what I’ve been able to mention here.
And what is that image at the head of every page? It is inspired by the
windows of Polar Music Studio B that overlooked
