“Ladies and Gentlemen, Here’s Grace!”
Every inch of this cover art screams Grace. To this day, the mere sight of art is like discovering lost treasure. From the near-impossible contortion and superhuman form, to her sculpted-by-the-G-d’s shape, there is no mistaking this album hides a sound that echoes the outstanding achievement that was capturing Grace Jones in her prime. Interestingly, Island Life is a compilation album by Jones released in 1985, summing up the first nine years of her musical career. The cover art showcasing this well-oiled goddess was created by long-time creative partner, designer Jean-Paul Goude, an illustrator, photographer and graphic designer.
As Goude was once quoted on the creation of this historic image: “I photographed her in a variety of positions, which I combined into a montage that made it possible to show her simultaneously full frontal and in profile, like an Egyptian bas-relief. Then, having transferred the montage to photographic paper, I used it as the preliminary sketch for a painting meant to give the photographic illusion that she is alone, like a contortionist, though on closer look you can see that from a strictly anatomical point of view the pose is impossible to achieve.” The impact is staggering.
