Earth Wind and Fire – Last Days and Time 1972

Abdul Mati Klarwein conjured this cover for Earth, Wind & Fire, brimming with psychedelic energy. Look at how he builds the city with these graphic blocks of colour, punctuated by hard lines and then explodes the centre with a flower cloud, like a beautiful bomb. He layers the paint in such a way that each element seems to vibrate with its own frequency. Notice the way the clouds morph into flames, a painted fire, and the crispness of the figures, they look like cut outs. This juxtaposition of the hyper-real and the dreamlike lends a mystical quality to the piece. Klarwein's work reminds me a little of Matias Grünewald, that sense of the ecstatic, the otherworldly made physical. It’s this embrace of ambiguity, this refusal to settle on one single meaning, that makes art so endlessly fascinating, isn’t it?