History & Practice Session X: Revolution in the Head

Martin Sharp

Martin Sharp, Vincent, ​1968

Martin Sharp, Man Walking on the Moon, 1972

Martin Sharp, Donovan, 1968

Martin Sharp was an Australian artist and filmmaker born on the 21st of January 1942 in Sydney, Australia. He is most famously known for his distinctive 1960's music posters, many of which featuring popular musicians such as Donovan and Bob Dylan. Sharp used a mixture of photographs, cartoon figures, and embedded letters, all brought together with his psychedelic patterns in the illustrations he produced. Upon moving to London in 1966, Sharp became an artistic director for the popular satirical magazine Oz, where he gained national attention for his work.

Martin Sharp, Oz no. 7, 1967

Martin Sharp, Cream album cover for Disraeli Gears, 1967

Martin Sharp, Oz, 1967

Sharp was inspired by his favourite artists, Van Gogh, Magritte, Matisse and Hokusai, including a strong influence from the music he greatly appreciated throughout the 60s. He was drawn to a particular artist known as Tiny Tim, a performer that played the ukulele and sang in a falsetto voice. He was fascinated by the language of art, of which he could mix and connect things, such as his combination of a Magritte still life within a Van Gogh landscape which was featured in his simply titled Art Book published in 1972.

​Martin Sharp, Art Book, 1972

Vincent van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night, 1888

Rene Margitte, The Explanation, 1954

Many of Sharp's illustrations incorporate images from many classic paintings, from Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci to The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. While studying art at school, Sharp was awarded a book about Vincent Van Gogh as an art prize which provoked a lifelong fascination with the painter. He went on to rework many of Van Gogh's paintings into his own work, developing them into his own distinctive works.

The illustration shown below on the left, Still Life: Marilyn, is directly inspired by both Vincent van Gogh and Andy Warhol. Sharp collaged two of their most famous works, Sunflowers and Green Marilyn, to create a unique surrealist piece before later going on to paint it. Sharp stated that the collage was only possible due to Marilyn's green eye-shadow matching the green of the background of the sunflowers, signifying that the influence of both artists still lived and influencing the title of the piece.  

Martin Sharp, Still Life: Marilyn, 1973

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889

Andy Warhol, Green Marilyn, 1964

Through this clear dedication to Vincent van Gogh’s work, the influence he had over Martin Sharp’s work is evident. This is further emphasised in Sharp’s rendition of The Road to Tarascon, a painting originally created by Van Gogh in 1888, using his own unique cartoonist style for Oz magazine and going as far as to name it the same. While the basic composition of the two artworks below are the same from the figures pose to the shadow, they convey a very different atmosphere with their individual colour palettes and style in which they were produced.

Vincent van Gogh, The Road to Tarascon, 1888

Martin Sharp, The Road to Tarascon, Oz magazine no. 16, 1968

Martin Sharp, The Road to Tarascon, Oz Magazine No. 41, 1972