Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis
Documentary by Anton Corbijn
Featuring interviews with Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Noel Gallagher, David Gilmore, Nick Mason, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Peter Gabriel, Graham Gouldman
Showing as part of the British Film Festival

The 1967 release of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an important marker in Western culture. It was the point at which the largely working-class, youthful music culture emerging in the relative security of the post-WWII economic boom met the creative, modernist art that had grown on the fringe of mass-consumerist advertising.

The era was formed by the confluence of the Baby Boom generation maturing in a period of comparative peace, technological advancements such as the electrification of musical instruments allowing small bands to fill huge venues with sound, the birth control Pill allowing sexual freedom and the worldwide, liberationist, anti-colonial, anti-Vietnam War and anti-racism movements. Associated with this heady mixture there were marijuana and LSD, which made things even more heady.

At this zeitgeist moment a friendship circle developed in Cambridge in a haze of hashish smoke and later moved to London. From this grouping came Pink Floyd and the design firm, Hipgnosis. Squaring the Circle is the story of Hipgnosis and by default chronicles a particular slice of cultural history.

Hipgnosis was formed and led by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. Squaring the Circle’s central strength is the examination of their personalities, which seem to have been jarringly different.

Thorgerson was extraordinarily abrasive and argumentative. Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason says that Thorgerson “could not take ‘yes’ for an answer”, he always had to dominate.

While Thorgerson was the design ideas person, Powell was the photographer whose dedication to getting the perfect shot turned the ideas into reality.

Noel Gallagher, of Oasis, says in this film that while rich people have works of art hanging on their walls, working class people have art in the form of record covers leaning against their walls. Hipgnosis is synonymous with the best of that art.

The music that hit the big time coming out of the 60s and lasting until the late 1970s was characterized by male ‘rock gods’. Hipgnosis clients, such as Led Zepplin, strutted the stages and jetted about in cocaine-fueled egomania.

Hipgnosis produced over 250, era-defining record covers between 1968 and 1983, giving a visual, not necessarily literal, reflection of the music on the vinyl. It passes without comment here that only a handful of those were for female artists.

The artistic standard of the Hipgnosis output is beyond dispute, as is its lingering impact. It is said in this film that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon has sold over 67 million copies. If so, the Hipgnosis triangle-and-light-prism artwork is imprinted on the memories of a significant number of human beings.

Dark Side of the Moon is both an elegy to Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s founder, who suffered a catastrophic mental collapse from taking too much LSD and a critique of capitalist alienation – “Money, get back, I’m alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack.”

Its social criticism combined with compassionate personal reflection has kept it selling since its 1973 release. The cover symbolically contrasts light and darkness while exposing the full spectrum of self-expression that is available to all human beings.

The film relates stories behind many of the most memorable Hipgnosis covers, such as the hilarious events around the Animals inflatable, flyingpig that brought Heathrow Airport to a standstill. Accompanying the images are clips of the music that inspired them and interviews with many of the people involved.

The film skims over much of the era’s political framework, but steers clear of nostalgia. It is clear-eyed about the period’s inanities, and it shows the social struggles sparking the Punk explosion that ended the days of the Rock Dinosaurs.

Film maker Anton Corbijn has crafted an affecting film by returning to the personality-driven narrative in between the stories of the cover art. He allows Thorgerson and Powell’s creative strengths and their considerable foibles to unfold sympathetically, but not uncritically.

Viewers can come to this movie for the familiar cover images and their amusing back-stories, relax with the music but expect to be moved by the humanity of the people who worked so hard to express a kaleidoscopic era.

A selection of some Pink Floyd covers by Hipgnosis from the Victoria and Albert Museum: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-graphic-identity-of-pink-floyd

A Marxist appraisal of Dark Side of the Moon – https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-at-50-how-marx-trauma-and-compassion-all-influenced-pink-floyds-masterpiece-198400

Trailer: