Tracing the visual codes of excess from postmodern pop to hypermodern spectacle
I found myself lingering over the inner sleeve of Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1984), struck by how oddly current the image feels: saturated colors, a dream-like lushness, a fantastical fauna nestled within a baroque wilderness.
The band members pose like figures from a fevered tableau, caught somewhere between theater and ritual, where pleasure becomes its own myth.
Then I stopped by the poster for Björk’s Cornucopia tour — this Sunday, May 11 at the Grand Rex — and i personally found an uncannily similar aesthetic. Don’t you think so?
Forty years apart, yet both visuals seem to breathe a similar image narrative, creating a sensory-rich world we now call hypermodern: vibrant colors, intricate details, and surreal compositions that visually represent a reality where nature and technology intertwine — harmoniously, yet unmistakably dreamlike.
Rather than hybridization, I would speak of an aesthetic mutation that alternately blends nature, the human, and now technology.
lemodalogue.com 