St. Vincent’s Design Philosophy? “DIY Til I Die”
Photo: Alex Da Corte / All Rights Reserved; St Vincent
Even a casual fan of performer St. Vincent—real name Annie Clark—is probably aware of her encyclopedic knowledge of musicians and music genres. Her Grammy-winning records span styles ranging from industrial rock to lounge pop, all of which showcase Clark’s trademark incisive lyrics and her ability to absolutely shred on guitar. But what might come as more of a surprise is her equal facility with the finer points of art history. During the course of our interview, she excitedly mentions everyone from ’90s visual artist Félix González-Torres to photographer Marilyn Minter to English artist Sophy Rickett as inspirations for her latest album, All Born Screaming, released earlier this year, as well as its accompanying world tour, continuing into 2025. And just as this record is her first entirely self-produced (the Spanish-language version, Todos Nacen Gritando, will drop on November 15) but features appearances from industry luminaries like Dave Grohl, Clark’s creativity and wit form the backbone of the album’s and tour’s visuals with help from friends like conceptual artist Alex Da Corte.
Interestingly, the inspiration for this album cycle’s imagery was not a contemporary artist, but one born in the 18th century: Spanish Romantic painter Francisco de Goya. Clark was on a “lost weekend” in Madrid with Da Corte when the two found themselves transfixed in front of his work at Museo del Prado. “We both had a very intense, visceral reaction to Goya's black paintings, specifically Saturn Devouring His Son,” Clark recalls. And as All Born Screaming is about “life and death and love, period,” the painting, with its dark composition and flashes of white and red, became a touchstone when the two began working on designs for the album.
Back in the US, Clark and Da Corte spent time at his studio poring over art books, finding particular inspiration in ’90s artists like Jack Goldstein, Sophy Rickett, and Robert Longo. “We realized later that these people were in the midst of a plague, and we’ve just survived one. So there was connective tissue that felt very resonant there,” she says. It’s also not surprising that Clark and Da Corte would be drawn to the same style: The two seem to share a kind of creative shorthand with one another, unsurprising considering how often they collaborate. “Annie and I are both studio rats,” Da Corte says. “I deeply admire the ways she moves around a melody, weaves a story, and commits to the worlds she has built, and her willingness to deconstruct them and start over.”
The finished album photos, shot by Da Corte, feature images like a poised Clark seated by a table with a bright orange marigold in a tin can, or her clad in a Day-Glo yellow coat leaning in a black archway illuminated with white light. But perhaps the most arresting is the cover shot, which features Clark, flailing and with her arms on fire, in a pose very reminiscent of Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities series. All of the photos are a fascinating synthesis of Goya’s chiaroscuro, the Pictures Generation’s representational imagery, and Da Corte’s own winking nods to pop culture. “We push each other into these unknowns,” Da Corte says of working with Clark. “And that always brings me light.”
The theme of archways also carried over to Clark’s vision for her tour sets. “So much about the record is a Rubicon,” she explains. “You’re going from one space to the other. And how do you do that in a set that feels uncanny? How do you make a space that is a void, but with architectural elements that give the impression of containment? So that was archways.” Interestingly, the artistic fulcrum for these designs ended up being a painter even older than Goya: Hieronymus Bosch and his famed oak panel triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, which Clark and Da Corte also saw at the Prado. “I've been obsessed with that painting since I saw a print of it in my great aunt’s house when I was four,” Clark says. “[For the tour] it made sense to me: This triptych of you starting in paradise and then you end in hell. But let’s be honest, hell always looked more fun,” she adds with a laugh. “So for the show’s structure, we start in hell and end in heaven.”
After sketching out her ideas, Clark brought the images to the lighting and production designer team of Tess Falcone and Dan Hadley. They constructed a set with a series of moveable archways that can be positioned to different places on stage according to the choreography of the show. Prerecorded video content—a series of shots of objects related to the album artwork that were conceptualized by Clark and her good friend and director Alan Del Rio Ortiz—is also projected behind the archways. “Everything had to be tactile and inexplicably evocative, but not literal,” she says of the videos. “So, for example, we took a piece of red plexi and dropped it and shot it in slow motion. You could watch it forever.” Not every element, however, made it into the final production. “I originally had this idea that I was going to cut through a membrane of sorts at the top of the show. And we tried it, and the first thing that happened was I cut my hand and couldn’t make it through the fabric. It looked like community theater,” Clark says, laughing.
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But as sleek as Clark’s sets are for this current tour, she’s well aware of the work it takes to get them up to professional shape. “My ethos—and Alex’s ethos—is DIY til we die,” she says. “I came up through indie rock; I came up making my own sets and lugging them around. If you have a tiny bit of time, enough money—I’m talking pennies—and a vision, you can make this happen.”
And though the album imagery and stage sets are a major part of the creative process for Clark, they work, ultimately, to further the experience of the music. “Obviously your job as a performer is to shock and console and shock and console, make sure that every show is different and alive,” she says, when asked how she wanted the audience to feel when they see the stage set up. “But I also wanted there to be release, wanted there to be a place where you could lay your burden down, ’cause fucking Lord knows we need that.”
St. Vincent’s seventh album, All Born Screaming, is out now, and tour dates are live through April 2025. She will also release Todos Nacen Gritando, a Spanish language version of the album, on November 15 via Total Pleasure Records in partnership with Virgin Music Group.
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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