When artist Robert Rauschenberg died in 2008, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne wrote an op-ed for the New York Times. Reflecting on both their friendship and creative collaborations, Byrne recounted how he’d crash at Rauschenberg’s studio on Captiva Island, Florida to workshop songs. One time, he left behind a pair of old tennis shoes, only to see them again sometime later—in a painting.

Byrne struck up Rauschenberg’s acquaintance in the mid-1980s after seeing some of his black-and-white photo collages at a gallery in New York City. Byrne’s band was working on their fifth album, to be titled Speaking in Tongues, and he was wondering if Rauschenberg would be interested in designing the cover. The artist agreed, but under one condition: he’d not only do the cover, but the “whole LP package.”

Robert Rauschenberg (right) and David Byrne in 1983. Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images.

Rauschenberg was no stranger to working with musicians. Back when he was studying art at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College in the early ’50s, his aptly named “White Paintings” series served as the inspiration for the four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence that is composer John Cage’s “4’33.” Setting up shop in New York, he thought the city’s singers and guitar players made for better company than its visual artists. In hindsight, this preference was hardly surprising. As the Museum of Modern Art noted in a 2017 retrospective, his use of everyday objects and interest in other mediums—from music and dance to poetry—were part of a desire to challenge “the heroic gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism.”

For the cover of Speaking in Tongues, which was released in July 1983, Rauschenberg revisited ideas and aesthetics he previously explored with his 1967 “Revolver” sculptures. These consisted of silkscreened Plexiglass discs mounted on metal bases that produced kaleidoscopic effects when spun. For Talking Heads, Rauschenberg created three plastic discs with cyan, magenta, and yellow designs that, when overlaid on top of the spinning LP, would produce a full-color, kinetic composition that featured images of a car, billboard, and bedroom. Clarity of vision was beside the point. As Byrne put it: “One could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.”

Talking Heads, Speaking In Tongues (1983) limited edition LP, designed by Robert Rauschenberg. Photo: Simon Robinson / Easy On The Eye via Alamy.

If the album cover is difficult to describe, it was even more difficult to produce, let alone mass-produce. With help from Oscar Meyer, a company otherwise known for processing and packaging meat, Rauschenberg’s vision was turned into a reality—but only as a limited edition, as the standard version of the album ended up featuring a more conventional, easily produceable cover created by Byrne himself.

Andy Warhol, a lifelong fan of Talking Heads, once said that Rauschenberg had told him he was upset because the band had paid him $2,000 when he could have very well asked for $25,000. Whether this story is true or not, any grievance that may have resulted from the deal surely dissolved after Speaking in Tongues won a Grammy for best album cover.

Talking Heads, Speaking In Tongues (1983) standard LP cover.

In many ways, Rauschenberg and Talking Heads were a perfect fit for each other. As an obituary published in TIME magazine noted, “It’s hard to think of a better match for Rauschenberg, a demiurge of creative disorder, than the band that said, ‘Stop making sense.’” Byrne himself agreed, writing in his op-ed that “being around Bob was often like being on some kind of ecstatic drug: he inspired those around him to not only think outside of the box, but to question the box’s very existence.”

What’s the deal with Leonardo’s harpsichord-viola? Why were Impressionists obsessed with the color purple? Art Bites brings you a surprising fact, lesser-known anecdote, or curious event from art history.