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A rare and important collection of original production artwork from U2's Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (1995), the animated music video created for Batman Forever. Described by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest animated music videos ever made, the film captures U2 at their most self-aware and visually daring.
Directed by Kevin Godley and animation directed by Shaun Magher at Manga Studios, the video plays like a kinetic fever dream, Bono's alter-egos The Fly and MacPhisto spiralling through fame, temptation, and transformation, with Batman and the Riddler intersecting their journey in flashes of comic-book chaos. The song itself, first conceived during the Zooropa sessions, reflects Bono's fascination with the performative nature of celebrity: The Fly, the jaded rock star in leather and shades, and MacPhisto, the washed-up devil in gold lame, became mirror images of fame's seduction and decay.
This set contains three original layout drawings and three ink guides, each revealing a different stage of the animation process. The layouts are particularly significant, mapping the cinematic movement and staging that gave the video its hypnotic rhythm.
One sheet shows The Fly twisting within a shattered window, a self-referential nod to media fragmentation and Bono's Zoo TV persona trapped inside the screen. Another depicts Bono strapped to a surreal electric frame, annotated "He is hit with electric shocks - he shakes violently", marking his symbolic metamorphosis into MacPhisto. The third presents the towering Zoo TV stage, suspended over a Gotham-like skyline, an architectural homage to U2's real concert design, with stacked monitors and broadcast towers suggesting both church and machine. Its precision lines and camera guides underline the scale and ambition of a production that blurred stadium rock, television, and digital art long before it was the expected norm.
The ink guides, rendered in bold black marker, define the silhouetted energy of three key figures: Batman, mid-transformation, The Riddler, his manic grin and posture based on Jim Carrey's live-action performance, and Bono's alter ego; MacPhisto. These were working reference sheets used by the paint and trace team to maintain consistency across the film's frenetic action sequences.
As Shaun Magher recalls: "We were working around the clock to finish this in just twelve days, gathering artists from across the UK, it was a thrill to see the video win the MTV People's Choice Award." That urgency translates into every frame of the film: stylised, graphic, and brimming with cultural commentary.
A cornerstone of U2's multimedia era, Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me stands at the intersection of rock music, animation, and modern mythology. These artworks capture that moment; the sound and spectacle of fame dissected through the lens of animation.
Rare survivors from the production, they remain both historical artefacts and powerful visual testaments to the ambition of U2's most experimental decade. Dimensions (one sheet): 40.5 cm x 32 cm (16" x 12.5")
Sold without copyright; see copyright notice in the Terms and Conditions.
Estimate: £700 - 1,400 M
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