Cover Stories, Printworks
(Dec. 12, 2010) A recommendation for all the Chicagoans: go check out Cover Stories: The Art of the Book Jacket at Printworks in River North. 68 artists’ jackets designs for favorite books. (Through February. And it’s free!) A few personal highlights: Robert Schultz’s Death in Venice and Christopher Schneberger’s Lolita were hung near one another and in both was visible the artists’ discomfort with the books’ young romantic characters. (I’m tempted to, at least in the case of Tadzio, describe him instead as object rather than character, for doesn’t Aschenbach’s attraction stem from the opportunity to project onto the blank slate born of youth and distance?) Lolita and Tadzio are both presented in their late teens or early twenties. This is understandable in the case of an image the artist must eroticize, particularly given the need for a real model in Schneberger’s photograph, but left me wondering if, consequently, these were the best works for these artists to tackle. The unpalatable aspects of these books are consciously central; in the artists’ evasion of engagement, the authors were underserved. By contrast, Balthus’s Girl With Cat has long struck me during AIC visits, in the subject’s aggressive posing, as a suitably discomforting cover for the Nabokov. The media ranged from photo to prints to embroidery (above). Quite a few incorporated collage. Jay Craig’s Leaves of Grass used fiberous grass-like material in an approach that was literal without being corny. Simpson constructed her Gatsby cover out of squares of high-gloss paper that looked like pool tile. The most engaging collage incorporated text. A bird silhouette in Coupe-Ryding’s Mockingbird cover was filled with a passage in handwritten script. Audrey Niffenegger’s Alice in Wonderland falls down a rabbit hole constructed of lines cut out of the printed text. The medium is natural for a book design, and served to forefront the artistic power of these words.
