Cover Art

[sartorias]

After the fun Jim Hines had the other day, I put together a riff about cover art.

Was also thinking about books that I avoided because I didn't like the cover art. Like A Wrinkle in Time, when I was a kid. The cover art was crude, three kid figures with weird circles around them, suggesting science fiction, which I mostly equated with horror.

Comments

[mrissa]

One of the things that fascinates me in cover art is that I am so steeped in sff that I can tell when covers I don't like are meant to appeal to me in particular directions. The reason I find this interesting is that I started reading adult SF at 12 and mysteries about ten years later, and I have just not generated the same "cover art literacy" in the mystery genre. For me looking at mystery covers is like listening to people speak Japanese: I know a few rudimentary phrases, but the bulk of the discussion is just whizzing right past me and leaving me none the wiser about whether the thing in question is of interest or not.

[sartorias]

That's another interesting topic--decoding. When I was a kid, I responded intensely to the art of the old masters, without thinking about why. It wasn't until I hit college, and discovered the weird, nervy art of the Mannerists that it finally hit me that the artists were not representing nature without comment, they were communicating through art.

That really hit home when I'd tour lesser known historical sites, and looked at art on walls by artists long forgotten, and saw how blatant various codes could be, when not handled skillfully.

[mrissa]

Heh. Rants on the coded messages are often forthcoming when I'm in an art museum, and if they're not really masters, I quite frequently get...colorful...in my rants. "It was 1848, fool! The peasants were not thrilled and bucolic! This painting is a lying liar that lies!"

[sartorias]

Hee!

[jimhines]

I think it would be best if I stayed out of the comments over there, but I really appreciated your discussion, and the text-only cover was fascinating. I'd love to do that with a larger sampling of covers to see what you ended up with.

[sartorias]

If you check further down the comments, there is a far less snarky one, with a link to a woman who did some extensive posing of both male and female cover art.

Re text-only, I thought about that--it would be fun, but that one took this techdweeb a ridiculously long time!

[jimhines]

That's ocelott's post, right? I loved that - great photoshoot, and she captured and demonstrated a lot of things that I didn't.

[sartorias]

Yeah. Wasn't that cool?

[serialbabbler]

I read The Stepsister Scheme cover art as "light/humorous fantasy with young female protagonists". (Which actually made me avoid it until I'd been reading Jim's blog for awhile because I'm picky about my humor.) The sexy girls aspect is there, but it strikes me as being mostly stylistic rather than a main focus.

I'm currently fascinated by the number of "hard science-fiction" books that have completely irrelevant to the story cityscapes on the cover. Perhaps that's an attempt to create a feeling of futuristic distance...

[sartorias]

Yes--like sf of thiry years ago that had to have a weird looking rocket on the front (often with impossibly aerodynamics) even if the story took place entirely on a futureEarth.

[faelariel]

Haha, I agree about the Wrinkle in Time cover art...it was disturbing to me as well.

[faelariel]

Yes! This was the exact cover that made me suspicious of Wrinkle in Time until years later. I wasn't interested until I saw the redesigned covers in the library - whether the intense color/flaming one or the pastels cover I don't know, but something worked. So yes-sometimes cover bias can be reversed with a new cover.

[faelariel]

I agree. And who ever said, "don't judge a book by its cover"? We are visually stimulated people, that is almost an impossible thing to do.

[sartorias]

Oh the Hildebrandt brothers!

Yay!

[carbonelle]

Another Elizabeth Malczynski fan!

Nothing of any sense to add to your post just generally squeeing that someone else knows and loves a favorite illustrator. And it was the same book that introduced me to her!

Re: Yay!

[sartorias]

:-)