"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
I’ve just added a fourth cover to last year’s post, Look Here: The first three Gor novels, with cover art by Robert Foster, but I suppose I might as well post it here, too:
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Hey, it’s a hand-coloured photomontage!
Freshly scanned… interesting how the photo-reference becomes more insistent with each successive cover here…
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ABOVE: John Norman, Tarnsman of Gor (NY: Ballantine Books, 1972), with cover art by Robert Foster.
ABOVE: John Norman, Outlaw of Gor (NY: Ballantine Books, 1972), with cover art by Robert Foster.
ABOVE: John Norman, Priest-Kings of Gor (NY: Ballantine Books, 1973), with cover art by Robert Foster.
To view all of the covers with art by Robert Foster that I’ve scanned and posted so far, click here.
BONUS SCAN:
Here’s a recent acquisition of mine that further illuminates Foster’s technical modus operandi:
The cover of Nomads of Gor isn’t just based on an underlying photomontage. It is a colourized photomontage.
Here are four novels with cover art by Robert Foster that I acquired this spring:
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Unfortunately, the edition of Davy that you see above is not the one I would prefer to own. The edition that I would prefer to own is the one that shows more of Robert Foster’s artwork and thus doesn’t drain all of the surrealism out of it:
You can view a snapshot of Foster’s painting, framed and hanging on somebody’s wall, over on the Illustration Exchange site, where you’ll find the following particulars: 19 x 25 inches, acrylic, 1964.
Here’s another paperback that I purchased at a recent church rummage sale:
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Now, that’s a very strong cover, no doubt, but I think that anyone who is familiar with the work of Gustav Klimt will tell you that the composition of Foster’s illustration owes a clear debt to Klimt’s Medicine (1901), a large-scale ceiling painting that was destroyed in a fire started by the Nazis and is known to us only by a black-and-white photograph of the finished work and a small colour preliminary:
Although at first glance you might be tempted to conclude that, in addition to being inspired by Klimt’s composition, Foster flat-out swiped the figure of the woman suspended in space in the upper-left-hand quadrant of Klimt’s painting, I think a closer comparison of the two figures suggests that what Foster actually did was hire his own model and instruct her to strike a pose similar to one Klimt chose for his model.
RELATED POSTS:
Ragged Claws Network > Connections: Zurbaran, Dali, Vallejo, Foster
Ragged Claws Network > Connections: Gustav Klimt and Jeffrey Jones
BONUS IMAGE (Added 21 October 2012):
Just came across an illustration (with collage elements) by Jim Steranko, published in 1970, that obviously shares a strong family resemblance with the cover illustration by Foster, published in 1968, featured above:
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BONUS IMAGE, TOO (Added 27 October 2012):
I definitely think Foster shot his own reference for the figure of the floating woman in the New Writings in SF4 cover:
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At first, I just planned to post a couple of covers by Robert Foster, scanned by me from my personal collection of SF paperbacks, but I have since decided that it might be more interesting to trace one warm line up through the chain of influence that led to Foster’s arresting illustrations for the front and back covers of Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man. So here goes:
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The typography on the cover of Behold the Man perfectly complements Foster’s painting, don’t you think? The whole package, front and back, is a real stunner!
BONUS IMAGE:
Since I already scanned Foster’s collage-like Alternities cover, I suppose I might as well post that image, too:
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Another strong image, I think.
One bare foot… hm… perhaps it’s a sign… a symbol of some sort… if only I could think what it means…
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BONUS COVER SCAN (added 14 August 2010):
This evening, as I was absent-mindedly browsing the paperback shelves in our basement, I came across a cover by an uncredited artist that had something about it that made me want to include it here…
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BONUS LINK:
Flickr > Kyle Katz > Robert Foster Covers
Ragged Claws Network 