Heads Up! · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones

Heads Up: JEFFREY JONES: THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE

I have complained several times here at RCN about the lack of basic publication and other information about the covers, spot illustrations, and other materials featured in the books that have been published to date about the work of Jeffrey Jones.

Today, however, I am delighted to highlight a book that promises to fill in some of the blanks in our knowledge of Jones’s career and perhaps bring to light a few forgotten gems in Jones’s vast back-catalogue of published work:

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Here’s the publisher’s description:

Vanguard follows Frazetta: The Definitive Reference with Jeffrey Jones: The Definitive Reference. Frazetta called Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner, Jones, the greatest living painter. This book catalogues all published Jones work: book covers, National Lampoon, Idyl, comics, The Studio (with Wrightson, Winsdor-Smith and Kaluta), prints, portfolios, and more.

The regular hardcover edition runs 176 pages, the deluxe slip-cased edition is 192 pages and features a 16 page bonus folio section not part of the regular hardcover edition.

With a career as poorly documented as Jones’s has been, the task of compiling a catalogue of all of the artist’s published work must have involved countless hours of scholarly detective work. That being said, however, one doesn’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that an online errata sheet will be posted by someone or other shortly after the book is published. Because the fact is, generally speaking, very few scholarly reference works make it to press without some errors and/or omissions, and even fewer do so when the area of research is an obscure corner of popular culture. But don’t pass up the first edition of Jeffrey Jones: The Definitive Reference in hope that an updated/corrected/perfect edition will appear at some future date. If the first edition is not successful in the first place, an updated/corrected edition won’t even be a possibility.

P.S. Needless to say, Jones fan that I am, I have already pre-ordered the slip-cased edition.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Gustav Klimt · Illustration Art · Jim Steranko · Look Here · Robert Foster

Connections: Gustav Klimt and Robert Foster (and Jim Steranko)

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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via


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:

via

Keywords: New Writings in SF4, Infinity One, Thorns.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here · Paul Lehr

Look Here: Three SF novels with cover art by Paul Lehr

Went to a church rummage sale yesterday. Picked up three LPs and a small stack of paperbacks, including three with covers by Paul Lehr. Scanned the Lehr covers a few minutes ago. Uploaded the JPEGs to RCN. Typed a few lines of nonsense. Published the post. Tweeted the link. Sat back and admired my busywork.

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To browse through all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted thus far on RCN, click here, scroll down, click the link to the next page, scroll down, etc.

Keywords: The Marian Way and Other Stories, Nightmare Blue, Rogue Star.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here · Richard Corben

Look Here: Another fantasy novel with cover art by Richard Corben

I purchased The Point Man by Stephen Englehart for three bucks from a local seller of used books last weekend, and not because the author is a well-known comics writer. No, the reason I bought the book is because the cover art is by Richard Corben, and although the painting is, frankly, not one of his best efforts, I’m enough of a Corben collector that I couldn’t pass it up. Of course, the fact that the book is a first edition, and in great condition, was also a factor…

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Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Book/Magazine Covers (Jones) · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here

Look Here: An obscure occult novel with equally obscure cover art by Jeffrey Jones

Here’s another “treasure” from the library of yours truly. As far as I am aware, the painting on the cover of Devil Soul has not been reproduced in any form in any collection of the work of Jeffrey Jones published to date. Enjoy!

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As you can see, my copy of the novel is truly in excellent condition! It makes me happy just to know it is on my bookshelf. Is this what people mean when they talk about “pride of ownership”?

Heads Up! · Illustration Art

Heads Up: “Mati & the Music: 52 Record Covers 1955-2005”

Coming in late October 2012 (according to Amazon):

Here’s the publisher’s description:

The 1960s and 1970s offered many options for mind expansion: psychedelic drugs, Eastern meditation, sex — and the art of Mati Klarwein. Klarwein (1932-2002) was a major presence in the New York art scene, admired by everyone from Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí to Jimi Hendrix and Jackie Onassis (who commissioned him to paint a portrait of John F. Kennedy). His pop-surrealist universe of pantheistic religious harmony, sexual fertility and gender and racial unity gave visual expression to an era and to a generation of music, and was embraced by some of the most progressive musicians of his time. Mati & the Music presents Klarwein’s 52 paintings that appeared on album covers, a body of work that began in the mid-1950s and continued for half a century. The majority of the album covers Klarwein painted were commissioned by the musicians themselves, most famously by Miles Davis for his breakthrough fusion albums Bitches Brew and Live Evil and Carlos Santana for Abraxas. Others included Earth Wind & Fire, Buddy Miles and Gregg Allman. Major record labels also employed Klarwein, including Blue Note for Jackie McLean and Reuben Wilson, and Douglas Records for the Last Poets, Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia. With the trim size of an LP album, Mati & The Music will appeal to lovers of music, graphic design and psychedelic art.

And here’s a bit about Mati Klarwein:

Klarwein was born in Germany in 1932 and moved to Paris in 1948 where he studied with the painter Fernand Leger. He was introduced to the art of Dali and Bunuel by Ernst Fuchs, who also taught him the mixed technique of Van Eyck and the Flemish School During his New York years, from 1965 onwards, Klarwein’s work was considered to be inspired by Surrealism and the Psychedelic movement of the time. In the late 1970s Klarwein moved to Majorca, where he lived until he passed away in 2002. The artist completed many painting including famous commissioned portraits of politicians such as JFK, artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Bernstein, actors such as Brigitte Bardot and writers such as Robert Graves. He was also famous for his landscapes, [for] his still lifeworks, and for the many record covers he painted

The Fuchs influence is strong in this one. And that’s a good thing.


BONUS LINK:

Mati Klarwein Art > Album Covers – includes a large scan of Klarwein’s Annunciation (1961), made famous as the wraparound cover of Santana’s landmark Abraxis album.

Dave Sim · Heads Up!

Heads Up: IDW to publish complete collection of Cerebus covers in 2013

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Late yesterday, a short press release from IDW sent tremors of delight through the comics web:

IDW is pleased to announce it has reached an agreement with Aardvark-Vanaheim Inc. to publish a book of the 300 CEREBUS covers in 2013, IDW CEO and Publisher Ted Adams announced today as Scott Dunbier, IDW’s award-winning Special Projects Editor arrived in Kitchener, Ontario to begin the daunting process of scanning all of the CEREBUS covers — and cover related material — at the “Off-White House”.

“With the long-anticipated launch of Dave Sim’s HIGH SOCIETY DIGITAL and HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL only days away, and as a long-time fan of Dave’s work, I couldn’t be happier to have IDW here in the Ground Zero spotlight with Dave and CEREBUS in announcing this major publication event which fans have been clamouring for since CEREBUS came to an end in 2004,” said Adams.

Dave Sim, president of Aardvark-Vanaheim, added, “I can’t think of any other publisher than IDW and any other editor than Scott Dunbier to whom I would have entrusted this Herculean task. I’m working full-time with Scott, providing him with every imaginable raw material needed. Based on Scott’s flawless track record, I think we’re all in for a treat.”

So start saving your allowance, kids! Pace Dave Sim, IDW doesn’t have a “flawless” track record with books like this — the publisher should be embarrassed, for instance, by the heavily damaged magazine and book covers that whoever-it-was scanned for Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art as well as by the overall sub-standard reproduction in what ought to have been a collection of Jones artwork for the ages — but more often than not, they get it right.

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BONUS LINK:

CerebusDownloads.com officially opens for business on 10 October 2012, but right now you can download a five-minute preview of “High Society – Special Audio/Visual Digital Edition” in which Sim himself reads all of the captions, dialogue, thought balloons, etc., “in character,” over a pan-and-zoom presentation of the comic that includes background music and ambient noise.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here

Look Here: An obscure SF cover with bizarre art by John Cayea

Before today, I had never heard the name John Cayea, but thanks to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), I was quickly able to find out that Cayea created the expressive but bizarre art featured on the cover of Eando Binder’s Night of the Saucers, which I purchased earlier this morning for a dollar and four cents:

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One’s first impression of the above cover is of an attractive human couple about to kiss, but closer inspection reveals that what we’ve got here are two severed heads, each of which is suspended from a flying saucer by lines lashed to its hair. And what’s more, each dead head has not one but two faces, one human and the other bestial, that look in opposite directions like the two faces of the Roman god Janus. Judging from the copy on the back cover, I would venture to guess that image is intended to convey the idea of hidden identities, of aliens masquerading as humans, or maybe aliens as the puppeteers of human hosts, although I must admit that don’t intend to read the book any time soon to find out for sure. I just sampled a couple of pages at random and that’s quite enough for me: the writing is dreadful.

Anyway… turns out that Night of the Saucers, published in 1971, is the earliest listing for Cayea in the ISFDB; the latest is his Bosch-inspired cover for Stephen King’s The Stand, published in 1990. Since I can’t find any earlier work by Cayea on any other sites, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Night of the Saucers was (probably) one of the first cover illustration jobs of John Cayea’s career, and as such, I’d say it was a fine effort.

ISFDB has a small selection of covers with art by Cayea, published between 1971 and 1980 (although someone should tell the site admin that not all of them display properly). What one notices immediately as one browses through the images is that Cayea’s later covers are quite far removed, both technically and stylistically, from the cover displayed above; in fact, if one didn’t know better, one might think they were done by a different artist. To give you an idea of what I am going to call Cayea’s “mature style,” here are three of the best that ISFDB has to offer:

My favourite of the three is the cover of A Wreath of Stars — excellent work!

Keywords: Night of the Saucers, Deus Irae, A Wreath of Stars, Unto Zeor, Forever.