The Guardian makeover
Following the lead of the NYT by the looks of it.
Category: {design}
Design
The poster art of Marian Zazeela
top: Jon Hassell: Solid State. Richard Maxfield: Memorial Concerts.
bottom: The Theatre of Eternal Music Big Band. Pandit Pran Nath: Evening Ragas.
Artist Marian Zazeela’s beautiful hand-drawn posters can be seen (and bought) at the MELA Foundation website. Most of these were created for the Dream House productions hosted by Zazeela and partner La Monte Young. Zazeela has also used her distinctive calligraphic design on the sleeves of recordings by La Monte Young, Terry Riley and raga master Pandit Pran Nath.
• A gallery of Marian Zazeela posters
Previously on { feuilleton}
• The poster art of Bob Peak
• Posters by Josef Müller-Brockmann
• A premonition of Premonition
• Perfume: the art of scent
• Metropolis posters
• Film noir posters
T&H: At the Sign of the Dolphin
James Joyce and his World (1978).
Despite my earlier statement about not being much of a collector, today’s book purchase (above) was enough to confirm some well-established patterns (obsessions, even) that should make me reconsider any hasty pronouncements. Not so much for the subject in this case—I already have enough books by and about James Joyce—the significant thing here is the three magic words on the cover: Thames and Hudson. The sight of Joyce’s name on the spine above the old T&H dolphin logo (signifying the two rivers that comprise the company’s name; or maybe a discourse between London and New York via the Atlantic) was enough to demand further investigation. I realised I’d been hoping to eventually find this book after seeing it listed in the back of its companion title, Beardsley and his World by Brigid Brophy. Both books form part of a series that T&H produced in the Seventies, a collection of heavily illustrated mini-biographies of writers, with the odd artist among them. Very worthwhile they are too, with lots of photographs, paintings or drawings of the people and places relevant to their subjects’ lives.
Jack Rose returns
And speaking of American folk music, guitarist Jack Rose returns to Manchester this month and I’ve once again been asked to design the poster and flyers for the event. I was hoping to do something a bit more elaborate and original for this but overruns on other work meant I ran out of time; sticking type over a scanned picture is the lazy solution. The picture in question is an engraving of cavorting witches and warlocks that originally illustrated Robert Burns’ poem Tam O’Shanter. No idea who the artist was for this but it’s from an 1822 printing of Burns’ poetry and one of the best illustrations I’ve seen for that particular work.
Red Deer Club / Friends of Music presents
JACK ROSE and special guest LIZ GREEN
Friday 18th may 2007
@ Jabez Clegg (small back room), Manchester
8PM : £7 ADV (plus 50p booking fee) £8 DOOR
• Red Deer Club
• Jack Rose
• Liz Green
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jack Rose in Manchester
Fantastic art from Pan Books
Fantastic Art (1973).
Cover: Earth by Arcimboldo.
I’d thought of writing something about this book series even before I started this weblog since there’s very little information to be found about it online. I can’t compete with the serious Penguin-heads, and I’m not much of a dedicated book collector anyway, but I do have a decent collection of the art books that Pan/Ballantine published in the UK throughout the 1970s. These were published simultaneously by Ballantine/Peacock Press in the US and nearly all were edited by David Larkin, with Betty Ballantine overseeing the American editions. Two of the series, the Dalí and Magritte, were among the first art books I owned. Over the years I’ve gradually accumulated most of the set, and I always look for their distinctive white spines in secondhand shops.