Leo and Diane Dillon – { feuilleton }

Leo Dillon, 1933–2012

Illustrations for Dangerous Visions (1967) by Leo & Diane Dillon.
top left: Lord Randy, My Son by Joe L. Hensley; top right: Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber; bottom left: The Happy Breed by John Sladek; bottom right: Shall the Dust Praise Thee? by Damon Knight

Beyond my love for them and my understanding that they have influenced my ethical and moral life almost more than anyone else I’ve ever known, my respect for their artistic intelligence and their incomparable craft is enormous. Leo and Diane Dillon are the best. Simply put: the best.

Harlan Ellison, from The Illustrated Harlan Ellison (1978)

Pre-internet, illustrators and designers often suffered from being landlocked by whatever territories (to use that wretched marketing term) the work they embellished was sold in. I’ve said as much in the past but it’s worth repeating since it explains how reputations could loom large in one country while the artists in question might be unknown elsewhere. Leo and Diane Dillon are a good example of this, lauded in the US for work that spanned a variety styles and media yet barely visible in Europe unless you chanced across an imported paperback bearing one of their covers. Their long and fruitful relationship with Harlan Ellison saw them illustrate many of his major works, books which when they were reprinted here were often packaged with inappropriate spaceship art by Chris Foss or one of his imitators. Happily the Dillons’ superb woodcut illustrations for Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology survived the journey across the Atlantic. I still find those illustrations thrilling for the way they condensed the essence of thirty-two challenging stories with the greatest economy of means. And thanks to the internet we can see just how versatile they were at The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon. That site also includes links to interviews and further examples of their art.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Science fiction and fantasy covers
• Groovy book covers
• Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth

Weekend links 81

Black Cat on a Chair (1850–1860) by Andrew L Von Wittkamp.

• “A little bit of acid, lots of weed, and too much Castaneda and I was ready to move from the magical realm of Middle Earth into a world that was much stranger than any involving hairy dwarves and white wizards…” Too Much to Dream by Peter Bebergal, “a psychedelic American boyhood”.

This year’s Booker prize isn’t about the power of the new – there’s no experiment with form or strangeness of imagination. The winner may get on the bedside tables of middle England, but that’s not as important as changing the way that even one person dreams.

Jeanette Winterson throws the cat among the pigeons.

• 50 Watts continues to show us things you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere: illustrations by TagliaMani from a new edition of Les Chants de Maldoror, and War Is a Verb, collages by Allan Kausch.

• Don’t go in the swimming pool! Coilhouse directs us to Fantasy: music by French outfit DyE with a weird and nasty animation by Jérémie Périn.

• Ace album cover designer and photographic Surrealist Storm Thorgerson is having another exhibition at IG Gallery, London.

• The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon, an art and illustration archive.

• John Turturro reads a short story by Italo Calvino.

• Spaceport America by Foster + Partners.

• Your Body of Work by Olafur Eliasson.

• Wonder-Cat cures all ailments.

• Blogging Moby-Dick.

• Krazy Kat (1927) by Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra with Bix and Lang | Pussy Cat Dues (1959) by Charles Mingus | Katzenmusik 5 (1979) by Michael Rother | Big Electric Cat (1982) by Adrian Belew | Purrfect (1996) by Funki Porcini.

Science fiction and fantasy covers

Two samples from a great Flickr set of science fiction and fantasy paperback covers. Both these titles were first published in 1976 and, unlike many Flickr postings, this set gives credit to the cover artists where known. The Moorcock book is one of his Elric volumes and while it isn’t a favourite of mine, the painting by Michael Whelan certainly is. Whelan produced several Elric covers in the 1970s of which this is easily the most successful, and one of the few works by any artist after Jim Cawthorn to capture the weird inhumanity of the Melnibonéan.

The Ellison collection, on the other hand is one of his finest, with a wraparound cover by the author’s favourite artists Leo & Diane Dillon. Just last week I completed the interior design for Tachyon’s forthcoming The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction which included among a host of great stories The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison, a remarkable piece of writing and one of the best pieces in the entire book. That’s now gone off to the printer so I’ll be posting samples of the pages here shortly.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Groovy book covers
• Jim Cawthorn, 1929–2008
• Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others

Groovy book covers

top left: Leo & Diane Dillon (1969); top right: Tom Huffman (1968).
bottom left: Gray Morrow & Henry Berkowitz (1967); bottom right: no credit.

Great examples of typically florid Sixties’ cover design at Font of all Wisdom – Unique lettering in design, a Flickr pool. The masterful Leo & Diane Dillon illustrated many of Harlan Ellison’s books, inside and out.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth