The Art of the Bookcover

Years ago a book cover caught my eye. I've always been a fan of the flippant introduction for the TV show My Three Sons and this cover resembled it. It was a drawing of three different pairs of legs, pants and shoes, all next to each other and all doing things with their feet. I grabbed it immediately and saw that it was for A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. It was a great cover, and though I was familiar with Waugh, the cover steered me more so in the right direction -- his direction. I have been grateful ever since, and have always appreciated good book covers.

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Recently Penguin Books and London gallery StolenSpace joined up to do just that. Entitled, "Never Judge...?"; it was a celebration and exploration of the art behind the book cover, and included a wide variety of artists.

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A statement from StolenSpace read, " ...With the advent of the iPad it's now questionable how long the printed novel and its cover will be around, just like the album cover, it'll be resigned to a thumbnail in iTunes." As for the guidelines and artists, StolenSpace invited them to "paint, print, etch, sculpt, photograph, whatever their medium, whatever their style... create a book cover for a novel of their choice, a book that has inspired them, a book that has had a profound impact on them or a book that they remember fondly as a child ... all that we asked was that they create their original artwork to the traditional format and size of a Penguin book 198mm (h) x 129mm (w)."

Titles included such classics as my personal favorite, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Breakfast At Tiffany's.

This group exhibition with Penguin Books, was held Dec 3rd to December 19th. Prints are available for purchase at StolenSpace.com.