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Paper #3 Presentation: Picturing a Book



“In the friction and interaction among artist and designer and book, a new thing is born. The book is remade, its delights are refreshed, it becomes inviting again” (Audrey Niffenegger)

For the first part of your Paper #3 assignment, I want you to design the cover for a new edition of ONE of the books in class using a classic painting or work of art. Remember that the cover is the first thing someone sees before reading a book, and it continues to stare at and challenge (delight?) the reader as he/she spends time with the book. So your task is to find an image that can live in the mind of the reader, and subtly (or explicitly) mirror the themes of the book and/or the characters inside it. Ideally, you want to choose a painting (or other work) from around the same time period, so we can see visually what the writer was attempting to capture in his or her work.

Paintings with Gothic/Romantic leanings such as those by Francisco Goya, Caspar David Freidrich, J.M. Turner, John Atkinson Grimshaw, John Singer Sargent, Dante Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Maxwell Armfield are great places to start. However, you can use any painting that you feel has a conversation with the book itself, and helps us ‘see’ something important in the text. I’ll post a link to a few pages with paintings for you to explore, but don’t feel limited to these—look around (esp. at the Pre-Raphaelite painters) and find anything that suits your fancy.

THREE WEEKS from now (the week of April 23rd), you will present your new cover image to the class. You could simply show us the painting, OR you could actually design a new cover suitable for one of the novels. There are many free programs such as Canva that allow you to do this, but only do it if you want to (see the link on the blog for this). I’m really just interested to see what work of art you choose and how you can discuss it. For the presentation, I want you to do THREE things:

* Introduce the artist and the work, along with the date
* Discuss why you think the work complements the novel in question
*  Find a brief passage from the novel to use as a “frame” for the artwork; the passage should illustrate the connection you discussed in #2. Be sure to show or read this to us and be able to explain why you chose it.
This will go hand-in-hand with your Paper #3 assignment, which I will give to you next week. So start thinking about this and go hunting for great art! Again, I will post some links on the blog to help you, but the choice is up to you. Just make sure it accentuates the text in an interesting way and initiates a conversation with the text, even if it’s a controversial one. Please e-mail me with questions or come to my office to discuss it.

Here are some links to help you find good paintings/works of art:

Wikipedia page for the Pre-Raphaelites (many good images and clickable content): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood

A page from the Tate Gallery of Art on 19th century British paintings and painters: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/british-school-19th-century-60

Complete paintings of Caspar David Friedrich ("the" Gothic painter, famous for the Wanderer in the Sea of Fog): https://www.caspardavidfriedrich.org/

Complete paintings of John Singer Sargent (not Gothic, but contemporary with Wilde and captures people of high society in intimate portraits--we looked at his portrait of Madame X): https://www.johnsingersargent.org/

Complete paintings of J.M.W. Turner (we looked at his "Ocean with Sea Monsters" and others in class): https://www.william-turner.org/

Wikipedia page for Goya ("The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Goya

Wikipedia page for John Atkinson Grimshaw (British painter of Gothic landscapes and townscapes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Atkinson_Grimshaw

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