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Barney ascendant

Poster by Barney Bubbles for Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!! (1980).

Adelita, the publishers of Reasons To Be Cheerful: the life and work of Barney Bubbles, announced this week that Paul Gorman’s essential collection of BB graphics has been named Book of the Year in Mojo magazine:

Reasons To Be Cheerful – the acclaimed study of the life and work of the late graphic genius Barney Bubbles – has been declared Book Of The Year by the UK’s leading rock monthly Mojo magazine.

Described as “fascinating and definitive” by the Sunday Times and “moving and lovingly researched,” by GQ editor Dylan Jones in The Independent, Reasons To Be Cheerful was written by Paul Gorman (author of style bible The Look and Straight with Boy George) and published by British independent popular culture imprint Adelita (sales and distribution through Turnaround Publisher Services).

Mojo will name Reasons To Be Cheerful Book Of The Year in its January 2010 issue (published November 27) with an exclusive interview with Factory Records designer Peter Saville praising its publication.

A quarter of a century after he took his own life at the age of 41, Reasons To Be Cheerful has transformed Barney Bubbles’ cult status by elevating him into the pantheon of graphic design greats. Among fans of the book are such prominent musicians as Paul Weller, Jah Wobble, Mick Jones, Nick Lowe and Billy Bragg.

Reasons To Be Cheerful is the first and definitive exploration of this important visual artist’s body of work, with more than 600 images including student sketchbooks, private paintings, product, brand, underground and music press and examples of the hundreds of record sleeves, posters, adverts, promotional items and music videos he created for the likes of the Rolling Stones, Hawkwind, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Squeeze, Depeche Mode, The Specials and Billy Bragg.

Reasons To Be Cheerful has also spawned a spectacular online presence featuring fresh interviews, information and rare and previously unseen images (see http://barneybubbles.com/blog) and has been well received in the UK and US (where it is distributed by D.A.P). Author Paul Gorman will also curate a Barney Bubbles exhibition to be inaugurated at London’s Chelsea Space gallery during Design Week in September 2010.

By coincidence, two days after Mojo appears the All-Day Barney Bubbles Benefit Memorial Concert will be staged at the 229 Club, Great Portland Street, London. Bands featured include various members of the Hawkwind/Hawklords family led by Nik Turner. There’ll also be the return of Turner’s post-Hawks outfit Inner City Unit, for whom Barney created some of his last designs, and the resurrection of the Imperial Pompadours, a one-off rock’n’roll collaboration between Nik and Barney. That’s happening on 29th November and Turner’s website has all the necessary details.

The Elvis Costello poster above comes from a feature about the Get Happy!! album at Paul Gorman’s BB site. I was never a great fan of Costello’s records but the designs Barney created for those early releases were outstanding and represent the peak of his career. (See the Armed Forces sleeve design for a real eye blast.) Paul’s post shows how much work went into creating a range of integrated graphics for the album, singles and promotional material, and he also has some exclusive material which didn’t make it into Reasons To Be Cheerful. The BB book has been a continual treat to look through this year, and the book design I happen to be finishing has not only been inspired by Barney’s example but also manages to make passing reference to him inside. More about that later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hawk things
• Who is Heeps Willard?
• The Sonic Assassins
• Reasons To Be Cheerful, part 3: A Barney Bubbles exclusive
• More Barney Bubbles
• Reasons To Be Cheerful, part 2
• Reasons To Be Cheerful: the Barney Bubbles revival
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer

More book covers

One of my Cthulhu portraits as it appears in Image Swirl, a new Google feature-in-search-of-a-purpose. Yes, I own a portion of the Googleverse, or the Googleverse owns a portion of me; the latter seems more likely. As well as being the cover of my Lovecraft volume, that picture appeared earlier this year on a reprint of The Call of Cthulhu from Barnes & Noble.

While we’re on the subject—and book covers are never far away, as yesterday’s post demonstrates—I was asked to contribute to this week’s Mind Meld discussion at SF Signal, answering the question “Which are the most memorable book covers in science fiction and fantasy?” Some of the entries in my list have been discussed here in the past. Compared to the other responses I come across like I’m giving a lecture… And there was further sf cover discussion at io9 this week. Good to see older generations of artists and designers still receiving enthusiastic attention.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Science fiction and fantasy covers

Finch posters

I won’t say this is by popular demand but after persistent requests for posters of my cover art for Jeff VanderMeer’s latest novel, Finch, I’ve opened a new CafePress shop selling exactly that. The largest of these is 58.38cm x 82.55 (22.984″ x 32.5″) which should be big enough for most appetites. There’s also a smaller size 35.03cm x 49.53 (13.7904″ x 19.5″) and I’ve added some cards and postcards.

In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

Jeff is currently promoting Finch on his latest book tour, details of which can be found here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Finch

Drowned worlds

Hollywood at Night (2006).

Alexis Rockman‘s paintings of swamped or ruined American landmarks present views which are a novelty in contemporary art galleries whilst being very familiar to science fiction readers. Many of these could well be illustrations for JG Ballard’s 1981 novel, Hello America, which imagined a depopulated United States reclaimed by flora and fauna. Others would suit The Drowned World, of course, and they bear favourable comparison with Dick French’s illustrated edition (below) which was also published in 1981.

Gateway Arch (2005).

Rockman’s hothouse atmospheres remind me of earlier paintings of Brazilian wildlife by another American artist, Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), many of whose tropical landscapes only require a distant ruin or two to match Rockman’s work. (Tip via Design Observer.)

The Drowned World by Dick French (1981).

While we’re on the subject, Ballardian has posted the first of three features about my colleagues at Savoy Books, beginning with a Michael Butterworth interview which discusses some of Ballard’s connections with Savoy. One of the subsequent posts should see yours truly discussing the visual dimension of the Savoy world. More about that later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The coming of the dust
• Ballard and the painters

Virtual Alice

No, I didn’t go searching for this, I had my fill of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland last month. The British Library website is a lot more amenable than it used to be for the casual browser, and one of its newer sections is a small collection of what they call virtual books which enable you to leaf through some of their exclusive volumes. The pages above are from the original handwritten manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, from which the printed book was later adapted. I have this in a small facsimile edition so I don’t need a web version, and the illustrations are often reprinted, but this web copy allows you to see the work in its entirety. They also reproduce the text and have an audio facility. I went through my copy a couple of times whilst working on the calendar in order to see how Dodgson depicted some of his scenes. A few of his conceptions differ from the famous Tenniel illustrations, not least his drawing of Alice herself who closely resembles the real Alice Liddell.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
• Charles Robinson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Humpty Dumpty variations
• Alice in Wonderland by Jonathan Miller
• The Illustrators of Alice