1 Top Class Manager

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1 Top Class Manager is a book bearing the subtitle “The notebooks of Joy Division’s manager, 1978–1980” published this week by Anti-Archivists, Manchester. I’ve been working on the design for this on and off since March although we actually started putting it together this time last year.

Rob Gretton, manager of Joy Division and later New Order, died in 1999 so this is something of a memorial to his work in giving Joy Division the status they have today. Rob’s widow, Lesley, oversaw (and paid for) the production. She and editor Abigail Ward contributed much to my design efforts which underwent considerable back and forth adjustment until we had something everyone was happy with. Some spreads from the book follow below and when I get the time I’ll add larger page views to the book design section of the main site. Music critic and historian Jon Savage wrote the foreword. This was an exciting and fascinating project to be involved, not least for the wealth of rare documentary material which it reveals.

1 Top Class Manager is available via mail order from the book’s website.

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The recurrent pose 21

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And still they come… This variation on the Flandrin pose was recommended by Jonathan at Midian Books, for whom I designed some catalogue covers several years ago. Jonathan’s partner, Victoria Musson, took the (untitled) photo and their site features other examples of her work with a distinctly pagan quality.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
• The recurrent pose archive

Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision

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The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman Hunt (1851).

Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision is an exhibition of Victorian paintings at Manchester’s City Art Gallery which they describe as “the first international exhibition in over 40 years dedicated to the life and work of Pre-Raphaelite master William Holman Hunt.” It helps that they own some prime examples of Hunt’s work, including The Hireling Shepherd, a painting I used to look at a great deal when I first moved to Manchester.

This isn’t my favourite Holman Hunt work—that would be The Lady of Shalott—but The Hireling Shepherd has a wealth of the insane detail which was his forte. For anyone who’s tried painting in this hyper-real manner it’s good seeing how he rendered the flowers, grass and fabrics. The picture is laden with typical Victorian morality, of course; the shepherd is distracted so his flock is straying. That never interested me, far more fascinating was looking at the original of the work which Brian Aldiss uses in his experimental science fiction novel, Report on Probability A (1968). In one of Aldiss’s parallel universes Holman Hunt’s painting is exactly the same as the one we know but for the addition of a book entitled Low Point X which can be seen lying incongruously on the grass. Whenever I’ve been in the City Gallery I’m always disappointed that the book is missing from the picture.

Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision runs to 11 January 2009.