It's hard to think of a more challenging test for realistic illustration than Vladimir Nabokov's book, Lolita. Nabokov emphasized to his publisher that any illustrator who attempted a representational image of the character would be missing the point. He wrote: "There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl."
The difficulty of illustrating Lolita has been widely recognized. The (excellent) book, Lolita; The Story of a Cover Girl contains essays and dozens of images on "Vladimir Nabokov's novel in art and design." Lit Hub compiled a (useless) survey, The 60 Best and Worst International Covers of Lolita . In 2016 The Folio Society produced what they called the First-Ever Illustrated Version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita."
Many artists and art editors have tried coming up with realistic illustrations for Nabokov's psychologically complex novel but the results have been pretty worthless:
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Illustration for the recent Folio edition
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You may not think much of the talents of these particular illustrators, but replace them in your imagination with your favorite representational illustrator. Is there a facial expression or a pose or a color scheme that you think would be more successful?
Now contrast the representational images above with the conceptual illustrations below, often using photography or graphics.
In my view, these conceptual illustrations are far more impressive; they get closer to the meaning of the book; they engage the viewer and inspire deeper thought. The sheet of notebook paper shockingly reminding us of what a 12 year old girl is. The broken lollipop or the crumpled clean white page conveying besmirched innocence. The repetitive writing of Lolita's name giving us insight into Humbert Humbert's obsessive brain.
The following photographic illustration (one of my favorites in this series) could be the view of the deranged Humbert lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and it could also be the panties of a 12 year old girl. A very powerful use of imagery by Jamie Keenan.
Could this image have been as effective if it was painted by a talented artist? I doubt it. Crimped by the intent of the artist, a painting would look too much like either panties or a ceiling. The objectivity of the camera gives this image its double entendre, and it gives us the shock when we realize what our mind is seeing.
If anyone can suggest more effective representational paintings or drawings of this book, I would welcome them. Absent that, I think these images are strong evidence for the argument that the end justifies the means in illustration, and that excellence can extend beyond hand drawn or painted images, to encompass some kinds of photography, graphics and digital imagery.
16 comments:
There’s a double standard in literature and art. Authors can wallow in human depravity in ways no artist would dare, and the literati will lap it up. The rat in American Psycho, the murders of children in Lord of the Flies and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, various scenes in Cormac McCarthy’s work. All fair game in written form, career suicide for a qualified painter.
Lolita spends a nauseating amount of time indulging in the poesy of a pedophile rapist. So much so that any cover not focused on directly sexualizing Dolores, while also playing up her youth, would be way off brand. But, as with the other cases, illustrating that with the full artistic toolbox of a qualified illustrator would be morally criminal. It’s no wonder no one bothered to try it.
To me, it seems that the relative success of the abstract covers over the representational ones is more about artistic self-censorship among the illustrators rather than anything inherently valuable in the work of the graphic designers.
I agree that Jamie Keenan’s cover is the best, but only because he discovered the only socially acceptable way to illustrate a youth's genitals. Which is, unfortunately, probably the best subject matter for the cover of this feted bit of degenerate fluff.
Third from the top is an 1878 painting by Fedorico Zandomeneghi, purloined for the book adding an unwholesomeness narrative not intended by the artist
Bill
I think you've hit the nail on the head, other than artists/writers can deliberately choose how and where they intend the audience to take part in what they're portraying. A terrible event can occur in a story or scene in a documentary or tragic manner, but we've all seen films where the director/writer took a horrific assault and tried to put it to sick use it as a kind of erotica.
Have never read this, so don't know where the participatory intent of the author lay or leaned, but its wider cultural 'brand' has certainly veered into fodder for the warped. I don't think its publishers and so on have always been innocent of playing up to that dark gallery.
Bill
(Some comments are disappearing, by the way)
In response to "Some comments are disappearing, by the way." Thanks very much for alerting me. I never, ever delete a message here unless it's something like an advertisement for escort services in Malaysia. Any time you see a message here saying "comment deleted," it's always by the author, who is usually correcting a typo or changing a phrase.
I checked just now and found that Blogger had sent 3 comments to the spam folder for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. They must've "improved" their algorithm again yesterday, but I have now released all 3. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
Sorry about the duplication, the 1st one of mine replying to Richard above can be be deleted. (Bill)
David,
I certainly agree that the book covers you prefer are the better ones for the job.
However, I disagree with your following statement:
I think these images are strong evidence for the argument that the end justifies the means in illustration, and that excellence can extend beyond hand drawn or painted images, to encompass some kinds of photography, graphics and digital imagery.
For a start you seem to be conflating literary expression with plastic expression. But my main push-back is that the theme of Nabokov's book concerns deranged, pathological desire, and its subject is a first person account of an older man's desire for a girl on the cusp of womanhood (a very disturbing and upsetting read btw, for this very reason).
So, although the book's title is the girl's name, Lolita, she is not its essential subject or theme. And it is believing that she is, while being aware of the novel's actual theme and subject, that causes the problem with almost any depiction of the girl at all.
Which is the real reason those illustrations on the first set of examples don't work.
I think the comments focusing on the morality of a character in the book are on the wrong path. In my view, the quality of an illustration is quite separate from the virtue of the person or thing being depicted. (Plenty of people admire Bernie Wrightson's complex drawings of monsters and killers.) I also think it's possible to write books and draw pictures on sexual themes in tasteful or symbolic ways, so I don't think the painted representational covers here are operating at any more of a disadvantage than the conceptual / photographic art.
My argument is that the "conceptual" or "idea" illustrations seem more thought provoking and intelligent, inspiring reactions that are more true to the psychological complexity of the literature. In some ways the name written in childlike penmanship on school paper is more horrifying than the representational paintings could be. Can we extrapolate from this to draw any conclusions about the relative merits of conceptual and representational illustration?
An explicit representational painting would likely be disgusting (rather than horrifying) to everyone (including Nabokov himself) but that merely requires a representational artist to balance the elements the way all artists must (see William Gaines' testimony before Congress regarding where to draw the line on depicting the severed head on the cover of Crime Suspense Stories No. 22.)
Plenty of people admire Bernie Wrightson's complex drawings of monsters and killers
That works because the narratives Wrightson illustrated allowed for a monstrous depiction of the figure. Lolita doesn’t allow for that same relationship with Humbert. The novel requires a sympathetic point of view. This is why the cover, showing Humbert’s monstrous red hands painting Dolores's feet, feels so out of place compared to the others. That cover would require a different novel.
I also think it's possible to [...] draw pictures on sexual themes in tasteful [...] ways
How exactly would you suggest an artist should draw a picture sexualizing a child in a "tasteful way"?
I agree with your conclusion David. I think an attempt to illustrate the main characters on the cover of a novel is a huge risk, given how jarringly the visualisation of the character(s) might conflict with the reader’s own. I’d rather not have the book try and show me what the main character(s) look like at all. It feels like a cheap, pulp-novel thing to do.
Personally, I prefer novel covers with some nice typography and semi-abstract graphic shapes which hint at the novel’s contents as subtly as possible. Don’t know if you have the book ‘Mid Century Modern Graphic Design’ by Theo Inglis, but there’s a double page spread of covers by Alvin Lustig from 1943-50, which are excellent examples of unobtrusive, minimal, graphic cover design.
Interesting comments, it seems (to me) that the conceptual designs removes the viewer from the natural disgust one feels towards Nabokov’s protagonist. None of the representational covers work because it sugar coats what the reader will find within. But this is true for many crime novels, look at the covers for, “In Cold Blood.” “In this late stage pretty sure that anyone buying, “Lolita”, knows what they’re picking up.
David: "Plenty of people admire Bernie Wrightson's complex drawings of monsters and killers"
All the great artists create an aesthetic dream world of their own invention. Wrightson's works are obviously fictions, exaggerated and comical; brush-strokes, composing, handwriting, and other clues to human creation evident all over the place and from the ground up. It is art that looks and feels like art. It isn’t photorealistic/hyperreal. It isn’t literal.
Also Wrightson’s work and sensibility don’t promote “interestedness” in the Kantian sense of stimulating the base appetites. (Fear and humor are not appetites.)
Richard: "the narratives Wrightson illustrated allowed for a monstrous depiction of the figure. Lolita doesn’t allow for that same relationship with Humbert. The novel requires a sympathetic point of view."
Wrightson’s Swamp Thing is both monstrous and sympathetic. But it’s only monstrous outwardly. So there is irony, but no actual moral ambiguity. Lolita is morally dubious in its sympathies because HH is monstrous internally, thus in intent and action.
Meanwhile, Lolita also falls into the category of works that titillate while pretending to simply narrate. Like every supposed exposé on tv, it plays a double game of critical observation and prurience. Which collapses the use/reference distinction.
It is touted as a comic novel. Comedy holds nothing sacred. And for good reason; to burst the pompous bubbles of holier-than-thou types by going after their sacred cows under the guise of joking. After all, in politics any given unassailable piety usually masks some kind of grift or crime hidden beneath the cult-like defense behaviors. (Politics is always nestling into religious clothing by forming cults around a scam.)
But there are sacred things which are not cult-related. Which are not political in the religious sense, or related to scams. To me, at least, childhood qualifies.
Like every supposed exposé on tv, it plays a double game of critical observation and prurience.
I’d go further—
Most "comedies" today, including Lolita, operate in a pseudo-critical mode. Regardless of the artist's intent, audiences take them at face value, laughing in agreement rather than in derision. They might as well be clapping. Humor has become a truce word, allowing artists to endorse anything so long as they claim to hate it when the newsmen sit them down for an interview.
Theo Von’s racism parody attracts genuine racists. Larry David appeals to amoral curmudgeons. Female comedians joking about promiscuity draw fans who embrace that lifestyle. Porky's resonates with misogynists. Jokes about hating kids normalize the sentiment.
As for Lolita, the second half of the book seems to exist only to excuse the first. It’s no accident it was originally published by a French pornographer.
Richard, I can't agree with you that all jokes are endorsements of a kind. That's tantamount to the Maoist position that all art is propaganda, so you better propagandize for the Utopia or you might end up dead, you capitalist pig. These literalists cannot understand poetry/figurative language.
Comedy has been edgy since the dawn of time. The 'edge' being the nebulous zone between wrong and right, awful and proper, distorted and true, unsayable and sayable, etc. Which valences are all determined by social methods, bottom up as well as top down, emergent as well as astroturfed.
Blazing Saddles is full of sendups of racist jokes and racists that can be taken by simple maoist brains - (self-righteous politicized people who tend to have both febrile neuroses and reading comprehension problems) - to be actual racist jokes. No cultural product should be tainted by its dumbest interpreters.
Black comedy rooms are full of race-based humor, not just about whites, but also about blacks. It's all in fun. To be offended, one must be taught to be offended. Which is just what is being done en masse by the moral midwits of marxism.
The main error is thinking that jokes with a critical edge are hateful. That's a snowflake take that will and does destroy not only all comedy, but all art and fun as well. No thanks.
When you watch a gaggle of comedians ribbing each other, race gets thrown into the mix all the time. And those people are better, tighter, more loyal friends than any of the activist white ladies with performative black friendships crying about racism at every turn who wouldn't walk alone through a ghetto on a bet.
Regarding the designs, my opinions... the walls-suggesting-legs (last example) is very clever and subtle. The broken lollipop as the 'o' in Lolita though, is the most dynamic and expressive in relation to the content. Also clever, scandalous/gross even in its evocation of menses by the use of the splattered red lollipop. The rest of the designs are nondescript by comparison and I agree the illustrations are all poor for the reasons already argued and others.
Since I don't equate all designed visual communication with "illustration", I can't agree with your anything-goes-in-illustration point of view. Anything goes in book cover design, that's for sure. Anything can be used to graphically suggest the content of a story that's under a particular cover. In house, these kinds of covers are generally called designs, not illustrations. Or simply covers.
I guess the question goes to the definition of the word "illustration." Howard Pyle taught that it meant both "a making clear" and "a making illustrious." It was also presumed to be hand made, rendering a dramatic moment from the narrative.
Design, on the other hand, has always been more abstracted. More graphic yet less clear, less narrative, less hand-made, less illustrious. More coded really, thus more in need of interpretation.
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