Modern American Book Jacket vs Surrealism

アメリカ近代ブックジャケット / シュルレアリスム

Modern American Book Jacket comes from Publishing and Editing and Surrealism from Avant-garde. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.

Modern American Book Jacket

Modern American Book Jacket — ラスティグ『嘔吐』カバー（CC BY 2.0）Modern American Book Jacket — ラスティグの誌面（CC BY 2.0）Modern American Book Jacket — レイモンド・チャンドラー『湖中の女』初版ダストジャケット 1943 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

The jacket style Lustig built at New Directions: suggestion by sign and abstraction instead of illustration, turning literary covers into small modern artworks and raising postwar American book design.

Surrealism

Surrealism — 『アンダルシアの犬』タイトル 1929 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainSurrealism — Max Ernst《ハバクク》デュッセルドルフ — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0Surrealism — Max Ernst《助手・蛙・亀》1967 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

The movement that forced reality's objects into impossible meetings under the logic of dream and the unconscious. Dépaysement spread from painting into photography, film and advertising as the grammar of impossible adjacency.

Modern American Book JacketSurrealism
Era1940s–1950s1924–1950s
FamilyPublishing and EditingAvant-garde
KindStyleStyle
CuesAbstract suggestion of content / Compositions of sign and shape / Hand lettering with type / Series coherenceDépaysement / Dream perspective / Objects transformed / Precision serving absurdity
Best used forLiterary series covers made one by one without showing the plot · A dress that reads as one series when shelved beside earlier volumesAdvertising and covers that make the viewer demand an explanation instantly · Carrying the visual side of a story about dream and the unconscious
TypeTitle in hand lettering beside type, author name kept smallNo explanatory copy, only a quiet title outside the frame
CompositionOne shape set off center with generous emptiness around itHold one horizon and displace objects out of their true scale
MaterialTwo or three flat inks over the bare paper colorRealist rendering and smooth finish, so technique carries the strangeness
CautionChoosing an abstract shape without tying it to the book yields an ornament that would fit any title, so the series stops being distinguishable.Multiplying strange combinations dilutes each individual shock, and the result is merely a decorative photomontage.

Put these two together

Publishing and Editing ／ Avant-garde

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