Covering the "New Yorker": Cutting-edge Covers from a Literary Institution (California Studies in the History of Art. Discovery Series.) [Hardcover]

This beautiful volume would be rewarding simply as art. Realizing its connection to The New Yorker makes it seem both more familiar and more interesting.

Francoise Mouly, art editor since 1993, has done a remarkable job of improving the covers during her tenure and has used that same remarkable eye to select these covers from all of the New Yorker's 75 years, as well. The book is greatly enriched by her introduction, and a conversation with Lawrence Weschler, who is a New Yorker writer. You will also enjoy "sketchbook" features on the artists Sempe, Spiegelman and Steinberg. You will be further rewarded with 6 ready-to-frame prints of covers. What a great deal! I encourage you to buy a copy for yourself, and as a gift for everyone you know who loves The New Yorker.

Magazine covers have enormous impact on whether we buy or read a particular issue. Princess Diana would draw more people to the inside of a book than anyone else in history. If you are The New Yorker, what kind of covers suit best? This remarkable collection of 75 years worth of covers will undoubtedly change your mind about what a cover can and should be. To me, these covers are a more profound communication at many levels than what I see on Time, Newsweek, People or Fortune.

I have a somewhat unusual background for reviewing this book. I have often done assignments for magazines to help them determine a policy for selecting their covers. This perspective made me appreciate this book in unusual ways that I would like to share with you.

Magazine publishers want covers that sell, but they also don't want to spend much money. Editors want covers to convey their vision of the editorial content. That sets off an institutional dynamic that normally results in dramatic photography of the familiar in new settings on covers, but kept within a tiny budget.

The most expensive and difficult (and dangerous) route is to feature original art on the cover. The New Yorker started with and has maintained that approach to its identity, which makes it special -- even if the art itself was not as remarkable as it is. The fact that the covers work so well both aesthetically and commerically is a great accomplishment that we should all honor.

The cover for the book is aptly chosen. This "effete looking dandy" has graced the covers almost every February for the 75 years of the magazine's existence, beginning with the first issue. In fact, the image is so familiar that many will swear that it is always on the cover. You will enjoy the satires of this cover that are in the book. This image also sets a tone for The New Yorker that connects us both to the magazine and our reactions to it.

As Ms. Mouly points out, "You can't judge a book by its cover." A magazine's " . . . personality is defined by its cover, and the rest of the magazine has to stand behind it." If you are like me, what will impress you is how much richer, deeper, and more interesting the covers are under Ms. Mouly's editorship. One of my favorites is "Life at the Top" by Eric Drooker in 1994. This features men and women standing near the tops of skyscrapers on very thin stilts looking harried and concerned.

Perhaps no magazine's cover has ever made fun of the elite in such a consistent and effective way as has The New Yorker. There were several covers that were new to me that really made an impression in this way. One was of Monica Lewinsky as Mona Lisa. That image connects to so many levels of L'Affaire Lewsinsky that they are almost inexpressable, yet there they all are in one glance. "Putting drawings on the cover . . . keeps artists at the center of the cultural dialogue . . . where they should be."

You will also see many controversial covers such as the famous one from 1993 which had a Jewish Hassidic male kissing a black woman.

The covers are loosely organized into sections: The Big City, Catching the Moment, A Year at The New Yorker, The Arts, Sports, and The Timeless Moment. Most of my favorite covers were in the sections on The Big City, Mother's Day, Taxes, Christmas, and Sports. One of my other favorites has a lone cyclist in the Tour de France trailing the pack by a wide margin in he beautiful French countryside while everyone else is bunched together. How wonderful!

After you have finished enjoying these wonderful images and the commentaries on them, I suggest that you think about where else art would make a more profound part of our dialogue. How about Presidential debates about the candidates' favorite artists and paintings or sculptures? Or having fine art on packages of the products we buy and use to help indicate their quality and contents? Or stand-up comedians doing routines about art displayed on easels?

Let art lead your mind everywhere!

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Some quibbles: editor Francoise Mouly is a bit precious in her introduction and conversation with Lawrence Weschler. Her take on the history of the NYer is a bit off in places; the book omits listing the arrival of EB White and Katherine White in its timeline(!), and she gives perhaps too much play to her husband/artist Art Spiegelman. One interesting aside, noted by others who have this volume: the old covers (mostly from the 30s) that she prints side-by-side with the work she commissioned in the 90s is almost always superior to these newer covers. A few new artists, such as Sempe and Spiegelman stand out; but most run a distant second to the likes of Arno, Thurber, and Steig from an earlier era. --robert luhn