2013.06.10还会有《了不起的盖茨比》那样的标志性书籍封面...

shiyi18

CULTURE
Will There Ever Be Another Book Cover as Iconic as The Great Gatsby's?
F. Scott Fitzgerald worked with an artist to create the perfect image for his novel. But jacket design seems less important now, in the era of e-readers.

By Edward Tenner
JUNE 10, 2013
SHARE
gatsby cover princeton 650.jpg
Princeton
For all the visual spectacle of Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby, the most enduring image associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald's great American novel remains its cover. The original art, by Cuban-born Francis Cugat (1896-1981), was recently on display at the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of the Princeton University Library, offering a reminder in this digital age of just how essential cover design can be.

Cugat, the brother of the famous bandleader Xavier Cugat, gave the title "Celestial Eyes" to his haunting image of a female face hovering over a gaudy landscape. The Smithsonian Magazine's Design Decoded blog tells the story of the still-enigmatic design here, and there's a gallery of at least 14 alternate covers here.

One intriguing fact about the original design, as Smithsonian explains, is that it was not simply an insightful interpretation of a finished manuscript but the product of a collaboration between novelist and artist:

In a letter to editor Max Perkins, Fitzgerald, whose manuscript was late, requested that the art be held for him. "For Christ's sake don't give anyone that jacket you're saving for me," Fitzgerald wrote, "I've written it into the book." It's not clear exactly what Fitzgerald meant by this, but it is generally believed that that Cugat's haunting image was realized in the form of the recurring billboard for oculist Dr. T.J. Eckleburg that watches over one of the climactic moments of Fitzgerald's work:

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground."

As the Princeton library site notes, despite Fitzgerald's apparent request for the original art, the gouache ended in a discard pile, and only an observant Scribner family member saved it from its own Valley of Ashes. (If such a close call could happen to an iconic illustration for a bestseller of a traditionalist literary house, it's little surprise that the fate of now-prized pulp cover art was generally oblivion.)


Nowadays, cover illustration has a diminished role for e-books, but packaging design still appears at least as a thumbnail online and often in buyers' own computer programs. One of today's most celebrated designers, Chip Kidd, is philosophical about the change:

"People don't buy a book on the Web because of the cover," Kidd says. "They'll buy a book on the Web because they've read a review or it's word of mouth or some combination of the two."

But he's not worried about sticking to old-fashioned ways.

"Hardcover books are, frankly, luxury items, and they sort of always have been," he says. "And I think there will be a market for them."

Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture, and an affiliate of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. He was a founding adviser of Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center.



文化
还会有像《了不起的盖茨比》那样的标志性书籍封面吗？
F. 斯科特-菲茨杰拉德与一位艺术家合作，为他的小说创造了完美的形象。但现在，在电子阅读器的时代，封面设计似乎不那么重要了。

作者：Edward Tenner
2013年6月10日
分享到
盖茨比的封面普林斯顿大学650.jpg
普林斯顿
就巴兹-鲁尔曼的《了不起的盖茨比》的所有视觉奇观而言，与F-斯科特-菲茨杰拉德的这部伟大的美国小说相关的最持久的图像仍然是其封面。出生于古巴的弗朗西斯-库加（Francis Cugat，1896-1981）的原作最近在普林斯顿大学图书馆的珍本和特藏部展出，在这个数字时代提醒人们封面设计是多么重要。

Cugat是著名乐队指挥Xavier Cugat的兄弟，他将 "Celestial Eyes "这个标题赋予了他那张萦绕在艳丽风景上的女性面孔的图像。史密森尼杂志的设计解码博客在这里讲述了这个仍然神秘的设计的故事，这里有一个至少14个备选封面的画廊。

正如Smithsonian所解释的那样，关于原始设计的一个有趣的事实是，它不仅仅是对一份完成的手稿的精辟解释，而是小说家和艺术家之间合作的产物。

菲茨杰拉德在写给编辑马克斯-珀金斯的信中，要求为他保留艺术作品，因为他的手稿已经晚了。"看在上帝的份上，不要把你为我保留的那件外套给别人，"菲茨杰拉德写道，"我已经把它写进书里了。" 目前还不清楚菲茨杰拉德这样说的确切含义，但一般认为，库加的那个令人神往的形象是以反复出现的眼科医生T.J.埃克尔伯格博士的广告牌的形式实现的，该广告牌注视着菲茨杰拉德作品中的一个高潮时刻。

"T.J.Eckleburg医生的眼睛是蓝色的、巨大的，他们的虹膜有一码高。他们不是从脸上看出来的，而是从一副巨大的黄色眼镜上看出来的，这副眼镜盖在一个不存在的鼻子上。显而易见，某个疯狂的眼科医生把它们放在那里，以增加他在皇后区的业务量，然后自己沉入永恒的失明中，或者忘记它们并搬走。但是他的眼睛，在许多无痛的日子里，在阳光和雨露下，变得有些暗淡，在这个庄严的垃圾场上徘徊着。

正如普林斯顿图书馆网站所指出的，尽管菲茨杰拉德显然要求得到原作，但水粉画最终还是被丢弃在了一堆，只有一位善于观察的斯克里布纳家族成员将它从自己的灰烬之谷中拯救出来。(如果这样的险情能发生在一个传统主义文学社的畅销书的标志性插图上，那么现在受人尊敬的纸浆封面艺术的命运一般都是被遗忘的，这一点并不奇怪)。


如今，封面插图在电子书中的作用越来越小，但包装设计仍然至少作为缩略图出现在网上，而且经常出现在买家自己的电脑程序中。当今最著名的设计师之一，奇普-基德（Chip Kidd）对这种变化持哲学态度。

"人们不会因为封面而在网上买一本书，"基德说。"他们会在网上买一本书，因为他们读了一篇评论，或者是口口相传，或者是两者的某种结合。"

但他并不担心坚持老式的方式。

"他说："坦率地说，精装书是奢侈品，而且它们一直都是如此。"我认为它们会有一个市场。"

爱德华-滕纳是一位技术和文化的历史学家，也是普林斯顿大学伍德罗-威尔逊学院艺术和文化政策中心的成员。他是史密森尼的莱姆森中心的创始顾问。