NICK BASBANES INTERVIEWS MICHAEL SUAREZ

ISSUE 10.4 // AUTUMN 2012

The Nation’s Bookbinder Reinventing Melville & Conrad How to Research Rare Books

 Book Lover’s Gift Guide The Art of Fred Marcellino @2012 Fine Books & Collections

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An illustration by book jacket artist turned children's author and illustrator, Fred Marcellino, for the 1992 book, The Steadfast Tin Soldier.

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By Leonard S. Marcus ACover Story

How Fred Marcellino’s trendsetting book jackets of the seventies and eighties evolved into the brilliant picture book illustrations of the nineties

nyone in America who kept up with books, or merely hung out in book- stores during the 1970s and 1980s, was bound to spot—and fall under the seductive spell of—the suavely witty cover designs created by Fred Marcellino (1939–2001), the period’s premier book jacket artist. Most browsers, of course, would not have been able to tell you his name, and few would have thought to trace back the indelible graphics he devised for ’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist to the same drawing table. But on the sublimi- nal, air-we-breathe level at which originality in the applied arts usu- Aally registers, Marcellino’s inspired mini-posters for books by Wolfe, Tyler, , Milan Kundera, , and many others played

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a significant role in defining the visual look and language of He proceeded to test himself in the fields of advertising, an era in books. Then, in mid-career, Marcellino changed furniture design, and editorial illustration. With encour- course and became a children’s book illustrator and writer. agement from his future wife, Columbia Records art direc- A national touring exhibition of his work in both realms, tor Jean Cunningham, he produced a run of LP record Dancing by the Light of the Moon: The Art of Fred Marcellino, is jackets that established his first professional identity. It was on view through December 24, 2012, at the Abraham Art while developing these visually striking concept covers that Gallery, Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas, Marcellino learned to distill a complex work into a sin- and will next be seen at the Children’s Museum of gle image. Rock albums, which typically served up a grab in the spring of 2013. bag of the performer’s latest tunes, were not, however, the Coming of age as a fine art student at Cooper Union ideal material for eliciting the kind of graphically unified and Yale University during the waning years of Abstract response that Marcellino now saw as a worthy goal for his Expressionism, Marcellino dutifully experimented with non- art. A literary work, on the other hand, was a force to con- representational modes of art only to find that abstraction jure with, and when in the mid-seventies he was offered left him cold. A Fulbright-sponsored residency in Venice, the chance to design his first book covers, something deep where he immersed himself in the rich figurative tradition inside him clicked into place. of Giorgioni, Bellini, and Carpaccio ignited an aesthetic For the next decade and a half, Marcellino main- crisis that remained unresolved on his return to . tained a furious pace, reading and reacting graphically in When Marcellino emerged from self-doubt it was with two cover designs for an average of more than forty books a newly formed guiding principles: representation was cen- year. Editor Nan A. Talese, who now heads an epony- tral to his artistic practice, and the academic distinction mous imprint at Doubleday, hired him often. She found it between “pure” and “applied” art meant nothing to him. refreshing that Marcellino did read rather than work from

From the picture book, The Pelican Chorus and Other Nonsense (1995), illustrated by Fred Marcellino.

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the standard tip sheet. “I would have an idea of what I wanted,” Talese recalled, “but Fred did not want to hear it. He was a real reader, and I think he liked to discover for himself the pic- ture that would tell the story.” Time and again, Marcellino would give store browsers ample reason to defy the old cliché about judging a book by its cover. More impressive than his engagement with books was the astonishing originality of his designs. Historian and art director Steven Heller noted that Marcellino entered the eld in the era of the “Big Book Look,” when the ham- sted formula in vogue called for a “big title and big author byline,” augmented perhaps by a “small symbolic illustration.” Rejecting this approach, Marcellino treated a cover as a miniature poster, Winter’s Tale (). The Bon re of the Vanities (). as an artwork with the supporting role rst of catching browsers’ attention, then of o ering a clear impression of the experience held in store. In Heller’s estimation, Marcellino was “an unpretentious artist who had found an evocative vocabulary.” Exquisite backlighting, beguiling trompe l’oeil special e ects and other winking references to the Surrealist provocations of René Magritte, and elegant retro typography were among the keynotes of an ever-expanding rep- ertoire. It helped considerably, observed Chip Kidd, who is arguably Marcellino’s successor as the trendsetting jacket artist for a generation, that Marcellino was a “skilled illustrator and an excellent graphic designer,” a combination, he added, that is “a lot rarer than you might think.” As Marcellino’s long-time friend and colleague Wendell Minor has remarked, “Fred is the best example of someone [who used] every combi- nation of art, photography, and typography to The Handmaid’s Tale (). The Golden Notebook (reissue; ). produce a truly unique body of work.” Universal name recognition may not have come with the territory, but by the early s bookshops everywhere had become de facto Fred Marcellino art galleries, where in any given publishing season a half dozen or more of his designs were apt to be prominently displayed. Inside the book world, Marcellino enjoyed celebrity status. Over the four years of the s when the National Book Foundation honored jacket designers with an award of their own, he took home three of the medals, in one year gar- nering three of the ve nominations. A trim, thoughtful, fastidiously elegant man with an explosive grin and boyish glint in his eye, Marcellino approached life as a work in progress and his career in books as a steady, methodical journey to the interior. By , as the father of a three-year-old to whom he read The Accidental Tourist (). The Unbearable Lightness of Being ().

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nightly, he had developed a deep curiosity about picture life—haughtier, more outrageous, more absurd—than ordi- books, an art form that allowed a designer/illustrator to craft nary mortals. A golden light, redolent of the color palette a fully realized alternate world. After preparing a dummy of the dreamlike Venetian vistas that Marcellino adored, for a little-known ABC text by Edward Lear, he arranged bathed everything in its emotional glow. The palpable through a novelist friend, James McCourt, to meet Michael warmth of his sense of light balanced the ornate grandeur di Capua of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. of Marcellino’s draftsmanship, giving the illustrations an As one of the very few editors who worked in both the intimate dimension that anyone could feel. “adult” and “juvenile” sides of the industry, di Capua was Re-illustrating classic tales from the canon of Charles considered a rare bird among publishers. He had recently Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and the like was a prag- guided McCourt’s extravagant first adult novel, Mawrdew matic strategy. But deciding, as Marcellino did for his fourth Czgowchwz, to press. Among the legendary author/art- book, to resurrect Helen Bannerman’s much-vilified Little ists for children on his list were Maurice Sendak, William Black Sambo might well have proven a recipe for disas- Steig, Margot Zemach, and . In di Capua, ter. The Scottish author’s century-old picture book, with Marcellino recognized a kindred spirit: a perfectionist who its crudely drawn illustrations anchored in racially offen- shared his love of literature, music, and art. Thirteen years sive stereotypes, had long been a lightning rod for contro- would pass before the two men agreed that Marcellino’s versy, and the name Sambo a repugnant code word. But as first picture book should be a retelling of the French liter- Marcellino stubbornly pointed out, the story itself was a ary fairy tale Puss in Boots (1990). Two more years would genuinely charming trickster tale, and, as its references to go by before the book saw the light of day. tigers and ghee implied, its proper setting was India, not During that long gestation period, Marcellino intro- Africa. Marcellino’s re-imagining of Bannerman’s text and duced di Capua to Tor Seidler, whose novella for young illustrations in The Story of Little Babaji was a remarkable readers, Terpin, the editor went on to publish in 1982, with act of literary rescue and release. In a serendipitous turn of a Marcellino cover. When Seidler followed up with the events that made his decision to take on the challenge look manuscript for A Rat’s Tale, a poignant animal fantasy in more farsighted than foolhardy, The Story of Little Babaji the tradition of The Cricket in Times Square, di Capua hired appeared in the same season that a well-known African- Marcellino not only to design the jacket but also to create American author-illustrator team, Julius Lester and Jerry a suite of interior drawings. Work on the book, published Pinkney, published their own reclamation effort, Sam and in 1986, reinforced Marcellino’s determination to illus- the Tigers. trate picture books, where the art would play an even big- For Marcellino, the greatest challenge lay in writing a ger role in the storytelling and could be far more layered story to illustrate. For a long time this seemed an impos- than even the subtlest cover image, which had to deliver sible mountain to climb. But with di Capua’s encourage- its goods in a glance. ment and inspiration from one of the obscure old books When Puss in Boots finally appeared, the children’s book he was always nosing around in, he completed I, Crocodile, world noted the arrival of a major talent. Not surprisingly, a tongue-in-cheek farce in which the Emperor Napoleon Marcellino, with some help from di Capua, had made cer- meets his match in arrogant self-regard in the person of a tain the jacket design would do its part to draw attention to ravenous reptile. The writing of one story quickly led to the book. As di Capua recalled in a memorial tribute writ- the writing of others; the cancer from which Marcellino ten in 2001, Marcellino had painted the cover image—a died in 2001, at the age of sixty-one, ended a career that was stylish, in-your-face, “magnificent” close-up of the mas- shaping up to be as much about words as pictures. ter trickster of the tale—only to realize that he had not left Marcellino with his darkly mischievous sense of the space for the title and author byline. Di Capua told what absurd was just the man to appreciate the irony that his last happened next. “At dawn one day, I had a dream. The published work proved, quite literally, to be a swan song. In dream said: Don’t put any type on the front of the jacket! My the late 1960s, when drawings were needed for E. B. White’s phone call woke Fred up. He actually gasped when I blurted third children’s book, The Trumpet of the Swan, White’s reg- out the news.” At awards time, Marcellino received the ular illustrator, Garth Williams, had been unavailable. The American Library Association’s runner-up prize for best- illustrations done in his stead by Edward Frascino had left illustrated book of the year, a Caldecott Honor—a more many readers disappointed. As the novel’s thirtieth anni- than good beginning. versary neared, Marcellino was asked to give a fresh look to The type-free front cover was the first of many grand this children’s fantasy by a writer he venerated. His draw- gestures that brought an electrifying sense of visual theater ings for the new edition were haunting, sly, and superb: the to Marcellino’s books. Intensively researched, dazzlingly valedictory work of an artist for whom reading was a con- rendered scenes set in Bourbon France (Puss in Boots), mid- suming passion and illustration was the art of reading. nineteenth-century Denmark (The Steadfast Tin Soldier), Leonard S. Marcus is the author, most recently, of Show Me A Story!: Why Picture and the Egypt of the Napoleonic conquests (I, Crocodile), Books Matter and Listening for Madeleine, a book about Madeleine l’engle. he lives pulled readers into the orbit of their storied worlds, where in , new york. Photos courtesy of the estate of fred Marcellino. any coMMercial use or distribution of these iMages without the characters one met always looked to be a bit larger than exPressed PerMission of the estate of fred Marcellino is forbidden by law.

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When Puss in Boots nally appeared, the children’s book world noted the arrival of a major talent.

An illustration from Marcellino's Puss in Boots ().

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