Book Lover's Gift Guide

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 Digest-02.indd 1 9/17/12 12:36 PM FRED MARCELLINO An illustration by book jacket artist turned children's author and illustrator, Fred Marcellino, for the 1992 book, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. 30 | F INE B OOKS & C OLLEC TIONS @2012 Fine Books & Collections marcellino-01.indd 30 9/17/12 12:50 PM FRED MARCELLINO 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 Tom Wolfe’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, Judith Rossner, Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood, and many others played @2012 Fine Books & Collections AUTUM N 2012 | 31 marcellino-01.indd 31 9/17/12 12:50 PM FRED MARCELLINO 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 Houston 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 New York. 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. 32 | F INE B OOKS & C O LLECTIO NS @2012 Fine Books & Collections marcellino-01.indd 32 9/17/12 12:50 PM FRED MARCELLINO 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 picture 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 combination 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 (). @2012 Fine Books & Collections AUTUMN | 33 marcellino-01.indd 33 9/17/12 1:06 PM FRED MARCELLINO 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 Natalie Babbitt. 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.

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