24 August 2009

Barbara Kruger, book designer

So here I am, merrily adding books to LibraryThing, and I notice that the cover design for my copy of Medieval humanism and other studies by R.W. Southern (Harper & Row, 1970) is credited to Barbara Kruger.
Checking her biography, I note that she did indeed do magazine design and illustration after graduating from Parsons. The cover has the zodiac and the labors of the month and similar blockprint-like images in a circle against clouds and stars.

I've seen articles recently on Andy Warhol's early contributions to illustration, e.g., his album covers. I find it interesting to think about how the artist's "fine" arts are visible or not in the commercial work. Kruger's (or her editor's) use of moral images plays rather well into her polemical collages.

(Sorry about the image. It's "borrowed" from LibraryThing.)

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