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Sunday, April 30, 2006

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

I'm a huge fan of Murakami and of Mssrss. Kidd and Gall, who seem to divide the Murakami catalog into hardcover (Kidd) and paperback (Gall). So if history means anything, this should be Kidd, but it looks like John Gall's work to me.

Anywho...just yesterday I posted the cover to Absurdistan -- in some ways a similar cover, but in all ways an inferior one.



They both have interesting palettes, but that's about where the mutual compliments end. This cover has me absolutely intrigued. Everything -- the photo treatment, the colors, the type, that logo at the top on the right -- are perfectly evocative of a particular time. The eyes are brilliant and almost a little creepy. And if you step back from this one, you'll notice (well, at least I did) that the black, purple and white shapes form a sort of head or a helmet or a figure that contains the eyes. The maroon is the background, and there's another figure next to the main one, but his/her eyes aren't visible.

A bit of a stretch? Probably. But any cover that makes me look this hard and this long is a good one, right?

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1 comment:

M said...

Good enough for me. Kidd always does great covers. Some of the paperbacks fall a bit short (I'm thinking of "Kafka on the Shore" - a bit uninspired considering the work on some of the others) -

Kidd is blogging this week at the Powells.com blog.