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The Creepy and the Cozy
4 years ago
General
TOM ADAMS UNCOVERED: THE ART OF AGATHA CHRISTIE AND BEYOND (Harper Collins, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Adams-Uncovered-Agatha-Christie/dp/0008165351/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C0GUGQ3D6HYC&dchild=1&keywords=tom+adams&qid=1634833004&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sr=1-1&sres=0008165351%2C1779512031%2CB09JJHRWPC%2C1984878107%2C0983437009%2C1530856973%2C1599559374%2CB09J44X66W%2C1848774559%2C1534485155%2CB08HJNQC26%2C0470481226%2C0520292111%2C0981834426%2C1939714176%2C1483606945&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
AGATHA CHRISTIE: THE ART OF HER CRIMES (Everest House, 1981)
https://www.amazon.com/Agatha-Christie-Art-Her-Crimes/dp/0896961443/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=agatha+christie+the+art+of+her+crimes&qid=1634833170&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sr=1-3&sres=0896961443%2C1605989096%2C0008296618%2C0062073559%2C125030170X%2C0062073486%2C006207413X%2C0008158614%2CB000FC146M%2C1250304458%2C006207380X%2C0062073850%2C1681776537%2CB007OV600W%2C0141392738%2C1542020190
The '60s and '70s were the golden age of the mass market paperback, the last era in which illustrators working in traditional media could paint book covers for a mass, as opposed to a specialty, audience. Long before Poirot and Jane Marple became television stars, Tom Adams (1926 - 2019), the definitive Agatha Christie illustrator, interpreted Christie's world of pre-WW2 English villages, where members of the upper crust bumped each other off with antique daggers and such, to evoke the seething, violent impulses and moral decay beneath the genteel surface. His images combined trompe l'oeil realism, out and out surrealism, and macabre wit with frequent depictions of characters so self-isolated, so unable to connect that they can barely look at one another: Magritte and John Peto meet Bergman and Antonioni. (The covers were usually more riveting than anything in Christie's books, but you could say the same about Frazetta and Edgar Rice Burroughs, or James Bama and Doc Savage.)
TOM ADAMS UNCOVERED (2016), the indispensable companion volume to AGATHA CHRISTIE: THE ART OF HER CRIMES (1981), gives us a wider-ranging view of Adams's life's work: his non-Christie paperback covers (including five -- only five? -- of his marvelous Raymond Chandler covers), portraits and abstract paintings, book illustrations, album covers, advertising art, and a selection of pop art posters (with hilariously dated hippie-era poetry) for the Fulham Gallery. The Christie covers, of course, get the lion's share of the later book, and it's worth comparing the overlap between volumes -- some images are less cropped, but the colors are darker (or lighter) than in the earlier book. Some paintings (AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS, THE CLOCKS, MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS?) appear in only one volume or the other. And some Christie covers aren't in either volume, because they were painted by Ian Robertson, a colleague who was paid to mimic Adams's style.
The mass market paperback was a trade-off: cheap and available in every five-and-dime store, adorned with lurid cover paintings, but with that small print so hard on aging eyes...Today's trade paperbacks make for larger, easier reading, but with ho-hum Photoshopped covers, or worse, gimmicks (Remember that early 2000s fad for die-cut paperback covers, an idea so dumb only a design school graduate could've thought of it?). Looking at Tom Adams's cover gallery makes me feel something dangerously close to nostalgia. Gotta watch that.
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Adams-Uncovered-Agatha-Christie/dp/0008165351/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C0GUGQ3D6HYC&dchild=1&keywords=tom+adams&qid=1634833004&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sr=1-1&sres=0008165351%2C1779512031%2CB09JJHRWPC%2C1984878107%2C0983437009%2C1530856973%2C1599559374%2CB09J44X66W%2C1848774559%2C1534485155%2CB08HJNQC26%2C0470481226%2C0520292111%2C0981834426%2C1939714176%2C1483606945&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
AGATHA CHRISTIE: THE ART OF HER CRIMES (Everest House, 1981)
https://www.amazon.com/Agatha-Christie-Art-Her-Crimes/dp/0896961443/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=agatha+christie+the+art+of+her+crimes&qid=1634833170&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sr=1-3&sres=0896961443%2C1605989096%2C0008296618%2C0062073559%2C125030170X%2C0062073486%2C006207413X%2C0008158614%2CB000FC146M%2C1250304458%2C006207380X%2C0062073850%2C1681776537%2CB007OV600W%2C0141392738%2C1542020190
The '60s and '70s were the golden age of the mass market paperback, the last era in which illustrators working in traditional media could paint book covers for a mass, as opposed to a specialty, audience. Long before Poirot and Jane Marple became television stars, Tom Adams (1926 - 2019), the definitive Agatha Christie illustrator, interpreted Christie's world of pre-WW2 English villages, where members of the upper crust bumped each other off with antique daggers and such, to evoke the seething, violent impulses and moral decay beneath the genteel surface. His images combined trompe l'oeil realism, out and out surrealism, and macabre wit with frequent depictions of characters so self-isolated, so unable to connect that they can barely look at one another: Magritte and John Peto meet Bergman and Antonioni. (The covers were usually more riveting than anything in Christie's books, but you could say the same about Frazetta and Edgar Rice Burroughs, or James Bama and Doc Savage.)
TOM ADAMS UNCOVERED (2016), the indispensable companion volume to AGATHA CHRISTIE: THE ART OF HER CRIMES (1981), gives us a wider-ranging view of Adams's life's work: his non-Christie paperback covers (including five -- only five? -- of his marvelous Raymond Chandler covers), portraits and abstract paintings, book illustrations, album covers, advertising art, and a selection of pop art posters (with hilariously dated hippie-era poetry) for the Fulham Gallery. The Christie covers, of course, get the lion's share of the later book, and it's worth comparing the overlap between volumes -- some images are less cropped, but the colors are darker (or lighter) than in the earlier book. Some paintings (AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS, THE CLOCKS, MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS?) appear in only one volume or the other. And some Christie covers aren't in either volume, because they were painted by Ian Robertson, a colleague who was paid to mimic Adams's style.
The mass market paperback was a trade-off: cheap and available in every five-and-dime store, adorned with lurid cover paintings, but with that small print so hard on aging eyes...Today's trade paperbacks make for larger, easier reading, but with ho-hum Photoshopped covers, or worse, gimmicks (Remember that early 2000s fad for die-cut paperback covers, an idea so dumb only a design school graduate could've thought of it?). Looking at Tom Adams's cover gallery makes me feel something dangerously close to nostalgia. Gotta watch that.
