Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio | |||||
John Picacio | |||||
Monkeybrain Books, 200 pages | |||||
A review by Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Except, if I'm being honest with myself and my readers, that's not true. It's a damn lie, in fact. You
see, to be the future would imply that Picacio has yet to come into his own. Anyone who
even casually thumbs through Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio knows full well that
this young artist has arrived. The question isn't how good he is, it's how much better can he
possibly get?
The immediate impulse is to compare Picacio to the genre greats who've come before him, giants
with names like Don Maitz, Frank Kelly Freas, Michael Whelan, the Brothers Hildebrandt. That
impulse is a mistake, though, doing a disservice to both Picacio and those other artists. Art isn't a
measured quality that can be run as a horse race. Pitting the work of Richard M. Powers against
Wayne Douglas Barlowe's in a steel cage match is the sport of fools. They're all obscenely
talented, all distinctive and all were the hot new thing at some point in their careers. As is Picacio
now.
What set Picacio's work apart from others on the bookshelf is his refusal to pigeonhole himself
into one trademark style. That's not to say a Picacio cover isn't immediately recognizable -- it is,
often startlingly so. But Picacio isn't one whose work is content with one basic calling card. He
works digitally, yes, but his paintings are done with canvass and brush, not mouse clicks and
Photoshop. He builds shadow boxes around paintings to complete the scene. Found objects take
on new life when touched by his imagination. He has a particular affinity for earth tones, but can
turn around and dazzle with the most spectacular use of luminous color. His seemingly effortless
creative diversity is his distinctive edge, and it that primal foundation of his art that is instantly
recognizable rather than any simple technical mode.
The thirtieth anniversary edition of Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man was Picacio's
first book cover, and it is intriguing to examine today. The barren, windswept image is one of
sepia and light, which manifests itself in his later work. But it is the mood that carries the
cover more than any simple composition. There's a gravity in this image, a somber foreboding and
contemplation that serves the Moorcock novella well. Tellingly, this is also the first -- and to my
knowledge, only -- cover art that has avoided the obvious and not included crucifixion imagery in
some manner. It's fitting, then, that the final cover presented in this book is Picacio's interpretation
of A Canticle for Leibowitz, a landmark fusion of science fiction and religion every bit as
influential as Behold the Man -- if not moreso. And Leibowitz is one genre book
that has benefitted from some truly marvelous cover art down through the years. Picacio uses a
palette of browns, yellows and reds to deliver a scene of intensity, with Saint Leibowitz in simple
robes, clutching a cherished book. Around his head, dark carrion birds fly as if they were a
mocking halo, turning into flaming books as they sweep under and around. This isn't a scene any
reader will find in the book itself, but it effectively captures the spirit of the piece -- or, perhaps
more accurately, a piece of the spirit.
That's another trait that repeatedly crops up in Picacio's art. He doesn't so much as illustrate as he
evokes. His cover for the anthology Live Without A Net is powerful in its use of
blues, whites and blacks to create an image of a man breaking free of his plugged-in existence that
is every bit as symbolic in its own way as Apple Computer's iconic 1984 commercial from
two decades past. Equally impressive is his stylish, flashy melding of myriad images for the
colorful cover of Frederik Pohl's Gateway, a cosmically spectacular scene that is downright
vibrant. Even the few non-genre commissions Picacio includes in the package are jaw-dropping.
"The Second Hunt," done a Rick Bass hunting story, shows the viewer a hunter and his dog in
silhouette, unknowingly scaling the front profile of an enormous deer -- a creature so vast its
antlers form the forest the hunter is entering. It is at once atmospheric and mythic, bringing to
mind elements of Hayao Miyazaki's ecological fable Princess Mononoke.
Picacio is an artist blessed with an obscene amount of talent -- more than any single human being
has a right to. Fortunately for the rest of us mortals, he only uses his powers for good. Cover
Story is undoubtedly only the first of many collections of Picacio's art. Those future volumes
may well hold visual treasures even more wondrous than this one, but that concept's a hard one to
fathom. Pick up a copy of Cover Story and you'll understand.
Jayme Lynn Blaschke writes science fiction and fantasy as well as related non-fiction. A collection of his interviews, Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak, is now available from the University of Nebraska Press and he also serves as fiction editor for RevolutionSF.com. His web log can be found at jlbgibberish.blogspot.com |
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