Fine art and commerce collide in book cover design. Using conceptual art to quickly convey the book's main theme, sometimes without the viewer realizing it, has long been in use. The history and execution of conceptual art in book design is laced with controversy, high art aspirations and plain old commerce.
Definition
Conceptual art is art inspired by an idea. The idea is the most important aspect of the piece. Materials used and how the art is executed are secondary. Some artists believe that conceptual art can exist on its own; that is, without creating anything tangible at all.
Though the term conceptual art refers to a specific artistic movement from 1960 to 1975, it's also used to describe how an artist approaches work. Conceptual art applies to book covers when the book cover artist conveys the book's main idea in the jacket art.
History
In their book "By Its Cover: Modern American Book Design" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), authors Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger place the 1934 edition of James Joyce's "Ulysses" as the first modern book jacket. Designed by Ernst Reichl, the cover features the title in huge, nearly unreadable letters that take up the entire front space. The design replicates the feeling of confusion and busyness the characters in the novel experience. Ever since, book covers have, by and large, followed this conceptual pattern of evoking the book's theme on its cover.
Considerations
Book covers are not an art independent of commerce, made for the sake of art. Unlike art one sees in a museum, book covers serve a purely commercial purpose: to sell books. The book must stand out in the store and convince people to buy it. Therefore, it is not just the book's designer who gets to decide how the cover appears. The marketing and sales team, the book's author and the editors all have a say in the jacket design.
Expert Insight
It's not enough for a book to stand out in the bookstore. In an article titled "Deceptively Conceptual" (The New Yorker, October 17, 2005), John Updike writes, "A good cover should be a bit recessive in its art, leading us past the cover into the book itself." Loud book cover designs, he believes, are off-putting. "We look to books not only for stimulation but for reassurance." Updike's vision of book covers was sometimes at odds with certain modern graphic designers, whose concern was, Drew and Sternberger wrote, to "put lessons gleaned from the modernist worlds of fine arts and theoretical experimentation to practical use," unconcerned with notions of gentleness or subtlety.
Potential
The best conceptual art book covers, then, combine current art theory, the novel's themes and the need for "reassurance" in a piece of art that stands out in the bookstore. With the advent of computer technology, it's become easier for designers to achieve this and more--perhaps too easily. Graphic designers can use pieces of other artists' work in their own designs to add clout to the author's work. Updike writes, "Appropriating a Blake watercolor, say, or a Dürer etching or an Ingres painting for the cover's pictorial element puts the text in excellent company without diluting its descriptive authority. Nobody confuses these artists' representations with the author's, but their validated excellence may rub off." This may give a false impression that a book is better than it is, but the cover serves its main function: to sell books.
