Monday, March 12, 2012

Magazine covers by artists #4: Andy Warhol





January 29th, 1965. From the issue:

For this week’s cover, [Warhol] took seven youngsters–aged 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19, and all relatives of TIME staffers–to a Broadway arcade, where they posed for pictures in one of these old five-and-ten type camera booths. These pictures were Warhol’s starting point for the cover illustration. We asked him to use the same techniques for the accompanying “self-portrait.”

In the following issue, two letters were published about the cover:

Sir: Andy Warhol’s cover illustration portrays the antics of monkeys in a sideshow. One might infer that today’s teenagers make a joke of the responsibility inherent in their premature sophistication.
D. R. HUNNEMAN III, New Haven, Conn.

Sir: Your Andy Warhol cover is evocative and refreshing. The squares, unfortunately, won’t pay attention to how he’s manipulated his patterns, and thus will miss the rhythm and wit.
R. C. JONES, New York City



March 19, 1984. From Warhol's diaries:

March 7, 1984: I finished the Michael Jackson cover. I didn't like it but the office kids did. Then the Time people came down to see it, about forty of them. And they stood around saying that it should increase newsstand sales. . . . Then later the Time guy called me . . . and said they were going to use it. I think the yellow one. And I told him to cross his fingers that it wouldn't get bumped on Saturday and he said he would.

March 12, 1984: Time came out and the Jackson cover made it, it didn't get bumped. And the article inside was crazy. It had them asking if he was going to get a sex-change operation and he said no. The cover should have had more blue. I gave them some in the style of the Fonda cover I did for Time once, but they wanted this style.





Below: A 1949 illustration for Glamour magazine (one of his earliest clients), a 1951 cover for Interiors Magazine, a January 1984 Vogue magazine cover, an early illustration for Harper's Bazaar, a 1966 cover for TV Guide and an anniversary issue of Playboy magazine from '86.






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