Blackpaint 58

Penguin Covers

I love those old Penguin Modern Classic covers from the 60s and 70s, I think when Germano Facetti was in charge, when they used modern (ish) paintings.  At the moment, I’m reading At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien and it has a great Jack Butler Yeats cover; “the Bus by the River”, in fleshy creams, red-browns, light green and Prussian Blue, done with slices of a thick brush and maybe a knife, showing a capped man and hatted woman peering out from the bus at the passing houses – I’ve already nicked the colour scheme, but it didn’t come out as well as Yeats’, needless to say.

If you have any sort of collection of these old paperbacks, you should lay them all out face up on the floor – you’ll have  a fair set of great art repros, including some fairly obscure names; John Brack for instance, from the cover of Patrick White’s “The Vivisector”.  I’m going to go through my lot over the weekend to see what else there is (yes, sad, loser, all the other variations).

Gillian Ayres

Another fantastic painter, I’ve been admiring the Patrick Heron (as I thought) cover of our phone book – turns out it’s Gillian Ayres “Lure”.  look it up, you’ll see why i thought it was Heron.  Beautiful picture, throbbing colours; its easy to see why she couldn’t stand the Euston Road people who taught her, according to Martin Gayford’s Telegraph article last week.

Giacometti 

Worth every penny.  it’s going to look very striking in my entrance hall.

Gambling Man trad. arr.by Lonnie Donegan

“Well, I’ve gambled down in Washington,

And I’ve gambled up in Maine,

I’m goin’ down into Georgia to knock down my last game….

I’m a gambling man, man, man,

I’m a gambling man…”

Blackpaint

04.02.10

Tags: Germano Facetti, Giacometti, Gillian Ayres, Jack Yeats, John Brack, Lonnie Donegan, Penguin