While researching other New Yorker covers made by the artist Eric Drooker, I found one from September 12th 1994 that has a similar theme as the one I was assigned. The image shows thousands of people walking on stilts above New York City. All of the people are men wearing hats, suits, and carrying breifcases. It is similar to the October 25th 2010 cover because they both portray people above the city, and looking down on it in a sense. I think what Drooker displayed with both of these covers was people trying to climb to the top of NYC. The September issue shows it more in climbing the business ladder, and the October issue focuses more on breaking out of the clutter and confusion and rising above it.
The next thing I found wasn't a New Yorker cover he's done, but it is a piece of art he's done. His painting "The Maze" had a very similar theme as the two covers. It is a painting of New York city, but the buildings are interlocked to look like a maze, and a bird is flying above it. This is right in keeping with the theme of being above the city in some way. The bird must represent freedom, and the bird is free from the confusion of the city. Although the maze stretches on past the horizon and seems to not end, so the bird isn't necessarily free after all. This theme of entrappment is shown in the two covers as well because he shows the buildings in the background that are almost like a barrier.
This is interesting material to work with... I wonder if you've thought about googling the work of Salvador Dali at all?
ReplyDeleteI think right now you want to press more on the question of how the city is represented on your cover and by your artist: you will have to get at the issue of ambivalence, because I see major themes of mazes/traps/escape as well as romantic/surreal visions of the city....
You mentioned that your artist was friends with Allen Ginsberg? Why not look up his famous New York City poem, Howl, for another take on representing NY....