Magazine covers by Artists: Barbara Kruger

"For the cover of New York’s Election Issue, we turned to the artist Barbara Kruger, who had created such a memorable cover for the magazine the week of Eliot Spitzer’s resignation. She came back with this image. Editor-in-chief Adam Moss says that he and the editors “were drawn to it, in part, for the three ways in which it could be interpreted: as Trump speaking (single word epithets being his specialty); as a description of Trump; and as a call on the election result. On this latter point, who knows — and we confess to being a little rattled when the Comey letter news broke just as we were shipping it. But in the end we felt that the power of Kruger’s image transcended any one meaning you could read into it. The issue analyzes many aspects of Trump’s extraordinary candidacy, and an important point is spelled out in the headline we appended to the bottom corner: Trump has already changed America, not much for the better. Which adds a fourth meaning: in that sense we are all losers too.”

- New York magazine editors, pre-election

"Our pre-election issue, with a cover by the American artist Barbara Kruger, went to press on Friday afternoon, October 28. That deadline came up just as FBI director James Comey made his announcement about a newly discovered cache of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Maybe Comey’s letter moved voters decisively away from Clinton or toward Trump; maybe it didn’t. But that was — at least according to polls that we no longer believe — the moment her momentum stalled.

We, and Kruger, had always intended for our cover to convey multiple meanings: certainly that Trump was running behind, but also that America itself was losing, dragged down into a filthy dumb-show campaign. And, Kruger herself adds, “Donald Trump has a keen instinct for locating the most vulnerable place in the character of anyone who disagrees with him — my labeling him with the word he most feared was just a comment on and reenactment of that strategy.” (Not to mention that Trump himself uses single-word epithets so enthusiastically.) After a brief reconsideration that Friday, we stuck with our plan instead of scrapping it, with the knowledge that the cover would be seen by many readers only one way — as a prediction — even as we hoped that the power of the image transcended any one interpretation of its meaning.

Since then, phone calls and social-media posts, particularly on the morning after the election, have made it clear that many readers couldn’t get past the “call”: Wrong, wrong, wrong, as Trump might say. We get that (although, c’mon, the idea that we somehow jinxed the election is beyond the pale). And even as we stubbornly maintain that the image is more complex than a certain notorious, erroneous headline from 1948, it is true that seeing the cover on the newsstand after Election Day makes us cringe — and that the vote turned an image meant to be provocative into one that perhaps feels hubristic instead. (That’s on us, by the way, not Kruger.) Obviously, in one critical sense, we were wrong. And now we can only hope that one of the cover’s other meanings — that this election has turned us all into losers, big-league — is wrong as well."

- New York magazine editors, post-election

Magazine Covers by Artists: Arts Magazine by Andy Warhol

[Andy Warhol cover]
Arts Magazine April 1970
New York City, USA: The Art Digest, 1970
68 pp., 12 x 9”, staple-bound
Edition size unknown

A rare copy (exceedingly so when signed, as bottom, above) of Arts Magazine with an "original cover by Andy Warhol" and "Andy Warhol's Travel Piece", both of which feature Factory stalwart, Gregory Battcock in his underwear. Three years later he would be named editor of the magazine.

Battcock had starred in two of Warhol's films (Batman Dracula and Horse), and had previously contributed articles to the journal such as, “Notes on the Chelsea Girls: A Film by Andy Warhol,” 1967, and “Warhol Film,” 1968.

The issue includes contributions by Sol LeWitt and Mel Bochner, and my favorite Lawrence Weiner work (three typewritten rules: 1. the artist can make it work. 2. the work piece can be manufactured. 3. the work piece does not have to be built.)

For other magazine covers designed by artists (included several by Warhol), see the MCBA tag below.

Magazine covers by artists #5: Christo and Jeanne-Claude

From Artvent, as part of an obituary to Jeanne-Claude:


My first contact with Christo and Jeanne-Claude was In 1989 when, as fine art consultant to TIME Magazine, I proposed commissioning Christo to do the cover of a special issue about the state of the environment: “The Planet of the Year: The Endangered Earth.”

But when I met with them, Christo said, “The idea is banal.”

Jeanne-Claude said, “Christo doesn’t do commissions.”

My deadline was the next Wednesday. “If you change your mind,” I told them, “you can call me at home any time.”

Jeanne-Claude called me at 7:00 Tuesday night. “Christo has an idea.”

The next morning, the art director, Rudy Hoglund, and I went to the studio, where Christo presented his plan to wrap a globe of the earth in semi-transparent plastic, tie it with twine, and photograph it on the sand at Jones Beach with the sun rising behind it. It was the perfect image: the earth bound and enshrouded in a claustrophobic film, with the sunrise a sign of optimism.

Leaving the studio we were walking on air, until Rudy asked me what I’d negotiated about the copyright.

Copyright? It was my first commission for TIME, and I had to admit I hadn’t considered it.

Hearing this, Rudy's face turned bright red and he started stomping up Broadway.

I spent the next weekend on the phone between Jeanne-Claude and TIME’s lawyer, working out the details of a contract that became TIME’s standard agreement with fine artists. In the process I learned a lot about copyright and also about the way Christo and Jeanne-Claude work.

I learned about their openness to possibility. Their decision to refuse all commissions was one that served them, but it didn’t blind them to the one situation that might be different.

I was impressed by their willingness to negotiate a solution that would maintain their integrity in the project without impeding it. It was a remarkable exercise in both flexibility and inflexibility that comes, not from ego, but from recognition of what’s really important.

After it was over, I received a post card that read simply “You were right,” signed: Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

So although the TIME Magazine cover was their smallest public project, it was also the one that reached the most people. And according to newsstand sales, one of the most popular TIME ever ran.

Their work illustrates that even with a minimalist, non-representational approach, high art need not be elite, that artistic rigor and public engagement can indeed go hand in hand. There’s a distinction to be made between work that seeks to be popular by pandering to existing perceptions of what art is, and art that transcends those expectations to create an event that becomes a vehicle for social and esthetic advancement.

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.

Magazine covers by artists #3: David Shrigley

Stylist magazine is a free women's weekly, published in the UK since October of 2009. The covers typically feature photographs of popular female actresses (Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston), singers (Jennifer Lopez), comediennes (Tina Fey) or politicians (Hillary Clinton). The current issue - free last Wednesday in London, Brighton, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham - features a design by David Shrigley that also includes a reworking of the logo.

"I’ve designed lots of books over the years and I’ve learnt people do actually judge a book by its cover, so it’s not really being completely ironic. And I like drawing nice logos badly so it was fun to bastardise the Stylistlogo! The first time that your work appears on the cover of a magazine it’s pretty exciting and then when you get asked to do the cover, that’s even better." - DS.

Magazine covers by artists #2: Barbara Kruger

“I thought it was a funny comment on the need to show and tell constantly,” Kruger says of her Kim Kardashian cover for W Magazine . “Diaries used to have locks on them. That’s over.”

Kruger's covers are often controversial, with regular debates about plagiarism, pandering and even the slight changes made to her signature Futura font.