Cover to Cover
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Until relatively recently, I never looked at cover art. I bought books because of a review, or, more likely, because of a personal recommendation. There was art I liked, and some I didn’t like, and some that embarrassed me for one reason or another. But, the art in and of itself didn’t influence my purchasing of any book.
It was recently brought to my attention, however, that the style of cover art comes in and out of fashion, like anything else. Many of us can tell, just looking at the clothing in a photograph, in what decade the photo was taken. Hairstyle is a great indicator, as are necklines, width and length of collars and cuffs, of hemlines and sleeves. Shoulder pads anyone? Thirty years from now, someone looking at today’s photos are going to think of the 2010’s as “the decade of the beard.”
There are many people better qualified than I to talk about cover art as art. I just want to talk about it as covers. My examples are completely arbitrary, and usually come from my own shelves. Keep in mind that in order to look at changing fashion in covers over decades, I have to look at works that have been in print for that long.
