Leanne Shapton
I’ve revered Leanne Shapton’s illustrations ever since I first came across them in “Fresh Dialogue Four“, book four of a series that document the Fresh Dialogue event by the New York Chapter of AIGA.
Shapton recalls that she started illustration at the age of fourteen when her dad gave her a book by illustrator James McMullan. She would copy his illustrations “like crazy”. Later when she was in New York City attending Pratt (where she met photographer Jason Fulford, and together they started J&L Books), she found a James McMullan in the phone book and called him. She visited him and started working for him.
Shapton had a habit of drawing mock covers for books that she read. The image above shows some of the Herman Hesse covers that she was commissioned by Rodrigo Corral to illustrate, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The second row of Hesse covers are drawn by Milton Glaser. Shapton’s mentor, James McMullan, used to be part of the legendary Push Pin Studios, along with Glaser and Seymour Chwast.
In 1997, Shapton, again, picked up the phone and called Ken Whyte, the editor in chief of a new Canadian newspaper at the time, National Post. She tried to sell the idea of visual journalism for the arts and culture section of the paper, and she was offered the job to art direct that section, called Avenue. Some amazing work came out of that time, when she was able to commission illustrators and designers such as Seth, Dave Eggers, Brian Cronin (see Judy’s last post), and her mentor, Jame McMullan.
FSG recently published a book by Shapton called “Was She Pretty?“, some sort of an adult children book, if you will. The book is a collection of short stories (usually less than a paragraph long) of people’s recollection of their ex-lovers, and each story is paired with beautiful line drawings. Here’s a sample of a story,
Joe kept a photograph of his ex-girlfriend in a frame on top of his upright piano. One day his girlfriend Stacy felt like dusting and the photograph accidentally fell between the piano and the wall.
There you have it.
Ms. Shapton’s drawings are interesting in that they remind me of the early work of Donald Baechler, and Raymond Pettibon. Her brushed lettering even further recalls the pioneering work of artist Jessica Diamond from the early 1980’s. Diamond’s infamous “Helpless Peabrain” drawings on rice paper, and her caustic handwritten diatribes and slogans predate all the above. Like the artist Cady Noland, Jessica Diamond remains mysteriously hidden in the periphery from public scrutiny (or acknowledgement).