THE 20TH CENTURY brimmed over with cheap, fleeting graphic art conceived to increase the appeal of the “real” art it enfolded or advertised. It was an age when—if public relations flaks had anything to say about it—you could tell a book or a song by its cover, and a movie or a stage show by its posters and lobby cards. Book lovers no longer perused the tiny print on rows of cloth spines to examine a bookseller’s wares; they were now assaulted by paper jackets, each competing to catch the irresolute consumer’s eye with a sjavascript:noop(); Optionsexy nymph or bold swatch of color. No one placed much value, cultural or pecuniary, on the actual designs, least of all the illustrators who functioned as work-for-hire drones, owning neither their art nor a percentage of the value it might accrue.
Value did accrue, of course, as it had for the flamboyant lithography of Toulouse Lautrec’s broadsheets for the Moulin Rouge, but in a different way. The juggernaut of mechanical reproduction had taken a turn, favoring not the artist (virtually anonymous, in most instances), but rather the sentimental aura of ephemeral artifacts— collectibles—that merely symbolize cultural history. Their value is measured by a combination of rarity, condition, and enduring associations. Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” can be had in any bookstore for a few dollars, but the 1930 first-printing complete with its flat, unimaginative dust jacket fetches well over $100,000, mostly for the jacket, though hardly anyone knows or cares who illustrated it.
Only in a climate of nostalgic acquisition, and only in the 20th century, could an equally tangential kind of value attach itself to music. The commonplace artifacts of 19th century music consisted chiefly of concert programs, which roused little passion and offered only the most rudimentary kind of design, and sheet music, which usually had no design at all, just white paper with black typeface. That changed with the arrival of Tin Pan Alley, a factory of songwriting professionals, whose songs were marketed in retail stores, many of which had a pianist on hand to demonstrate the newest tunes. As the songs proliferated, cover designs grew increasingly colorful, gaudy, witty, and purposeful…
From the early 1950s through the middle 1980s, when Compact Discs took over, everything about the LP seduced music lovers, who collected them and treated them with the respect accorded books. Alphabetized on specially-built shelves, they were beloved, even fetishized. The 45s were the equivalent of bestsellers, everyone had them. But a person’s LPs signified his or her character. It was the ideal collectible: an inexpensive and sturdy objet d’art that remained unusually stable. The LP jacket didn’t change the way a book did, when it was reprinted in a cheaper edition. The jacket became an essential part of the musical experience, especially in jazz…
Jacketing Music
by Gary Giddins
THE 20TH CENTURY brimmed over with cheap, fleeting graphic art conceived to increase the appeal of the “real” art it enfolded or advertised. It was an age when—if public relations flaks had anything to say about it—you could tell a book or a song by its cover, and a movie or a stage show by its posters and lobby cards. Book lovers no longer perused the tiny print on rows of cloth spines to examine a bookseller’s wares; they were now assaulted by paper jackets, each competing to catch the irresolute consumer’s eye with a sjavascript:noop(); Optionsexy nymph or bold swatch of color. No one placed much value, cultural or pecuniary, on the actual designs, least of all the illustrators who functioned as work-for-hire drones, owning neither their art nor a percentage of the value it might accrue.
Value did accrue, of course, as it had for the flamboyant lithography of Toulouse Lautrec’s broadsheets for the Moulin Rouge, but in a different way. The juggernaut of mechanical reproduction had taken a turn, favoring not the artist (virtually anonymous, in most instances), but rather the sentimental aura of ephemeral artifacts— collectibles—that merely symbolize cultural history. Their value is measured by a combination of rarity, condition, and enduring associations. Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” can be had in any bookstore for a few dollars, but the 1930 first-printing complete with its flat, unimaginative dust jacket fetches well over $100,000, mostly for the jacket, though hardly anyone knows or cares who illustrated it.
Only in a climate of nostalgic acquisition, and only in the 20th century, could an equally tangential kind of value attach itself to music. The commonplace artifacts of 19th century music consisted chiefly of concert programs, which roused little passion and offered only the most rudimentary kind of design, and sheet music, which usually had no design at all, just white paper with black typeface. That changed with the arrival of Tin Pan Alley, a factory of songwriting professionals, whose songs were marketed in retail stores, many of which had a pianist on hand to demonstrate the newest tunes. As the songs proliferated, cover designs grew increasingly colorful, gaudy, witty, and purposeful…
From the early 1950s through the middle 1980s, when Compact Discs took over, everything about the LP seduced music lovers, who collected them and treated them with the respect accorded books. Alphabetized on specially-built shelves, they were beloved, even fetishized. The 45s were the equivalent of bestsellers, everyone had them. But a person’s LPs signified his or her character. It was the ideal collectible: an inexpensive and sturdy objet d’art that remained unusually stable. The LP jacket didn’t change the way a book did, when it was reprinted in a cheaper edition. The jacket became an essential part of the musical experience, especially in jazz…
(end of excerpt)