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Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa may be one of the most beloved artworks in the world. Seen by millions of people each year, it is considered to be the crown jewel of the Louvres collection, an iconic work of the Renaissance, and a painting that is impossible to value because it is seen as being priceless. It has also been the target of theft and vandalism on several occasions.

Since the start of the 20th century, the painting, which was acquired by France in 1797, has had spray paint and a teacup thrown at it. This week, it was caked. In 1956 alone, two vandals tried to use a razor blade and a rock to defile it on separate occasions. Each time, the Mona Lisa has emerged without damage. (All of this doesnt count the various artists who have altered the Mona Lisas image, among the Marcel Duchamp, who famously put a mustache on a reproduction of the Leonardo painting, or the era during World War II when the painting risked being seized by the Nazis during their occupation of France.)

In short, the Mona Lisa has faced so much potential damage that even Salvador Dal was once moved to speak on all the vandalism, attributing to the painting a power, unique in all art history, to provoke the most violent and different kinds of aggressions.

To look back on this unusual art-historical lineage, ARTnews has charted below five times in which the Mona Lisa was vandalized or stolen.

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5 Times the Mona Lisa Was Vandalized or Stolen - ARTnews

Art

Ayanna Dozier

Installation view of Everything is Beautiful, 2022, at Frist Art Museum. Photo by John Schweikert. Courtesy of Frist Art Museum.

Alma Thomass paintings create portals into other worlds through color and form. And though the late artist, who died in 1978, is now regarded as a seminal painter of Abstract Expressionism, her first major museum solo exhibition did not arrive until she was 80. That show, held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972, came to fruition thanks to a recommendation by the esteemed artist and curator David Driskell. At the opening, Thomas wore a vivid geometric dress she designed herself, which matched her abstract paintings that were inspired by her love of nature and space exploration. The exhibition launched a meteoric rise in Thomass career that lasted until her death at the age of 86.

While Thomas gained success late in life, her inclusion in the art historical canon, and the ascent of her market, did not comelike many Black abstract paintersuntil the 21st century. Over the past decade, Thomass work has been included in several reparative exhibitions that have cemented her place in Modern and abstract art, such as the forthcoming Put it This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden this summer. Thomas is currently the subject of a traveling, four-city retrospective titled Everything Is Beautiful, which closes on June 5th at the Frist Art Museum, before reaching its final stop, the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, this July; the show was also featured at the Chrysler Museum of Art and The Phillips Collection.

Portrait of Alma Thomas with two students at the Howard University Art Gallery, 1928 or after. Courtesy of Alma W. Thomas Papers, The Columbus Museum, GA.

Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891 and spent two-thirds of her life living in and dealing with the effects of racially segregated environments in the United States. Her family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1907, when she was 15, to further her education; as Black Americans in Columbus, there were little to no educational opportunities beyond middle school.

In 1921, at the age of 30, Thomas enrolled in the Home Economics program at Howard University to pursue costume design; though she originally sought to pursue a career in architecture, Thomas abandoned that goal due to the lack of educational programs for Black women in the field. At Howard, her costumes caught the attention of James V. Herring, who founded the universitys department of art in 1921 and invited Thomas to join it. In 1924, Thomas became Howards first fine arts graduate. In 1934, she earned a masters in education from Columbia Universitys Teachers College.

Though she went on to a career in teaching, Thomas never ceased her painting practice. Her indefatigable approach to art shaped her painterly practice, leading her to experiment with Modern art styles like Cubism and pure abstraction over a 35 year period.

Alma W. Thomas, Untitled, 1922/1924. Alma Thomas. Courtesy of The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection.

A masterful Untitled still life from 1924 displays the inspiration she gleaned from Paul Czanneparticularly, his use of color, rather than line, to create a sense of form. Untitled is a vibrant, full-bodied painting where color is used to immerse audiences in a scene of wine bottles, a die, and other cube-like forms. The heavy use of red and pink across the painting dominate the mood, suggesting a hot, if not, sensuous tone that is heightened by the empty wine bottles. The red die is unusually large, occupying as much space as the wine bottles beside it, evoking a hint of Alice in Wonderland. This dreamlike still life evokes Thomass interest in the scene design and puppetry. Her masters thesis, after all, was focused on marionettes.

Thomas began making abstract paintings in earnest in 1960, following her retirement at age 68. That was also when she finished a decade-long practice of taking modernist painting courses at American University. In Red Abstraction (1960), she used large swaths of red against a green background and black gestural lines to minimize depth. The painting is a free-flowing atmosphere dominated by color and brushstrokes.

The painting March on Washington (1964) documents Thomass participation in the titular march alongside her friend, opera singer Lillian Evanti. In it, the outlines of the marchers bodies combine to become a swirling blur of color and movement. The result is the effect or feeling of the march, rather than the specific representation of it.

Alma W. Thomas, Untitled, 1968. Alma Thomas. Courtesy of Steve and Lesley Testan Collection, as curated by Emily Friedman Fine Art.

Thomas is best known for her distinctive, mosaic-like paintings, characterized by a heavy arrangement of warm blocks of yellow, orange, and red, bleeding into a smaller circular pattern of cool blues and purples. She began these works in 1966 with the painting Resurrection, which was made for her first gallery show at Howard University.

Her interest in colors emotive properties began after reading Johannes Ittens work on color theory. As she pursued abstraction in the 1960s, Ittens scholarship on color and emotions led Thomas to use color as a force that can positively and negatively alter space and mood.

Thomas composed the mosaic paintings for her Whitney exhibition with strips of painted paper that she cut and placed on a stretched canvas to form a grid, as in Untitled (1968). This technique allowed Thomas to carefully build up the color on each work over time, as opposed to painting her colors all at once. X-rays of select paintings in Everything is Beautiful reveal Thomas as a masterful color corrector: the excessive buildup of color in some areas suggest that she added additional layers of darker colors for contrast and used white paint in some places to dilute intensity.

Installation view of Blast Off, 1970, Natures Red Impressions, 1968, Breeze Rustling Through Fall Flowers, 1968, aA Joyful Scene of Spring, 1968 in Everything is Beautiful, 2022, at Frist Art Museum. Photo by John Schweikert. Courtesy of Frist Art Museum.

In Blast Off (1970), Thomas used color and shape to represent the force and speed of a rocket. This imaginative subject matter conveys Thomass desire to escape or build another environment devoid of racial oppression; as Sun Ra put it, space is the place. In a 1979 Washington Post interview, Thomas shared her preference for being defined as an American artist rather than a Black artist. She said this precisely because her experiences as Black woman were, to her, distinctively American insofar as it was the United Statess segregationist policies that shaped her life and practice.

In spite of racial oppression, Thomass career did gain an audience during her lifetime and her renown has only continued to soar in the years since. The expansive world-building that emerges through Thomass deft use of color transforms audiences into space travelers. Even now, decades after her death, in seeing these paintings, Thomas sends us to the moon and beyond.

Ayanna Dozier

Ayanna Dozier is Artsys Staff Writer.

Thumbnail image: Portrait of Alma Thomas at Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition opening, 1972. Courtesy of the Alma Thomas papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and Alma W. Thomas, Blast Off, 1970.

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How Alma Thomas Arrived at Her Seminal Style of Vibrant Abstract Painting - Artsy

"Dervishes" by Egypt's Mahmoud Said - social media

CAIRO 2 June 2022: Bonhams Auctions sold many paintings of the pioneers of Egyptian plastic art, including the artist Mahmoud Said.

The auction house sold nearly five paintings, including the Tomb, but they all could not exceed the price of the Dervishes by Mahmoud Said.

"Dervishes" by Egypt's Mahmoud Said - social media

In April 2010, Christie's Auctions sold the "Dervishes" for $2.434 million. At the time of its sale, it was recorded as the most expensive painting drawn by a Middle Eastern artist in the modern era. The painting dates back to 1935.

Dervishes is one of Saids early works. It shows six Mevlevi dervishes with similar features and similar clothes, and with differences in the position of each of them while performing religious remembrances in the Ottoman eras. Throughout his artistic career, Said worked on the religious topic, and the ideas of death, burial, the afterlife, mysticism and worship.

Said painted the "Dervishes" in 1935, in the phase of employing Western methods in painting, but he was the unique model that digested these methods, and adapted them to draw intimate Egyptian paintings.

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Mahmoud Said's painting 'Dervishes' holds its position as most expensive in Middle East - Egypt Today

Queen Elizabeth II was late and I soon realized that she doesn't like to be late. The first words Her Majesty The Queen spoke at the first sitting of our portrait painting sessions in the autumn of 2011 was an apologyof sortsnot to me directly of course. Goodness, I couldn't possibly even imagine the thought of the Queen apologizing to me.

But she made a comment about being annoyed by her late arrival for reasons which I frankly cannot remember because I was too busy being in a state of shock that I was standing there in the very presence of living historythe monarch who, now 96, marks her Platinum Jubilee this weekend.

Much of my sittings with the Queen for the three portrait paintings I'd done of her are a bit of a blur, as it was one of those astonishing moments of sheer disbelief in life where you think: "Did that just happen?"

But what I do remember first and foremost about the Queen is the directness of her gaze. The portraits I'd done of her are not the most characterful pictures. But I knew I wanted that unforgettable gaze in her gray blue eyes to be captured in my paintings.

She can go from looking quite serious to having this incredibly beautiful, radiant smile. We've all heard the Queen's voice before in public. It's quite high-pitched, but she's also got this shrill, infectious laugh that makes you feel as if the sun's come out.

I think her laughter is one of the most ordinary things about this extraordinary woman. She laughed a lot while telling me all sorts of random stories, which were mostly to keep herself awake, really, at these sittings. She recalled sitting with Philip de Lszl, the late portrait painter and one of my great inspirations, who painted the Queen as a child back in the early part of the 20th century.

As she was so young at the time, she remembered she didn't enjoy the sitting because he kept on saying things like: "Get back into your chair" and "stop wriggling." But little did the future queen know that portrait sittings would be one of the many aspects of her role later in life as the head of the Royal family.

Even if she arrived late, you damn well knew she was in the room. I can still remember how fast my heart was beating out of my chest and my hands were sweaty when she first arrived for the first portrait wearing the glorious robes of the Order of the Garterthank goodness she was wearing gloves when I shook her hand. But thankfully adrenaline soon took over and once I had my brushes in my hand, I was more in my element and I realized there is a job at hand.

Surprisingly, my sittings with the Queen were rather low-key, with just a handful of staff with her. Once the photographer had finished taking various snaps of her, I was left in the drawing room with the Queen, her diary secretary and her dresser. I wasn't given any special briefing about what to do or not to do in her presence but I knew I wasn't going to go arrange the jewelry around her neck anytime soon.

And the Queen could be direct and abrupt when she needed to be. During the sitting for my second portrait of her in the spring of 2016, which was for the Royal Company of Archers and saw her wearing the robes of the Order of the Thistle, I managed to ask the Queen: "Ma'am would you be able to put your shoulders to the door and turn to face me," in a bid to get more of her neck in the portrait, as it's more flattering, to which she replied: "I can face the door or I can face the window but I can't do both."

If her dresser would take too long to adjust her robe at the sitting, she wouldn't hesitate to say: "Stop fiddling with that now."

But she was very obliging to me at the sittings, even though it would have been easy for her to get impatient and just say even from the first sitting: "You know what, I'm 85 and past all this and don't fancy doing this." She wanted to be obliging as she knew I was under pressure to finish the pieces.

The one thing she absolutely did not like was being thought of as frail or incapable in some way and she is neither of those things. For all of our sittings, which were each about an hour long, the Queen remained standing the whole time. Yet when her secretary would come around with a chair, she'd decline the offer without a second thought, as if to say: "Stop putting 10 years on me, I'm actually fine."

It's hard to know whether I truly gathered anything about the Queen's personality in the short time we spent together. But what I can say is she was entertaining herself as much as us in the room. She tried to make the experience interesting and honestlyshe's just good fun to spend time with.

A renowned mimic, the Queen actually did an impression during one of the sittingswhich I really cannot reveal and will have to take with me to the graveand had me in stitches. I remember how her face would light up when she talked about her horses and dogs, as she loves animals. It's part of the reason why I decided to work her four dogs into an additional version of her first portrait, even though they were not at the sitting, as they're such a huge part of her life.

At one point during a sitting for the first portrait in the drawing room of Buckingham Palace, which faces Green Park, the Queen stared out the window and said: "Oh look, here he comes again," referring to a man in a green tracksuit who was obviously running laps around the park for his usual morning run but had no idea that the Queen had been watching him.

Much of our conversations revolved around the traditions and duties that come with her roleshe loved explaining things and I was taken aback by her encyclopedic knowledge, talking me through the insignia on her robes and what they meant. She knew her stuffdown to the smallest detailsand it just showed all the more how important her role is to her.

What struck me most was that, as much as being committed to the monarchy, she genuinely finds merit in all the traditions and customs she's having to partake in, such as these countless portrait sittings.

She's got such a lively sense of humor and I think it's what allows her to embrace and rather enjoy the eccentricities of her role and what makes the monarchy, both behind closed doors and in the public eye.

She's so observant and has a great sense of the absurd in her role, including sitting for a portrait painting, which in the modern age of photography could come across as outdated in some ways. But she would never think to criticize or make fun of it in a way that was disrespectful to the institution that is the monarchy.

At the end of the third sitting for the first portrait, she asked: "May I have a look?" and came around to have a peek. So what did the Queen think of it? Perhaps unsurprisingly, she remained mostly poker-faced, being very polite and perfectly pleasant, as I think there is a general unspoken policy for the Queen to not say anything one way or another about her portraits to avoid upsetting anyone.

But I have to assume she must have at least not hated the final result because when Royal Mail, who commissioned the piece, couldn't accommodate the version of the portrait that included her four dogs, they gave it to the Royal Collection. So that piece is currently hanging in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace.

I wasn't looking at the Queen like a grandmother figure or a friendI was looking at her as my monarch and the portraits reflect how she felt to me at the time we'd metwhich was simply majestic.

The Queen is dedicated, steadfast and the embodiment of stability to her country and I hoped to convey that in my paintings of her. She has been through so much and met so many interesting people around the world and been part of so many different events that have happened over the years. It's extraordinary, what's embodied in this one person.

If I were given another chance to paint a portrait of the Queen, I'd love to paint her in a headscarf on a horse. I think there's something marvelous about her going horse riding, one of the more dangerous sports in life, wearing merely a headscarf. That probably says even more about her than anything elsethat nobody can tell the Queen what to donot even to wear a protective gear for her own safety.

Looking back over the 70 years of her reign, what stands out most to me is her consistency. She's come to the forefront at poignant moments in life and breathed some wise words based on her huge amount of life experience and I think she should say them more often.

We have the benefit of her wisdom and a little snippet from her goes a long way, because it's got gravitas. You can't live for 96 years and not be wise, really. So I hope she goes on to say more for many more years to come.

Nicky Philipps is an accomplished British painter whose various works can be found in public and private collections worldwide. She lives in the U.K. For more information, see nickyphilipps.com. You can follow her on Instagram @nickyphilipps .

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Soo Kim

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'I Painted The QueenShe Was Surprising In So Many Ways' - Newsweek

SACO Jubilee Park Covered Bridge, a watercolor by award-winning artist and author, Gerard Bianco, was selected into the American Watercolor Society juried 2022 Associate Members Online Exhibit. The show will run from June 7 to Aug. 20.

One of New Englands biggest secrets is Jubilee Park Covered Bridge in Saco, Bianco said in a statement. Even many residents of this historic town do not know of its existence. The bridge connects Water Street to Jubilee Island Park, a beautifully landscaped island on the Saco River where youll find picnic tables, wildlife, summer concerts, and fabulous views of the river.

Bianco said his watercolor, a portrait of Jubilee Park Covered Bridge in winter, is sure to shine a spotlight on the relatively quiet town of Saco, attracting tourists and members of covered bridge societies in the U.S. The painting depicts the many contrasting textures in this scene, including the wooden bridge siding, the soft rock-laden snowbanks, the supporting rocks, the cool icy river, the warm sky and its reflections on the water.

Local artist Bianco is an associate member of the American Watercolor Society. He holds an MFA in Writing. He studied at the Arts Students League and the School of Visual Arts. He said his portraits and illustrations hang in corporate and private collections throughout the U.S., including the permanent U.S. Navy Collection. His website, https://gerardbianco.com/, features other New England watercolor paintings and coastal scenes.

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Painting of Saco's Jubilee Park covered bridge Selected for exhibition - Press Herald

Image via Netflix

Volume One of Stranger Things season four officially dropped on Netflix this past Friday. As eagle-eyed viewers continue to binge-watch the first seven episodes of the season, many diehard fans are asking the same question: what exactly did Will Byers paint?

After the release of season fours first batch of episodes, fans are convinced now more than ever that Will is gay. And, with it now being Pride month, the rumor mill is churning as fans are dissecting clues about Wills sexuality one of them being a painting he created during the premiere episode of the fourth season.

In the season opener, Jane Eleven Hopper is penning a letter to Mike Wheeler about her new experiences and life thus far in California. The letter includes information about Joyce, Jonathan, and Will. In addition, Eleven informs Mike that Will has spent a lot of his personal time painting a picture, although Will has decided to keep the details about the painting to himself.

As mentioned before, details about the painting have been kept under wraps, but several clues hint that the painting is for Mike, who he has been best friends with since kindergarten. Many fans believe Will has a crush on Mike. While Mike has established a strong relationship with Eleven over the last three seasons, Will has never vocalized any interest in any relationship.

One clue that the painting is for Mike happens when Will and Eleven go to the airport to pick Mike up for his visit to California. During the reunion, Will is seen holding the painting rolled up, but he never gives the artwork to Mike. Instead, Will angrily crumbles up the painting when he watches Mike and Eleven kiss, which hints that the painting is for Mike.

And while we dont know for sure what Will specifically painted for Mike, folks are speculating all of the possibilities. The painting options include either Will and Mike kissing, holding hands, or their initial encounter with each other at a swingset when they were younger.

Whether the painting depicts any of these theories remains to be seen. But, we do know that the painting is significant to Wills character growth, sexuality, and development in the action-packed fourth season of the sci-fi sensation.

Well see if we find out what Will painted in Vol. 2 of Stranger Things season four, which drops on Netflix on July 1.

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What Did Will Paint in 'Stranger Things'? - We Got This Covered

Claude Rutault, a French artist whose paintings were made according to rigorous sets of rules, has died at 80. A representative for Perrotin, the Paris-based gallery that represents him, said he died of an illness on Saturday.

Those who knew him will miss his mischievousness, intelligence, strong personality, generosity, and freedom of spirit, evident in his work, Perrotin wrote on social media.

Rutaults paintings bridged the gap between postwar abstraction and the lofty ideas of the Minimalist and Conceptualist art movements. His works take the form of pared-down abstractions; many of them are monochromes. They are the result of processes done according to strict determinations written out by Rutault in advance.

Because those rules can effectively be followed by anyone, Rutault claimed he never made his works themselves. He also said he did not involve himself in these works exhibition or sales, effectively removing himself entirely.

The goal of this unusual mode of working was to disturb traditional notions about painting and how it is viewed. He labeled his sets of instructions d-finition/mthodes, and the space or collector which showed them as the charge-taker.

My proposition is about exiting the pictorial context, he said in a 2015 interview in Purple. Getting away from the painting. Going beyond the insignificance of the monochrome. For me, putting up paintings outside is a spectacle.

Born in 1941 in Trois Moutiers, France, Rutault was part of a generation of French artists who subjected painting, a hallowed medium historically associated with originality, to unusual means of production. Painters like Niele Toroni created repetitive abstractions dictated by precise mathematical systems, while the Supports/Surface movement relied on quotidian materials to question the mediums most basic elements. However, Rutault often said he felt a greater affinity with the Minimalists working in New York than with these artists.

Rutaults works were sly in ways that are less obvious than initially meets the eye. One work demanded that its creator paint a canvas the same color as the walls of the gallery in which its set. Another called on its seller to scale the price of the painting up or down in relation to the sums needed to buy local real estate, according to its size.

Paintings by Rutault are difficult to love, due to their hauteur, and this may account for why they have not often been seen outside France. Before Perrotin mounted an exhibition of his work in New York in 2014, he had not had a solo show in New York since 1979, when the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presented his art. Still, early on, he figured in important shows at important French venues such as the Muse National dArt Moderne in Paris and the Centre Pompidou, as well as the 1977 and 1982 editions of Documenta in Kassel, Germany.

Although his work was highly conceptual, Rutault did not believe it was without humor.

You dont know what my work will become, he told the artist Allan McCollum in conversation featured in Interview magazine. You dont know what color it will be painted. You dont know where it will be shown. Theres a part of playfulness and game, but its also very serious in a way.

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Claude Rutault, French Artist Who Rewrote the Rules of Painting, Dies at 80 - ARTnews

Fall Fun by Connie Wininger, who is the featured artist at the Southside Art League in June. Winingers paintings will be on display through June 30.

SUBMITTED PHOTO

With soft, pleading eyes, the good dog stares at the viewer so lifelike you wish you could reach out and scratch behind her ears.

The bubbling exuberance of a happy child is captured in vibrant color on another canvas. Father and daughter wade carefully into the foaming waves in a third painting.

Connie Wininger has found that colors help express the best of her work.

I was always drawn to work like Vincent Van Goghs, and people who worked along those lines. I like to have a mood and feeling in my artwork, and you need to use colors to do that, she said.

Through colorful expression, Wininger tries to capture the joy of the world around her. Her vibrant paintings of people, animals and places take over the Southside Art Leagues Off Broadway Gallery throughout the month of June.

Wininger hopes that those who see her work sparks a recollection from their own lives.

Maybe theyll get a feeling or a memory that they can relate to connected to it, she said. I like for them to make a personal connection.

Wininger has grown up in creative spaces. She was immersed in art as a child, took courses through high school and then went to Franklin College to study art education. After graduation, she taught art at Perry Meridian High School and Perry Meridian Middle School, in addition to working as a librarian at Glenns Valley Elementary School.

While teaching and raising her two children, Wininger didnt have time to explore her own art. But following her retirement, she decided to get back to painting and drawing.

It brings me a real peace. When I started painting again, I had forgotten how good it made me feel, she said. I feel very at peace and it brings me a lot of satisfaction to do it.

In the past few years, she has shown her work in local art shows at the Greenwood Public Library, Southside Art League and the Art Sanctuary in Martinsville. Her time at the Art Sanctuary inspired this solo exhibition in Greenwood.

Wininger started going to an open painting class at the Art Sanctuary, where she worked with artist Nancy Maxwell to rekindle her creative spirit.

Wed come in and work for a few hours, and shed critique our things. She asked if I showed my work, and I said not really, and she suggested I start, Wininger said.

As a member of the Southside Art League, she inquired about having an exhibition of her own. The gallery had openings in its exhibition schedule, and she signed up.

The show will be an opportunity to showcase her approach to painting. Wininger looks for subjects that inspire her, sometimes people, sometimes animals and sometimes everyday scenes that she encounters.

She prefers to not paint entirely realistically, instead opting for saturated colors that radiate emotion.

I tend to choose colors for the expressive purpose. I like very expressive artwork, but also to see images in it; its not abstract, she said.

The exhibition is a blend of work that shes completed, mostly over the past two years. Her paintings will be on display through June 30. A public reception is scheduled for 3 to 5 p.m. June 5.

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Powerful expression: Artist captures emotion of everyday life in paintings - Daily Journal

When it came time for my novel, Planes, to get a cover, I was thrilled to learn that Linda Huang had been assigned to make it. I met Linda in the fall of 2004, when we lived on the same dorm hall. Ive long admired her work as a cover designer; more than once, in the years since graduation, Ive found myself admiring a cover on a bookstore table, then realizing it was one of hers. So I knew I was in good handsand I was happy to feel some different chapters of my life intertwining.

I also had no idea what to expect. Id tried coming up with cover concepts on my ownjust as an exerciseand everything I came up with felt dumb or untrue to the book. When the email with Lindas cover arrived, I had butterflies in my stomach. It was bizarre and surreal to know that, when I clicked on the attachment, I would see a sprawling story Id spent almost a decade on summed up with a single image. Fortunately, I loved it. In the weeks leading up to publication, I emailed with Linda, hoping to learn more about her process and history as a designer.

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Peter C. Baker: Can you tell me how you first approached the process of designing this cover? Are there initial steps you tend to follow for all cover projects?

Linda Huang: Before reading the manuscript, I was well aware that you wanted something abstract, typographic, and dimensionalbased on the Melissa Febos cover you sent as inspiration.

PCB: FunnyId only sent that cover over because I saw it and felt something? I cant say exactly what, but it felt like it belonged in the mix. On the mood board. I definitely didnt mean to be saying, firmly, GIVE ME SOMETHING LIKE THIS!

LH: I guess it was a visual fragment that I glommed onto, that excited me as wella license to approach it more graphically and formally, which tends to lead to more interesting visual outcomes.

There was also the question of the title. Although short, single-word titles are ideal for design, it became clear to me while reading the manuscript that the title didnt reveal much about the story. I was hoping that the cover would at least touch on some core aspects of the novellike redactions, secrecy, black sites, and incomplete storiesbut still be mysterious enough to lure you in.

After reading the manuscript, I do what I usually do for all fiction covers: jot down key themes, motifs, and what I feel like the cover needs to convey. Its a very loose, associative process, and varies from book to book. Most of the time I doodle thumbnail sketches, but looking back at my notebook, I couldnt find any sketches, only written concepts, e.g.:

Redacting using typeFragments created by folding / pleatsA head-up display (the electronic data displayed on a planes window for pilots)Repeating PLANES with some kind of interruption

Because these directions relied heavily on typography, I started sketching on the computer directly. It was a very experimental process of trial and error.

I quickly started toying with the idea of planes of existence, or a flat surface connecting two pointssymbolic of the two narratives that unfold, connecting the two female protagonists. Combining this idea with redaction and black sites led me to the final cover direction. I was hoping to convey both elegance and brutality by stylizing the title this way, and the black shapes are also reminiscent of a blueprint for something vaguely militaristic or industrialthemes relevant to the novel.

Obviously, post-9/11 torture is a heavy element in the story, but I didnt think it would be winning to convey any of that on the cover. We are always told that nobody wants to pick up a book depicting anything gruesome, depressing, or generally off-putting, especially when theres no humor involved. (In case you didnt know, Sales tends to love covers that are colorful, inviting, and accessible.) Thankfully, I didnt have to compromise much for Planes. I think the optimistic blue sky helped.

PCB: I love the blue sky: how it evokes an ideal of openness and calm thats in tension with the rest of the cover, in a way that makes the whole thing feel eerie and alive.

Once you had the ideawhat sort of work did you do to implement it? I think people who are unfamiliar with cover design can be amazed to learn how much sometimes goes into it. I remember you telling me something about printing out letters then scanning them back in

LH: I did some type tests to get the proportions right for the type-as-redaction shapes. Finding the right typeface for a cover is an important part of my process, and I can easily spend hours, if not days, researching the right letterforms.

The original background image above is a page scanned from Uncorporate Identity by Metahaven of what looks like footage from a surveillance camera. (Metahaven is a Dutch design studio whose work, very loosely speaking, explores geopolitical phenomena.) I may have leaned too much into the political aspect of the book; when I showed it at the cover meeting, the feedback was that the background was too vague. They suggested a sky, which I thought was a great idea. Way more approachable! The type also begged to be a tad larger.

My other idea was to print PLANES on a folded piece of paper, creating dimension:

In both cases, I printed out the letterforms at a reduced scale, then blew them up on the scanner. This trick imbues some imperfection to the shapes, creating jagged edges that would be difficult to create by hand.

Ive always loved this collage by Scott Dickson of fragments of sky interlocked like a puzzle. It has that vintage postcard quality that is hard to replicate nowadays. I thought it could be an alternate, perhaps more inviting cover direction (you can see the colorful sky!), hinting at a sense of interconnectedness and shared history.

PCB: Im glad I didnt see all of these at the time; it would have been really hard for me to pick between them.

In college I knew you as a visual artist, and I have a really vivid memory of coming to your studio to look at paintings you were working onI remember some of babies, and some of raw meat, right? The paintings made an impression, but I was just as struck by the feel of the studio, and my sense of how much time you were spending there. Back then I really wanted to be writing fiction but didnt do very much of it. I had a lot of trouble committing to anything or seeing it through, and seeing all of the work youd accumulated was inspiring. What was your journey from painting to cover design? And how do you feel one influences the other?

LH: Even though I chose painting as the final medium for my senior thesis, I hardly considered myself a painter. One out of my four classes per semester was a studio art class. You know how it is at liberal arts collegesbreadth over depth, at least that was my experience. Now that Ive met people who went to art school for undergrad, for whom most of their classes were rigorous studio art classes, I feel like I barely dabbled in the medium. But senior year was more immersive for sure, and in hindsight it was a very precious timeto have a dedicated studio space surrounded by like-minded others making work.

After graduation, I wanted to work in a field related to visual culture. After some unsatisfying stints interning with art dealers and galleries in the summers during college, I knew I wanted to be making the work, not managing it. But I was less interested in painting and fine art and became increasingly interested in graphic design, especially its inseparability from typography. For as long as I can recall, Ive always been obsessed with fonts. I have a memory from when I was 11 or 12 of making a bookmark from magazine cutouts of various logos and words that I collaged together and even had laminated. In college I spent far too long choosing a font before writing my papers. I realize Im very sensitive to the shapes of letterforms and their impact on how a message is received.

So I decided to enroll in a three-semester, vocational design program at Parsons, where I took a class on book cover design taught by Jason Booher, who was then a designer at Knopf. It was really hard but really rewarding. I had no idea there was such a niche field where people got paid to read books and think about how to package them. In a way, its one of the most pure forms of designresponding to someone elses work of art. And, unlike, say, designing film posters, the non-visual nature of writing allows for richer interpretation. Jason taught us that book cover design is all about the singular visual momentthe formal play that makes a cover unique.

While at Parsons, I interned with Gabriele Wilson, a former Knopf designer, working on various cover and interior design projects. After finishing the program, via Jasons connection, I started freelancing at Knopf and was eventually hired as a junior designer. I remember telling my now-husband that, in my professional life, I just wanted to be left alone to solve visual problems. It would be hard to find a more fitting match.

What I enjoy most about cover design is the opportunity to channel different visual styles and techniques. I become a chameleon, molding myself to each book. The ability to grasp an authors core thesis in a range of topicsfrom physics to historyis a necessary skill. Its also what keeps the job interesting.

On a fundamental level, painting and cover design share many similaritiescore principles such as composition, scale, color theory, foreground/background, and positive/negative space. You can also approach painting in a more designed way (Piet Mondrian, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly are obvious examples). I think the primary way painting has influenced me is purely formaltraining me to see. Those college paintings of babies were purely sensory and not conceptual. Of course, I still use some of my painting background to illustrate the occasional book cover (albeit in a very basic/crude way) and hand-letter type.

PCB: Did the process feel any different than usual because we know each other?

LH: Definitely. I felt more pressure to get it right on the first go. And while reading the manuscript, I couldnt help but think of you behind the voice of the female protagonists. I was struck by how attuned you were to their psyches. Maybe this led me to a less conventionally feminine solution (e.g. theres nothing on the cover that hints at two female protagonists). Picturing you, a male author, may have slightly biased the design to be more masculine. Male authors, even those who write female characters, have traditionally been able to get away with designs that are more graphic, abstract, and stark.

I was also extremely curious where you got the idea to write the novel from (other than the news, of course), and kept thinking about how much work it takes to write an entire book!

PCB: I was worried youd say that, about trying to get it right from the start. Thats too much pressure!

I started the book in 2011, when I was in graduate school in North Carolina. I was already doing some nonfiction writing about torture and rendition, and getting increasingly dissatisfiedwith the way I saw these subjects taken up by novels and movies. Then I read this 2005 New York Times article about the CIA using charter plane companies in North Carolina for rendition flights.

Id actually read the article before, but not at a time in my life when I was actively trying to start a novel. I suddenly felt able to approach torture and rendition in a new waythrough conventions more commonly associated with novels about small-town life, about domestic life, about marriage. And that was the start, though it took five years to start adding the sections set in Italywhich now make up over half the book.

LH: Fascinating. I found your approach to integrating torture and rendition into domestic and married life very unexpected, in a refreshing way. How did you go about planning the sub-narratives and where did you find inspiration for such different characters? It seems quite obvious from reading the book that you also spent time in Rome. Was there a particular reason you chose to set half the book there?

PCB: Adding the Rome material was a way to make the book bigger, but without swapping out the up-close, domestic lens. It helped that Id spent several weeks there in 2009. In 2017 I went back on a family vacation and I was able to go to locations I was using in the novel.

As for the characters and subplots, I think its probably a lot like cover design, or any creative process, especially since Ive never been a big advance planner or outline-maker. I try something but then realize somethings missing. I fill in whats missing but then things are out of balance. I put things back in balance but then they feel boring. I try something that doesnt feel boringand again. So its weirdly hard for me to remember where certain parts of the bookeven whole characters!originally came from. Its nice to forget, actually; that means it cant stress me out anymore. And having a great cover is part of that. Its really out there, which means Im really done with it.

______________________________

Peter C. Bakers Planes is available from Knopf

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Secrets of the Book Designer: On Typography, Painting, and Finding That Single Visual Moment - Literary Hub

The details surrounding hometown legends can get kind of fuzzy over time. Take the legend of the Painted Rock in Lincoln.

The rock, if you haven't been to see it in person yet, is situated in Lincoln on Route 6, about a mile from the town line.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 3, Caprice Stevens

No one can really remember exactly when the tradition of painting the rock began.

Darlene Flood grew up in the neighboring town of Lee.

"I grew up in Lee and attended Lee Academy. We passed the rock every trip to Lincoln and back."

Flood recalls the painting of this giant rock began at some point in the 70s.

"My earliest memories are of the rock in the early 1970s. And it all began when a local boy and his friends painted his name on the rock. Simply one word Jesse. It stayed for a very long time it was forbidden graffiti.1970s kids were rebels."

Flood says that the painting of the rock really started to pick up in the years to come.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 9, Martha Currier

"I raised my kids in Lincoln in the 1980s and 90s. Things really accelerated then. It became the rural version of city billboards."

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 14, Kelli McLeod Bard

Flood's father, Alton Pickering, would document the different layers of paint back then with his manual camera.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 6, Alton Pickering

"The Dunphy photo is the most well known. It was a traumatic time for our small town of Lee...The 1991 photos of troops returning were a huge deal. "

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 7, Alton Pickering

Others like lifelong Lincoln resident Ruth Birtz think it might have started earlier than the 70s.

"I don't know how far back it goes. I do know that I have lived in Lincoln my entire life...and I would say it's been as far back as 1960-something...It's certainly been in place for a number of years. "

Birtz, who has worked in one capacity or another, for the Town of Lincoln for the past 30 years, says the Famous Painted Rock has been around as far back as she can remember.

"That rock, I wouldn't even dare to say how many coats of paint are on it."

One thing all who are familiar with the rock can agree on isthe paint has always been added to mark a major life event or to commemorate the lost life of a local loved one.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 12, Kelli McLeod Bard

Birtz says historically, the rock has been painted to mark births, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, the passing of local members of EMS and military members, or even just folks who lived in the area.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 13, Kelli McLeod Bard

It's even been used, in a friendly rivalry between neighboring towns, to show support for local teams during big sporting events.

"One day you'll see is 'Go Lee Pandas!' and the next day you'll see 'Hey Lady Howlers' and then you'll get the 'Mattanawcook Academy Lynx'. It changes multiple times a year."

Usually painted under the cover of night, Birtz says she only remembers one time actually seeing someone physically paint on the rock.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 15, Kelli McLeod Bard

"It's always stealth. It's usually in the middle of the night. People go with flashlights and stuff. I think the only time I've seen it done actually during the day, was when it's to commemorate someone who has passed. Then they take a little bit more time with it."

Capt. Royce Smith 10/12/15 memorial, Painted by Heather Ann, photo by Kelli McLeod Bard

Martha Currier, who grew up in Lincoln, says she's been lucky enough to paint the rock a time or two.

"I painted 2 one for my mum n one for my best friend going to college and had my friend caprice paint it for my daughter."

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 11, Martha Currier

"I love the rock! It is a local tradition and an honor to have ur name, accomplishments, birthdays, artwork, any celebration, etc.. painted on 'the rock'! So many local memories that bring the whole community together."

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 8, Martha Currier

Local artist Caprice Stevens,who grew up in Lee but now lives in Lincon, has painted the rock a number of times.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 4, Caprice Stevens

"I was asked on a few separate occasions to paint something good that would bring cheer to the people who drove by. Its always been a fun outlet for me because I love creating."

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 2, Caprice Stevens

Kathy Lothrop Crise also has a special connection to Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock, as she helped honor her fallen nephew with a display in 2007.

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 5, Kathy Lothrop Crise

"Joel House is my nephew. The morning after Army officials notified Joels parents, my sister, and brother-in-law, my dad gathered us all and said 'lets go paint the rock'.Ive had many people tell me over the years that this is how they found out about Joels death."

Most recently, "The Rock" was painted to honor another local man named Gary Lyle Worster, who passed away unexpectedly in April of this year.

Lincoln's Famous Rock 3, Phil Drew

Worster, better known to his friends as "Swampy" was well-known and well-loved in the area.

Swampy's longtime friend and relative, Jennifer Gordon, was one of the local artistsinvolved in painting the tribute to Swampy on the rock.

"Amy Renaud contacted me shortly after Gary's passing asking if I would be interested in painting the rock in his memory. The answer was YES immediately. I have done artistic painting for over 20 years and I was honored to help with it."

Lincoln's Famous Rock 1, Phil Drew

"Gary meant a lot to all that knew him and always left a lasting impression. His personality always put a smile on your face. Amy had some ideas of what she would like it to say so we bounced some ideas back and forth. His love for the slots and vegas were among the discussion. It was definitely a joint effort between the two of us."

Lincoln's Famous Rock 2, Phil Drew

"As we were there painting the rock we both realized the last time either of us had painted it was together then also with a group of kids in remembrance of a classmate."

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 1, Caprice Stevens

"So many people complimenting and thanking me at Gary's celebration of life. I mentioned to a few it would be interesting to start a page for people to share past paintings. I got such a positive response I decided to do it"

And thus, theLincoln's Famous Painted RockFacebook Page was started. Now folks have a spot to share photos and stories of this local legend.

Birtz says she thinks it's pretty amazing that in all the years "the rock" has existed, it's never been painted up to be political or too vulgar.

"I think it's amazing that it's never been political. I don't recall ever seeing anything political on it. It's always been to commemorate a life event. Whether it's to celebrate a sports team winning or to celebrate a local person for their life achievements. There might have been one time, in my lifetime, when it had something inappropriate on it. But overnight it was gone. For the amount of years that that rock has been painted, that in itself is pretty remarkable as well."

Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock 10, Martha Currier

"It's almost like it's got this unspoken folklore, that you're going to put things on the rock that you want to celebrate."

Here are the 10 most visited Maine state parks in 2021, according to the Maine Bureau of Parks and Land.

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Do You Know The Story Of Lincoln's Famous Painted Rock? - q1065.fm