Word: mugging
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...decision that is in a way the culmination of every week: the choice of a cover. We had commissioned a painting of Simpson by Greg Spalenka, we had an abundance of photographs to choose from, and at 2 a.m. EDT on Saturday, the Los Angeles police department released a mug shot. We prepared all of these options as covers and at the same time decided to commission another artist's portrait, using the mug shot as a starting point. For this assignment we turned to Matt Mahurin, a master of photo-illustration (using photography as the basis for work...
...only a few hours, but I found what he did in that time quite impressive. The harshness of the mug shot -- the merciless bright light, the stubble on Simpson's face, the cold specificity of the picture -- had been subtly smoothed and shaped into an icon of tragedy. The expression on his face was not merely blank now; it was bottomless. This cover, with the simple, nonjudgmental headline "An American Tragedy," seemed the obvious, right choice...
...attempt to make him look more sinister and guilty, to portray him as "some kind of animal," as the N.A.A.C.P.'s Benjamin Chavis put it. A white press critic said the cover had the effect of sending him "back to the ghetto." Others objected to the fact that the mug shot had been altered at all, arguing that photographs, particularly news photos, should never be altered...
...week, or frowning?). And every major news outlet routinely crops and retouches photos to eliminate minor, extraneous elements, so long as the essential meaning of the picture is left intact. Our critics felt that Matt Mahurin's work changed the picture fundamentally; I felt it lifted a common police mug shot to the level of art, with no sacrifice to truth. Reasonable people may disagree about that. If there was anything wrong with the cover, in my view, it was that it was not immediately apparent that this was a photo-illustration rather than an unaltered photograph; to know that...
...world needs Spike Jones, the 1940s bandleader with a Dead End Kid's mug and a wardrobe of cacophonous checks and plaids. Jones had fun with music. He took a sedate standard like Laura or Chloe, played it straight for a minute and then revved it up double-time and orchestrated it for tuba, kazoo and other instruments that mimic indiscreet bodily functions. Then he set this raucous pastiche to a junkyard syncopation of washboards, cap pistols, Klaxon and bicycle horns, pie pans and garbage cans -- augmented by bird whistles, brays and tag lines from radio ads ("Super Suds!" "Bromo...