Pulp Lit
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For my AP Art final, I had to submit a 8-12 piece concentration. My initial idea was to simply redesign books I had been reading for my lit class. I started looking for insipiration in my living room bookcase. My most interesting find was a Taschen book on pulp novels.
Pulp was the lowest form of American literature you could find on the shelves in the early 20th century. These publications were festooned with half-naked women, rough and muscular men, and perhaps a ferocious animal or bloodthirsty native. They sold like wildfire. So I wondered, what if other types of books took up similar marketing tactics to sell their copies? Books like the ones I was reading?
I pored over hundreds of pulp covers to understand their content and aesthetic, and did my best to reappropriate the style. When I finished painting, I overlaid article titles pulled straight from real covers, and created some of the seediest classics you've ever seen.
What surprised me was how hard it was to tell that these covers were outrageous. They looked like any magazine cover you might find in a grocery store checkout line. Sex sells and violence intrigues, and if trends continue, maybe this is what the great literature of the future will look like.
