Rolf has an excellent collection of Signet paperbacks he has saved for their gorgeous covers, some of them designed by Milton Glaser, best-known for the 1966 Dylan poster that came tucked inside Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (1967). Recently, while looking through Rolf's collection, I noticed a title and author I had not heard of before, and then the image, which I misread at first glance.
Without knowing anything of its story, it appears there is something coming between the man and woman who are not the subject of the artist's landscape. What that something is is at first glance what it looks like, and that is a phallus and testes.
Years ago, when the painter's easel was a more common sight than it is today, we would have recognized the easel and thought no more about it (the visible part of the easel is what's referred to as the "front vertical member"). Or if we thought anything, we might have thought about the relationship between the man and the woman facing each other and the artist before them.
A love triangle? Sure. But why is the artist painting a landscape and not the couple? Probably to signify that the couple and the artist, though pictured together, are not literally in the same place at the same time. So rare to see covers back then representing two realities, not one.
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