Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist

Steven Brower

Book cover for Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist
Image for variant 9781683965480
Book cover for Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist
Image for variant 9781683965480

Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist

Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist

Steven Brower

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Description
The legacy of Grove Press is well known within literary circles: how Barney Rosset bought a fledgling but failing publishing company in the early 1950s and changed the world of letters in America, and perhaps the very culture as well. Grove Press brought to national prominence the writers, art, and artists of the avant-garde. Equally innovative, and ultimately as influential, Grove Press book covers reflected not only the work inside, but also the prevailing zeitgeist. The iconoclastic writing was echoed in the packaging, a marriage of imagery and the written word that had not been seen before, or, perhaps, since.

The covers, the work of a young artist named Roy Kuhlman, who arrived on Grove's doorstep in 1951, contributed invaluably to the company's image as a distinguished and innovative publishing house. Work from all of Kuhlman's oeuvre is included in this handsome volume, over 300 in all, with an emphasis on the Grove covers. To date, the public has seen little of Kuhlmans's total creative output. It is all assembled here for the first time, displaying depth, variety, and innovation. It is at once illustrative, abstract, conceptual, comical, serious and revolutionary. This book is a celebration of and a tribute to this important designer's creative métier.

Critical Reviews

Kuhlman was known as a great teacher and an inspired artist but could also be notoriously stubborn and uncompromising... Judging by the sheer number of brilliant designs collected in Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist, we are lucky that he managed to have his way.-- "The New Criterion"

With more than 300 reproduced works, many shown for the first time, Reluctant Modernist reveals the full scope of Kuhlman's output and argues for his place as a vital, if underrecognized, author of visual culture.-- "PRINT"

This impressive, oversized paperback deserves to be displayed on one--ironically, the very kind of living room fixture popular during the 1950s to early '80s, when Kuhlman's often controversial paperback designs were ephemeral and rarely coffee-table fare. Steven Brower's book isn't a biography so much as a thoughtfully curated visual archive of Kuhlman's striking cover art, spanning the high arc of his career....So, it begs the question, can you judge a cover by its book? Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist contains the sublime answer.-- "TYPO"

Publishing Information

Publisher: Fantagraphics Underground - Fu Press
Pub date: 2025-11-04
Length: 312 pages

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