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Total Geek-Art: A Celebration Of Pop Culture by Thomas Olivri (book review).

Total Geek-Art: A Celebration Of Pop Culture by Thomas Olivri. Pub: Abrams

Any book with ‘Geek’ in its title falls into our raised eyebrow category. Thomas Olivri’s book, ‘Total Geek-Art: A Celebration Of Pop Culture’, nature is to show the work of 80 artists who don’t do standard work, often playing with recognised images and icons and, shall we say, twist them, usually for funny effect.

So what you get is a mixture based on odd ideas and done by competent professional commercial artists to make you think as much as looking at the art. Incidentally, most of them sell their work to various companies who must approve of what they see.

art: James Gilleard.
Total Geek-Art: A Celebration Of Pop Culture by Thomas Olivri. pub: Abrams

There is a lot of film poster work here, especially in Science Fiction and fantasy. Each provides their websites so you can see what else they do and sell, making this sampler a useful promotion of their work. Keeping count of their nationalities and we have English, Welsh, American, Australian, French, Spanish and Costa Rica. Then again, that shouldn’t be surprising as being geek is international.

Probably the one that had me laughing out loud the most was Australian Steven Rhodes take on children’s hobbies which was slightly sick and shouldn’t be copied.

art: Mister Hope.
otal Geek-Art: A Celebration Of Pop Culture by Thomas Olivri. pub: Abrams

There is so much to choose from here and even my gulping down about 70 pages at a time or day to make deadlines is still something to absorb the various styles and gag pictures. I was taken by Medusa Dollmaker (really Asunción Macián Ruiz) statement, ‘Ars Longa, Vita Brevis’, which translates as ‘Life is short, art prevails’ which must be true of all art.

art: Rory Kurtz.
otal Geek-Art: A Celebration Of Pop Culture by Thomas Olivri. pub: Abrams

With so many artists it is impossible to choose even particular favourites and I hate doing that anyway. The value of any artist depends on your personal taste. Quite frankly, there’s enough here to fit all and no artist is short-changed here. About the only thing straight here is putting the artists in alphabetical order but it would be chaos to try anything else. Feel inspired.

GF Willmetts

October 2020

(pub: Cernunnos/Abrams. 415 page illustrated medium large softcover. Price: £30.00 (UK), $40.00 (US), $50.00 (CAN). ISBN: 978-1-4197-4777-9)

check out website: www.abramsbooks.com

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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