viz.

Image Credit:  The New Yorker

H/T:  Texas Performing Arts

This video is an interview with Francoise Mouly, art director of The New Yorker, speaking about the multi-part cover of the Money Issue from this month, October 12, 2009.  The 3-part cover begins with Dan Clowes, who created the image of a wealthy woman ordering a hamburger, which inspired Zohar Lazar's illustration of the woman carrying the fast food to her chaffeur-driven car, and then, finally, Mark Ulriksen's idea of depicting a poodle being fed the burger.  Ulriksen notes that by his ending image, "You realize that some things never change for certain people." 

Image Credit: Dan Clowes for The New Yorker

Via The New Yorker

The three illustrators as Mouly says, "give multiple points of view," the second two illustrations acting as points of departure from the initial image.  The interesting thing is that this is the first time that the magazine has done a multi-part cover. The difference in seeing Clowes' image in isolation, as opposed to seeing the developing argument, points out the way magazine covers usually make more-or-less a singular claim, acting as a larger representative symbol for the texts that will follow. But the unusual 3-fold sequence here allows for interventions on the predominant signifier. In the video, Clowes, Lazar, and Ulriksen give their comments, as well as Mouly's narration. Mouly has a previous book on the subject of cover art called Covering the New Yorker:  Cutting Edge Covers from a Literary Institution.   

Image Credit:  Zohar Lazar for The New Yorker

Via Zohar Lazar

I was especially drawn to Mouly (probably because of her lovely accent) but also because of the way she has surfaced her work areas with copious imagery from the previous issues but also of all kinds.  Along with the video of her next to the walls of cover art from the last century, I got the sense that The New Yorker is whole visual universe unto itself.  Nothing loosey-goosey about the iconography here; these are highly situated, self-conscious aesthetic choices.You can search the archives for the monthly covers of The New Yorker.