J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy has had an enor­mous­ly wide, cross-cul­tur­al appeal. This despite the fact that its cre­ator was a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of a long-dead lan­guage, Anglo-Sax­on, who set his sto­ry in a world of cus­toms and mores—supernatural ele­ments aside—that bear a fair­ly close resem­blance to ancient and medieval Eng­land. But such sim­i­lar­ly provin­cial set­tings have raised no bar­ri­ers to the glob­al reach of the Ili­ad, say, or Shake­speare. West­ern epics, ancient and mod­ern, may on the one hand have trav­eled the globe on waves of cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism (and Hol­ly­wood film), and, on the oth­er, they have their own built-in glob­al reach because they tap into arche­typ­al sto­ry-types and human characteristics—because their use of myth and folk­lore reads as uni­ver­sal, though the par­tic­u­lars change from place to place and age to age.

The mul­ti­lin­gual among us have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see how well, or not, great sto­ries trans­late into dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts. Read­ers, for exam­ple, of both Chi­nese and Eng­lish will be able to com­pare Tolkien’s orig­i­nals with forth­com­ing edi­tions of the books from Wen­Jing Pub­lish­ing. The rest of us provin­cial mono­lin­guals can still make com­par­isons of visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the text, like these pos­si­ble book cov­ers drawn by artist Jian Guo. Part of a com­pe­ti­tion held by the pub­lish­er of the new Chi­nese text, the beau­ti­ful, mono­chro­mat­ic illus­tra­tions draw on many of the design ele­ments of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal paint­ings for the trilogy’s cov­ers, elab­o­rat­ing on the icon­ic ring and tow­ers with intri­cate Asian lines and flour­ish­es. At the top, see The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, above The Two Tow­ers, and below, The Return of the King.

The artist, an archi­tec­tur­al stu­dent, describes his style as “glass paint­ing style,” which he uses for its “sense of reli­gious mag­nif­i­cence.” Inter­est­ing­ly, before see­ing Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adap­ta­tion in 2002, he had nev­er heard of the books. (Pre­vi­ous Chi­nese trans­la­tions of the books fea­ture rather unimag­i­na­tive cov­ers with images from Jackson’s movies.) The films con­vert­ed him into an avid read­er of Tolkien—see a Hob­bit illus­tra­tion at the bot­tom of the post. Jian is also a lover of J.K. Rowling’s pop­u­lar fan­ta­sy series and has designed some won­der­ful­ly styl­ized illus­tra­tions for Har­ry Pot­ter and the Cham­ber of Secrets and Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

via Tor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Illus­tra­tions of The Lord of the Rings in Russ­ian Iconog­ra­phy Style (1993)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ralph Stead­man is best known as the artist who real­ized the gonzo vision of Hunter S. Thomp­son in illus­tra­tions for the latter’s books and arti­cles (and more recent­ly, per­haps, for the labels on Colorado’s Fly­ing Dog brew). His work has famous­ly appeared over the past sev­er­al decades in Punch, Pri­vate Eye, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and he pro­duced a bril­liant­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Alice in Won­der­land. Like his friend Ger­ald Scarfe, anoth­er wicked­ly satir­i­cal car­toon­ist who cre­at­ed the look of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Stead­man has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the look of the coun­ter­cul­ture.

But while Steadman’s work with Hunter Thomp­son may large­ly define his career, anoth­er notable col­lab­o­ra­tion with a lit­er­ary fig­ure, William S. Bur­roughs, also proved fruit­ful many years lat­er. In 1995, Stead­man brought togeth­er his own illus­tra­tions with Bur­roughs love of guns, ask­ing the octo­ge­nar­i­an writer to blast holes in orig­i­nal Stead­man cre­ations.

Some of these paint­ings fea­ture the Polaroid por­traits of Bur­roughs above and at the top of the post (see a result­ing Steadman/Burroughs silkscreen print, with gun­shot holes, here). Just above, you can see Stead­man tak­ing the pho­tos. First, he makes some test shots with an assis­tant, then, at 2:50, we see him with Bur­roughs and an entourage. As The Inde­pen­dent described the meet­ing at Bur­roughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas, it was some­thing of a “con­trived event,” with “swarms of assis­tants” and “acolytes” in atten­dance, “tap­ing the whole thing on video.”

Luck­i­ly for us, I’d say. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we don’t seem to have video from lat­er in the day, when the group drove “out to Burrough’s friends place out­side town, where he does his shoot­ing.” Once there, “Bur­roughs, Stead­man and his wife Anna and Bur­roughs’ entourage take turns blaz­ing away with .33s, .45s, pump-action shot­guns and Sat­ur­day-night spe­cials at a vari­ety of tar­gets,” includ­ing Steadman’s art. That would be some­thing to see. We’ll have to set­tle for the art itself, and Steadman’s fas­ci­nat­ing demon­stra­tion below of his approach to por­trai­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness