Chris Foss
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christopher Foss (born 1946) is a British illustrator and science fiction artist, best known for his science fiction book covers and the illustrations for the original editions of The Joy of Sex.
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[edit] Science-fiction illustrations
His evocative science fiction book covers pioneered a much-imitated style featuring vast, colourful spaceships, machines and cities, often marked with mysterious symbols. Human figures are (almost always) totally absent. These images are suggestive of science fiction in general rather than depictions of specific scenes from books, and therefore can be -- and have been -- used interchangeably on book covers. During the 1970s, Foss's images of future technology had the same iconic "definitive" quality that H.R. Giger's would have in terms of depictions of alien or future life forms.
Books featuring Foss illustrations include the 1970s British paperback covers for Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, the Terran Trade Authority, and E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series. Some of the art he did produce was specific to the stories and some examples of this are the covers he did for the Grafton publications of the Demon Princes novels by Jack Vance in the late 1980's, Star King, The Killing Machine, The Palace of Love, The Face and The Book of Dreams.
In 1975 Foss was hired by director Alejandro Jodorowsky for an intended film version of the science-fiction novel Dune by author Frank Herbert. He delivered several conceptual studies published in the book 21st Century Foss, ISBN 90-6332-571-1, containing a foreword by Jodorowsky. The project failed. In 1977 Foss worked for several month on studies for the movie Alien (not being used in the movie) and also did some designs of the planet Krypton for the movie Superman. Some of his crystal structures for the planet were realised in the movie, although they were used as ice-structures.
During this period Chris Foss illustrated the sleeve of the album Clear Air Turbulence for the Ian Gillan Band.
Chris Foss also released a book that was vague in many of the details of its production called Diary of a Spaceperson, published by 'Paper Tiger' (ISBN 1-85028-049-5).It has a copyright date of 1990. It is obviously a tome of his work, to date. However there is no way of knowing what that date is, which in some way provides some potency to the story within, as it is stated in the forward page that "the contents of the book are extracts of a ‘spaceperson's diary’ and are duplicated within", and ‘that the dates published within are of no meaning’. This gives the book a 'lost and found feel'. Making it timeless in a sense, much like his work.
Although there is a vast number of his paintings within the book, hardly a large percentage of what he has produced is featured, and the diary text itself, (fictional of course), also bears little connection to the paintings, except in some contrived ways. There is also no mention of the actual or original titles for any of the featured artworks, but many have been seen on the covers of authors' science fiction.
It also features many sketches in various states of completion, some of which are seen completed and painted in other parts of the book. This can be illuminating of his techniques. In fact only some of the images, all of which feature architecture and craft, are rendered in paint, the rest of the works are nudes and sketches of women.
However there is sometimes a difficulty in seeing if these nudes and portraits are actually the work of Foss. This is due in some way to such a diverse difference and lack of refinement of the pencil sketches as compared to the completely awesome airbrushed masterpieces, with their grand scale and brilliant colour.
However, in some of the sketches there are enough of his trademark features to give away the fact that they are his work, some are shaded, some are hatched, and some are simply line drawings, there is one on the rear cover that is coloured and inked, but is featured in greyscale within the book. The women are beautiful, and very naturally rendered and are tastefully posed and illustrated, most of them are scantily clad, some are completely nude, and some are in evocative poses.
Painter Glenn Brown has appropriated individual space scene paintings by Foss and in the one case copying and altering it (Exercise One (for Ian Curtis), 1995) and in the other, leaving it entirely unchanged (Dark Angel (for Ian Curtis), 2002). The titles of these works reference the vocalist of the band Joy Division, who died by his own hand.
[edit] The Joy of Sex
In contrast, Foss's numerous illustrations for the sex manual The Joy of Sex are done in a much softer, natural style. The illustrations were based on original photographs of the book's art director and his wife. The illustrations have since become somewhat dated, mainly because of changes in hairstyles.
[edit] Official Website
The official Chris Foss website was launched in 2005, in conjunction with a web forum where the artist himself was apparently going to participate. Whilst the forum has seen a small amount of activity, the artist has not participated on the board since its inception and is not an active forum member. Dissapointingly, the promise that original works would be made available for purchase has yet to eventuate (as of May 2006).
