Brooks Hansen's favorite books featuring designers of the dreamscape

Blake was the unwitting father of many things—among them, illustration as we have come to know it.

He was (metaphorically speaking) a sport (botanically speaking) an unprecedented visionary in both word and image. For the best of his illustrations, or "illuminations" as he called them, you might want to look at The Book of Job and ask yourself where the authority of these images and imagery comes from.

As far as his texts go, my favorite is probably The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, mostly because of a section called “Proverbs from Hell.” (He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.) Never before or since have wisdom and subversion sung together in such harmony.  

I’ve always had a weak spot for etchings and engravings.

My mother was a woodcut artist, and I suspect that in some prior life, parallel universe, or retirement plan, I am an etcher, even though certain of the techniques baffle me. The value of the medium is both aesthetic—to pronounce exactly—but also practical—to allow for copies.

Either way, and especially in the case of Doré, the effect is to cement the image, and in this way to do a kind of terrible thing, when you think about it: to rob Dante’s image from the reader’s imagination, to define what an angel looks like, or a storm, or the contours of heaven and hell.

So should we curse an artist like Doré, for having come between us and the poem, or do we thank him, for preserving it more indelibly than the words alone ever could?

Compared to the other recommendations here, this one is a bit of a cheat, being a collection. But it does well to cover a whole swath of artists from what’s come to be called the "Golden Age" of illustration: Parrish, Dulac, Rackham, J.W. Smith, Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and more.

What is it that distinguishes them as a "school"? The material, first–vivid, classic tales of action and adventure. But there are certain shared aesthetic values as well. Colors that glow in juxtaposition, and (again) an open embrace of the line as a way of pronouncing and demarcating edges. False, but also clarifying. A little like the piano. Or any word you choose. 

This is not a book. It’s the 8th installment of a magazine series on illustrators, a labor of love put together by David Saunders.

This edition features the work of one Hugh J. Ward, a student of Wyeth’s who, for having come a generation late, missed out on all the Ivanhos and Robin Hoods and Arabian Nights. He therefore had to ply his craft painting hilariously problematical pulp fiction covers, featuring hooligans, turbaned Arabs, apes, and almost always women in torn clothing.

Do these images populate our dreams? I hope not, and I’m not sure whether my fascination with Ward’s work is a measure of my sympathy, my admiration, or my moral delinquency, but the man could flat-out paint. If you ever wondered, "What if Albert Zorn had had to hustle for a living?", here’s your answer. 

And then there are the illustrators who were finally allowed to generate their own material.

Jean Giraud was the visionary behind the famously unfinished Jodorowsky Dune movie, but also Blade Runner, Alien, Tron, and The Fifth Element. All these and more were based upon drawings and comics by Giraud.

Whether he has inscribed our minds or read them, it’s clear to anyone who glances in the direction of his later work—especially those titles credited to "Moebius"—he lived rent-free in some corner of the collective imagination.

He is also said to be one of those artists who drew without apparent hesitation or forethought. That is, in practice, he appeared to be more of a transmitter than a creator. As with all the best.