Who Cares Wins (red)
Who Cares Wins (red)
Signed Print
Harland Miller
Screenprint, 2014
Signed Print Edition of 50
H 138cm x W 110cm
Critical Review
Who Cares Wins shows Miller’s skill with wordplay and the artist’s more playful side within his Penguin series, based on the colourful dust jackets of popular Penguin Series and his titles characterized as “wittily deadpan, punkish and aphoristic” by novelist Michael Bracewell. The series marries Miller’s love for the written word and his artistic influences of Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism and Mark Rothko’s Colour Field paintings, resulting in a clever exploration of the relationship between text and image through subverting the familiar format of the books and inserting his own writing.
Miller was originally inspired by how the Penguin Classics were colour-coded based on genre and how that affected the perceptions of their titles, as well as using the nostalgia and anti-elitist universality associated with Penguin books to formulate clever statements of social critique. This effect is enhanced by the photorealistic rendering of the rugged original covers, serving as authentic “packaging” for the artist’s message. Who Cares Wins is one of the more positive, hopeful examples of the series, while still being slightly ironic. Miller’s choice of vibrant colours such as red and white for the background signals a more upbeat tone.
