HARLAND MILLER, WHO CARES WINS, PENGUIN PRINTS, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 25, 2016
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.
Read more about Penguin prints by Harland Miller.
ABOUT HARLAND MILLER
Harland Miller is a British writer and artist, born in Yorkshire in 1964, best known for producing a series of paintings based on Penguin book covers, including International Lonely Guy and Fuck Art Let’s Dance. Miller’s work explores the relationship between words and images. His paintings, sculptures and mix-media artworks combine the two to comment on the frequent disconnect between representation and reality. Learn more about Harland Miller.
