Richard Powers Art Blog: Fold, Spindle, and Mutilate...

Powers was notorious for re-purposing his art. He had no attachment to much of his commercial art and would regularly pull older art and slice it up for "raw materials" to be used in other images, much to the horror of his reps (like Jane Frank). Powers would merrily destroy the old to create the new, despite pleadings to cease and desist!

There have been many times I have marveled at a particular cover he did, only to discover he had later pillaged it to create another cover... it was gone forever. Although it is easy to mourn the many classic covers that Powers destroyed in his creative process, it is a fascinating glimpse at the man and his art (and it is a fun game to find and associate his cannibalized works).

Get Out of My Sky
Here Powers cut elements from the back of the wrap-around cover of Get Out of My Sky to include in Tiger by The Tail. Does the front cover portion still exist? Possibly, as we will see in the next example.

From Richard Powers Art Blog

The Undying Fire

Powers was evidently bothered by the constraints of compositions inherent in wrap-around covers (or covers in general that must allow room for text). He felt some of his commercial works had merit but needed cropping, so he might keep the front cover portion (for example) and cut off the back cover. In the case of The Undying Fire, Powers kept the front cover portion (which exist today), but cannibalized the rear cover portion.

From Richard Powers Art Blog

Lambda 1

Unfortunately THREE classic covers gave there lives for Lambda 1.

Sad but true : (

From Richard Powers Art Blog

Maze of Death

Here Powers actually jumps genres, taking one his mystery covers and turning it into a SF cover. This is one instance where I actually don't mind. However, I have a bad feeling a few other works were mutilated for the other elements we see in Maze of Death.