h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Strangely, the dead guy in the bottom left corner is Jesus Christ - it's Andrea Mantegna's "The Dead Christ":

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-the-dead-christ-by-andrea-mantegna--c1480-8160310.html

What's he's doing there is anybody's guess.

'Shrooms!

The guy with the codpiece above him looks vaguely familiar too - I think he was from some other religious painting of my childhood. A "Look and Learn" magazine called "The Bible Story" comes to mind.

what's a 'codpiece'?

It's a sort of Wonder Bra for men in the Renaissance.

Also, think about Alex and his Droogs from Clockwork Orange... remember their outfits and you'll know what I'm talking about. Save you from Googling it.

(go ahead and google it. It's fairly safe if you add "blackadder" to the search as I did.)

How fascinating. I wonder if there are other borrowed images in there. To be honest, the green man always reminded me somewhat of Peter Gabriel's flower head from Supper's Ready http://humanflowerproject.com/images/uploads/genesis_petergabriel475.jpg

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That's the one

You are right, to me the guy in the codpiece also looks slightly familiar. Right at the moment I'd put him into some Dutch Renaissance painting, but I can be completely wrong.

re 45:

Thank you, Baron We call it a skamkapsel in Danish (Google translates this into shame capsule )

My feeling - of the artist unfamiliar with what she was illustrating - is growing.

Thanks also to Gnomon for pointing out Andrea Mantegna's Christ

SUCCES!

I have tracked down the artist and she has sent me a very nice reply. I have just asked to tell me a little about the details on the front cover and am waiting impatiently for her reply!

Apparently she was asked to create the cover by Storm Thorgerson, who died quite recently. He had been a fellow student at the Royal College of Art.

And I found this website while I was looking for examples of her work http://fan.theonering.net/~rolozo/cgi-bin/rolozo.cgi/collection Hundreds and hundreds of Tolkien images, some good... some not so good.

RESULT:

I just got this answer from the cover artist Jane Furst: "I have had a look on ebay and I was astonished to see many examples of the record and cove for sale and even a mug!
I can verify that the figure lying down is of Mantegna's Christ. Both hands are drawn from life from my own hand the ring was my wedding ring. The little fighting figures I think I adapted from a karate magazine. The strange plants 'Christ' is lying amongst are repeats from an Ernst Haeckel marine plant drawing. I often work from his 'Art Forms in Nature'.The landscape is a sort of simplified adaptation taken from Mantegna, Christ in the garden of Gethsemini, but not sure af title. I no longer remember where I got the figure evolving from the mountain range nor the range itself. Probably I got it from a book on landscape photographs and the bats from a natural history book but I put them into that formation.It was helpful to have a look on the computer as I no longer have a copy to hand. One may be in storage with my family.
I am so delighted to find someone interested in studying the work and you might like to know that recently a mural artist was asked to do a copy of it on a restaurant somewhere. I gave my permission very readily but can't imagine why they want to do this. All the best Jane Furst"

My conclusion is: She had never read the books and had no idea of what they contained - or maybe just didn't care. Fine with me. It means nothing to neither the books nor the music - and I like the cover anyway

Sorry, but I find that very strange.

strange? I'm finding it totally bonkers, frankly.

But it's always interesting to hear from an artist about their work.

agreed, but it's nice of her to reply and tell us about her work.

Seems like she feels very pleased to be asked about it, too!

Mantegna's Garden of Gethsemane, which she says was an inspiration for the general layout of the picture, is here:

http://thewiseguise.com/2012/07/our-generations-gethsemane/

You can see a city in the top left, a mountain with some sort of swirly air in the top right, and figures lying on the ground, although in this case, Christ is up and about, rather than being dead.

Keep in mind that Ms. Furst refers to herself as an artist, not a mere illustrator. This gives her artistic freedom (which she most certainly has made use of!)

I recently heard a singer-songwriter be very pleased to have learned that the title song she had made for a tv series actually matched the content of said series. This sounded to me but explains a lot of other title songs

Personally I would have preferred a cover somewhat closer related to the contents of the book, but I still think Jane Furst did a fairly decent job