Harland Miller | In Shadows I Boogie

Harland Miller | In Shadows I Boogie
Publisher: Phaidon Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781838663100
Number of pages: 314
Dimensions: 320 x 230 x 33 mm
Edition: Revised edition

Harland Miller | In Shadows I Boogie. The most comprehensive monograph to date on the British artist and writer loved for his witty book-cover-inspired canvases, now updated with forty of his latest works

Harland Miller’s creativity as both artist and writer culminates in his iconic paintings of battered book covers with cleverly invented titles. Initially appropriating the classic Penguin paperback before devising his own unique designs, Miller combines aspects of pop art, abstraction, and figurative painting to create highly coveted artworks that have won him a cult following.

This monograph covers nearly twenty years of his paintings, and features specially commissioned essays by eminent art writers exploring different aspects of his practice and has been updated with forty of his latest works.

Yorkshire-born Harland Miller has exhibited at ICA, White Cube, and Royal Academy in London; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; and Kunsthalle, Mannheim, and Blain Southern, Berlin.

Michael Bracewell is a British novelist, critic, curator, and cultural commentator.

Martin Herbert is a Berlin-based writer and critic.

Catherine Ince is senior curator for V&A East, and was previously curator at the Barbican, London.

Harland Miller

Writer and artist Harland Miller (born 1964) is known for his large-scale, playful re-workings of Penguin book covers. He explores the relationship between words and images and the process of producing meaning—in his paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works. Interested in canonical authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway and drawing influence from Ed Ruscha, Mark Rothko, Anselm Kiefer, and Robert Rauschenberg, Miller pointedly combines text and images to comment on the frequent disconnect between representation and reality.

In 2001 Miller produced a series of paintings based of the dust jackets of Penguin books and found a way to marry aspects of Pop Art, abstraction and figurative painting with his writer’s love of text. “I remember my parents’ Penguin books. For me, they are about nostalgia for a by-gone era – that musty smell, those coffee-mug rings, the often heart-breaking inscriptions on the inside cover.” Miller has lived and worked in New York, Berlin and Paris. Born in the North of England in 1964, Miller’s fondness for the drizzle and grimness of those northern towns remains a strong theme in his work. “I suppose mine is a very English sense of humour,” he says.

Harland Miller was born in Yorkshire in 1964 and lives in London. Group exhibitions include Royal Academy, London (2006, 2005), Kunsthalle, Mannheim (2004) and the ICA, London (1996).