I think a lot about how some things that live in the realm of human imagination – like characters in a book – can sometimes become fixed in our mind’s eye. One of my go-to examples is the Lord of the Rings. I had very different pictures of the characters in my head, informed by lots of different things, that were overwritten by the visual power and popular embrace of the Peter Jackson films. I think of it as a kind of fossilization, where something of vast possibility is turned into something unchanging. It kind of bums me out.
I got David Day’s Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (1992) for Christmas in the mid-90s. It is essentially an expanded, re-organized version of Day’s Bestiary (some of that book’s art graces these pages) and is, for my money, the best encapsulation of Tolkien’s Middle Earth in print.
Even back then, Angus McBride’s MERP paintings, the animated films and Alan Lee’s illustrations were influencing the way I pictured Middle Earth. The art in this book took a sledgehammer to that. I lost my original copy along the way, then the Jackson movies came out and I couldn’t think of Lord of the Rings in any other way. Then I got another copy of the Encyclopedia and the idea that there was one right way to picture Middle Earth exploded again.
Just flip through those images. Those are some radical visual interpretations, no? I love that they not only clash with my preconceptions, but with each other. I don’t even necessarily like all of the art, but I think it is really cool to have one book work so hard to challenge the idea that there is a correct way to depict Tolkien’s world. How cool would it be to have a cartoon LotR in the style of Andrew Mockett’s expressive prints? (Sauron and the balrog Gothmog)
