The Tiki paperback cover art thread

I would like to devote this thread to the fine art of paperback cover illustration depicting Tikis and its unsung artists.

Art by Chaco, Spain 1958

Who says you can’t judge a book by its cover

[ Edited by: Mister Naufrago 2010-06-18 13:22 ]

Ha! Didn't know they had blow darts in the Marquesas ! :D

On 2010-06-18 13:31, bigbrotiki wrote:
Ha! Didn't know they had blow darts in the Marquesas ! :D

Can't blame the artist.
The original Marquesan native was quite a bore.
Poetic license was required. :)

Aaah, if it isn't Maki'i Tau'a Pepe, the Butterfly Priestess :) - I lightened her up a little ( neglecting the Southamerican Indian):

And here is a photo I took of her at the Te I'i Pona temple site on Hiva Oa:

I think it will be difficult to find many paperbacks with actual Tikis on them. But if we would agree on "Tiki-related" covers, we could put a nice thread together:

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-06-18 18:20 ]

I think it will be difficult to find many paperbacks with actual Tikis on them. But if we would agree on "Tiki-related" covers, we could put a nice thread together:

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-06-18 18:20 ]

Que raro…
Depictions of primitive art are not something uncommon in European paperback covers. That’s why I thought that there would be plentiful of Tiki imagery in its U.S. counterparts.

Dessin de Pierre Joubert, France 1963

Maybe because of its usually subdued depiction of sex and violence by censorship requirements, the artists turned to primitive art for shocking value.

And on the "Tiki related" side...

Cover art by Alvaro, Spain 1965

I see the mutant from This Island Earth

wow, love those last few covers! Here's one I've got, no tiki on the cover though.

Hawaiian Eye paperback. Cover illustration by Harry Bennett - 1962.

Front

Back

Yessss, very nice, Kate. Here is another fave South Seas cover of mine:

That author wrote nautical adventure stories with titles like Castaway and Ports of Call, but not all had such cool covers. There is ONE paperback of his with a Moai on the cover, in the classic "half-face" style that was used on album covers like Ritual of the Savage and Hawaiian Eye (and then on the BOT), but I don't have the image, nor can I remember the title. Anybody here has it?

[ Edited by: grog 2010-06-20 15:41 ]

On 2010-06-18 15:49, Mister Naufrago wrote:

On 2010-06-18 13:31, bigbrotiki wrote:
Ha! Didn't know they had blow darts in the Marquesas ! :D

Can't blame the artist.
The original Marquesan native was quite a bore.
Poetic license was required. :)

Nice.

Of course, Aku Aku must be listed:

Grog start drinking BEFORE Tonga Hut event already? :D

On 2010-06-18 15:49, Mister Naufrago wrote:

On 2010-06-18 13:31, bigbrotiki wrote:
Ha! Didn't know they had blow darts in the Marquesas ! :D

Can't blame the artist.
The original Marquesan native was quite a bore.
Poetic license was required. :)

That picture on the right was originally posted by me on the "Mondo Tiki - Shocking pictures of real Tikis !!!" thread http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=31680&forum=1&hilite=mondo#fresh
It's from my files and it would be nice if you would give me the credit for it.

Aloha

On 2010-06-20 15:39, Zeta wrote:

On 2010-06-18 15:49, Mister Naufrago wrote:

On 2010-06-18 13:31, bigbrotiki wrote:
Ha! Didn't know they had blow darts in the Marquesas ! :D

Can't blame the artist.
The original Marquesan native was quite a bore.
Poetic license was required. :)

That picture on the right was originally posted by me on the "Mondo Tiki - Shocking pictures of real Tikis !!!" thread http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=31680&forum=1&hilite=mondo#fresh
It's from my files and it would be nice if you would give me the credit for it.

Aloha

Sorry Zeta. No offense intended.
I must confess my utter ignorance of TC Uploaded Images Credit Protocol. :)

OK. I’m guilty of saving some images I come across on the Internet and forgetting where every image came from.
But you know, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”

Since the image is from and old and unrelated thread I hope you’ll understand that there is no "animus vulnerandi"
If you are sensitive about this issue, maybe you should watermark your uploaded images (but I´m not sure if this is OK with copyrighted or even public domain stuff).
You better ask a lawyer :)

On 2010-06-19 20:07, martian-tiki wrote:

I see the mutant from This Island Earth

Martian Tiki, this thread is about Tikik paperbacks

But we can stay on topic and keep watching the skies.

Zeta, I do remember your theory about the Atlantes Toltecas. :)

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=31441&forum=1&vpost=436627&hilite=TOLTEC

[ Edited by: Mister Naufrago 2013-04-16 01:14 ]

I had posted this once upon a time in Tiki Finds - just wanted to show how the Hawaiian Eye novel looks fully open:

OK kids, d'ya think that after we managed to fill the whole first page of this once promising thread by posting the same image 7 times, we can contribute some NEW content !? :lol:

We want eye candy. Like this.... Michener:

"Return..." even has two nice back cover illous:

I used all the covers above in my publications because they illustrated certain aspects of the Polynesian pop esthetic or history

Melville:

Notice that even when the Island Adventures were not taking place in THE islands of Polynesia (like the above in the Galapagos Islands), Polynesian pop icons were used

Conrad:

The above is another fave of mine, and will be used some day.

Last not least, some boobage:

Girl, Mask, Drum, Voodoo = 'Tiki' in my book (no pun intended)

Certainly one of the classic covers that belongs in this thread, here my musings to its origin:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=34744&forum=1&vpost=499597

Here's a few:

[ Edited by: Trader Tom 2010-06-21 13:44 ]

Nice covers Tom.
Lovin this thread so far!

Wow! Now we're talking! GREAT stuff!

Thanks! I wanna know more about "Long Pig" -the novel! ...and "Steak's Off Luv" !!? What the hey is up with that !!! Maybe there really was a "Steak Island" (Tiki Modern p. 247)

great covers bigbro! Here is my favorite Michener cover for obvious reasons....

wow...this is a great thread..plenty of things I've never seen before!

Here's a couple of images. The first is another cover for the Conrad novel that Sven posted earlier. You can almost hear Mick Jagger singing Under My Thumb in the background.

Following that is a poster for the film adaptation. I'm not sure if it's a feminist re-interpretation or if Kerima was JUST that hot...

How 'bout this one?

*I've just realized how bad this photo is compared to all the others. I'll fix that...

[ Edited by: Brandomoai 2010-06-21 22:27 ]

Here ya go.

[ Edited by: GROG 2010-06-22 01:35 ]

How come when GROG post pictures they don't come out as big as the others? GROG tried changing the size, the DPI, etc. and the above size is as big as it would get. What's up with that?

GROG was going to start a thread "The Hula Girl in Art", but now GROG worried about having too much overlap with this thread.

[ Edited by: GROG 2010-06-22 05:43 ]

Wow! Whatta thread!

Thanks for starting it.

Mondo Wahine

I love the Carter Brown covers!

Here's another pulp cover for you. I guess this is why you always keep your eyes on the hands!

New York, NY, Original Novels, 1952. Back cover copy reads: "She was as Lovely as a Dark-Hued Orchid, Exotic as the Jungle, Nude as a Flame."

On 2010-06-18 13:21, Mister Naufrago wrote:
I would like to devote this thread to the fine art of paperback cover illustration depicting Tikis and its unsung artists.

So far there are only a couple of book covers posted here that actually HAVE Tikis on them. Mostly there are covers with Hula Girls (which were supposed to be saved for the "Hula Girl in Art" thread GROG going to start). If it doesn't have a Tiki on it, can it really be called Tiki? So, here's an actual a paperback with a Tiki ON it.

But Sir Grog, that's why I wrote in post # 4 of this thread:

On 2010-06-18 18:19, bigbrotiki wrote:
I think it will be difficult to find many paperbacks with actual Tikis on them. But if we would agree on "Tiki-related" covers, we could put a nice thread together:

...opening it up to a wonderful horn of plenty of Wahine imagery.

And that ain't no Tiki either, that's a Pre-Columbian thang...just another example of Tiki confusion.
I think that the American paperback illustrator's world was sadly bereft of Tiki imagery, so there isn't much out there.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-06-23 08:33 ]

Then maybe we should post this same picture over and over of a bookcover with a Tiki on it like everybody did on page one of this thread. :)

GROG get rid of offending blowdart gun, because everybody know they not have blowdart guns in the Marquesas.

GROG
Get better soon Tiki-Kate and Marie.

[ Edited by: GROG 2010-06-23 09:39 ]

The reason WHY there was so little Tiki in paperback art is, I believe, not that the artists weren't into primitive art or Polynesian sculpture, but that the publishers went by one simple truth: Sex Sells! Just reading all the lurid sub-headers makes that obvious.

Which does NOT explain why there were not more covers exploiting the Yin and Yang tension of the Wahine/Tiki combination. :)

Which brings me back to my earlier, un-answered request, for which I still harbor some faint hope

On 2010-06-20 11:24, bigbrotiki wrote:
That author ROBERT CARSE wrote nautical adventure stories with titles like Castaway and Ports of Call, but not all had such cool covers. There is ONE paperback of his with a Moai on the cover, in the classic "half-face" style that was used on album covers like Ritual of the Savage and Hawaiian Eye (and then on the BOT), but I don't have the image, nor can I remember the title. Anybody here has it?

Here is ONE cover, which I used in my "Sound of Tiki" CD booklet, that clearly has a Tiki on it. But it's not a paperback, it's a book club hardcover first edition, predating the golden age of paperback illustrations.

That Tiki kind of reminds me of the Trader Vic's Maori logo Tiki, but this cover was made before the Trader used it. The facial features could be African, too. The whole cover (is that the eye of an ape?) has very little to do with the novel, as far as I can tell. I tried to find out how the illustrator came (Walter H. Lorraine) up with this great image, but got nowhere.

[ Edited by: GROG 2010-06-23 12:43 ]

Nice...some seem more Exotica-related, (and the "Enchanted Oasis" cover looks more like Palm Springs-related), but all in all a fine addition to this thread. And again not a Tiki in sight.

On 2010-06-23 09:24, bigbrotiki wrote:
The reason WHY there was so little Tiki in paperback art is, I believe, not that the artists weren't into primitive art or Polynesian sculpture, but that the publishers went by one simple truth: Sex Sells! Just reading all the lurid sub-headers makes that obvious.

Exacto.

Most of the Tiki covers I`ve posted are not from adult paperbacks but "young readers" oriented literature (for those days standards)and probably Tiki seemed a suitable subject matter.
Or maybe French publishers don't believe in the "sex sells" axiom. :)

Nevertheless some of its artists and authors like Henri Vernes sure were into primitive art.

Here is one I am reading I got from the library

kk

[ Edited by: Kamaina Kraig 2010-06-23 14:20 ]

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2010-06-23 14:28 ]

On 2010-06-22 01:43, GROG wrote:
How come when GROG post pictures they don't come out as big as the others? GROG tried changing the size, the DPI, etc. and the above size is as big as it would get. What's up with that?

You'd think GROG would be used to finding his was smaller than everyone else's... images. GROG should try a service like Flickr, Shutterfly, or Photobucket to hold his images.

GROG was going to start a thread "The Hula Girl in Art", but now GROG worried about having too much overlap with this thread.

Go right ahead and start it, I won't stop you.

On 2010-06-23 14:26, JOHN-O wrote:

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2010-06-23 14:28 ]

Ay!, that's a flashback.
Anyone old enough to remember this Miriam Linna´s zine?

My introduction to the Vin Saxon and the sleazy paperbacks world.

Back to topic. Les sept croix de plomb.
Same book, different Tiki

another cover version of the book above

Cool thread....found these two to add to the collection....