Image of a Ghost, paperback cover 1973

This paperback cover, “Image of a Ghost,” was made by Victor Prezio, but the date is unknown. The palette is all muted oranges, browns, and greens, but then suddenly this ghost emerges as a shaft of pale blues and white. It's like the painting is a set of instructions for how to paint a ghost. Looking at the way the spectral figure emerges from the tree, it is clear that Prezio isn’t going for photorealism. Everything is brushy and blobby and gestural. I love that this ghost is more a feeling than a form, more like a memory than a material thing. Check out the way that some of the marks describing the tree trunk are the same color as the ghost’s dress. It is as if the ghost is not just emerging from the tree, but *is* the tree, or at least made from the same stuff as the tree. It makes me think of Philip Guston, who also painted a lot of lumpy shapes in a limited color palette, but Guston’s shapes were more cartoonish and less scary. This cover is the perfect image for a scary novel, because it suggests that the line between life and death, solid and spectral, is blurry and indistinct.