Titan's Drew Struzan collections
Drew Struzan: Oeuvre
The Art Of Drew Struzan
(2010/2011 - Titan Books) 
Oeuvre (2011 (preceeded in 2004 by Dreamwave) There must be some interesting story around the two significantly different editions of this book, the original one from 2004 by Dreamwave and the later 2011 one from Titan Books. First, let me make sure to register right here at the top, that the Titan 314-page edition is superior in regards to presentation. It is a 9-by-12-inch tome that is a bit too big, but it does open flat, allowing an amazing 31 double-page-spreads to present acceptably. Another 180 pages present a single image as either a full-bleed or backgrounded in some pastel or cream color. Then there are 23 more pieces that seem to work best on a standard white background and then only six pages with two images side by side. It has three fold-out pages (as do the other editions) that aren't bad, but that isn't an effective presentation strategy in an artbook, in my opinion. 11 pages are given over to captioning the works, including title, size, medium and how the work was first used. Be aware that the works are referenced by page number and are in that order, but only about a third of the pages are actually numbered. What I especially liked was that they moved the copyright information out of the captioning and instead concentrated them on another three pages. A majority of the work is art for his movie posters. There's a great sampling of personal pieces and art for book covers, music album covers & collector's plates. Now let's talk about the original edition - it has the even more unwieldly dimensions of 10-by-14-inches, but you may want to have it in your collection too. Yes, it is missing 61 full-page images that are in the Titan edition, but it then presents 48 new ones, along with another 16 new images on half-pages. I say both books may be desired because the 60-ish images that each has, that the other doesn't, probably aren't going to be collected anywhere else.
The Art Of Drew Struzan (2010) It scores lower than both of the recommended OEUVRE editions, but all the same, this book is special. 160 pages of which 66 are single-page, large reproductions of Struzan's work, mostly intended for movie posters and admittedly 30-odd of those would be repeat images from the better books, but it is in those other pages, including 79 more with multiple images, where the specialness lies. On them is all the artwork for posters that did not come to be - different takes on familiar subjects, paintings for film companies that decided not to utilize them for promotion, privately commissioned works engendered by certain projects and hundreds of Struzan's compositional drawings showing different use of the same themes seen in the finished posters, as well as completely different interpretations. Many of those 'comps' were taken on to the painting phase and are presented in color here. The text is an introduction and anecdotes about the featured 40 film projects as well as one set of photos showing how one painting was carved up and re-created into the form that studio-execs were demanding. Anyway, this wealth of unseen artwork will drive Struzan fans to want to add this to their collections.
Related Books
The Movie Posters Of Drew Struzan
more movie-poster madness
Reynold Brown - A Life In Pictures
The Movie Posters Of Drew Struzan
Graphic Thrills - American XXX Movie Posters 1970 to 1985 vols.1 & 2
other Titan releases
Empyrean - The Art Of Stephen Hickman
Tarzan - The Centennial Celebration
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