Art and Design Projects Inspired by Literary Classics by Maria Popova

From James Joyce to Jonah, or what the Brontë Sisters’ objectification of men has to do with Holden Caulfield.

Art inspires art, often crossing boundary lines in magnificent cross-disciplinary manifestations. As a lover of remix culture and a hopeless bookworm, I revel in the cross-pollination of visual art and literature. Here are five wonderful art and design projects, inspired by literary classics.

WAKE IN PROGRESS

In February of 2010, Paris-based designer and illustrator Stephen Crowe set out on an ambitious project — to not only read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, considered one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language, but to also illustrate it. The result is a creative feat    and yet entirely its own and entirely terrific.

First Line

Page 22

Page 25

Page 75

Page 76

Page 79: Kate Strong, a widow

Nothing that appears in Finnegans Wake is ever just one thing. How exactly do you draw a talking fox which is also a mouse, one of two arguing brothers, a pope, and modernist author Wyndham Lewis?” ~ Stephen Crowe