On Me Not In Me

The inspiration originates in his iconic Penguin series (2001-), which are based on dust jackets of popular Penguin classics books. Miller subverts the nostalgia and familiarity associated with the universally recognisable cover, as well as the classic literary motifs and sentiments found in titles through “hijacking” the format with his fictitious ones, often provocative and satirical. On Me Not In Me, albeit not one of the Penguin prints is clearly driven by a similar exploration of the relationship between text and image, and Miller’s clever manipulation of the background colours to his words, hereby influencing their meaning and way they will be perceived by the viewer. This way of colour-coding, also inherent to the Penguin Books themselves that are coloured based on genre, is drawing heavily on Mark Rothko and his emblematic Colour Field paintings. Rothko is one of Miller’s main artistic influences, along with Abstract Expressionists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Pop Artist like Ed Ruscha. This screen print’s rich black background decorated with gold-leaf is one of the more sophisticated examples of Miller’s famous book cover pieces, with a punchy juxtaposition of the elegance of the background to the humorous vagueness of the title.