Gazing back into the static world
The wonderment of the still image and the talent of Paul Lehr
Not long ago, the best images in the world didn’t move.
Pictures did move on television, snowy, lineated, and ephemeral. They moved better at the movie theater when you had the money, and mom let you go as long as it wasn’t rated R. Other than that, images of beauty, wonder, horror and love were static. There were no on-demand videos of the Louvre or the Uffizi, or of the Sistine Chapel, or of Angkor Wat or the Acropolis. You had to wait and catch a documentary on PBS (see TV quality above). “On demand” meant on paper. The world’s history and art were on paper alone, essentially.
I was struggling the other day with this question: what art, if any, influenced me as a kid? I wish that the paintings of Michelangelo and Botticelli had been inspirations. But no. In the 1970s, heavy art books were nothing a kid wanted and they were expensive. My great-grandmother was a prolific oil painter as were my two aunts. But their folksy landscapes were not an influence.
I nearly gave up this inquiry.
But then I remembered. There was some art that moved me, even scared me: The covers of paperback science fiction books.
A paperback in those days were two things: words and a cover painted by a hugely talented and underpaid artist that no one knew.
The first two books I remember owning were “Planets for Sale” and “Dolphin Island.” Both are unremarkable books, but their covers are branded into my prepubescent mind. Until recently, I did not know who painted their covers.
Paul Lehr painted them. Mr. Lehr illustrated hundreds of books and painted thousands of pictures. His mind was so imaginative, his hands so prolific, his work so evocative that publishers would buy his paintings in advance just to have them on hand. When a new book arrived, they would already have a “Lehr” that would relate in some way.
I read Dolphin Island in the 7th grade. I was captivated by the story, but I also gazed into the mesmerizing Lehr picture every day for weeks. Mr. Lehr did that to people. His cover paintings rarely described the book but somehow evoked the spirit of the contents. Thus his work was a story, the first story, before you read the second one within.
This was the case with Dolphin Island. What are those swimmers doing? That thing behind them must be an underwater shelter, and not a creature or they would have SCUBA on; they must be returning to it for air. Or is it a benevolent creature? This cover scene is NOT in the book. This is how I was introduced to Mr. Paul Lehr as a 12-year-old, but I didn’t know his name.
Later in high school, when challenged by a reading-fiend friend (I don’t like Heinlein much), I bought Starship Troopers. The cover of my used copy was a Lehr painting unrelated to the story. The painting is of big, bug eyed things, obviously military spaceships, not enemy bugs. The distant horizon glows with the fire of a bombardment. The ships are in formation, perhaps loading infantry. All this is not in the book and yet all of it is. This is another “stock” Lehr painting used for a later edition of Starship Troopers. I still stare at it. I wish I had a life-size print.
Between 1965 and 1980 a large percentage of science fiction books had Lehr covers. It was as though Mr. Lehr’s evocative work had become the standard.
I cannot remember the exact painting that frightened me as a kid, but many of his paintings did and still do, like the one below. Mr. Lehr often painted a magnificent urban future receiving a Biblical cataclysm. His scenes are rarely personal. The victims are not painted, but we know they are there, screaming, dying. Nuclear war was a very real thing to me as a kid and to Mr. Lehr, no doubt. Mr. Lehr could paint holocaust and wonder, disaster and beauty, at the same time.
Before the 1990s, one could rarely see mayhem in motion, and never on demand. Mayhem was photographed before, during or after with film cameras. Mr. Lehr seemed to understand this and was able to paint all three phases at the same time. A Lehr painting invites the mind to makes its own story: Who is on that tugboat? Where are they going? Are those human cities or are they invaders? They look peaceful. Why did that building explode?
As a man of a more respectful generation, Mr. Lehr never, as far as I know, painted intending to titillate or disgust as H.R. Giger and others did in the 1970s. There was vestigial hope in Mr. Lehr’s work. When he painted destruction, it was an awe-full, beautiful destruction. Atmospheric, but not often not bleak. A Lehr book cover is mood lighting for the mind before it enters the world of the author. Still acrylic paint on masonite; dry as stone. But Mr. Lehr could endow his paintings with a range of motion: explosions, failing spacecraft, a mob marching or a simple tug boat. The picture is moving.
Sadly, this great American illustrator, Paul Lehr, does not have an English language Wikipedia page. There is a very short and inadequate one in Dutch. He does, however, have many fans and several websites have good articles about him. One tribute is even on Substack: Adam Rowe’s Retro Sci Fi Art. Mr. Lehr’s daughter and some admiring filmmakers are producing a documentary of his life. See the trailer HERE.
I close in praise of the dendritic quality of inquiry. My self inquiry about art provoked my memory of sci-fi book covers which led to Paul Lehr, which has reinvigorated my love of his work. AND THAT has forced me to remember that I gave away all my old books in a stupid de-hoarding frenzy years ago and some books are now fetching $5 to $100 per paperback on some sites. Inquiry is an a-hole sometimes!
The best images in the world still don’t move.
Enjoy the Lehr paintings set to Chopin in the video:
They are haunting, and mesmerizing. These are pretty elevated artistic taste for a tween. My verson of "art" in those days was Archie comics (or sometimes Superman in the sci-fi realm).
This was a fascinating dive into the inspirations of your childhood. It’s a shame concept artists like Lehr are disappearing thanks to generative AI. Some publishers and game companies that used to employ dozens of these artists now just have a prompt engineer... anyways. Really enjoyed this one Harry. What Sci-fi author left the biggest impression on you?