Something has just happened to make Clint Eastwood's day. We refer, of course, not to the fact that he was yesterday made a Commander of the French Legion of Honour in Paris by President Sarkozky, but to the publication of Clint Eastwood, Icon, a gorgeous assembly of artwork from around the world commemorating an incredibly long-lived career.
Armed with an enthusiastic and ingenuous preface by David Frangioni, the mad-keen American collector-fan whose devotion to duty over the years has made this book possible, it encompasses posters, door panels, standees (the larger-than-life-size cut-out figures that lurk in cinema lobbies). And it runs the gamut of Eastwood's career across half a century, from B-movie action-man to Oscar-winning actor/director/leathery Hollywood institution.
His international status is represented too, in territories from Japan to Poland to South America, and it's instructive to observe how the same film and same familiar visage were sold very differently from country to country. The European and American artwork for Firefox (1982), for instance, has a simple image of Clint smouldering sleekly in a helmet and black combat fatigues, while the Pakistani poster has a effervescent, primary-coloured palette and teems with zooming jet fighters, guns and explosions.
Leading poster artists such as Michelangelo Papuzza, Franz Fazetta and Peter Max are included, as are a galaxy of graphic styles. East European surrealism, American pop art, pulp fantasy, suave Gallic fashion photography: all could be, and were, pressed into service in selling this endlessly malleable, infinitely fascinating star.
- Clint Eastwood, Icon, by David Frangioni and Thomas Schatz, is published by Titan Books
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