cover image The World of Richard Stine

The World of Richard Stine

Richard Stine. Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, $29.95 (140pp) ISBN 978-1-55670-375-1

At once whimsical and philosophical, conceptualist and cartoonish, Stine's delightfully irresistible art unlocks the heart's unspoken desires and pries open the mind's devious recesses. Stine-who operates PAL Press, a line of greeting cards, from his island home in Seattle and is the author-illustrator of Off to Sea-in this new compilation splices greeting-card art, vibrant paintings, sketchbook pages, excerpts from letters and notebook jottings. Although his writings tend toward simplistic feel-good psychobabble, his witty, startling pictures, many melding words and images, score quick points with ironic humor on love, hope, friendship, aspiration, creativity, the inevitability of change and the psychic barriers we erect to shield ourselves from reality and other people. Ideograms of the human condition, his work often calls to mind the art of Saul Steinberg but is more populist. BOMC selection. (Oct.)