Noma Bar’s Negative Space Illustrations
By: Maria PopovaWhat hippies have to do with Wall Street, Iraq and the Little Red Riding Hood.
We’ve been longtime fans of Israeli illustrator Noma Bar, whose mastery of negative space — the space between and around the subjects of an image, which can frame another subject in and of itself — never ceases to amaze, adding a new layer of thoughtfulness to the classic figure-ground illusion of perception. As he recently redesigned a handful of Don DeLillo classics for Picador Books, we were reminded of our favorite Noma Bar classic: Negative Space — an anthology of Bar’s most compelling work from various high-profile magazines, commenting on some of today’s most pressing sociopolitical issues with the artist’s signature provocative subtlety.
A sneak peek of the book follows, but we highly recommend you indulge in its entirety — it’s a rare tapas bar of brain food and eye candy.
Beware The Wolves: Artwork for an article on older men who pursue younger women
Fat Cat: Artwork for an article on how CEOs invest their personal wealth
The Big Squeeze: Artwork for an article on the oil politics behind the Iraq war
Artwork for a piece on gun crime and violence
When Doves Cry: Mourning the loss of the hippy dream with white doves and a VW van
Thought-provoking and visually stunning, Negative Space is the kind of blend of aesthetics and ethics we’d like to see more of in the world.
Images courtesy of Creative Review
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