Celestial Eyes

Celestial Eyes
Celestial Eyes
Artist	Francis Cugat
Year	1924
Medium	Oil on canvas
Movement	Art Deco
Location	Princeton University, Princeton

Celestial Eyes is a painting painted in 1924 by Spanish painter Francis Cugat and preserved at the Princeton University Library for the Grafic Arts Collection.^[1]^[2]

The Art Deco style work is the cover of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, set in the 1920s Jazz Age and considered one of the most representative novels of American literature.^[3]

The work depicts a female face of a flapper with poorly delineated contours, of which are seen only the eyes and mouth, suspended above the night sky of a city, evoking the Coney Island amusement park in New York. Inside the irises there are female nude figures and a green tint in correspondence of the left eye resembling a tear.^[4]

The iconic motif of the cover is given by its abstractness that gives it a mysterious charm and that is why it has met with many strongly conflicting opinions.^[5]

In addition, her ill-defined characters have prompted readers and critics to wonder what she may have been inspired by, with the main hypotheses pinning on Dr. Eckleburg's billboard in the Valley of Ashes or the description of Daisy, loved by the protagonist Jay Gatsby in the novel.^[6]

^ Emanuel, Dhanraj. "A Book by Its Covers". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-02-17.
^ Scribner, Charles III (Winter 1992). Celestial Eyes: From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece. Princeton University Library Chronicle. pp. 141–147.
^ F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference. New York City: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7867-0996-0, pp. 27-30
^ "Baz Luhrmann's 'Great Gatsby': Good idea?". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2024-02-12.
^ McCrum, Robert (2014-09-08). "The 100 best novels: No 51 – The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-02-12.
^ Scribner, Charles (1992). "Celestial Eyes: From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece". The Princeton University Library Chronicle. 53 (2): 141–155. doi:10.2307/26410056. ISSN 0032-8456. JSTOR 26410056.

[1] Emanuel, Dhanraj. "A Book by Its Covers". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-02-17.

[2] Scribner, Charles III (Winter 1992). Celestial Eyes: From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece. Princeton University Library Chronicle. pp. 141–147.

[3] F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference. New York City: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7867-0996-0, pp. 27-30

[4] "Baz Luhrmann's 'Great Gatsby': Good idea?". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2024-02-12.

[5] McCrum, Robert (2014-09-08). "The 100 best novels: No 51 – The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-02-12.

[6] Scribner, Charles (1992). "Celestial Eyes: From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece". The Princeton University Library Chronicle. 53 (2): 141–155. doi:10.2307/26410056. ISSN 0032-8456. JSTOR 26410056.

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