Has anyone taken a look at this yet? -Julius _______________________________________________________ ROLLING STONE : THE ILLUSTRATED PORTRAITS Fred Woodward, editor Chronicle, $40, 218 pages Face to face: Renderings from Rolling Stone "I feel like I'm married to this guy Art," Joni Mitchell said. "I'm responsible to Art above all else." Mitchell's quote appears in tiny type next to a huge, soft-pastel portrait of her by Vivienne Flesher in "Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits." On the opposite page there's another take on Mitchell, by Gary Kelley, that shows her as a beret-wearing bohemian, all angles and cheekbones, in a cafe. The two illustrations of Mitchell show how an artist can catch something a photographer can't, some heightened, exaggerated feature or feeling that gives us a fresh look at someone we thought we knew. Sometimes the take may simply be silly -- a young Chuck Berry watches a flock of ducks walk by and gets a bright idea -- and sometimes it might be totally unexpected. Anita Kunz imagined Metallica and the Spice Girls as warring dragons; Allen Milgrom saw Bob Marley as Spiderman, swinging above the rooftops of Trenchtown. Rolling Stone is a magazine better known for its photography than its illustrations, but this book makes a strong case that it is art - - both functional art and Joni Mitchell's more serious, self- conscious Art -- that has been in the visual driver's seat all along. When you can get Ralph Steadman to draw Courtney Love as an amorphous, runny blob with a very human hand, you've done something special. If you can follow that with Leslie Cabarga's beautiful, two- page illustration of Elton John at the piano and Ward Sutton's pop- art portrait of Austin Powers, you've really got it going.
