God Creating Autumn may have been Edward Sorel's original title for what would become The New Yorker's cover of October 13, 1997. This name is being used by London's Chris Beetles Gallery in its listing of the preliminary art, Sorel's satirical take on Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam relocated to the leaf-changing season in New England. The angels have been transformed into tourists with their cameras loaded, no doubt, with color film. Beetles has been offering this one for ten years. It is priced at 1,750 pounds sterling.
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The changes that were made for the final cover are meant, I think, to serve the narrative flow. Sorel flipped the composition around, moving away from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel masterpiece while somehow keeping the familiar Creation imagery. The New Yorker gave the cover the understated title Fall Colors but the art is anything but understated. As we tend to read pictures from left to right and from top to bottom, we can now methodically make our way, following God's finger and Sorel's pen, down to the divine blaze of autumn glory.
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| Edward Sorel Fall Colors The New Yorker, October 13, 1997 |
In sum, here is the full chronology:
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam#/media/File:Michelangelo_-_Creation_of_Adam_(cropped).jpg |
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