Killer icon

Some icons just won’t go away and it seems that the beret and the palette are two of them. Sometimes images that have outlived their real-life use survive in signage – witness the silhouette of the steam train that still warns of railroad crossings in New Zealand –and sometimes they just live on in the popular imagination. Can’t remember the last time we saw a palette with its amoeba-like shape and finger hole in action, but the palette remains the traditional sign of the artist. This recent book cover for the mass murderer chic series Dexter proves the point.