A colorful way to chart the progression of a magazines' ideals, is through their choice of cover art. While not all the modernist magazines cataloged in the MJP change the tone of their cover over the course of publication, those that do are rich with insight into the magazine's political and artistic stance as well as the time in which they are publishing. Wheels is one such magazine, the cover of which changes dramatically from 1916 when it was first published until 1921 when it ran it's last issue. Over the course of these years, the imagery moved from a simplistic line drawing to intricate futurist paintings depicting images of soldiers and mechanized men. Through the shift in the magazine's identifying cover, appears the progression of change in response to World War I.
The first cover of Wheels published in 1916 depicts a simple image of a woman pushing a baby carraige (March 1916 Vol.1). The war was, at this point, already in progress, but judging by the cover, the magazines particular artistic and political sentiments had not yet formed in it's first issue. The second issue offers a more sophisticated design from the first line drawing, it depicts a variety of circular shapes repeated over the cover(1917 Vol.2). In stark contrast, the third issue is illustrated by an angular futuristic painting of a bird like machine titled at the bottom, "The Sky Pilot" (1918 Vol.3). This image begins a new phase of cover art for Wheels; the following year, the magaine published a cover depicting fucia colored men using machienery of the same huge, causing the men and their equiptment to be indeciperable from one another (1919 Vol.4). The year this cover was published the war ended, but Wheels continued on to published two more covers of sarkly different character from those previous. Even the most artistically illiterate individual (like myself) can see a progression of thought in the artistic editing over the final years of the war. Influenced by futurist painters, the covers of Wheels illustrate the effect the war had on individuals relationship to machines.
