B I O G R A P H Y   1(6)    BORIS VALLEJO is an "applied" artist. He doesn't expect that museums and picture-galleries will one day wish to collect his works, because nowadays the applied arts usually fall under the category of commercial art. An astonishing number of books are published annually in the United States: 50 to 60 thousand. All books, be they thrillers or easy-to-read novels, need a clever, eye-catching cover. An "enticing" picture or graphic will always make a significant difference in the number of customers and amount of profit, and we can assert that from this point of view Boris Vallejo is the uncrowned king of book-cover art.     When the new edition of John German's adventure series and the Gar stories were published in the late 1970s, the publisher was pleased to discover in the course of analysing sales that he had been wise to choose Vallejo as the cover artist. Countless readers who already owned the Gar novels bought the new edition merely because they liked the cover! Vallejo could refer to himself as a truly popular artist; which, just as for any other artist creating popular art forms so much under-rated by aestheticians. may be a comfort to him if anybody looks down on his work.     It is indisputable that there is something in Vallejo's work which is quite impressive, even though it may not influence a person's artistic taste. This is, of course, the result of a conscious aspiration and a well thought out method. It is no secret: Vallejo made it commonly known in the book about him published by Ballantine Books, his main customer. First the artist's creative, or shall we say "classical", imagination begins to work. The artist captures the essence of the scene's mood, which he then sketches as a "living picture". The sketch that begins this way is more vivid, more delicate and more loosely drawn than the final result. Maybe it would be a better pass for Vallejo to the Parnassus of fine arts, but this is not his goal. It is necessary that he attract the attention of as many people as possible: the books need to be marketable. The saleability of a book depends on whether the cover appeals to average American taste and on whether it can relate to the life of an ordinary person. The tricks of the advertising trade and the tactic of using familiar film stars to sell products cannot be left out of consideration as a means of marketing a product. B I O G R A P H Y   1(6)