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When Welsh artist Ralph Steadman picks up the phone, he seems a little paranoid.
“It’s Friday the 13th, you know,” he said apocalyptically.
“I am terribly superstitious,” he adds. “It’s not just that, but the year itself. And everything that happened this year. We have to get out of this year. Like this song from the Animals, We Gotta Get Out of This Place. “
His new picture book Ralph Steadman: A Life in Ink, retracing more than half a century of works of art, reflects this. From his political satire – portraying Boris Johnson as the devil and Donald Trump as a dwarf – to his trademark journalism work Gonzo created alongside American writer Hunter S Thompson for the novel-turned-movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, it’s is a testament to one of the freest artists of our time.
“All I wanted to do when I started was change the world, and now, 60 years later, I’ve done it,” says the 84-year-old artist. “But it’s worse now than when I started, we’re really living in one hell of a year, aren’t we?”
The book is a chronological adventure through his “swipe of the wrist” artwork, using the cartoon as a weapon to settle scores with the evil in the world, giving voice to the voiceless. It begins with his early sketchbook designs from the 1950s, his illustrations for newspapers and magazines of the 1960s, his chaotic collaborations with Thompson throughout the 1970s and the pages of his other books from the 1980s through. These days.
This is the very last image in the book that sums up 2020. It’s a drawing called Viral Menace, a portrait of Covid-19. It looks like an ink splattered demon on a sea of blood. A walking nightmare, if there ever was one.
“It’s worse than sitting in an underground shelter during the German blitz of 1939,” Steadman says. “We were sitting there, my mother was knitting, trying to keep her calm. I would go look for shrapnel in the morning, molten metal that has hardened. I would have liked to keep a piece of it.
Looking back on his 60-year career, Steadman can’t remember having done half of the designs he did.
“I am amazed at how many things I have done that I can’t remember; I’m going through the book and wonder how the hell I did them, ”Steadman says from his home in Kent. “I have become a pictorial polluter. Too many drawings, really.
He is featured in the new documentary Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb, which follows Thompson as he poses as sheriff in Aspen, Colo., In 1970 (Steadman created the footage for Thompson’s campaign at the time). He also hosted parts of Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan, a film about the Pogues singer, which will be released in December.
“People always ask me my style,” says Steadman. “‘Where did you find this style?’ I say, it’s not a style, it’s just a sequence of elements that I’m working with. This sometimes includes his “dirty water technique”, where the artist recycles dirty water from the pot in which he cleans his brushes, spreads it on paper and lets it dry for several days before using it as a base. to draw pictures.
There are artwork from Steadman’s other books, which range from portraits of Sigmund Freud to Leonardo da Vinci, as well as images of the Pope, taken from a book on religion called The Big I Am. His works have adorned the cover of the album art by Travis Scott and the episodes of Parts Unknown by Anthony Bourdain.
His political cartoons, which date back to the 1970s, could not be more relevant today. “I used to think Nixon was horrible, I think Trump is worse,” Steadman says. “These are the same problems, only worse now.”
In a piece called Democracy Maze from 1972, he portrayed an endless maze of words, including “democracy, equality, freedom,” where civilians get lost. In another, a picture of police brutality depicts what Steadman calls “the Los Angeles police hitting someone on the head for dropping a candy wrapper on the sidewalk.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen a moment like this,” he says. “The last time was 1348. The Black Death.
He also takes a blow to the royalty in the book, with a design degrading the British banknote in 1976. “I like this banknote which is losing its value, with a mustache on the queen,” he said. .
“I drew her in a photo booth, drawing with a corgi on the stool, shots of her making faces and of the dog standing up to pee,” he adds. “The queen knocks the dog off the stool. I absolutely did not draw my character. “
He’s drawn portraits of everyone from Shakespeare to Gay Talese to Slash from Guns N ‘Roses. He also drew Rupert Murdoch with a rosy red nose, resembling a clown. “I prefer him to Trump, actually,” Steadman says. “Trump is a hideous man. I could never draw him as bad as he has become. I think the worst person in our known history is Donald Trump. He really is – I can’t think of anything worse.
Steadman also knew writer William Burroughs during his lifetime. “It was interesting,” Steadman says. “I did a shooting competition with William in his backyard, where he had a small gun and we put a picture of Hunter on a board, which we were shooting. He walked over, a few feet from Hunter’s portrait, and turned it. I said, “I think you missed it, William. He said, “Well, he’s dead, isn’t he?”
Steadman pulled furiously through the UK general election of 1997, where John Major was defeated by Tony Blair of the Labor Party. “I just wanted to get the Conservatives out, I just hoped I had helped,” he recalls.
He turns the page over. “I drew Sarah Palin, do you remember her? Ugh. Desperate idea.
“I didn’t think much about Bush either,” he adds. “I’m starting to repeat myself, oh my God.”
Steadman also drew Brexit as a work of art with socks bearing the British flag. “Put a sock in it, stop this Brexit thing,” he says. “Brexit, that was a stupid idea.”
Then the artist plans to write a book, because there is nothing else to do. “It should start twice at a time,” he says. “He lived a wizard. A fantastic and silly story. See how stupid I can be?
Suddenly the doorbell rings. “Someone’s at the door,” Steadman said, looking worried. He jokes, “It’s probably someone here to kick us out.”
The most memorable work in the book is a self-portrait of the artist wearing a face mask. He has a paranoid look in his eyes. It is a reflection of 2020.
“I suddenly saw all these masks everywhere,” Steadman says. “I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting for Rembrandt to wear a mask in a self-portrait?” Suddenly the idea of a self-portrait became an interesting idea, with a mask. It goes against the art of the object, really.
We live in the Gonzo era, as Thompson would say.
“Things got weird, absolutely weird,” Steadman says. “It’s strange. I wonder if it will ever get back to normal.
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