When Welsh artist Ralph Steadman picks up the phone, he makes a little strange noise.
“It’s the 13th Friday, you know,” he says with a doomsday tone.
“I’m terribly superstitious,” he adds. “It’s not just that, it’s the year. And everything that has happened this year. We have to get out this year. Like that song of animals, we too will get out of this place. “
His new picture book, Ralph Steadman: A Life in Ink, imitates more than half a century of artwork. Featuring Boris Johnson as the Devil and Donald Trump as the Dwarf – from his political satire, to the novelist Filmfare in Las Vegas with American writer Hunter S. Thompson and his trademark Gonzo for Lotting, he is one of the most immortal of our time.
“I wanted to change the world when I started doing it, and now, 60 years later, I’m successful,” says the 84-year-old. “But now it’s worse when I started. We really live in hell for a year, don’t we?”
The book is a chronological rum through his “wrist flick” artwork, which uses cartooning as a weapon to reconcile virtues with evil in the world. It began with sketchbook drawings from the early 1950s, illustrations for newspapers and magazines of the 1960s, his chaotic collaboration with Thompson in the 1970s, and the pages of his other books from the 1980s to the present day.
This is the very last picture of the book which is numbered 2020. It’s a portrait of Corvid-19, called Viral Menas. He looks like a monster scattering ink over a sea of blood. Walking night dream, if there ever was one.
“This is worse than sitting in an underground shelter during the 1939 German Blitz,” says Steadman. “As we sat there, my mother tried to calm them down. I go in search of the shrapnel in the morning, the molten metal that had hardened. I wish I had a piece. “
Looking back on his 60-year career, Steadman can’t remember making half the drawings he made.
“I am amazed at how many things I have done that I do not remember; I’m going through the book and wonder how on earth I did it, “says Steadman from his home in Kent.” I’ve become an illustrated polluter. Really too many drawings. “
He featured in the new documentary Freak Power: Beatle or Bomb Bomb, which revolves around The Thumpson as he runs for a sheriff in Aspen, Colorado, in 1970 (the stadium man created the image for Thumpson’s campaign at the time). He also animated parts of Crock Gold F Gold: Shane McGowan with a Few Rounds, a film about Pogge’s singer, coming out in December.
“People are always asking about my style,” Steadman says. “Where did you get this style?” “I say that it is not a style, it’s just I’m dealing with it is the order of the elements. This includes his “dirty water technique”, where the artist recycles the dirty water from the pot in which he cleans his paintbrush, splits it on paper, and lets it dry for several days before using it as a base for drawing images.
Stadman’s other books include artwork, ranging from Sigmund Freud’s portraits to Leonardo da Vinci’s pope, taken from a book about religion called The Big I Am. An album cover for his artwork Travis Scott and parts of Anthony Bourdain have been found in unknown episodes.
His political cartoons, from the 1970s, could not be more relevant today. “I think Nixon was horrible, I think Trump is bad,” Steadman says. “Those are similar issues, just worse now.”
In a section called Democracy Maze since 1972, it shows the endless path of words, including “democracy, equality, freedom”, where citizens get lost. In another, a drawing of police brutality shows Steadman saying, “LA police were dropping a candy wrapper on the sidewalk when someone was hitting them on the head.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen a time like this.” “The last time was 1348. The Black Plague.”
He also touched on royalties in the book, in which a picture reprimanded a British banknote in 1976. “I would like to note that the pound lost its value, with a mustache on the queen,” he says.
“I drew a photo booth on the stool, and the dog sniffed and sniffed and sniffed and sniffed and sniffed and sniffed. cilia Zhili Zhili Zhili Zhili seem to capture fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine “The queen hit the dog with a stool. The character I made came out completely out of the picture.”
He has painted pictures of everyone from Shakespeare to Gay Tales to Slash to Guns N ‘Roses. He pulled Rupert Murdoch like a clown with a colored red nose. “I like him more than Trump,” Steadman says. “Trump is a disgusting man. I’ve never been able to make it as bad as it used to be. I think the worst person in our known history is Donald Trump. It really is – I can’t think of anything worse. “
Steadman also got to know the author William Burroughs during his lifetime. “It was interesting,” Steadman says. “I had a shooting competition with William in his garden, where he had a little gun and we put a picture of Hunter on the board, which we would shoot. He walked over to her, a few feet away from Hunter’s portrait, and shot her. I said, ‘I think you missed it, William.’ He said: ‘Well, he’s dead, isn’t he?’ ”
Steadman was furious at the 1997 UK general election, where John Major was defeated by Labor’s Tony Blair. He recalls, “I just wanted to get the Tories out, I hope I helped.”
It flips the page. “I drew Sarah Palin, does she remember? Uh. Disappointing thought.
“I didn’t think much of Bush either,” he adds. “I’m starting to repeat myself, oh dear.”
Steadman also drew Brexit as an artwork with UK flag flags. He says, “Put a ring in it, stop this Brexit thing. “Brexit, that was a stupid idea.”
Next, the artist plans to write a book, as there is nothing else to do. “It should start twice at a time,” he says. “The wizard lived there. A fictional, silly story. See how stupid I can be? ”
Suddenly, the doorbell rang. “Someone’s home,” says Steadman in a worried voice. He jokes: “Maybe someone is here to kick us out.”
The most memorable artwork in the book is a self-portrait of an artist wearing a face mask. His eye has a paranoid appearance. It is a reflection of 2020.
“I saw all these masks all of a sudden,” says Steadman. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if Rembrandt had to wear a mask in a self-portrait?’ Suddenly the idea of a self-portrait became an interesting idea, the mask of which continued. It really defeats the art of its object. “
We are living in Gonzo time, as Thompson would say.
“Things have gotten weird, absolutely weird,” Steadman says. “It’s weird. I wonder if it will ever return to normal.”
