Welcome to C R E A T I V E R E F U G E

Welcome to C R E A T I V E R E F U G E

n hour talking with artist Ralph Steadman can best be described as “a journey of a thousand miles.” Whether he’s humbly dissecting his formidable craft, reminiscing about his “Gonzo” days of fear and loathing with Hunter S. Thompson, or weighing in on politics, religion, technology, or fine wine—this eclectic Brit brings his seven decades of wit and wisdom to every topic he explores. I caught him by phone recently, between projects at his home in Kent.

Mike: Like few artists I’ve seen, your art really speaks for itself. How would you describe your craft to someone unfamiliar with your body of work?

Ralph: It’s like a shortcut to the essence of what I’m trying to say. The shortcut being that I can’t be bothered too much with fine detail. I have to go straight for it and make my comments do damage, if you know what I mean. That might sound awful, saying I want to damage something. An example would be in the making of strong visual comments about social issues. It’s a kind of violence. And the only way to do violence in my experience is you have to be violent in the drawing. You have to use your pen like a sword, like a knife, and cut and slash and burn (laugh). I have been known to burn things. I’ve used flame on a picture to burn a part of it to make it do what I wanted to do with it. I mean, not the whole damn thing (laugh), but I’ve done that too, by mistake. Speaking of fire, I just illustrated Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, not Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, though I think his was a backhanded compliment to Ray Bradbury actually. It’s the same kind of protest as Ray’s for the burning of books, though Michael Moore’s against stupid white men isn’t he?

M: Indeed. Your editorial cartoons convey strong feelings towards the current state of global affairs. Does a project like your collaboration with Mr. Bradbury help you blow off some steam?

R: Yes, but I can’t really satisfy the kind of frustration you must be feeling right now as well about the tragedy in Chechnya last week. That must rank as one of the most unspeakable acts of evil one can imagine. What kind of cause can you believe in that says it’s okay to shoot that little girl running across the playground? What kind of ideal would you have to justify that? I don’t get it. And they claim they show their strength by killing. I say you show your weakness by killing. I wrote a piece on my Web site about it called, "So... 3000 B.C. and Beyond...".

M: I enjoyed that piece, as well as the other editorials on your site. However, I really found myself drawn to your illustrations. They have always struck me as almost magically spontaneous. How did you develop your style?

R: I never took up drawing until my nineteenth year. I tried everything else first. I was an aircraft engineer. That’s where my straight lines and circles come from. So that might explain to some people why I use straight lines, and why I use circles, and why my drawings can resemble a plan, and then there’s freedom, and wildness. The combination is what creates a tension, you know. The tightness. I learned to draw by going to life classes for seven years, and practicing, and just learning how to draw. You have to develop that coordination between the hand, eye, and the mind. Those three form a triangle. The hand and the eye need to be coordinated through the digesting mechanism of the brain, or the mind. And I worry about the young today not learning to draw. I think they feel they can do it a lot quicker through Photoshop.
Artwork by Ralph Steadman
Above: Artwork (detail) by Ralph Steadman.
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M: So you see a bit of a devil in the computerization of drawing?

R: I think [the computer] is a wonderful tool. I can get things done quickly. I can’t draw in a computer, it just doesn’t work. But I can draw out of it, put it into the computer, then work more on it. You know, lay in a few colors or whatever. That’s fun. It’s a great tool, but it’s not the answer to it all. You don’t think, “Good, I don’t have to draw anymore. I can just draw that in here and drag that over there and put this together with that and I got myself a picture.” And the whole line thing. I can’t control a pen line on a computer. It’s too bloody fast. In a way it’s uncontrollably fast, it’s just silly. And [a computer generated line] is not really a “feeling” line. I think a line is either alive or dead. A lot of people do pencil first and then go over the pencil with a pen to make the finished picture, and it dies because you haven’t experienced it at the moment, you’re just going over secondhand material. You’ve got to do it straight on with the pen. You’ve got to commit yourself to it straight away.

M: Do you make use of preliminary sketches?

R: I try to use the barest of scribbles of what it might be. People ask, “Well can you send us a rough?” And I say, “Well I can’t send you a rough because if I do a rough, that’s the picture.” Or, “That’s not the picture and never will it be, that’s the rough. And you might prefer the bloody rough (laugh)!” You’re wasting your time, and your energy by the way. So that seems to me to be an unnecessary aspect of it. You have to get your work well enough known so [the client] knows what to expect. Otherwise, don’t ask. They know they’ll get something.

M: How would you describe your brushwork?

R: When people ask me for a little sketch [for a charitable cause] I usually whack a sheet of paper on the board, let it dry, and then add a bird’s beak, couple of eyes, legs, wings, or turn it into a prairie dog, you know (laugh). Whatever it suggests, that’s what I draw. It’s amazing when you hit a piece of paper with a lovely ink-soaked paintbrush and it whacks all over the place. It's part of that thing I talked about earlier, the damage, the violence. And the violence expresses something in a certain direction when you go “thwop”, let it dry, and then turn it into something that people accept as artistic license. They may not think it looks like whatever it is [supposed to portray], but it is a semblance of something. And I’d like people to accept it on that basis, you know. As just a creative outburst.

M: Have you had much trouble with people trying to mimic your style?

R: There have been a few. I see my terrible lettering has been made into a font (laugh). Check it out when you get a chance.
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Collateral Damage font by Chris Hunt, courtesy of Chank.com
—Chanks, Chank!

M: Do you see your art as a creative outlet, a livelihood, or a weapon?

R: All that. Well of course, it’s been a livelihood for all my life. I tried nearly everything else first. I tried to be an aircraft engineer, a manager at Woolworths, a rat catcher, I worked on motorbikes at the fairground. Then I saw this advert that read, “You Too Can Learn to Draw & Earn Pounds.” It was a press art school course. I took that while I did my military service and that’s ultimately what kept me off the streets I guess.

M: Well they sure delivered on their promise in your case.

R: Well, in a way they did. I mean, I did my two years in the military buggerin’ about, I was in radar. This press arts course had twelve lessons on how to draw; each was a month in duration. So after a dozen lessons the implication was that you could draw (laugh). And another five pounds would get you six more lessons on how to be a cartoonist. What it did was to get me interested; it was a kind of reason for trying to be an artist.

M: I’m assuming you completed the course.

R: Yes, and I sent a few cartoons off before I came out of the Royal Air Force, and I got a call to go to London to have an interview with a large newspaper group. They said, “Would you like a job when you come out?” And I said, “What do I do?” “You do drawings for our [northern England] papers.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” So for three years I was a working artist, the only regular job I ever had (laugh). Then I was made redundant because the paper was bought up, and the only job I was offered was to be a black and white artist doing crossword puzzles—painting the little squares and so forth. So I left and found an agent on Fleet Street in London and became a working cartoonist.

M: Your collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson certainly proved to be a seminal event in your career— at least on this side of the Pond. How did this relationship unfold?

R: I had been in the States for a few weeks looking for work and I was contacted by Scanlons, a real radical magazine against Nixon, which eventually got them on his blacklist. Someone in England had found my collective work which was called, Still Life with Raspberry (fart noise, laugh). It was all my 60s work in one book. They said, “Would you like to go to Kentucky with this ex-Hells Angel, who just shaved his head, named Hunter S. Thompson—who wants to go back and find the evil, decadent people he knew growing up? He doesn’t want a photographer. We looked at your book and it has lots of ugly faces in it so we thought you might be the right guy.” So I met Hunter and we made the trip, and he really couldn’t write the piece. He was suffering from writer’s block, but he did take loads of notes down. And the piece became just that—exactly what happened to us. That’s what we called the “new journalism” that Tom Wolfe wrote about; the first “gonzo” piece. Our next project was in Rhode Island where we got in the way of the America’s Cup yacht race. We had a rock band on board. We were like a pirate ship getting in between the racers trying to get to the finish line. There were so many delays it started to get boring. It was horrible. I got seasick. Hunter was taking pills, so by the end I asked, “What are those pills?” “They’re just psilocybin, Ralph. Hallucinogenics. I don’t know if you need them though if you’re just seasick.” “I have to try something,” I said. I’d never had a drug before or since. It completely scoured my mind.

M: Did you forget about your seasickness?

R: Oh, I forgot all about that. I was seeing all kinds of things—snarly red-eyed dogs and such. When I went back to New York, Hunter must have gone ahead and said, “I think you’ve got a basket case on your hands. He doesn’t know where he is. I think somebody better meet him at the airport.” And of course, nobody was there. A friend sent a cab for me. When I got to the doctor I was apparently purple, palpitating, and in a hell of a state.

M: Were you still hallucinating when you got to New York?

A: I was coming down, but Hunter said I had been up for ninety hours straight (laugh)!
Artwork by Ralph Steadman
Above: Artwork by Ralph Steadman.
View slideshow.

M: Speaking of projects with Hunter, having been one of the artists to immortalize Las Vegas with Fear and Loathing, how do you feel about the town today? Have you been back?

R: I love it. For a lot of reasons, I think it’s a fantastic place. My daughter got married there the year before last. Though I’m sorry they’re turning it into a sex-oriented place and not as much for everybody, you know. When I first went there in the 70s the streets just went out to the end of town and ended in sand. It was still all very primitive in a lot of ways. Hunter’s book is rather dated now. I mean it has all been so built up. They could ruin it completely if they’re not careful.

M: Getting back to your craft, do you see any contemporary artists or movements you find particularly worthwhile?

R: No (laugh). I’m inspired by Goya, Picasso, Du Champ, and all the surrealists. Andre Gide the writer. All those kind of weird things, I love all that stuff. That’s what inspires me. But I’m not really inspired by other cartoonists.

M: You work in many mediums. Would you describe yourself in a word as a cartoonist?

R: Well, part of me is a cartoonist. But you see I think all art in a way is cartoon because it's just a way of looking, isn’t it. It’s a way of responding to what you’re looking at. The information you’re getting, you respond to it this way—it’s not academically accurate because that’s not important. The most important thing is how you’re expressing what you’re looking at. And also, what you are drawing would not exist were you not looking at that thing you were drawing. You can dream something up, but it wouldn’t be that specific thing if you were looking at a tree, and you were going to try to draw the tree. How you draw that tree would not exist were you not looking at it, no matter how inaccurately you draw it. It still has a semblance of a tree. It can’t be the tree, because no matter how accurately you draw it its still only a drawing. I mean, Picasso was a cartoonist. He took the line everywhere. That was a kind of a cartoon expression. He did a series of etchings in the late 60s, when he was an old man, and they were called Suite 347 because there were 347 of them—all done in a five month period during 1967. He was like a sponge. Whatever he drew it just came from whatever he was looking at, which at the time included television and Errol Flynn movies and such. It’s like a vacuum cleaner, drawing it in and out it cometh, spilling out another way. And I guess that’s what one does as much as one can. But there are only so many hours in the day, so you never can catch everything. So you just do what you can do (laugh).

M: You probably saw this closer coming, but what advice would you give to the next generation?

R: Learn to draw again. Get yourself familiar with the world you live in. No matter how electronic you become you’re going to need the world itself. I think this is most important. In fact, [this familiarization] informs electronics in a way. Just as much as electronics are convenient, so the world around you is informative. That’s my only sadness about kids, they seem to be looking for the easy way, you know. It’s not easy. Never was. Never a picnic. And it never gets any easier, that’s the point. It pisses me off a bit (laugh).

M: Life or the creative process?

R: The creative process. Though there are no mistakes in art. A mistake is an opportunity to do something else. It suggests something else. You’ll think, “Oh fuck, it’s a mistake.... No, wait a minute, there’s something good in here." It can’t be a mistake. And who knows when you’re finished. I think you’re usually finished when you’ve lost interest.

M: Is that your personal signal that a project is complete?

R: Yes. You’ve done it. You’ve said what you will. And then you’re on to the next thing.

© 2004 Mike Buchheit