'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'.
Ralph Steadman is a Welsh graphic artist, cartoonist and painter, most famous for illustrating the works of Hunter S. Thompson, including the writer's signature cult novel 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' (1971). Much like Thompson is regarded as the inventor of "gonzo journalism", Steadman received the nickname "godfather of gonzo art." His raw, expressive and splashy art has livened up pages of many newspapers and magazines, most notably Rolling Stone. Steadman was also active as an editorial cartoonist for The New Statesman and other papers.
Early life and career
Ralph Steadman was born in 1936 in Wallasey, Cheshire, England, but raised in Abergele, North Wales. His father was a travelling salesman specialized in women's clothing, his mother worked as a shop assistant. The boy studied at East Ham Technical College and the London College of Printing. Disgusted with a particularly authoritarian and sadistic teacher, Steadman dropped out of school at age 16. Active as a radar operator at the De Havilland aircraft factory in Broughton, he also made aero-model designs, despite having no academic training. After six months, he had enough of the monotone factory mentality and, through the youth employment officer, got a new job as trainee manager in the stockroom at Woolworth's. As fate would have it, the same sadistic teacher that had driven him out of school happened to walk in the store one day and recognized him. He called Steadman a "failure" and said that he had made "a complete mess" of his life, before walking right through Steadman's sweepings. Some time later, the school dropout was fired after getting into a fight with his under-manager.
At this point, the youth employment officer had lost his patience with Steadman and instructed him to read a career encyclopedia over the weekend and decide by Monday what job he really wanted to do. The young man always wanted to avoid ending up like his father, who had aspired to become a car builder or engineer, but instead sold clothes for a living. Determined to become an artist, Steadman picked out a part-time course in advertising art at East Ham Technical College (1959-1966) and, between 1961 and 1965, also attended the London College of Printing. During his National Service, Steadman followed a correspondence course in cartooning.
Among Steadman's main graphic influences were Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco de Goya, the Dadaist Movement, Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Pablo Picasso and Kurt Schwitters. While his love for surreal, crude and expressive artists is easily explained, some might be surprised about his love for classic artists like Da Vinci and Rembrandt. Interviewed by Gabe Scott for Juxtapoz, Steadman said that he identified with Da Vinci's urge to try to be something as definitively as he possibly could, serving the purpose it was intended to serve. His admiration for Rembrandt was explained in an interview by Ted Scheinman (Pacific Standard, 18 March 2014), in which Steadman said that he admired Rembrandt's many self-portraits through life, showing a man visibly aging in paintings most people would find undecorative, but are actually beautiful. Steadman's cartoonist inspirations were Robert Crumb, André François, Carl Giles, James Gillray, William Hogarth, Leslie Illingworth, Winsor McCay, Ronald Searle and Saul Steinberg. Interviewed by Ben Thompson (The Independent, 14 January 1996), Steadman preferred to be called a cartoonist instead of an illustrator, because he felt Francisco de Goya, Honoré Daumier and Pablo Picasso were basically all cartoonists, but the term unfortunately has a bad name: "I'm not trying to be artsy-farty, but I don't like the division that one thing is fine art and another thing isn't."
Punch cover for the 17 March 1965 issue.
Early cartooning career
Through a relative who was a civil servant, Steadman got a job as illustrator for Kemsley Press and published his first cartoon in 1956 in The Manchester Evening Chronicle. Between 1959 and 1961, he drew editorial cartoons for the Kemsley Newspaper Group, including a weekly one-panel cartoon about a teenage girl, titled 'Teeny'. Most of his work was only lukewarmly received by his editor. Likewise, the cartoonist Leslie Illingworth once advised Steadman: "The best thing you could do, my boy, is to get the sack." From 1961 on, Steadman became a freelance artist, originally signing with "Stead", until his mother asked him whether he was ashamed to use his full name. His cartoons ran in The Daily Sketch, The Daily Telegraph, Punch and, from 1962 on, in the new satirical magazine Private Eye. In the early 1960s, Steadman was good friends with Gerald Scarfe, who became godfather to the eldest of Steadman's five children. Their respective graphic styles started sharing many similarities and they often submitted cartoons to the same magazines. However, when Steadman applied to Private Eye, Scarfe hadn't anything ready, which upset him. Despite Steadman's advice to quickly make something, Scarfe refused. When Steadman was indeed accepted as a contributor in Private Eye's pages, their friendship started to saturate. Behind his friend's back, Scarfe also applied to Private Eye and was accepted too. A fall out occurred when Steadman's wife sent Scarfe an angry letter, accusing him of imitating her husband and making it impossible to keep publishing his work. Steadman recalled that his wife actually asked him whether it would be wise to send the letter and that he told her: "I wouldn't send it, but it's your letter."
'Theo', published in Italy in Linus magazine (1967).
In 1967, Steadman became artist-in-residence at Sussex University. During the next decades, Steadman continued to publish his humorous and political cartoons in the satirical magazines Punch and Private Eye and the newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Around 1960, he also developed a satirical gag comic, 'Theo', which he tried to sell to British newspapers, but there was no interest. However, between 1967 and 1970, the finished comic strips eventually did get printed in the Italian comic news magazine Linus.
Private Eye, 12 November 1965.
Style
Ralph Steadman has an instantly recognizable style, which he, interviewed by Nadja Savej (The Guardian, 24 November 2020), insisted "is not a style (…) just a sequence of elements that I work with." His visuals often combine grotesquely distorted images that sometimes border on the abstract. Splashy ink blots, wobbly, handwritten texts and collage elements are other trademarks. Early in his career, he was so wild with ink that he often made unintentional splatters. Since Steadman didn't believe in mistakes, he regarded these splatters and blots as an opportunity to change his illustration, something that even surprised him. Interviewed by Ted Scheinman (Pacific Standard, 18 March 2014), Steadman said that he was inspired by Pablo Picasso who would also improvise a drawing that "will come out the end somehow". This unpredictable path made it a "fascinating", "worthwhile pursuit". Later he turned the process around: splattering ink first and then trying to turn it into a drawing afterwards. Steadman felt thinking of a style will only get in the way of what you're honestly trying to express.
'Prisoner of Denver', illustration to article in Vanity Fair, June 2004.
Following an economical approach, Steadman never threw drawings away, but he would sometimes return to an unused image later to do further work on it and perhaps create an image he did want to save. The dirty water from the pot he used to clean his paintbrushes in also proved its usefulness. He would splat it on the page, let it dry and marvel at the end result. Steadman also used collage techniques, like a 1976 real British bank note that he rendered useless by drawing a moustache on the queen's portrait. Some of the Polaroid portraits of celebrities he distorted were nicknamed 'Paranoids'. For this reason, he also referred to himself as a "pictorial polluter". In 1988, Steadman said that he always drew for the purpose of drawing in itself. The only downside was that the prints never quite captured the look of the original art.
"Google-eyed Greenhound and Snufflebeak".
Just like Ronald Searle, many of Steadman's drawings feature observational, satirical comedy. But unlike Searle, Steadman's work has a more aggressive, savage, explosive feel, motivated by the artist's lifelong irritation with shallowness, corruption and other injustices in the world. His portraits of politicians like Enoch Powell, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush Sr. and Jr., David Cameron and Donald Trump distort these people as unhinged abominations that instantly repulse or disturb the viewer. Some of his illustrations are presented in the style of a graphic report. For Rolling Stone (25 September 1975), for instance, he visualized a trip to Disneyland, depicting it as a kitschy tourist trap where families look miserable amidst the fake happy imagery, while the grotesque heads of Mickey and his friends scare children stiff. In 1976, Steadman visualized the Republican Party convention in Kemper Arena, Kansas City, depicting the police security as guards keeping an eye on crowds behaving as cattle.
As a result, some people had a wrong impression of Ralph Steadman as a person. As the artist explained in a 2013 interview: "People have said, 'I thought you'd be a nasty piece of work because you're so dark and trenchant', and I've said, 'No I'm not, I've got rid of it - it's all on paper."
"Fear and Loathing at the Watergate", depicting Richard Nixon.
Hunter S. Thompson
A large part of Ralph Steadman's fame rests on his lasting association with another cult figure: journalist and writer Hunter S. Thompson. The duo might have never collaborated if it wasn't for Steadman's 1970 divorce. In need of escapism and a challenge, the artist decided to visit the United States, where he started publishing in Rolling Stone and the radical magazine Scanlan's Monthly. The latter publication assigned journalist Hunter S. Thompson to travel to the annual Kentucky Derby and capture the atmosphere. When they couldn't find a photographer, Steadman was sent along to make sketches. As bad luck would have it, he lost all his drawing material on the way to the airport, but through the editor's wife he was able to use her lipstick and make-up colors as replacement tools. Thompson and Steadman had never met before and only received vague descriptions from the editors on how to spot each other in the crowd. They instantly got along, fraternizing over their love for alcohol and utter disdain for the spectacle they were forced to witness. The abrasive, uptight people in the tribune felt the need to inform Steadman that he was "facing the wrong way", while he was sketching the crowd instead of looking at the jockeys. Others were irritated when they saw his unflattering portraits of them. One woman even tried to grab his paper and tear it apart. The final article dealt more with Steadman and Thompson's tipsy perception of the lowlifes in the crowd than the race itself.
Ralph Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson.
When the Kentucky Derby article appeared in print, readers loved its humorous, unconventional style, peppered by Steadman's equally eccentric drawings. A man named Bill Cardoso called it "pure gonzo" (the Portuguese word for "hinge"), which Thompson liked so much that it became the official nickname for this kind of writing: "gonzo journalism". Thompson and Steadman were soon assigned to more collaborative reports. They covered the America's Cup sailing competition, the Honolulu Marathon ('The Curse of Lono'), the 1972 US presidential elections ('Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail') and the 1974 Watergate scandal hearings. In 1974, Rolling Stone also sent the duo to Zaire (present-day Congo) to cover the "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman, but once they landed in Kinshasa, Thompson sold their tickets to use the money to buy drugs and elephant tusks. Steadman did follow the fight on the TV set in the hotel bar. Once it ended, there was a huge rush from tourists and journalists to get on the very next plane. As Steadman observed: "Nobody wanted to stay in Zaire". Back in New York, Thompson wasn't allowed to bring the elephant tusks into the country. After telling Steadman to wait for him in the bar, he leapt over the customs desk, picked the tusks up, hid them under Steadman's bag in the bar and ran into a telephone booth. Still, in Thompson's home town of Colorado, the tusks were again confiscated. Steadman later heard that the custom officers only wanted a 28 dollar duty from Thompson, "if only he would listen." While Thompson had written nothing about the Rumble in the Jungle match, Steadman had made some drawings, but, understandably, Rolling Stone was not pleased and rejected them.
'The Kentucky Derby'.
In 1971, Thompson wrote his first novel, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', about the journalist Raoul Duke and his Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo who travel to Las Vegas for a report, but end up guzzling down various drugs and get into a variety of shenanigans. The stream-of-consciousness story was serialized in Rolling Stone from November 1971 on, illustrated by Steadman. Since Duke was an alter ego for Thompson, Steadman modelled the character after his friend. Dr. Gonzo was based on Chicano attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. His scratchy and surreal drawings perfectly captured the feeling of a fuzzy mind in a decadent place like Las Vegas. 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' became an instant cult classic and is arguably the work Steadman is most famous for. A downside of its popularity was that many people assumed that Thompson and Steadman advocated drug use. In reality, all the scenes are bad trips, while the increasingly paranoid Duke and Gonzo survive absurdly high doses and engage in many dangerous, irresponsible activities. Thompson intended the story more as a comically exaggerated tale, juxtaposing counterculture with conservative society. The only time Steadman ever took drugs with Thompson happened during a boat race in New Port, Rhode Island, when a dose of psilocybin "scoured my innards", as the artist recalled. The next day Steadman wanted to spray "fuck the pope" on a boat, but they were caught, which motivated Thompson to set off two distress flares and set fire to some ships "to cause a distraction". Another eternal regret was that Steadman sold the original artwork of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' on his agent's advice to Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. He received a measly 75 dollars, while it is nowadays worth far more. As a result, Steadman has kept all his other artwork in his personal archives.
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'.
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' remained popular in reprints. For decades, a movie adaptation was in the works. After reading the book, John Lennon considered playing the role of Duke, but his early death prevented any potential steps in that direction. Ralph Bakshi wanted to make an animated feature, directly based on Steadman's illustrations, while Alex Cox (of 'Repo Man' fame) wanted a more personal interpretation, again with animated intermezzos. Since Thompson hated animation, both deals were axed. Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone also showed interest, but in 1998 it was, ironically enough, Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam who received Thompson's blessing, although Gilliam indeed made a live-action picture, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro in the title roles. The frenetic picture flopped and was booed at the Festival of Cannes, but Thompson (who also had a cameo in the film) liked it. Steadman was also satisfied. The film later acquired cult status, introducing new generations to Thompson's and Steadman's work. In 2015, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' was also adapted into a graphic novel, drawn by Troy Little. Steadman's artwork was referenced in Matt Groening's 'The Simpsons', when Homer and Flanders travel to Las Vegas in 'Viva Ned Flanders' and Duke and Gonzo drive by. The Japanese rock band Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas took its name from the novel.
Thompson and Steadman became lifelong collaborators, friends and drinking buddies. The artist always felt it was remarkable that during his first visit to the US he actually met "the exact one person I needed to meet in this world." Thompson also expressed his fondness for Steadman in a 1970 letter to Don Goddard: "Dealing with Ralph made the whole rotten trip worthwhile for me, in some odd sense. I liked the bastard immensely, and his awkward sensitivity made me see, once again, some of the rot in this country that I've been living with for so long that I could only see it, now, through somebody else's fresh eye." Still, interviewed by Kiran Acharya for The Quietus (17 February 2013), Steadman recalled that many of the outrageous things Thompson said or did in his presence frequently got them into trouble: "He always had the addenda of … (…) an insult couched in kindness. Covered in it, if you like to soften the blow." Steadman also knew that Thompson had suicidal tendencies, because he kept loaded guns in his house and once told him: "I'd feel real trapped in this life, if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any moment." That day came in 2005, when Thompson shot himself. Steadman helped organize his funeral and later wrote a memoir, 'The Joke's Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me' (2006). Since his death, the artist has made annual portraits of his good friend on the day of his death.
Even after the death of his friend, Steadman had kept a strong association with Hunter S. Thompson and his work. In 2020, he provided artwork for the documentary film 'Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb', by Ajax Phillips and Daniel Joseph Watkins, based on Watkins' book of the same name. Both the book and the film were based on Thompson's infamous 1970 political campaign against sheriff Carol Whitmire, who wanted a crackdown on hippies (or anybody who looked like one).
Disneyland visit report for Rolling Stone (1975).
Editorial cartooning
Between June 1970 and January 1971, Steadman worked for The Times, covering the General Elections. However, editor William Rees-Mogg once told him his cartoons were "a little seditious and I don't think we need them in the pages of The Times, so I'll have to ask you to leave." Between 1976 and 1980, Steadman was a political cartoonist in The New Statesman, while his art also ran in Black Dwarf, The Guardian, The Independent, New Scientist, The New York Times, The Observer, Radio Times, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times and Times Higher Education Supplement. Interviewed by Alexis Petridis (The Guardian, 29 May 2014), Steadman said his graphic style became more vitriolic after having visited the USA: "The blatant idiocy of people's behaviour there changed it."
Growing more and more disillusioned about politics, Steadman didn't like Peter Fluck and Roger Law's satirical puppet show 'Spitting Image' (1984-1996), because it turned political caricature into "cosey entertainment". By 1987, he stopped drawing politicians for a full decade. Although he blamed 'Spitting Image', he also felt "the world is worse now than when I started, so I haven't done much of a job" and newspaper editors don't give cartoonists the same "dignified importance that they might give to their lead political writers." During the 1997 British elections, Steadman returned to editorial cartooning, but instead of drawing the candidates' faces, he drew their legs. Since the 2010s, his political cartoons have appeared in The New Statesman again.
'The 60's', comic strip for Private Eye.
Controversy
After caricaturing businessman Charles Forte in The Sunday Times (1978), Forte sued Ralph Steadman for libel. In 1992, he designed a poster for a cartoon exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, depicting a collage of guns and a headless man in a pool of blood. The London Transport banned the poster because the guns "could incite violence".
Book illustrations
Apart from Thompson's work, Steadman also illustrated editions of classic novels like Lewis Carroll's 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' (1972) and 'Alice in Wonderland' (1986), Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Treasure Island' (1985), George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' (1995), Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Treasure Island' (1985), Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' (2003), Ambrose Bierce's 'The Devil's Dictionary' (2004) and novels by Ted Hughes, Adrian Mitchell and Brian Patten. To raise awareness of endangered animals, he made several books with conservationist and film director Ceri Levy about animals who had gone extinct: 'Extinct Boids'(2012), 'Nextinction' (2015) and 'Critical Critters' (2017). While many are animals that actually existed, others are entirely fictional, like the "Needless Smut". For writer and journalist Will Self, Steadman illustrated his columns in The Independent and collaborated on the books 'Psychogeography' (2007) and 'Psycho Too' (2013).
Illustration for 'Animal Farm'.
In addition, Steadman wrote and illustrated some children books: 'The Little Red Computer' (1969), 'Jelly Book' (1970), 'Flowers for the Moon' (1974), 'Two Donkeys and the Bridge' (1974), 'That's My Dad' (1986), 'No Room to Swing a Cat' (1989), 'Teddy Where Are You?' (1994) and 'Little.Com' (2000), while also livening up the pages of other authors' children's books, namely Frank Dickens' 'The Big Grand Flyaway Peter' (1960), Mischa Damjan's 'Little Prince and the Tiger Cat' (1967) and Fiona Saint's 'The Yellow Flowers' (1968). He also illustrated Tony Palmer's book 'Born Under A Bad Sign' (1970), a series of articles and reports about the 1960s rock scene, which had a foreword by John Lennon.
After visiting Sigmund Freud's house in Vienna and lying on the floor where Freud's famous couch had been to photograph the ceiling, Steadman published the illustrated book 'Sigmund Freud' (1979). Three years of research went into his book 'I Leonardo' (1983), about Leonardo da Vinci. Just like the famous creator of the 'Mona Lisa', he created works in egg tempera and even built a gliding device after one of Da Vinci's designs.
'That's My Dad' and 'Extinct Boids'.
Steadman's most ambitious book was 'The Big I Am' (1988), in which he imagined an illustrated philosophical dialogue between God and himself. Interviewed by Gary Groth for The Comics Journal #131 (September 1989), Steadman explained his line of thought: "Every time I tried to plot the God book, I couldn't actually arrive at a plot. It became a sort of ongoing journey through something (...) my reasoning in it is that God had a wife who died in childbirth giving birth to this earth, hence his resentment towards us. They'd given birth to all the other planets - Pluto, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and the others - but they were all stillborn, except the one planet, Earth, and that became a sort of trigger for my God who would be vengeful, bitter. (...) having gone through the whole of history finding valid points to make about flagellance, the plague years, the rise of political thought, to today, and then God going back to heaven, standing on the Babel Tower, and getting the hell out, I was able to make the kind of general points I've always wanted to make in political drawings but wasn't able to do so because political drawing is in effect a kind of limited art; it says specific things about specific events; it takes sides. I didn't want to take sides; I wanted to be impartial. I wanted to be above it and look down on it. I wanted to give a non-partisan thunderbolt from above; I wanted to see man as he really was. I have no longer any partisan feeling Left or Right. I think I know that."
And just like Ronald Searle, Steadman also made an illustrated book about wine tasting ('The Grapes of Ralph', 1992) and additionally one about whisky ('Still Life with Bottle', 1994).
Musical career
Steadman wrote the lyrics for Richard Harvey's album 'Plague and the Moonflower' (1999). He illustrated the musical compilation album 'Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys' (2006) by Hal Willner and Johnny Depp, on which he also sings the song "Little Boy Billee' and provided backing vocals on Eliza Carthy's song 'Rolling Sea'. In 2015, he also recorded a single, 'The Man Who Woke Up in the Dark/ Striped Paint'.
Steadman also designed sets for the Royal Opera House's production of 'The Crucible'. He made many illustrations for Harry Enfield's Guide to Opera and the CD versions.
Flying Dog logo.
Graphic and written contributions
Steadman had made advertising art for Greenpeace, the off-licence chain Oddbins and Flying Dog beer (including the beer logo). Since the logo for Flying Dog had the slogan "Good Beer No Shit", the Colorado State Liquor Board pulled the brand from various stores, after a complaint about so-called "obscenity". With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Flying Dog sued the state of Colorado and won their case in 2001. When the Michigan Liquor Control Commission also banned Flying Dog's "Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA" in 2009, Flying Dog sued the state of Michigan and again won their case.
Steadman made a contribution to 'The Beatles' Illustrated Lyrics Book' (MacDonald Unit 75, 1969), edited by Alan Aldridge. In 1985, Steadman illustrated four official British stamps to celebrate the return of Halley's Comet that year. He illustrated a limited edition of DVDs about the TV series 'Breaking Bad' and Anthony Bourdain's cook book 'Appetites' (2016). Steadman wrote a personal homage to Robert Crumb in Monte Beauchamp's book 'The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments From Contemporaries' (St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 1998). In 2017, he made a graphic contribution in support of the imprisoned Iranese cartoonist Eaten Fish.
Steadman has illustrated covers of various jazz albums, like 'Informal Jazz' (1958) by the Elmo Hope Sextet, 'Back Country Suite for Piano, Bass and Drums' (1958) by Mose Allison, '4 Altos' (1958) by Phil Woods, Gene Quill, Sahib Shihab & Hal Stein, 'Funky' (1959) by Gene Ammons, 'Soultrane' (1960) by John Coltrane, Earth Birth' (1977) by Paul Brett and 'A Well Kept Secret' (1984) by Beaver Harris. Classical music was enriched by him on Richard Harvey's 'Plague and the Moonflower' (1999) and 'Smile: A Most Cheerful Earful' (2011) by Sixteen Wires. His art also adorned spoken word albums with recitations of works by Hunter S. Thompson, as well as John Arlott's 'John Arlott Talks Cricket' (1982), Peter O'Sullevan's 'Peter O'Sullevan Talks Turf' (1983), Vivian Stanshall's 'Sir Henry at Ndidi's Kraal' (1984), a rendition of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry ('Closed on Account of Rabies', 1997) and a recording by David Greenberger and Ralph Carney 'Oh, Pa' (2011) on interviews with seniors.
'The Who' (1966) by The Who.
His first rock album cover was The Who's 'The Who' (1966). The same image was also used for singles from this record. Another artist who once designed an album cover for The Who was Alan Aldridge. Steadman also illustrated rock records by Paul Brett ('Phoenix Future', 1975), Fischer-Z ('Remember Russia', 1979), Alexis Korner's 'Juvenile Delinquent' (1984), Andy Fitt & Jacky Pep ('Safe/Do Something', 1985), Exodus ('Force of Habit', 1992), Nils Lofgren ('Crooked Line', 1992), The Joy Formidable ('Hitch', 2016). He also livened up Julie Driscoll's Streetnoise' (1969), and his art also adorned experimental records like 'Miniatures' (1980) by Morgan Fisher, 'Road Island' (1982) by Ambrosia, 'No Sign Of Intelligent Life' (1991) by Dark Star, 'The Tonsils' (2002) by The Tonsils. In 1997, Steadman designed the cover for Frank Zappa's posthumous compilation album, 'Have I Offended Someone?', which compiled the singer's most offensive songs. However, the cover was lifted from Steadman's earlier illustrated book 'Born Under A Bad Sign' (1970), written by Tony Palmer, the same man who directed Zappa's cult movie '200 Motels' (1971).
In 2010, the artist designed the cover for Slash's eponymous album 'Slash' (2010) and six years later for Ed Harcourt's 'Furnaces' (2016), followed in 2017 by the cover of 'Huncho, Jack, Jack Huncho' by hip hop duo Huncho Jack. In 2019, he made artwork for Taylor Mac's play 'Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus'. He illustrated one soundtrack album, for the film 'Withnail and I' (1987) and Louis Theroux's 'My Scientology Movie' (2022).
'The Little Tin Bullring', set of 9 sequential screenprints on wove.
Recognition
In 1973, Ralph Steadman received the Francis Williams Book Illustration Award. He was also bestowed with the Designers & Art Directors' Association Gold Award (1977), the American Institute of Graphic Arts Illustrator of the Year Award (1979), the W.H. Smith Illustration Award (1987), the BBC Design Award for Postage Stamps (1987), the Italian Critica in Erba Award (1987), the Black Humour Award (1986), Vlag en Wimpel Award (1992) and the Cat Advertising Cartoonist of the Year Award (1995, 1996, 1998). In 1995, the University of Kent gave him an honorary doctorate.
In 2013, Ralph Steadman's art was the subject of an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London. The show later toured the rest of the UK and the US.
Legacy and influence
In the United Kingdom, Ralph Steadman was an influence on Dave Brown, Philip Burke, Mark Stafford and Kipper Williams. In the United States, he inspired Terry Gilliam, Edward Sorel and Richard Thompson. Steadman also found admirers in Belgium (Serge Buyse, Midam), France (Charles Berberian), Malaysia (Lat), The Netherlands (Eric Schreurs) and South Africa (Derek Bauer, Zapiro).
Secondary literature
For people interested in Steadman's life and career, the book 'A Life in Ink' (Chronicle Croma, 2020) and the documentary 'For No Good Reason' (2013), directed by Charlie Paul, are highly recommended. Among the interviewed people are Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson and Terry Gilliam.
Self-portrait (2006).