Arthur Paul

As Playboy Magazine’s founding art director, Art Paul used his three decades there to revolutionize illustration. It’s said that no magazine art director has commissioned more illustrators, persuaded more artists to illustrate (Warhol, Dali, and Rosenquist among them) or won more honors in giving illustration the daring and integrity of fine art. Among artists and designers Art has mentored or worked with he’s an unusually beloved and revered father figure.

But Art is unique also in having been not just an art director and graphic designer (in particular of Playboy’s rabbit logo), but also an illustrator, fine artist, curator, writer, and composer.  And there’s been a surge of interest just now in both his past and present, with recent talks, books, and a documentary on him, exhibits of his art, and performances of his writing and music.  At 91, he’s now putting his drawings and writings into book form, with projects focused on race, aging, animals, and graphic whimsy.

Curator

"Since much of the illustration I commissioned for Playboy from '54 to '82 was done by fine artists and the best illustrators of that 'golden age' of illustration, it seemed logical, from the start, to host exhibits of it. In those days magazines tended to pay just for one-time use and returned artists' work to them (some forgot even to return it). Having been in their shoes, I arranged for Playboy to buy artists' work outright, paying more to do so, and saw that frequent freelance contributors got the same bonuses as writers, and that artists were treated with respect. This also made it possible for us to exhibit the work in our offices and sponsor exhibits of it, giving individual artists a higher profile and honoring illustration as an art ........ There was a plan to donate this archive - the largest-ever archive from what turned out to be the golden age of American illustration - to an institution one day. Unfortunately, this donation did not happen: nearly all the work was sold off. But a book called 'The Art of Playboy' had been produced in 1985 with an essay by Ray Bradbury, and in the late 70's the largest exhibit I'd organized of art commissioned by Playboy did travel the world for many years. It included the project 'The Playmate as Fine Art' in which artists such as Warhol, Dali, Wesselman, Rosenquist, and others freely interpreted the Playmate." –Art Paul