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.

Innovator

"Art Paul did for publishing what Warhol did for fine art: he blurred the line between what hangs in galleries and what appears in magazines." –Hugh Hefner

"For Paul - student at the Institute of Design, commonly called the Chicago Bauhaus - Playboy was a laboratory for producing a model of contemporary magazine design and illustration... Paul helped create a forum that demolished artistic and cultural boundaries. In doing so, he transformed magazine illustration." –Steven Heller, America's foremost design critic

"Playboy could have been soft porno, but Paul gave it a sense of intellectualism. It was bright, sharp, and snarky, just right for the audience." –George Lois, Esquire cover designer + original "Mad Man"

"Art's effortless way of making type, color, and imagery come to life on the printed page has put the editorial vs. art direction debate to rest, once and for all" –Dana Arnett, VSA Partners

"To me, the artist, art director, illustrator, and designer Art Paul is not only a living legend, but a living thread through an incredible number of important eras. As a widely exhibited artist and award-winning designer who is best known as the pioneering art director of Playboy for 30 years, and whose work has also encompassed writing, music, and teaching, I see him as one of those great 20th Century hybrid practitioners - like William Morris, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer - who effortlessly transcend disciplinary boundaries with wide ranging, diverse practices ........  In his own work, and the work that he commissioned as an art director, Art has always strived to erase what he saw as false distinctions between fine art and popular art, "high" and "low" art. Equally, his work erases boundaries between art and design, between design and everyday life. The overall theme is perhaps Freedom: in his own work, and given to others he worked with... A key attribute of Art's work, across his entire career, is creating work that credits the reader with intelligence... in an aesthetically simple, yet powerful, human, and even generous way. The graphic design magazine "Print" labeled Art's approach the 'Illustration Liberation Movement." –James Goggin, RISD + Practise