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.

just art

70 YEARS OF SELF-PORTRAITS

"Since the 60's, I've experimented with composing on the piano. A dear friend, Bill Russo, then teaching here at Columbia College, orchestrated a few of my pieces which, last year, another friend, Jamie Caesar, inventively added to a video tracking 70 years of my self-portraits. Why so many? I throw nothing out. And given that I'm fascinated by faces, mine is handy to study. At one point, it seemed that I'd disappeared into my "heads" project, becoming one among many... all of which, being studies of inner states, are self-portraits as well, in a way. And as inner states of mind captured my imagination more and more, I found myself examining my own psyche as ruthlessly as those of the invented ones in my sketchbooks. As for the music, hearing my music orchestrated, by Russo and also by Jason Seed, was an exhilarating experience for me." –Art Paul

White Sox

Because it just has to be mentioned!

Tchotchikies

Because don't all designers collect them?

 
 

Family + Friends

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