The artist Ralph Steadman lost his colored inks in a New York City cab on his way to his first assignment with the late Hunter S. Thompson: covering the 1970 Kentucky Derby. A friend gave him her lipsticks, rouge and other makeup, and with those smeary, livid colors, Steadman out of necessity conjured the look of Gonzo journalism. And if you think of it, the look of Gonzo is the first thing you think of when you hear the term. Of course, Thompson’s chronicles of his misadventures—in Las Vegas, on the ’72 presidential campaign trail and on and on—are the stuff of journalistic legend. But when you think Gonzo, admit it, it's that scrawly inked line, those splatters, those characters with the pinwheel eyes that you think of first.
He’s still at it, collaborating now with Will Self, a novelist in England, with whom he produces a column in the Independent called Psychogeography. It’s nominally about the effect of places on people, but in truth—or perhaps because that’s such an elastic concept to start with—they write and draw on every conceivable subject: bicycling, the ridiculous size of Vatican City, Osama bin Laden, and the predicament of having a fox cub trapped in one’s kitchen in the middle of the night.
It’s nice to see that a change in collaborator has done nothing to Steadman’s style. He’s as intemperate as ever. Gonzo lives.
Images (c) Ralph Steadman; Courtesy Bloomsbury USA
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