From the early ’70s through the early ’90s, Canadian artist and activist Carl Chaplin produced and exhibited a series of paintings depicting the atomic destruction of major cities from around the world “to point out the horror of what would happen to all of mankind in a nuclear war.” The series was called Art Nuko, and it became quite controversial…
Despite a tragically short life, and despite still being almost completely unknown, Greg Irons has exerted an extraordinary influence on the course of underground and mainstream comics, graphic design, and the tattoo world, where he is regularly cited as a legend. Irons was born in Philadelphia in 1947 and moved to San Francisco during 1967’s Summer of Love, where he immediately found work designing event posters for music promoter Bill Graham…
Thanks to the record covers he drew for Rudimentary Peni, the band for which he was vocalist and guitarist, artist Nick Blinko’s initial audience was mainly confined to the members of the thriving British anarcho-punk scene of the early 1980s. Despite apparently operating in the same aggressive idiom as their peers, however, it was immediately clear that the Peni were unique…
Back in high school in the early ’90s, I often found myself haunting the aisles of the big record shops in Harvard Square in Cambridge—HMV, Tower Records, and most importantly Newbury Comics—for any and all available rare import CDs from my favorite local bands: Pixies, Throwing Muses, the Breeders…
Whenever I get to thinking about the old New York City, with its cheap book marts and thriving alt-weekly trade, its surplus of less unaffordable apartments, and tolerance (or indifference) to street art that hadn’t been curated or vetted to death—in short, the turnstile-jumping bridge-and-tunnel life that began disappearing long before 9/11—I think about Mark Beyer…
Today we spotlight the work of Pancho Domínguez, a visual artist from Monterrey, Mexico…
Although the extraordinary theatrical poster for Disney’s Something Wicked This Way Comes was illustrated by David Grove, Bob Peak painted these equally impressive pieces that, as far as I know, were never used. Peak, of course, was one of the finest commercial illustrators of the 20th century, and he virtually defined the visual concept of the modern film poster, starting with his colorful montage for 1961’s West Side Story…
Ionicus—the pen name of prolific British illustrator Joshua Charles Armitage—is probably best known for his cover illustrations for Penguin Books’ P. G. Wodehouse reissues and magazine The Dalesman, as well as the many cartoons he contributed to Punch magazine. But it is his work for London publishing house William Kimber & Co that may best represent his legacy…
Berkeley Bonaparte was a Bay Area poster art company founded in 1967 by illustrators Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson. The “Big Five,” as they came to be known, had developed a following designing posters to advertise local rock concerts, promoted by Bill Graham, at the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom…
Artist, activist, and philanthropist Keith Haring produced most of his “flying saucer” drawings well before his work became an international pop culture touchstone. In the summer of 1980, Haring was at a crossroads, and his life and art, he said, “went totally berserk”…
