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Arts
With a free, rare retrospective up now in Maine, Legendary gonzo artist Ralph Steadman talks favorite works, “Breaking Bad” — and the time Hunter S. Thompson took drugs, shot flares and attempted to deface a yacht in Newport.
One night in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1970, Ralph Steadman felt seasick and took a pill handed to him by Hunter S. Thompson.
That was his first mistake.
It was psilocybin because, of course, it was.
The Welsh satirical artist and the freak-flag-flying freelance journalist were covering the America’s Cup yacht sailing race for the short-lived Scanlan’s Monthly. They’d just established themselves as icons of gonzo journalism with the seminal “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” for Scanlan’s.
Now in New England and high on a powerful hallucinogen, they decided to hop in a dinghy, paddle out to a yacht and spray-paint it.
“I was going to write something on the side of one of the boats: “F— The Pope,” Steadman tells me with a laugh.
When he told Thompson his plan, he says, Thompson quipped, “Are you religious, Ralph?”
“I only thought about writing it — I didn’t do it,” the 89-year-old tells me now from his Kent, England, living room. “I think I’d still be in prison.”
Instead, someone heard their shaking paint cans. Hunter frantically rowed away, but fell backwards. His legs popped straight up from the boat.
“Goddamn! Goddamn!” Steadman says in a perfect Thompson imitation.
Back at the dock, Thompson fired off a flare gun. Fire rained down on yachts. People screamed. Harbor police arrived. Thompson and Steadman hopped on a passing boat to flee. Steadman white-knuckled his passport and return ticket home.
Near daylight, they found a coffee shop where Thompson rushed to call Aspen to ensure he was registered to run for sheriff on the third-party “Freak Power” ticket.
He lost.
The article never ran.
I’m sitting rapt as I Zoom with Steadman and his daughter Sadie Williams, director of the Ralph Steadman Art Collection, as a rare traveling retrospective, “Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing,” is up now in Maine, its only New England stop.
The free-admission exhibit spans 60 years of Steadman’s career through some 149 original artworks and ephemera at Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, now through Oct. 11. It then moves to the West Coast.
“With gonzo journalism, the journalist is part of the story. So Hunter always seemed to be putting you in, I wouldn’t say malevolent, but mischievous twinkle-in-the-eye-situations,” Williams, co-curator of the exhibit, says to her dad. “Graffitiing one of those big boats is a way of being subversive.”
“He could use me. I was naive. The innocent abroad,” says Steadman, in thick round glasses, plaid shirt and sweater vest. “He put me into spots where I could get into trouble. It was for his amusement more than mine.”
While the exhibit “pays tribute” to Thompson and Steadman’s famed collabs like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” it’s “more than a Gonzo exploration,” according to billing. See his lampoons of American presidents, illustrations for classics such as Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” and from books he wrote, like “I, Leonardo,” early sketches, ephemera, and more.
You might take a gonzo road trip to see a free screening of “For No Good Reason,” Charlie Paul’s 2012 documentary about Steadman featuring Johnny Depp, screening Sept. 9, the classic Depp-led 1998 adaptation, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” Sept. 24. Closing reception Oct. 10 features a discussion with co-curator Andrea Harris.
In conversation, Steadman is avuncular and charming. Sitting in a wooden chair, surrounded by books, papers, nib-pens and ink, he impersonates Thompson, cracks self-deprecating jokes, and shows me artwork.
At one point, out of the blue, he recites for me, in full, the old Irish poem, “The Pig,” or “A Man Who Boozes.”
At another, like a winking uncle, he asks me: “I’ve got a middle name. Do you know it?”
I do not.
“Idris. I had an Uncle Idris, a Welshman. It was my father’s middle name, as well.”
Later, he tells me his ideal New England day, which sounds lifted from a children’s book: “I want to write a book halfway up a mountain. Be nice to do. Take a typewriter with me.”
I Zoomed with the poetry-reciting, typewriter-loving, ink-blotting, Leonardo da Vinci obsessive that is Ralph Idris Steadman to talk “Breaking Bad,” Dr. Gonzo, and why he loves that dirty water.
Tell me a bit about you. You were born in Wallasey, Cheshire, England, 1936. One of your earliest memories is hiding in an air-raid shelter during World War II.
Steadman: We hid from bombs in a [pre-fabricated] Anderson shelter, in the garden. My mother would knit to help her nerves. Knit one, purl one.
Did you draw to cope? Or how did you get into art?
Well, I took a correspondence course, “You, Too, Can Learn to Draw,” for 9 pounds. It was a Percy V. Bradshaw Press Art School course during my National Service, age 18 to 20. [But] the Percy V. Bradshaw correspondence course was a bit phony.
[laughs] So you didn’t draw as a kid?
No. I’ll tell you what I did do. I built model airplanes. That’s what I like doing. And throwing them off high spots.
[laughs] So what drew you to art? Were you always into political satire cartoons?
Yes, I think I wanted to do something like that. I started out doing aircraft drawings, engineering drawings. I apprenticed at De Havilland Aircraft Company to become an engineer of some kind. But I couldn’t stand factory life. So I got out of it. I suppose, the rest is history.
At one point, you drew political cartoons for newspapers. You were first published in the Manchester Evening Chronicle in 1956.
I started with northern newspapers. I couldn’t say I had a proper artistic education. I started out as a sort of ignoramus.
Williams to dad: Then you enrolled in East Ham Tech College [in ’59] and met Leslie Richardson.
Steadman: That was the biggest thing in my life for education. The teacher there, Leslie Richardson, was kind and very encouraging. He became a lifelong friend.
How did you first connect with Hunter S. Thompson for the Kentucky Derby story?
Steadman: [Scanlan editor] J.C. Suares called: “Would you like to go to Kentucky and meet an ex-Hell’s Angel?” Hunter had shaved his head! [Breaks into perfect Thompson impression] “Hello. You Ralph Steadman?” “Yes.” “You draw cartoons?” “Yes.” “OK. I’m Hunter S. Thompson.”
[laughs] What sparked the art for that?
Williams, to dad: You left your inks in a taxi, and then whoever you were staying with, his wife was an Avon rep. And so most of the pictures for that piece are drawn in makeup: lipstick and eyeshadow.
Oh, wow.
Williams: Except for the horse. When he got home, they were like, “You went to the derby and haven’t drawn a horse.” So that’s drawn in ink.
Do you have these pieces?
Williams: We only have the horse. The others disappeared in Scanlan’s magazine offices somewhere, or were mislaid.
What was it like covering the Derby with Hunter?
Steadman: He was an extraordinary person. He’s something I don’t think I could have lived near — it’s better to be away from. [laughs] But I was drawing all the time– it was elevating to be around crazy people like that.
You told me about Newport. Any other wild memories like that?
Williams: When they covered a Hawaii marathon in 1980, they started off running at the [starting line], then had a van pick them up and drive them to the end.
Steadman: We were sitting near the end, shouting at the passing runners, “Run, ya bastard! Run!”
[laughs] Classic. And how did you come up with your unique ink-splatter, signature style?
Steadman: I don’t like the word “style.” “Content” is the only word I like, because that’s really all my style is. I try to draw things, cartoon-like, and they tend to express a certain atmosphere.
OK, but from where you started off, in the ‘50s, doing more standard newspaper cartoon drawings, how did that content evolve?
Steadman: I think it was the (time) I spent at Punch, [a satirical cartoon magazine in the U.K.]
Williams to dad: I think, as well — I’ve noticed this just having put exhibitions together — your art changed when you went to America because — this is going to sound really rudimentary — the paper got bigger. You were working on bigger bits and it freed you. You can see that change, literally. Looser and looser.
That’s interesting.
Steadman: I like blot artwork. Let it either dry or half-dry, and do something else to it. You imagine what might be in a blot — you suddenly see something. “Oh, it’s a machine.” I start doing circles with a compass. That’s how it evolved.
Williams to dad: In the later years. In earlier work, like Leonardo, there was more precision. It’s later that you got that real looseness with the blots, [images] coming through dirty water.
Steadman: The dirtier the water, the more interesting. You got extraordinary textures. I made the water smellier and smellier. It became enriched by its own smell. The smellier, the better.
[laughs]
Williams: It’s the silt in the dirty ink water. It settles in these amazing textures. Then the drawing emerges from the ink. That’s when I think he becomes the most fluid.
Rolling Stone must have loved the style. Jan Wenner bought one of your paintings?
Williams to dad: He bought all the “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” pieces, for $75 each. I know you regretted selling them, but think about where they were — the coolest place on earth. They hung in the Rolling Stone offices. So I think, “Wow, the people who must have seen them.”
Steadman: I was doing the right thing at the time. I wish I had copies of them, even.
You haven’t sold many pieces since.
Williams: One or two. It’s not something he likes to make a habit of. But that’s why we’re able to put such rich exhibitions together — we have so many pieces. You can really tell a narrative. That’s what was really exciting for me, having grown up with it.
Sadie, what’s your favorite piece?
Williams: The portrait of Lorca. When I lead tours, I always stop there. The background is torn paper from dad’s drawing board with splats. The face was elongated on a photocopier. It’s so powerful.
Ralph, what about you?
Steadman: “I, Leonardo.” Leonardo was a big figure in my life. I painted the Last Supper on my wall in the bedroom. I wanted to become Leonardo da Vinci. But I can’t speak Italian.
[laughs] You’ve been commissioned by so many brands — Vans, Nike, Flying Dog Beer. You also did Blu-Ray DVD covers for “Breaking Bad.”
Steadman: I hadn’t seen the show. Didn’t know anything about it.
Williams: Your granddaughter Grace was here doing some work here at the time. She was like, “What?! You’ve got to do it, Grumpy!” All his grandchildren call him Grumpy. So that day, Sony sent over by bike courier every single DVD.
We’ve got all the originals in the archive. But the one of Skyler White has never been seen, and never can be seen, because the actress didn’t approve them.
Oh wow. So in curating this exhibit, what do you hope people take away from it?
Williams: I like it when people are surprised. When they walk past pieces and go, “That’s surely not a Steadman.” Because they think it’s all “Fear and Loathing.” When they see the children’s work, they’re surprised he can do gentle, kind stuff. [laughs]
Ralph, do you still draw?
Steadman: Occasionally. I was extremely busy once. But one recently —
[He points to a large blank piece of poster-sized paper on the other side of the room. Williams gets it and holds it up. The paper is totally blank, save for small handwriting in upper left corner, reading: “Once upon ever such a big long time ago.”]
I think it’s funny to have something that’s empty.
I love that. That line has a great ring to it. Do you often write lines for your work?
Steadman: They come to me occasionally. [Digs through his pocket to hold up a notebook.]
Williams, to dad: I always thought Hunter was slightly jealous that you could write better than he could draw.
Interview has been edited and condensed. Lauren Daley can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagram at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
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Rosemary Ford
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