All the Art That's Fit to Print - J.Kraus

All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't): Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page, Jerelle Kraus (Foreword by Ralph Steadman), Colombia University Press, 2009.

" "It was important for us to develop an arresting visual world of our own", says Op-Ed's first art director, Lou Silverstein. Searching for ideas, "I grabbed two editors", he recalls, "and we spent a couple hours looking at illustrations in the public library." Then Silverstein sent seven top designers a list of the day's main issues, requesting that they make drawings. "These guys didn't need the extra money," Silverstein comments, "yet they could express themselves publicly on their burning issues. I spent a lot of time working with them, but it was a dead end. I got enough banal responses to realise designers weren't the key. You have to have a direction, a focus. Not everybody has something to say."

The Op-Ed page began publishing before establishing a fresh visual identity.
(...)
Before long, though, Op-Ed showcased a potent drawing by Ralph Steadman that Silverstein had seen in the artist's London apartment. Steadman would be good, Silverstein thought, because "he's an angry artist who focuses his anger."
(...)
After Silverstein got things going, he put staff art director Bob Melson in charge. During Op-Ed's first year, however, strong illustrations only occasionally showed up among lackluster spots and shots from the 'morgue', the Times's photograph archive. Melson held the helm until Memorial Day 1971.
Enter alpha male Jean-Claude Suarès, a wheeler-dealer who answers to "J.-C.". "Wearing a suit and hair down to my shoulders," he says, "I went for an interview at the Times. They were looking fro somebody to find art for Op-Ed." The paper eventually hired him as a freelance art editor. "But when I showed them images," Suarès recalls, "They'd say, 'That's great, but it's too crazy. We can't run it." Op-Ed didn't print a thing he showed them for seven months.
"I realized it was a joke," says Suarès. Then, one day in 1971, an article compared living in New York to living on the moon. It made Suarès think of "a perfect Topor drawing of a guy hanging from the moon. I had it made into a cut [lead engraving] and sent to the composing room. Then the mucky-mucks came down and said exactly what drove me nuts. 'I'm worried'. Whenever they said that, I saw red."
The editors replaced Topor's drawing with a photo of New York. Suarès thought that he was finished at the Times and had nothing to lose. "So I left," he recounts, "and took the Topor cut with me. I returned to the composing room just before closing. The mucky-mucks were gone. I told a printer, 'They changed their minds.' 'You sure?' 'Yes.' So the printer put the photo on the floor and Topor's drawing in the page." Suarès smashed the lead engraving of the photo whith his boot heel to ensure that it couldn't be used and then got a proof of the finished page.
"I knew my Times career was over," says Suarès. "I returned to my office and cleaned out my desk. I planned to see a movie the next day but I got an early call to come in." He went to see Silverstein who told him, "I can't believe how stupid you are! What made you think we'd ever run a drawing like this?"
"I thought that was what I was hired for," replied Suarès. Then Silverstein's phone rang. Editor Harrison Salisbury wanted to see Suarès. "So," Suarès relates, "I got up to Harrison, who's talking to the publisher. The publisher's telling him it's a great page. I don't speak. I never spoke to Silverstein again. I took over. And the page became what it was supposed to be -a place for the most committed political artists to show their work and feel in good company." "

p15-16


Quelques images : A.Siegel ; M.Arisman ; J.Vlahovic


[Pour voir l'image de Topor en question, je vous invite à faire un effort d'acquisition ou de déplacement jusqu'à une bibliothèque pour consulter physiquement le livre]

A voir : vidéo du NY Times pour les 40 ans de la page Op-Ed