Ralph Steadman
Drew took me to see Ralph Steadman at the library in the Haight last Thursday. Steadman’s on tour for his new book, The Joke’s Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson and Me.
Many people have been introduced to Steadman’s work from his association with Hunter Thompson. Here Steadman is dressed as Thompson (he’s even blurry):
Ralph Steadman is a Welsh artist, known for his iconoclastic illustrations that are aesthetically vivid and thought-provoking. The man’s a genius. He presented the library crowd with a slideshow of his work from the early 70s until the present.
He gave a very inspirational talk about how art should be used as “a weapon.” This is an idea that I’ve always been intrigued with. I think it’s very difficult to separate art from the world in which it’s created. Artists who care about what’s going on will address it on some level. And usually those are the artists who I admire the most.
One of my favorite quotes is by playwright Bertolt Brecht: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Steadman said “Use what you do to fight against it [the injustice of the world].”
I’m dying to check out one of his older books called The Big I Am. It’s Steadman’s take on how we got here and what it’s all about. He described his vision with great wit and said this of God: “His wife died in childbirth, which is why he’s such a mean son of a bitch.”
One of the things I really admired about his presentation was his humility. He described his bold, revolutionary ideas, with modesty and charming wit.
Steadman said, “Yes, I have changed the world. I made it worse.”