posted on 20 Sep 2015

Gonzo: The Art by Ralph Steadman

I can't remember exactly when I first encountered a Ralph Steadman drawing but I do remember exactly what I thought : wow! What the hell is this? That's still my reaction to Steadman's work - recognisable humans pulled into elastic proportions, heads explode, noses replaced with penises, arseholes that talk.

At the time I knew nothing about Steadman or his often side-kick Hunter S. Thompson and I'd never heard of Gonzo journalism or Gonzo Art. It was Steadman who sent me off to find out about it and I've had a lasting affection for this mind-expanding, head-banging, politically vicious genre ever since. This 1998 Weidenfeld and Nicolson published collection of drawings has a foreword by Hunter Thompson and it's one of my favourites because it pulls together a lot of stuff that's become too expensive for me to buy in individual editions.

You'll find the drawings here from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Steadman and Thompson's alcohol and drugs-fuelled road trip into the screaming nightmare of the American dream. There's also the drawings from the pair's trip to the Kentucky Derby where the US old money meets the US new vulgarity and they all meet Steadman and Thompson. It can only end well for one side of that equation.

Steadman never compromises but he eviscerates his characters with wit and even good humour - if you see him being interviewed you'd think he was nothing more than an amiable scribbler. He is, in reality, an astute social and political commentator whose work has influenced a whole generation of immitators and whose sensibility links the great satirists past and present.

Terry Potter

September 2015