Arthur Paul

As Playboy Magazine’s founding art director, Art Paul used his three decades there to revolutionize illustration. It’s said that no magazine art director has commissioned more illustrators, persuaded more artists to illustrate (Warhol, Dali, and Rosenquist among them) or won more honors in giving illustration the daring and integrity of fine art. Among artists and designers Art has mentored or worked with he’s an unusually beloved and revered father figure.

But Art is unique also in having been not just an art director and graphic designer (in particular of Playboy’s rabbit logo), but also an illustrator, fine artist, curator, writer, and composer.  And there’s been a surge of interest just now in both his past and present, with recent talks, books, and a documentary on him, exhibits of his art, and performances of his writing and music.  At 91, he’s now putting his drawings and writings into book form, with projects focused on race, aging, animals, and graphic whimsy.

Honoree

 
 

"In 1986, Art was inducted into the Art Directors' Hall of Fame. Among hundreds of awards- the most colorful of which were the "Bold Step" award (illustrated here) and a lovely, carved Chinese-ivory, reclining-nude statue which one art directors' club thought appropriate. Among his most important awards were the Society of Publication Designers' Herb Lubelin Award for lifetime achievement, and a professional achievement award from Chicago's Institute of Design. He's been appointed a fellow of AIGA and a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. And he has served on many boards, including that of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. But I observed that what seemed to give him most joy was being appointed a trustee of the Illinois Summer School of the Arts, which gives summer scholarships to high school kids. It brought him back to how excited he was, as a boy from a poor family, to gain a scholarship to the summer school of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago." –Suzanne Seed, author, photographer, and wife of Arthur Paul