Art Paul

Arthur "Art" Paul is an American graphic designer and was the founding Art Director of Playboy Magazine for 30 years. During his time at Playboy, he commissioned illustrators and artists to illustrate (Warhol, Dali, and Ronsenquist among them).

In addition to being an art director and graphic designer (in particular of Playboy's rabbit logo), Art Paul is an illustrator, fine artist, curator, writer, and composer. There has been a surge of recent interest concerning both Art's past and present, with recent talks, books, exhibitions, and a documentary being made about him. At 91 years old, he is now putting his drawings and writings into book form, with projects focused on race, aging, animals, and graphic whimsy.

Art Paul was born on January 18, 1925 in the Southwest Side of Chicago, but his family later moved to Rogers Park. There, while attending Roger C. Sullivan High School, an art teacher recognized that he was talented enough to earn a scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which he attended from 1940-1943. After World War II service in the Army Air Corps, he attended the Institute of Design, known as the "Chicago Bauhaus" and now part of Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied with László Moholy-Nagy.

"For Paul--student at the Institute of Design, commonly called the Chicago Bauhaus--Playboy was a laboratory for producing a model of contemporary magazine design and illustration...Paul helped create a forum that demolished artistic and cultural boundaries. In doing so, he transformed magazine illustration." --Steven Heller, an American design critic.

"I at first hesitated to accept Hugh Hefner's] offer. For as a freelancer I had the best clients one could in Chicago. So I freelanced the first few issues. What convinced me to accept was that I was promised freedom to buy the kind of art most illustrators couldn't sell in 1953, the personal visions that lay closest to their hearts. I told illustrators I don't want 'commercial' art. I want the kind you do to please yourself when you're not trying to get work in a magazine. At first they thought I was kidding. As for fine artists, I convinced them they would not be selling out to work for us but would reach a larger audience with their most authentic work."—Art Paul.

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Wikipedia