Back when I was a student the classics of Gonzo journalism written by Hunter S. Thompson and illustrated with mad blotchy, psychedelic drawings by Ralph Steadman were compulsory reading, almost style Bibles to some people.
The Gonzo works are only one aspect of the long and wide-ranging career of one of Britain’s most celebrated illustrators – it’s striking to learn that his first cartoon was published in 1953 and he’s still going strong over 60 years later.
This exhibition at the Heath Robinson Museum, up in Pinner, is a highly enjoyable dive into some key themes from the great man’s life, works and mind-expanding art.
Poster for Ralph Steadman: INKling
The exhibition showcases works from four themes:
1. Literary illustrations
One wall displays eight of Steadman’s illustrations of three great literary classics such as Alice in Wonderland (1967), Animal Farm (1994), and Treasure Island (1985).
The literary classics wall at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author)
It’s interesting to study the Alice illustrations, the earliest works here. Right back in 1967 his distorted and rather demented style is evident, especially in the eyes, which are often large as plates with huge black pupils, and often deliberately disturbingly asymmetrical. But the obvious thing about them compared to everything which follows are 1) far more attention to detail than you find later; the images are far more finished in every detail and 2) the importance of straight lines or, more accurately, the contrast between geometrically precise shapes often demarcated by lines, and the craziness of the human figures, especially the scary faces. Look at the precision of the numerable lines in the Through The Looking Glass pictures.
I set myself to choose one image from each of the four themes in the show. The Alice ones have a late 1960s trippy vibe, the Treasure Island pirates look bloodthirsty, but the best image on the wall as of Napoleon and Snowball, the two pigs from Animal Farm, oozing corrupt brutality.
2. Children’s book illustrations
It’s not all drug-crazed eyeballs and Jackson Pollock ink splats. This section displays no fewer than 28 illustrations from children’s books. Some of these are for other people’s books but a surprising number seem to be from books he wrote himself.
Part of the Children’s books wall at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author)
The 28 images show a surprising variety of tone and finish. Some are classic demented Steadman. Some are more restrained, like the images from ‘Teddy Where Are You?’ which had an almost Quentin Blake sweet common sense about them. The first section included half a dozen works I initially thought must have been painted by children themselves, so deliberately amateurish and childlike they seemed. You can see what I mean in the earliest images on the children’s section of his website.
I loved the spaceship taking off through a murky purple space cloud in ‘Flowers For The Moon’ (1974), the surprisingly realistic depictions of the Teddy bear in ‘Teddy Where Are You?’, and the craziness of No Room To Swing A Cat.
3. Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo
This is what we drug-curious students worshipped Steadman for, for his illustrations for the classic works of American Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, which rise above the category of ‘illustrations’ to become collaborations or, to adopt Gonzo mentality, conspiracies! The classic works are:
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973)
- The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
- The Curse of Lono (1983)
Already a well-established illustrator and newspaper cartoonist, in 1970 Steadman was commissioned to illustrate an article about the Kentucky Derby to be written by Hunter S. Thompson for what turned out to be the short-lived New Journalism magazine Scanlan’s Monthly. It was a marriage made in heaven, with the intense prose of the journalist perfectly illustrated by Steadman’s demented pictures. They became very close friends, collaborating on numerous projects and hanging out for the next 35 years until Thompson’s death in 2005.
Part of the Gonzo wall at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ (with some of the Children’s wall, on the left) @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author). For explanation of the black bats painted onto the walls, see below
Gonzo journalism refers to topical writing which makes no pretence at objectivity, and in which the character of the journalist himself looms very large. This might have been called subjective journalism or something similarly tame; what makes it Gonzo is the writer’s consumption of excessive amounts of booze and drugs, which crank up the descriptions, the prose, the often calamitous events, to hysteria level.
To give you a sense of the scale of depravity, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ is a fictionalised account of Thompson, under the pseudonym Raoul Duke, attending a drug-enforcement conference accompanied by his 300-pound Samoan attorney, named Dr Gonzo. As if this wasn’t surreal enough, they took with them a carefully itemised booty of illegal substances, to wit:
“two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.”
Steadman’s extreme style of demented caricature was heaven-sent to illustrate these adventures. The black bats swooping spatter-winged on the wall above the Gonzo images are part of the acid-fuelled hallucination which opens the book.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. (‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, page 1)
The New York Times wrote of Steadman’s illustrations that they “were stark and crazed and captured Thompson’s sensibility, his notion that below the plastic American surface lurked something chaotic and violent. The drawings are the plastic torn away and the people seen as monsters.”
In fact the exhibition only features seven illustrations from the book, classics though they are, accompanied by the black bats and random desert cacti printed onto the wall. Almost as striking is the glass display case which contains memorabilia connected with the Gonzo books and more.
The Gonzo display case at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author)
At the centre bottom you can see a copy of Scanlon’s Magazine, with paperback editions of Las Vegas, Lono and Campaign Trail just to the left. Gonzo completists might thrill to the fact that at the far left of the case, are items used by Ralph to impersonate Thompson, being Thompson’s trademark white fishing hat, yellow-tinted shades and cigarette holder.
4. Gonzovation
Obviously partial to bad puns, the section on Gonzovation turns out to be a series depicting endangered species and environmental activism. The story goes that in 2011 film-maker and conservationist Ceri Levy approached Steadman for an illustration of an extinct bird for a volume of extinct birds to be illustrated by lots of different artists. He heard nothing for weeks and then four pictures popped into his inbox. In the end Steadman drew a hundred images of extinct birds and imagined birds. The latter came to be referred to as ‘boids’ and became a project, eventually a book published by Bloomsbury called Extinct Boids.
Following the success of ‘Extinct Boids’, Steadman and Levy collaborated on a second book about endangered species of birds, titled ‘Nextinction’ (2013). And this was followed in 2015 by a book about endangered animals, ‘Critical Critters’. The three have come to be known as the Gonzovation Trilogy.
Critical Critters – Bornean-Sumatran Orangutan by Ralph Steadman (2017)
On display here are 16 fairly large images. Most of them are birds but there are striking images of a panda, lion, zebra, tuna fish, blue whale and this vibrant orang utan.
Because the displays go round in a circle (on the four walls of the Museum’s guest exhibition room) you end up where you began, the most recent critical critter placed close to his earliest works, the 1967 Alice images. This highlights the distinctiveness of both, namely the completeness, the thoroughness and the obsession with geometric lines in the black and white Alice illustrations; juxtaposed with the orang and his ilk. Well, how would you describe him?
Clearly there are none of the geometric lines from 60 years earlier, and none of the concern to produce an image complete and finished in every detail. The reverse. The power is in the incompletion of the image and instead the incredible propulsive power of the thick black lines radiating outwards. The orang utan is exploding onto our vision. And Steadman’s trademark splatter technique is here used to maximum effect, the radiating exploding lines feel wiggly and heartfelt
The artist’s desk
Probably the most striking thing in this little exhibition, though, is what appears to be Steadman’s actual working desk, with a photographic mock-up of part of his studio. It is, as you might expect, spattered with decades’ worth of coloured inks, across the drawing table, the surface of the desk and the wall behind it. Stuck to the desk are photos and memorabilia from his long career.
Ralph Steadman’s desk and a mock-up of part of his study at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author)
That’s not all. I could hear a burbling muttering noise coming from somewhere and eventually realised there’s a little loudspeaker under the desk emitting the sound of someone pottering around in a room, talking to themselves, occasionally bursting into snatches of song. Well, this appears to be a recording of the great man himself, Steadman ralphensis, recorded in his natural habitat.
Ralph Steadman’s desktop and self-portrait at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author)
Thoughts
Wonderful. Pure visual pleasure with lots of droll comedy. Nostalgic memories of the Fear and Loathing days overlaid with work from each decade since, crowned by the big and striking animal pictures. Steadman found a style in the late 1960s and developed it to infinity and beyond, creating a universe of incisive, dynamic and exciting imagery. Pure delight.
A life-sized cut-out of our hero lurking in a doorway to leap out at the unwary! at ‘Ralph Steadman: INKling’ @ the Heath Robinson Museum (photo by the author)
Related links
- Ralph Steadman: INKling was at the Heath Robinson Museum from 15 February to 10 May 2025
- Ralph Steadman Wikipedia article
Books & Boots 