Art Unseen

Believe it or not, this David Suter illustration was considered too offensive to print on the New York Times op-ed page.

A new book by former Times op-ed art director Jerelle Kraus reprints 320 illustrations, most by respected and even truly famous artists, that were rejected for being offensive. The book is called All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't) (Columbia University Press).

What kind of offensive? We're talking about mildly critical caricatures of sitting presidents or even of the United States government generally -- as in the case of Suter's drawing above, which I, for one, think is quite brilliant. Others were considered too sexual (usually in an eye-of-of-the-dirty-minded-beholder kind of way).

According to an article by Steve Brown on Alternet, Kraus's book says the Times paid $1 million in "kill" fees to the artists. This is a common practice when an illustration is commissioned but not used, but geez... a million bucks. That works out to an average of $3125 per illo for nothing, at least nothing as far as the paper was concerned (the illustrator obviously would disagree).

Often, the art was mild in comparison with the scathing op-ed it was meant to accompany... as if the editors suspected that a lot of readers would only look at the pictures, so it didn't really matter what the writers said.

To top it off, the Times discouraged Kraus from doing the book (according to the Alternet article), and now that she finally has, the Times book review is heavily ignoring the book's publication.

You'd think they might have some sense of humor over there at the Gray Lady, but I guess not.