Trump Inspires Great Art

One micro-thin silver lining of the Turnip era: editorial art. I've been putting a few pieces away to share all at once, and I have more than five now so it's time for the first round.

This piece was from Time magazine back in August. It's by Edel Rodriguez:


Unfortunately, this cover was too quick to predict Trump's demise.

This piece is from Mother Jones:


Created by Mike McQuade, it accompanies an article called Peter's Choice: I asked my student why he voted for Trump. The answer was thoughtful, smart, and terrifying.

This one doesn't appear to be attributed to anyone:


The signature at lower right is from the original, Soviet-era artwork (seen here). The Photoshop artist is unknown, as far as I can tell.

There will be many political cartoons. Here's one I particularly liked:


It's by Mark Wilson who goes by the name Marquil. This is his website: EmpireWire.com.

Italian cartoonist Matteo Bertelli had this take on Turmp's wall:


And finally, there's this illustration for an Atlantic article on Trump's conflicts of interest:


Visually arresting and pithy. Great stuff on an infuriating topic.

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After I posted, I realized I forgot the Der Spiegel cover that just ran after the botched executive order on immigration:


The art is by Edel Rodriguez (who also did the Time magazine cover art). Rodriguez is a Cuban-born American artist who came to the U.S. during the Mariel boatlift as a child. Some of his illustration work can be seen here. He is also a painter. About this cover, he said: “If I wanted to live in a dictatorship, I'd live in Cuba... it’s much warmer.”

More on Edel Rodriguez

It's a weird thing to realize you've been appreciating an artist's work for a while but you never bothered to learn his name. Yesterday I posted about some of the art we're seeing in the Turmp era, and realized that two of the pieces were by Edel Rodriguez.


Here are some other pieces by Rodriguez from the past couple of years, starting with the most current. These are all available on his Twitter feed, where he also shares snapshots of protest posters that people have made using his art.






The meltdown at the last debate:


This piece is from the fall or summer, but it could have been done now:


One of the earlier debates:


This one is called Please Curb Your Trump:




From those halcyon days when we all thought Republicans were destroying their party by flirting with Turnip:


If you get back far enough, you find work not related to Trump. Here are a couple on guns in America:




And finally, from the early days of Pope Francis:


I think it's safe to say I will recognize his work the next time I see something new.

New Artist Takes on the Current Occupant

It's been a while since I posted any of Mulligan-related artwork. Here are a few pieces I've seen in the last few months.




Two more Der Spiegel covers by Edel Rodriguez.


One by Matt Bors for an article about Michael Wolf's Fire and Fury...


...and another than ran after one of Mulligan's North Korea tweets.


From the Times of London from back in October.


A cool line-art caricature from the New Yorker — I didn't get the artist's name.


Steve Brodner, on point as usual.

The Path of Tolerance

While out in New York State recently, I happened upon the installation of an art show called the Path of Tolerance. Each poster was about 4x6', and they were pasted to the pavers along the main pedestrian path through the campus:


It contained dozens and dozens of images, each done by a prominent artist, illustrator, or designer from around the world:


Here are some of the images that caught my eye:








Those posters were all by people I hadn't heard of. Here are some by people from the design world whose work I know:


Illustrator Sue Coe.


Illustrator Edel Rodriguez, creator of images I've written about before.


Beautiful lettering by Jessica Hische.


And finally, the gritty work of Tacoma's Art Chantry.

Cover Meltdown

One thing I regret about our present era is the near disappearance of the illustrated magazine cover. Not just because magazines have lost much of their prominence generally given the rise of the interweb, but also because someone decided along the way that photos were more compelling to readers. (Along with lots of yellow headlines.)

But they are wrong. Illustrations make the best covers:


This one is by Edel Rodriguez and it's going to be shown for years to come in design schools.

Whether it makes anyone buy the magazine, I can't say, but that seems like the wrong metric to me.