All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't): Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page

by Jerelle Kraus

Overview

All the Art That's Fit to Print reveals the true story of the world's first Op-Ed page, a public platform that—in 1970—prefigured the Internet blogosphere. Not only did the New York Times's nonstaff bylines shatter tradition, but the pictures were revolutionary. Unlike anything ever seen in a newspaper, Op-Ed art became a globally influential idiom that reached beyond narrative for metaphor and changed illustration's very purpose and potential.

Jerelle Kraus, whose thirteen-year tenure as Op-Ed art director far exceeds that of any other art director or editor, unveils a riveting account of working at the Times. Her insider anecdotes include the reasons why artist Saul Steinberg hated the Times, why editor Howell Raines stopped the presses to kill a feature by Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau, and why reporter Syd Schanburg—whose story was told in the movie The Killing Fields—stated that he would travel anywhere to see Kissinger hanged, as well as Kraus's tale of surviving two and a half hours alone with the dethroned peerless outlaw, Richard Nixon.

All the Art features a satiric portrayal of John McCain, a classic cartoon of Barack Obama by Jules Feiffer, and a drawing of Hillary Clinton and Obama by Barry Blitt. But when Frank Rich wrote a column discussing Hillary Clinton exclusively, the Times refused to allow Blitt to portray her. Nearly any notion is palatable in prose, yet editors perceive pictures as a far greater threat. Confucius underestimated the number of words an image is worth; the thousand-fold power of a picture is also its curse.

Op-Ed's subject is the world, and its illustrations are created by the world's finest graphic artists. The 142 artists whose work appears in this book hail from thirty nations and five continents, and their 324 pictures-gleaned from a total of 30,000-reflect artists' common drive to communicate their creative visions and to stir our vibrant cultural-political pot.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231138253
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	1,035,527
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 10.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jerelle Kraus is the award-winning art director whose thirty-year tenure at the New York Times includes a record thirteen years at Op-Ed. She also worked as an art director at Time and as the art director of Ramparts magazine and of Francis Ford Coppola's City magazine.

The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine have published Kraus's writing, including an "On Language" column that subbed for William Safire. Fluent in four languages, she was educated at Swarthmore and Pomona colleges and at l'École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She received an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fulbright scholarship to Munich. Her Web site is jerellekraus.com.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Origins
The Seventies
The Eighties
The Nineties
The Aughts
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Bill Maher

To discover what really goes on inside the belly of the media beast, read All the Art That's Fit to Print. The "Some That Wasn't" are never-published illustrations censored by Times poobahs and revealed here for the first time. Jerelle Kraus's juicy tales include clashes with tyrannical editor Howell Raines over imagery he erroneously viewed as politically incorrect or sexual and a hilarious story of meeting Richard Nixon—behind an unmarked door after a secret knock—who wanted the original of her drawing of him and Brezhnev. In today's world of thought crimes, All the Art is must reading.

Ronald Searle

The pages of this book are illuminated by the results of Kraus's love affair with that remarkable editorial space in the Times.

Brad Holland

At first sight, the art of the Op-Ed page baffled. An intelligent reader might have guessed that the Times editors were locking their writers in one room and their artists in another, giving them the same assignments, then joining their words and pictures in editorial matrimony. Like many novel ideas, this approach first struck many as a mistake. Yet within a few years, the 'mistake' had spread to publications around the world, and as the novelty became commonplace, readers came to accept that pictures don't have to illustrate; they can stand on their own. The Op-Ed page was an experiment in form and content. Unlike the gorgeous color illustrations that appeared in glossy magazines, our artwork was defined by short deadlines, low budgets, and simple reproduction. This discipline taught us to whittle our imagery down to sharp points. We let authors dissect their subjects, stretching thought out in time, while we compressed thought into space.

Milton Glaser

All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some that Wasn't) is a fascinating display of the social and political events that have shaped the last third of a century, brought to life with powerful graphic images that persist in the memory.

Garry Trudeau

Among its other innovations, the New York Times Op-Ed page has given us the elegant visual jazz of artists set free in a parallel universe, a monochromatic dreamscape where language is banished, allegory rules, and Dada collides with Pop. Kraus serves up the best of these excursions, including, happily, those that went too far.

Editorial Reviews

An excellent reminder of the power of editorial illustration. These images do so much more than break up the gray space of columns of text. This book gives life to an underappreciated, and often unexamined, form of visual journalism.

Jounralism

As a memoir, Kraus's work provides colorful, intimate, and occasionally searing portraits of several high-ranking Times executives.

JHistory - Michael Socolow

Part memoir, part art book, and part journalism history. But all parts are exemplary.

— Beth Haller

American Journalism

As a memoir, Kraus's work provides colorful, intimate, and occasionally searing portraits of several high-ranking Times executives.

— Michael Socolow

JHistory

The enduring relevance of the New York Times op-ed illustrations are explicated with literary flair by Kraus, a former art director of the page, who contends that the groundbreaking pictures "changed the very purpose and potential of illustrations... to stir the political and cultural pot." Episodic essays accompanied by illustrations re-create the battles between art directors and editors that have raged since the Times created the world's first op-ed page in 1970. The works of famous Times illustrators like Brad Holland and Roland Topor, are enriched by Kraus's presentation of the controversies associated with their publication or rejection. The book serves as a chronicle of late 20th-century history, replete with sardonic images of tyrants and visual commentaries on the fall of communism; the works of Eastern Europeans who fled totalitarian regimes are some of the most challenging and resonant. In this overflowing treasure chest of ideas, politics and cultural critiques, Kraus proves that "art is dangerous" and sometimes necessarily so. 306 illus. (Nov.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Art is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of the New York Times , but it appears to play a very important journalistic role in communicating editorial ideas, even at a subconscious level. Kraus, an art director at the Times for 30 years, provides a detailed analysis of the art on the Op-Ed page, from its inception in 1970 to today. The 306 images are arranged by decade, and the text is divided into short sections that focus on a variety of themes related to the images, the artists, and editorial practices. Kraus draws on her 13 years as the art director of the Op-Ed page to share an insider's view of the editorial and political processes of the newspaper and includes several images that were never published in the Times . Using text and images, she shares her passion for visual communication. Readers will be entertained and come away with a deeper appreciation of the power of illustration. This book belongs in public libraries that subscribe to the Times and in most academic libraries.-Judy Solberg, Seattle Univ. Lib.

Library Journal

Part memoir, part art book, and part journalism history. But all parts are exemplary.

Beth Hallern Journalism

An intensely personal history of the [op-ed] page as it weathered tempests and tinpot tyrannies at the Times.

Columbia Journalism Review

[This] provocative book examines the images that shattered the conventions of newspaper imagery.

Huffington Post

Worth the price of the book is Kraus's 2 1/2-hour encounter with former President Richard Nixon.

History Wire

Part memoir, part art book, and part journalism history. But all parts are exemplary.

American Journalism - Beth Haller

An intensely personal history of the [op-ed] page as it weathered tempests and tinpot tyrannies at the Times.

Columbia Journalism Review