Ralph Stead­man is best known as the artist who real­ized the gonzo vision of Hunter S. Thomp­son in illus­tra­tions for the latter’s books and arti­cles (and more recent­ly, per­haps, for the labels on Colorado’s Fly­ing Dog brew). His work has famous­ly appeared over the past sev­er­al decades in Punch, Pri­vate Eye, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and he pro­duced a bril­liant­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Alice in Won­der­land. Like his friend Ger­ald Scarfe, anoth­er wicked­ly satir­i­cal car­toon­ist who cre­at­ed the look of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Stead­man has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the look of the coun­ter­cul­ture.

But while Steadman’s work with Hunter Thomp­son may large­ly define his career, anoth­er notable col­lab­o­ra­tion with a lit­er­ary fig­ure, William S. Bur­roughs, also proved fruit­ful many years lat­er. In 1995, Stead­man brought togeth­er his own illus­tra­tions with Bur­roughs love of guns, ask­ing the octo­ge­nar­i­an writer to blast holes in orig­i­nal Stead­man cre­ations.

Some of these paint­ings fea­ture the Polaroid por­traits of Bur­roughs above and at the top of the post (see a result­ing Steadman/Burroughs silkscreen print, with gun­shot holes, here). Just above, you can see Stead­man tak­ing the pho­tos. First, he makes some test shots with an assis­tant, then, at 2:50, we see him with Bur­roughs and an entourage. As The Inde­pen­dent described the meet­ing at Bur­roughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas, it was some­thing of a “con­trived event,” with “swarms of assis­tants” and “acolytes” in atten­dance, “tap­ing the whole thing on video.”

Luck­i­ly for us, I’d say. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we don’t seem to have video from lat­er in the day, when the group drove “out to Burrough’s friends place out­side town, where he does his shoot­ing.” Once there, “Bur­roughs, Stead­man and his wife Anna and Bur­roughs’ entourage take turns blaz­ing away with .33s, .45s, pump-action shot­guns and Sat­ur­day-night spe­cials at a vari­ety of tar­gets,” includ­ing Steadman’s art. That would be some­thing to see. We’ll have to set­tle for the art itself, and Steadman’s fas­ci­nat­ing demon­stra­tion below of his approach to por­trai­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The medieval trav­el­ogue presents present-day writ­ers and artists with an abun­dance of mate­r­i­al. Writ­ing in an age when the bound­aries between fic­tion and non- were not so sharply drawn, ear­ly explor­ers and sailors had lit­tle com­punc­tion about embell­ish­ing their tales with exag­ger­a­tions and out­right lies. Trav­el­ers cir­cu­lat­ed sto­ries of giants and mon­sters and cred­u­lous read­ers back home swal­lowed them whole. Well, some­times. In the case of the most famed medieval trav­el­er, Mar­co Polo, schol­ars have debat­ed whether Il Mil­ione—one of the titles of a nar­ra­tive based on his accounts—refers to a fam­i­ly nick­name or to Polo’s rep­u­ta­tion for telling “a mil­lion lies.” But whether Polo told the truth or not hard­ly mat­tered to Ita­lo Calvi­no, who found in the explorer’s col­or­ful tales just the inspi­ra­tion he need­ed for his 1972 nov­el Invis­i­ble Cities.

More a series of vignettes than a nar­ra­tive, the book con­sists of chap­ter after chap­ter of Polo describ­ing for Kublai Khan the var­i­ous cities he encoun­tered on his trav­els, each one more fan­tas­tic and mag­i­cal than the last. “Kublai Khan does not nec­es­sar­i­ly believe every­thing Mar­co Polo says,” Calvi­no tells us in his intro­duc­tion, “but the emper­or of the Tar­tars does con­tin­ue lis­ten­ing to the young Venet­ian with greater atten­tion and curios­i­ty than he shows any oth­er mes­sen­ger or explor­er of his.” As read­ers, we too lis­ten with rapt atten­tion to curi­ous sto­ries of cities like Olin­da, which “grows in con­cen­tric cir­cles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring” and Eusapia, where “the inhab­i­tants have con­struct­ed an iden­ti­cal copy of their city, under­ground,” so that the dead can “con­tin­ue their for­mer activ­i­ties.”

Play­ing on the bizarre nature of trav­el­ers’ tales and the imag­i­na­tive excess­es of exot­ic romances, Calvino’s nov­el abounds in delight­ful archi­tec­tur­al absur­di­ties and puz­zling alle­gories, almost demand­ing to be illu­mi­nat­ed like a medieval man­u­script. Decid­ing to meet the chal­lenge, artists Matt Kish, Leighton Con­nor, Joe Kuth began illus­trat­ing Invis­i­ble Cities in April of 2014. Their tum­blr, See­ing Calvi­no, updates every Wednes­day with a new inter­pre­ta­tion of the novel’s many strange cities. At the top of the post, see “Thekla,” the “city for­ev­er under con­struc­tion,” by Kish. Below it, Kuth’s imag­in­ing of “Irene,” the “name for a city in the dis­tance, and if you approach it, it changes.” And just above, Connor’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Beer­she­ba,” in which it is believed that “sus­pend­ed in the heav­ens, there exists anoth­er Beer­she­ba … They also believe, these inhab­i­tants, that anoth­er Beer­she­ba exists under­ground.”

See­ing Calvi­no isn’t Kish’s first for­ay into lit­er­ary illus­tra­tion. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he under­took an illus­tra­tion of every page of Melville’s Moby Dick, an impres­sive effort we fea­tured last week. (Above, see anoth­er of his Invis­i­ble Cities pieces, “Adel­ma.”) Of the new, col­lab­o­ra­tive Calvi­no project, Kish tells us, “the episod­ic struc­ture real­ly appealed to us and we thought it was the per­fect kind of thing to build a tum­blr around and share with peo­ple.”

Invis­i­ble Cities has been fas­ci­nat­ing to cre­ate… each of us brings a very dif­fer­ent approach to the work. Joe’s Cities tend to be far more lit­er­al, real­is­tic and rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al, which I find kind of stag­ger­ing because that is so dif­fi­cult to do with Calvi­no. My illus­tra­tions are far more abstract and con­cep­tu­al, try­ing to show in sym­bol­ic ways the ideas behind each chap­ter. Leighton falls some­where between us on that spec­trum, and his work has ele­ments of real­ism and abstrac­tion. None of us even talked about this before we start­ed, we sim­ply began inde­pen­dent­ly (after set­tling on a rota­tion) and watched each oth­er’s work evolve.

The three artists of See­ing Calvi­no have to date paint­ed 45 of the 56 cities in Calvino’s nov­el. Kish has also illus­trat­ed Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness, and his blog fea­tures many oth­er graph­ic inter­pre­ta­tions of lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic works. The Moby Dick project saw pub­li­ca­tion as a book in 2011. We can only hope that Calvino’s pub­lish­er sees the val­ue of an Invis­i­ble Cities edi­tion incor­po­rat­ing Kish, Kuth, and Connor’s illus­tra­tions.

You can vis­it See­ing Calvi­no here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Expe­ri­ence Invis­i­ble Cities, an Inno­v­a­tive, Ita­lo Calvi­no-Inspired Opera Staged in LA’s Union Sta­tion

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon”

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness