Cast your mind back to September 2019.
A general election was on the way, which would see Boris Johnson trouncing Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party to win a landslide victory and majority of 80 seats. But that wasn’t the end of the story. With the pandemic on the way, nobody got their happily ever after.
The mood of the times was perfectly captured by surrealist cartoonist Ralph Steadman, who has been the agent provocateur of political satire, capturing the monstrous and maniacal for six decades.
His exclusive cover for Big Issue features in A Life In Ink, the definitive retrospective of his work, alongside other significant collaborations from his career including that with gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson, who described Steadman’s art as “filthy scribblings”, capturing its raw and wild essence.
Boris Johnson for the cover of Big Issue, 2019
New London Cries 12, The Who, c. 1967
Read more:
- 12 huge artists have come together to support Big Issue. These are stories behind their art
- My Dog Sighs: ‘The power of art is it makes people look at the world in a different way’
- Meet the Drummond Street Artists – the new art collective with histories of homelessness
You’ve Had Your Fun – Now Work For It! c. 1960
Fear and Loathing Pastiche, from Psychogeography, 2003
Ralph Steadman (Mini Edition): A Life in Ink by Ralph Steadman (Chronicle Books, £23) is out on 18 December.
