Howdy everyone,
Seems like everywhere I go lately someone or a group of something’s will always manage to touch on a subject that I have only recently realised the significance of, ‘The Gonzo movement’. A quick low down, the gonzo movement began in the late 60’s early 70’s and was first attributed to an article that the infamous H.S. Thompson wrote for a ‘new journalism’ magazine entitled ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.’ Basically what Gonzo Journalism is, is a subjective account of events surrounding the journalist and his experience of the story in question. Hunter S. Thompson believed that there was no such thing as ‘objective journalism’ and therefore more often than not he was a part of and sometimes the main event of his articles.
Today I’m focusing on the art of the Gonzo movement. The gentleman responsible for the outlandish and surreal character creation for the movement was Ralph Steadman. Trained and specialised as a cartoonist and caricaturist Ralph was very close friends with Thompson long before they worked together and remained friends till his ‘timely’ death in February of 2005. Funnily enough, keeping with the “Alice in Wonderland theme’, Mr Steadman was awarded a Francis Williams Book Illustration Award for his contribution for Lewis Carroll’s classic. I think that Ralph did a superb job at capturing the H.S Thompson that was wild, crazy and in essence a menace to established intellectual society. Ralph was supposedly a very close friend to the late Thompson and spent many a afternoon with Hunter at his home in Colorado.
Well if you enjoyed some of the images you’ve seen and the culture you briefly touched have a look at the sites listed.
Fare thee well.
Alex
