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(gentle music)
- My name is Arthur Paul, Art Paul.
I have to be an artist.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Art Paul is legendary in both the world of art
and the world of ideas.
- He brought intelligence to this magazine
in the way he positioned things
against the editorial content.
There, I think, he was very significant.
- He's very versatile.
He's very prolific, from writing, to thinking,
to painting, to drawing, to typography, to publishing.
- Art established a visual culture in the magazine
that was his and his in collaboration with Hefner,
of course, but he was the architect.
- Arthur was as responsible for the success
of the magazine in those early years as I was.
- I don't think everybody knows Art Paul but they should.
(energetic jazz music)
(gentle piano music)
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] From the very start,
Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine
was nourished by Chicago's booming culture in the 1950s.
This cultural transformation likely had an influence
on Hugh Hefner and the content of his magazine.
But no one influenced the look of the magazine
more than Art Paul, the founding Art Director of Playboy.
- What Art Paul was able to do in a very clean
and a very linear way is to represent the philosophy
that Hugh Hefner really wanted
to communicate to his readers.
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- Playboy was a publication that was,
culturally obviously, very influential
because of the sexiness of the content
and the amazing graphic design of Art Paul
and the entire aesthetic and experience that it created.
(upbeat jazz music)
- It's Hard to find people who've had as much impact
on visual design, on visual communications than Art Paul.
(gentle jazz music)
- That was really an influential magazine,
both as far as a magazine goes and in terms of,
you know, the culture of the time.
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(lively music)
- [Narrator] Early 1950s America was a conservative time
of traditional family roles, where men were bread winners
and the women were bread makers.
It was a time of paranoid Cold War patriotism
and religious participation.
But while most people were wrapped up in the status quo,
a handful of visionaries in Chicago
were laying the foundation for a more liberated lifestyle.
- Chicago was an enormous influencer
on American culture during that time.
Chicago's role in these years, is really,
I think as a laboratory,
a lot of creativity was offloaded to Chicago.
- [Narrator] The publication of magazines such as
Esquire and Ebony out of Chicago were examples
of such energetic creativity.
But no periodical made such an explosive impact
on the American culture; sexually, socially and visually
than a new national magazine called Playboy,
which burst out of Chicago in November 1953.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Playboy really tells a story about what it means
to be an American man at that time.
(upbeat jazz music)
- During the 50s and 60s and 70s, it was the guidebook
for every young man and I read it in college.
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- The magazine was a profoundly influential element
at a time when there wasn't even the construct
of a lifestyle magazine.
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- [Narrator] Playboy's influence
on practically every aspect of American lifestyle;
the sexual revolution, fashion, advertising, music, design
and architecture, reverberated throughout the 1950s
and 1960s in special features in the magazine.
- Business is booming.
There's a new consumer market being created,
there were these new ideas as the world
is changing after the second world war
and Playboy is reflecting that back to its readers.
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- Hugh Hefner made jokes at various times,
saying that if not for the girls,
he would be publishing a literary magazine.
- And there was this running joke
that people read Playboy for the articles.
And in the 50s, 60s, 70s that was actually something
that you could say truthfully.
There was really good editorial direction
and the art direction of the magazine kind of matched that.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Well I often bought Playboy for the graphic design.
Which was really groundbreaking at the time.
So much about today in print culture we think
of as being very new and very alternative,
those seeds were planted with Art Paul years and years ago.
- [Photographer] Push your (mumbles).
- [Paula] That's a magazine that dehumanized women.
- Very nice.
Put your hands under your head.
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Warm, lush.
- Somewhere along the way you have to have a feeling
that that's not a great thing to be looking at,
even if the writing is terrific
and the illustration's great.
(camera clicking)
- [Photographer] Beautiful.
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- If you remember the important role that magazines used
to play in American cultural life,
you'll see how important what Art did
for the entire culture.
- He did it in a style that was very contemporary
and became quite frankly a leader
in magazine graphics in that timeframe.
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- I actually don't think it was all
that well designed.
What was incredible was the art direction,
because he bought really intelligent
illustrations for stories.
You wouldn't expect that in Playboy,
largely 'cause it was mostly pictures
of women in swimsuits and things like that.
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- The design of the magazine, in my opinion, is very classy.
It's very elevated.
It's very elegant.
The layouts are very considered.
The typography is typeset from a designer's eye.
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It's experimental.
It uses color and shape and form in a very interesting way.
(upbeat jazz music)
- I am sure with a group of men
who consider themselves intellectuals
and also like looking at light porn,
they have a tremendous emotional attachment
to that publication.
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- You'd open Playboy, do a quick flash of the women
then look at the articles and look at the graphics.
And you'd notice the art direction in it was sensational,
because there were illustrators in each issue
that really gave life to the articles.
(upbeat jazz music)
- I think for a lot of designers and the public, Playboy
is somewhere between soft porn and sexual revolution.
(mellow jazz music)
- Playboy is a breakthrough magazine
with great editorial design and a wonderful place
for the expression of women and their bodies.
- The early Playboy house style is for a generation
of designer that came before me was everything,
it was the coolest thing in the world.
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- Art Paul found a very divisive company to work for
and then in that work, expressed really genuine
heart-felt sentiments,
but also expressed some really critical things as well.
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- One of the reasons it became such an iconic force
in culture is its sort of advanced view,
at least for the time of sexuality.
I don't think that was Art's major interest.
He was more interested in the design side of things
and in making something beautiful and telling a story.
(pensive music)
- I have to be an artist.
Good or bad.
It's an ear and a ear is a very sensitive,
it's a very beautiful thing.
- He has always missed doing the art
and he came back to that then finally when he retired.
Started drawing and painting every day
and really grew, it was spectacular to see somebody just,
who was always really good,
but then to see somebody blossoming,
it becomes so much deeper.
- Not finished.
I have been painting and thinking of art and drawing
and enjoying art, looking at it as well as doing it.
And I'm trying to before I,
before I have to go to the big cloud above,
and, or somewhere else.
The reason for this is to get to know me better.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Art Paul was working
as a freelance graphic designer creating ads
for clients like Marshal Field's and Abbott Labs,
when in 1953 a potential client walked into his studio.
- Hef was looking for an illustrator to do work
for his magazine that he was putting together.
- Art had a studio on Van Buren,
on the edge of the Loop in Chicago.
And I went to his studio.
- He comes in and sees all these things on the wall,
the commercial stuff that I was doing
as well as more personal things,
and he said, Is that your work or work you like?
I said, it's both.
- [Hugh] I knew immediately
that I wanted him as my art director.
- It seems that Hefner immediately spotted
this exact skill of an art director.
An art director is someone who not only has
to produce amazing work by himself,
but has to know amazing work in order
to commission the work of others, to commission
and direct photographers, illustrators and so on.
(piano music)
- [Narrator] Arthur Paul was 29-years-old
when Hugh Hefner tapped him to become Art Director
of the new magazine he was starting.
Hefner, a year younger than Paul,
had been working as a promotion copy writer
at Esquire Magazine, in Chicago.
That magazine was moving to New York
and Hefner took it as an opportunity
to publish a new men's magazine.
- I had planned on calling the magazine, Stag Party.
- Stag Party,
Stag Party (laughing)
- He was lucky because he could use it for legal reasons.
He already hired Art Paul.
Can you imagine if they still had the name Stag Party?
Can you imagine beautiful women wearing antlers?
(gentle piano music)
You know you'd think they were
in North Pole working for Santa Claus.
- So about two maybe three weeks
before we actually launched, I changed the title,
changed it to Playboy.
I wanted to have a symbol, as other magazines did.
The New Yorker had Eustace Tilley.
Esquire had Esky.
I wanted a hopefully iconic character,
making it an animal, which seemed to be very unique.
- He was thinking of a rabbit symbol.
But a rabbit that does everything.
You know, wears a smoking jacket
and holds up a glass of champagne.
I wanted it to be something so simple,
that when you made it larger
you could do many things with it.
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- [Narrator] It took only one hour for Paul
to sketch the famous rabbit profile
with the cocked ear and tuxedo tie.
- It was incredibly important
to everything about the reputation
and the visual power of the magazine.
- Art drew this logo that at the start
was really just punctuating the ends of articles.
It was a little tiny full stop
or period at the end of the article.
- It has a certain balance,
both in its formal quality and graphic nature,
but it's also witty and it has a surprise to it.
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I think it tells folks that you can do a witty logo
for an editorial magazine that showcases women nude
and it can all mash up together
and build this terrific brand.
- I knew what the Playboy bunny was
probably before I knew what the American flag was.
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- With his iconic symbol for Playboy,
he hit a grand slam home run, you might say.
- Everybody knows it.
You could as a five-year-old.
- The Playboy Bunny,
which is a very beautifully designed form,
you'll look at as good or not good
depending upon your perception of that magazine ultimately.
- Art Paul sat down and designed the best logo
any magazine in the history of the world has ever had
or ever will have.
- It was a nicely drawn bunny and funny,
but because I have a negative feeling about the publication
there's no way I could embrace
that as a great piece of graphic design.
- The idea of the bunny was just so witty.
It bears no relationship to the word Playboy,
but it becomes a trade character that embodies
that word and he used it in so many different ways.
In addition to the silhouetted logo,
which has just become like a superhero logo.
- It's pure Bauhaus in its design.
It's the fewest number of lines to do the trick.
It's perfectly consistent with Art's philosophy.
- My God, it started with a logo.
Anybody could do photographs of women,
but not everybody could do that goddamn logo.
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- From the very beginning, he did the layouts,
he did the graphic concepts.
It really took two rather talented
and rather lucky guys to create the magazine.
In that sense, Arthur was my partner.
- I felt there was a lot of opportunity.
And if it didn't work, why, it was just one of those things.
And he felt the same way.
The first issue of Playboy, if you notice,
doesn't have his nor my name on it.
- [Narrator] When the first issue of Playboy
hit the news stands, Arthur Paul was incorporating
modern design concepts into the look of the magazine.
Hefner was developing the editorial content.
One of the first things he did was to obtain photos
of one of the most famous women for the cover
of the premier issue.
- [Art] Hef got me this Marilyn Monroe picture,
she's sitting on top a car at a ticker tape parade,
I believe in New York.
And so I blocked out that stuff, got the white background,
but keeping the feeling of the big city.
So it was simple and it was strong.
(gentle jazz music)
- [Narrator] It was stunning start,
selling more than 54,000 copies.
Both the visual look and editorial content
were evolving with each new issue.
Beginning with Playboy's third issue,
the rabbit symbol found its way to the cover.
- It was not a big drawing on the cover,
it was very small actually.
But it began the rest
of the rabbit appearances on the cover.
(jazz music)
Hef and I were very happily surprised
about the success of the magazine.
- In the early years they worked very closely together
and I know that Hefner had tremendous respect
for Art's visual skills and his sensibilities.
(jazz music)
Art was so open and Hef was so definite on what he wanted.
He was so focused.
- I ended up doing the first three issues
on a freelance basis.
Those issues were interesting
and they weren't the best looking issues in a lot of ways,
but they certainly diagrammed what the magazine
is going to be.
- Art Paul's role in the success of Playboy
is basically the form and much
of the artistic content of the magazine.
(jazz music)
Hugh Hefner was totally responsible for the photographs
and the cartoons that went into the magazine.
But if that was all there was of Playboy,
then Playboy would be nothing more
than some of the Playboy look-a-likes,
like Cavalier or Gent that came out shortly after.
- [Narrator] Art Paul and Hugh Hefner
had an unusual working relationship.
They had a close collaboration
and understanding from the very start,
which enabled Art to have a decisive voice.
- The relationship was extremely positive.
I was supportive in terms of what he was wanting to do.
He found with Playboy a freedom that he needed.
- Anything Art asked for, Hefner would,
sometimes he wouldn't quite understand
or would even, you know, have a bit of a debate
with him about it and Hefner would shrug his shoulders
and say, "Well you're the Art Director."
- I think that Art had a perfect partner in my father,
in that they both were uncompromising in their commitment
to not just quality, but to the reader experience.
- He promised he said he'd try to give me
as much freedom as possible and I think he did.
- Looking through his works that he's created,
I really became aware of how prolific he is
of an illustrator, of a typographer,
of a graphic designer, as a painter.
(upbeat jazz music)
(gentle music)
- Art Paul never really exhibited his work.
And Suzanne, his wife, who is a photographer,
she's the one that promoted his work.
- We're gonna show this to some galleries.
- I've always been struck by the diversity of Art's talent,
in terms of medium and subject matter,
and I think Suzanne has been extraordinary
in helping to organize and to actually archive.
- I put this one on the top,
'cause it's one of my favorites.
He's shy about showing his artwork.
And about getting in touch with galleries,
really just shy, holds back.
Partly he just wants to focus on the work.
But you know, I mean when you get to be 90, it's time.
(pensive music)
- [Narrator] Art Paul was born into a poor immigrant family
in Chicago's southwest side in 1925.
His father has escaped from Ukraine
to avoid being drafted into the Russian army.
He settled in Chicago where he had relatives.
- Art's father planned to send for Art's mother
and sister and brother, Art wasn't born yet
and then there was a pogrom.
Their house was burned down and so they escaped
to the neighbor's barn
and they just started running
from there all the way to Romania.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] A Jewish organization found them
in the streets of Romania and arranged for them
to come to the US to join Art's father.
- They took a boat, everybody took a boat
and came to Ellis Island.
So then they came in and were reunited
and then they had two more children.
And then Art's father died when he was one year old.
(somber music)
- My father grew up in a very difficult time,
without a father of his own
and so didn't have the role models of how
to be a father and a family man
and had to figure it out on his own.
And I think that that was something that he struggled with,
but took very seriously.
(faint slide machine whirring)
They did not have any money growing up or any security.
And He was raised largely by his older brother.
- [Narrator] His mother eventually settled the family
on the north side of Chicago
and scraped together a meager living.
Norman, Art's older brother, served as a father figure,
as well as an artistic mentor.
- I started drawing very early
in my life because of my brother.
When he took a lump of clay and he made a head,
like my sister fell asleep once with her head on the table.
And he rolled out this clay and he did this beautiful piece.
It just sends a chill up my spine.
You know, it was just magic to me.
So I think at that time I decided I wanted to be an artist.
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- [Narrator] A high school teacher recognized Paul's talent
in drawing and submitted his work for a scholarship
at the School of the Art Institute.
He graduated from high school in 1943,
enlisted in the Army Air Corps
and spent three years training as a combat pilot.
At the end of the war, Paul returned to Chicago
and was drawn to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
a Bauhaus-trained graphic designer from Germany,
who had founded the The New Bauhaus in Chicago.
Many know the term Bauhaus from the architecture
of Mies Van Der Rohe, but when The New Bauhaus opened
in Chicago in 1937 it was a laboratory for experimentation
in art, design and photography
and it created an aesthetic for industrial use.
(upbeat jazz music)
- It was Walter Paepcke who was the director
of the Container Corporation here,
a major company here in Chicago,
who bankrolled the New Bauhaus.
- So He was a great patron of the arts in Chicago
and again, very much saw a marriage between art
and commerce, which was for Moholy, exactly what he wanted
to do, a design school needs
to create designs that will be built.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Paepcke himself was instrumental
in inviting Moholy-Nagy to Chicago
and to use the motivations that the city
had at that point for new architecture, new ideas,
as well as being a center of manufacturing,
of transportation and so on.
- So they wanted to create industrial design,
industrial prototypes for things,
so it was the art and design school.
- [Narrator] Art Paul attended the school on the GI Bill.
The Bauhaus philosophy would have a lifelong impact
on his work.
- [Thomas] There's a lot of Moholy-Nagy
when you look at Art Paul.
One of Moholy's great creations as an artist in the 20s
and 30s was his collages, which were full of movement
and life; a lot of open spaces, shapes,
those kind of constructivist planar things,
but with people moving through them.
(gentle jazz music)
Art Paul's graphic design brings some of that to life.
There's air, there's motion, there's a lot of white space.
(gentle jazz music)
- I wasn't surprised to learn that Art Paul went
to the ID program at the Institute of Design,
and studied under the Bauhaus,
because it has very formal quality to it.
It's minimal and it uses type and space and layout
and graphic design in a way that I think
is very artful and high art.
- But the planes aren't just kind of flat graphic elements.
They seem to float and exist in space somehow.
I think he activated the magazine.
(energetic music)
- [Narrator] Throughout his career,
Art Paul talked about Maholy-Nagy and in late 2016,
When his work was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago,
Paul visited the exhibition.
(energetic music)
- The idea that simplicity, honesty of materials,
the embracing of mass production,
the recognition of how art and design
can situate itself in the wider culture,
all that stems from the Bauhaus.
- But Art, he had a great line once where he said
that even a bubble gum wrapper ought to be designed
as beautifully as you design a poster for a museum.
That's the essence of the Bauhaus.
(upbeat gentle jazz music)
- His influence from the New Bauhaus on handling space
and type and color and being a minimalist
and a modernist really separated Playboy magazine
out from other magazines that were being done in New York.
- [Narrator] Another Bauhaus feature
that Paul incorporated was melding find arts
and commercial arts.
Paul was inspired by the work of Cipe Pineles,
the first art director to hire fine artists
for Glamour Magazine in the 1940s,
but Paul certainly brought the use
of fine arts to a new level.
- Well, he was one of the first major art directors
to use fine artists as illustrators.
And illustrators basically as fine artists.
He just blurred the lines between the two,
because he was kind of both.
(gentle jazz music)
- Art Paul was truly a transformational Art Director
in that he broke the barrier
between commercial art and fine art.
- What he did by blurring those lines
was change the way illustration in the United States
was perceived and used.
It used to be that Norman Rockwell was the king,
the paradigm of what illustration was.
You'd take a phrase, you illustrate that phrase.
- There was one time in New York he ran
into Norman Rockwell on the street
and he was so thrilled.
He said, You're Norman Rockwell! (laughing)
And I would love to hire you to do an illustration.
And Rockwell said, Oh I would love to.
And my sons would think that was so cool of me.
And so, they make a plan.
And then Rockwell writes him,
I'm so sorry, but my wife won't let me do this. (laughing)
She thinks it's improper.
- Art conceived of himself as an art editor.
And he hired people to do pictures
that would sum up the theme of an article
instead of some narrative detail from the story
or from the article.
- For Art, it's incredible that he would just take an artist
who perhaps had never operated as an illustrator per se
and said, you know, here's a story
and I trust your take on it.
Go ahead and do what you like.
- [Brad] What art did was he converted
what had been illustration to popular art.
(pensive music)
(piano music)
- [Narrator] In addition to visual art,
he also experimented with music.
(piano music)
- [Suzanne] Well Art is a real renaissance man.
He's an exceptional Art Director and artist
and his writing is as quirky and creative as his art.
And he's even a self-taught composer and pianist.
(piano music)
- He doesn't have what anybody
would consider classical training.
He's basically just oriented himself
to the instrument over decades.
You know he's improved his facility on the instrument
and developed his own kind of musical language.
(piano music)
- Sometimes I'd walk into his office
and he'd be humming and working.
And because I played the piano
and have a little musical interest as well,
he would have recordings of some of his compositions.
He'd say, Gary, Gary, wait, I was working
on this last night, you've gotta listen.
- You wanna sit and listen to your music?
- [Art] Sure.
- [Suzanne] You started taping these things in like the 80s.
You gave this a title, Riding the Winds.
- [Art] Oh.
- You don't always give them titles.
- Happiness once more!
(instrumental music)
- [Suzanne] A friend who's a composer used to
be the head of the Columbia College Music Department,
Bill Russo, said, This is quirky stuff.
This would really be a challenge to orchestrate.
I wanna try this for my summer project.
So he orchestrated some of these pieces.
That was fun.
(instrumental music)
- There's a lot of what he does is improvised.
And then over time kind of builds something of a structure.
But That structure's very loose.
(energetic instrumental music)
- He plays the piano and music just kinda comes out
of him very naturally.
(instrumental music)
- I think he would probably have been a very good composer
if he'd have been trained in the techniques of composition.
He sort of reminds me of Beethoven still composing
even though he can't hear his compositions.
Art's still drawing even though he can't really see.
(instrumental music)
(energetic jazz music)
- [Narrator] American culture continued to change
in the 1960s with the raging Vietnam War,
Civil Rights activism, the advent of the pill
and the burgeoning sexual revolution.
The magazine stayed true to its core
and addressed the social issues of the day.
(gentle jazz music)
With its far-reaching success, the magazine continued
to interview prominent figures
and published writings by established authors.
(gentle jazz music)
- It was a social magazine.
It was a cultural magazine.
It was a magazine that you could be proud to hold on to.
Maybe not in public, because there were certain conventions
and rigors having to do with our puritan upbringing.
But it was a magazine that was as much of a design entity
as it was a portfolio of centerfolds.
- Art Paul shaped the culture of graphic design
in magazines by building a brand
that takes it quite seriously.
And was highly experimental, that used graphic design
and art direction in its most robust way,
that built a brand on ideas.
- Art's impact is both in publishing and in branding.
He was responsible for creating this modernist appeal
on the publishing industry.
- The first year of Playboy, is like design artifacts.
That's like a thing in the popular culture
that I think everybody is aware
of as a piece of American culture,
like a quintessential piece of American design.
- [Narrator] Art Paul explored this graphic vision
in the magazine by hiring iconoclastic art directors
and artists and giving them the freedom
to utilize their talents.
- Working with Art Paul was a very very unusual situation.
He developed, way before people like Apple
and some of the tech companies
that free and breezy atmosphere
that just made creativity ooze forth.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Playboy was a textbook in design
and so Art was like a god to designers, you know.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Art was able to manage us by allowing us
to be who we were.
And of course if you went over the line,
it wasn't like he wasn't gonna mention it to you.
I mean, I've had him mention it to me a couple of times.
(George laughing)
- [Kerig] He was a stickler for little things too,
like where to put subhead, or how to move the type
a little this way, a little that way.
- Art Paul did do some early illustrations back
in the 50s and he did it to encourage us art directors
to have that freedom to show our talent.
- One bad illustration isn't going
to make or break the magazine.
So we could have bad illustrations come in.
Once in a while, you'd hit a bummer.
- He was wise enough to let people do what they did best.
It's a whole different way of doing business.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] The Art Department at Playboy
held weekly meetings to brainstorm ideas
for design and illustration and then hire the artists
most appropriate for each assignment.
- When Art would have his art directors
in the conference room for their Monday morning meeting,
What would come out of that room was some
of the most brilliantly creative ideas.
- Some people are happy to be given instructions
and have their hands held, some people aren't.
And Art knew that the best way to get good work was often
to let the artist do whatever he was best at doing
and to just aid him in whatever he needed to be aided at.
- The idea that you had this designer,
who is kind of behind the scenes
and bringing like the best artists and illustrators
in the world into the most mainstream middle America,
like a normal publication, it's so interesting to me.
It's like crazy that he got away with it.
- I worked as a freelancer
for Playboy magazine, for Art Paul.
It was golden age of my life.
- Art would give me a phone call and say,
I've got a piece that I'd like you
to look at and talk about.
- Art Paul gave me assignment.
He didn't specify anything,
so I did whatever I feel like doing.
- I first started working with Art
when I was about 25 years old.
I called and made an appointment with him
to show him my portfolio.
I was very nervous about going
into the Playboy building because I'm gay.
And in my mind, I thought, oh, my god,
if they found out I'm gay, they won't hire me,
'cause this is all about women. (laughing)
(upbeat music)
- Art did go out of his way to support local artists
and probably one of the most notable being Ed Paschke
who, was again, was a regular Playboy contributor.
- [Kerig] Ed Paschke was at the Art Institute
of Chicago, he was not being successful as an artist.
But Art met him and asked him to do a piece.
- Ed Paschke said he wouldn't have been able
to continue his art and do the art the way he wanted
to do it and be a fine artist if he wasn't being paid
by Art Paul to do illustrations for the magazine.
- [Narrator] Paul commissioned work
from other prominent Chicago artists,
including Roger Brown, Karl Wirsum, Seymour Rosofsky,
and Shel Silverstein.
- There were two coasts and Chicago was kind
of the second city.
But we didn't really know a lot about what was going
on there until Playboy and certainly Art's contribution
of bringing Chicago into the universe of creativity.
- His genius was, he took the fine artists
that he knew and allowed them to put their pictures
in the magazine, almost exactly like hanging in a gallery.
(camera shutter clicking)
- He built his reputation to such a level
that later on he could very easily call up Andy Warhol
or Salvador Dali and they knew Playboy,
they knew that Playboy wasn't just this girly magazine,
it was something that was to be taken seriously
on an artistic level and he could very easily invite them
to contribute work and they did.
- I did over the years, drawings, paintings
for P.G. Wodehouse, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut.
My concept there was not to try to illustrate the article,
but to find an angle in the story
that would allow me to do an interesting picture.
- It's very standoffish to walk in an art gallery.
And most people would not even walk in.
So we taught people art through mass media.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] It was not always smooth sailing.
A letter from A.C. Spectorsky showed the Editorial Director
complained to Paul about the frequent use of abstract
and uncaptionable illustrations.
However, it was such illustrations in Playboy
that won numerous awards and honors for Paul over the years.
(gentle jazz music)
Including the Lifetime Achievement Award
from The Society of Publication Designers,
his induction to the Art Directors Hall of Fame
and acceptance to the prestigious
Alliance Graphique Internationale.
- The length of time that Art was at Playboy
is pretty unusual.
Even the best art directors, when a new editor comes,
they usually clean house.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] Art Paul held his position
and continued to reiterate his philosophy
and present illustration as a form of modern day painting,
focusing on the heart of each story
to create atmosphere and mood,
rather than to mirror a sentence in the story.
(faint scatting)
- The fact that what Art was doing at Playboy
that happened to last for 30 years
in itself is an achievement.
(pensive music)
When you walk into the art studio and see all
of these head paintings on the walls.
They're all portraits drawn by various people
that Art has commissioned or worked with over many years.
(pensive music)
- Well, Some of them are by his staff.
And Len Willis did this one,
emphasizing his kinda long face.
Kerig Pope emphasized his Siberian eyes.
(Suzanne chuckling)
And then Shel Silverstein, it's a fun one.
He just did one eye, which is interesting 'cause it gives
that sort of twinkling expression that people mention.
Then there are two by LeRoy Neiman.
One kind of formal looking, a nice one.
And one on a napkin, which is something
that LeRoy liked to do.
And there is one by Andy Warhol.
He did one of his Polaroid pictures.
Art said, Oh why are you photographing me?
He said, Oh you have an interesting face. (chuckling)
This one I did, of course that's the one
that is romantic looking.
- You can just sense the love and the admiration and respect
that people have for Art,
communicated through this wide variety
of portraits that you see.
- I took Art to the Project Onward.
It's like a sheltered workshop
for young artists who are autistic
or have some other challenge of that kind.
The Director of the workshop said,
You know, this young man is new with us and Art,
if you sit for him and let him draw you,
it would be his first commission.
And he did that of Art.
(pensive music)
- [Suzanne] Age has brought difficulties,
but he never complains.
Macular degeneration is maybe the worst thing.
Being near blind is hard for an artist.
But he counters the tricks his sight plays on him
by working with rather than fighting them.
That's real creativity.
Yeah, this is like the cover.
You know that they're tearing the page.
- [Physician] I'm gonna check your vision now okay?
I'm gonna check your--
- With macular degeneration,
you can't see what you're looking at.
You only have your peripheral vision.
You can't look over at it, you know,
you have to look straight ahead,
but everything that's straight ahead is fuzzy.
It looks like a picture of a tongue that won't work.
(Suzanne laughing)
- [Art] Yeah?
- He would describe what he was seeing and he knew
that what he was seeing wasn't what was there.
- [Physician] Do you see this right here?
- [Art] Yeah.
- [Physician] Okay, look straight at that for me okay?
Look straight at this little point, right here for me okay?
- Oh and getting shots in the eyeball from the eye doctor.
Whoa! (laughing)
Yet he doesn't complain about anything.
It all goes into the drawing.
- Look way up to the right now for me.
- For somebody whose eyesight has been so important
to his work and so important his whole life,
to you know, his talent and his gifts.
You would think he would feel sorry for himself
and I just never saw any of that.
- [Physician] Yeah, it's getting a little better.
- [Suzanne] Before he had such control.
He could draw anything that his mind saw,
he could put it down.
He could draw a likeness
and make it look like you in two strokes.
But now the lines are kind of crazy,
there's an exploded quality to them and I love these.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] If Paul brought art to the mass media
by hiring some of the most prominent artists,
then Editorial Director A.C. Spectorsky
brought fine literature.
Some of the literary giants of the time wrote for Playboy;
Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates,
Jack Kerouac, Nelson Algren and Alex Haley.
Paul occasionally communicated with these authors
to solicit their feedback
on the illustrations for their stories.
The authors held a wide range of opinions.
- [Man] Dear Arthur, Just a note to congratulate you
on the taste and imagination you put out
on publishing The Life of Juan Diaz.
Your other layouts on my stories in the past
have been excellent, but I think this one tops them all.
Ray Bradbury, August 18th, 1963.
- [Woman] Dear Mr. Paul,
My husband asked me to answer your letter of January.
In his own words, he greatly admired Roland Ginzel's
illustration of Despair.
They marvelously suited
the broken mirror quality of the book.
Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, February 11, 1969.
- [Narrator] But of course,
it wasn't always glowing reviews.
- [Man] Dear Mr. Paul, I'm afraid I'm not competent
to comment on the matter.
There is a degree of egocentricity in writers
that abhors any distraction or competition,
but I prefer the chapter as it appears unillustrated
in the novel.
John Cheever, March 12th, 1969.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] To get readers more engaged,
Paul used a technique called participatory graphics,
grabbing the reader's attention
and bringing the stories to life.
It was one more of Paul's notable innovations
and one for which Playboy spared no cost.
- Art did a lot of those.
He called them participatory graphics.
You just turn the page and then you come to this.
And then you can start reading.
You turn this page and you get the actual title.
The Code Battle article by David Kahn.
- He used die-cuts, so that there would be parts
of a picture peeking through a hole on one page.
Nobody was doing stuff like this in magazines.
- Playboy was clearly a laboratory for Art Paul.
You could see that in almost every issue.
You could see it on the cover that every issue
there was a different idea going on.
Usually they worked, but sometimes they didn't.
(gentle jazz music)
- He would do almost a cartoon effect
of having one painting on a page of a scene
and you turn the page, it's the same scene,
only the time has changed.
So you get a sort of a flip page action
which grabs the mind.
You know, it's wonderful when you get this aha moments.
And he was constantly doing that.
- An article on the environmental impact of developers
on the Everglades in Florida,
he wanted to show on the first page,
this contrast between some bird eggs in a nest.
And then the following page,
he wanted to illustrate how surveyors were coming
in with developers moving in
and perhaps taking over the environmental area
in the Everglades and changing it.
(gentle music music)
- In the early days of pollution in the air,
He said, which was really a radical idea at the time,
he said, I gonna run a blank page in the magazine,
nothing on it.
- Then one he and I did together.
You put this outside your window
and get dirt on it and it's all filthy.
It becomes a piece of artwork about how dirty the air is.
(Suzanne chuckling)
- What Art was doing with his participatory graphics
was basically what the digital world is all about now.
It's about user-friendly, user experience, interactivity.
And he was doing it on an analog level.
- I don't think ever again you will see the kind of puzzles
and games and pop-ups and engagements with the reader,
because candidly, those budgets are not available anymore
to any magazine.
- The surprise I have at what he was able to do
with such a mass market magazine,
to have a cover with no girl,
just white space and some cuff links
- What a story that tells.
Whose cuff links are they?
When did that person take them off?
What is that person is doing now that,
you know that his cuff links are off?
Paul is an idea guy.
He's a storyteller.
His stories are funny.
They're also done elegantly.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Several of Art Paul's covers were some
of the best covers ever done.
The one where the girl with the white gloves
is looking through like binoculars.
And they make perfect rabbits,
as she puts up her hands.
(mellow jazz music)
- Oh this is my, this is my drawing.
I just, I was rabbit conscious.
Also, I like the idea of drawing like this.
- The thing that really blew me away,
the major discovery was the back covers.
The highest valued real estate you
have for advertising is the back cover.
Art was using the back covers
as kind of even more avant-garde or abstract extensions
of the concept that he was running in the front cover.
- What he managed to do by establishing a trick
on every cover and that is: Where's the bunny?
Is what makes those covers so enticing,
while at the same time they weren't just girly pictures,
they were conceptual pieces.
(upbeat jazz music)
- It became a game, got the reader involved
and then people were sending pictures
of the logo from all over the world.
They had a sense of being part of this game.
(upbeat jazz music)
- I can remember getting phone calls at two in the morning
with somebody saying there was no bunny
on such and such a cover and I would say, yes, there is.
(upbeat jazz music)
(energetic jazz music)
- [Narrator] Playboy magazine
reached its zenith in the 1970s.
Circulation peaked at more than seven million.
The brand expanded.
At the same time, Art Paul continued a trend he'd started,
purchasing original illustrations and artwork
that appeared in the magazine.
(gentle jazz music)
- Art persuaded Playboy to buy the artworks outright
every time they commissioned a work.
He was very fair with them and Playboy ended up
with this incredible art collection
that actually toured in museums.
- We always paid an additional fee for the ones we wanted
to keep and we did that quite a bit.
(gentle jazz music)
- We probably had one of the biggest corporate collections
of anybody in the United States.
- [Narrator] Art Paul commissioned renowned artists
to interpret playmates and showed their work
in the Beyond Illustration Exhibit
in the United States, Europe and Asia.
- The painters that Art commissioned
were Larry Rivers,
Jim Rosenquist,
Tom Wesselmann, the person that did the big lips.
Andy Warhol did a very interesting nude,
something that I had never seen before by him.
He did two nudes side by side, same nude, on a canvas.
If a blacklight was put on it, it would glow.
It's very unearthly looking thing.
I Remember George Segal doing his version of the playmate,
which was a pregnant playmate sitting in a chair. (laughing)
- I wanted a rich variety, like an art gallery
and Art gave me what I wanted.
- Over the years, it's kind of sad,
but kind of gotten sold off.
And I think Art always hoped it would be donated,
but it didn't work out that way.
(pensive music)
- [Suzanne] Art and I met more than 50 years ago in 1967
when I called on him as a freelance photographer
to show him my portfolio.
Then we were acquaintances for several years, then friends.
We've been married for 42 years.
- He's always been this warm,
really interesting human being
and I think they're terrific together,
that they found each other, Suzanne and Art,
because she's also full of piss and vinegar. (laughing)
- He's very sweet, romantic, but most of all,
just warmly affectionate.
He's a huggy person.
And I always tell him I married him for the hugs.
- So there's really a lot of, you know, love.
A lot of warmth.
- They're amazing together, you know.
They're both very caring,
very loving, very supportive people.
He has become more dependent on her in a lot of ways.
- [Art] Honey, don't pick up my cane, I will.
- [Suzanne] Okay, I just wanna make sure
it's not in this messy room.
- [Art] Okay.
- He is not too steady on his feet sometimes,
so she does an amazing job
of being instantly available if needed.
There have just been so many little moments
where they're just extremely kind to each other.
- Art's first marriage, he married Beatrice very young.
And she was also a designer.
In the first years of Playboy, she did these collages
with the rabbit cut out.
Family was always important,
but like happened in the 50s and 60s and 70s,
he was working long hours and really felt
that he had shortchanged his sons,
as they were growing up by working such long hours.
- You know, he had a very serious and important career
that took a lot of his time.
And certainly his art was his passion in many ways.
But certainly he loved his family
and made time for his family, you know, when he could.
- He pretty much always worked.
He came from a family where everybody had to contribute
because they were really trying to keep afloat.
He said, You know, you have to give to get.
- We had family rituals,
like going to White Sox spring training every year
and that was a way for the whole family to connect
for a few days away from our standard environment.
(crowd cheering)
- I knew he had an interest in baseball.
when Reinsdorf and Einhorn, were buying the White Sox
from Bill Veeck and I had access
to a limited partnership interest.
Art took part in it as an owner
and so we bought one unit and he had the best tickets
in the house, in the ninth row on the first base line.
We went to the All-Star game when it was at Comiskey Park.
And we went to the World Series.
To the surprise of many who didn't know
that he had an interest in baseball,
he was like a duck in water, he really loved it.
I think Art kept his prime Season Tickets
for about 25 years.
(upbeat jazz music)
- He wasn't much interested in other things, (chuckling)
except baseball.
(upbeat music)
- In 1972, the Rolling Stones were on tour,
they spent the tour camped out
at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago.
That was really cool and I remember talking
to him one night when he came home.
And he had been to a meeting at the Mansion.
And he was like there.
And I said, you were there?
Oh yeah, I went to the meeting
and then like when it was done, I left.
That did not compute for a 15-year-old.
As I got older, I started to get a better sense
of what he was all about and how his dedication
to the craft and not the sort of flash.
- Women I would meet would tend to ask me,
oh, aren't you nervous
with your husband working at Playboy,
with all those bunnies running around?
Gosh, never crossed my mind. (laughing)
'Cause you know, he's certainly not about bunnies.
He is a very settled person.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] Paul left Playboy in 1982
to explore his own pursuits.
He began working on commissions, logos, designs
and commercial works.
- If anyone approached him with an interesting design job,
if it's intriguing, he'd do it,
like you know, designing a logo for hot dog stand,
he thought that was the most fun thing
anybody had ever proposed.
- [Narrator] He loved hot dogs
and willingly accepted a lifetime supply
of them for a logo design when the young owner
of the hot dog stand couldn't afford to pay him.
He designed many posters, including several
for the Chicago International Film Festival.
He also collaborated with his wife
on a poster to mark the 40th anniversary
of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1985.
It was called, War Kills the Sun.
(gentle music)
- We did that poster together.
If war kills the sun, everything's gone.
So it kind of has to be black, you know,
as minimal as possible.
It's about emptiness.
Ah okay.
Art has been drawing ever since he was a kid
and never stopped.
And he's kept nearly everything.
It's quite remarkable.
Work from high school, while in the Air Corps,
while at the Institute of Design, while freelancing
and even while at Playboy during meetings and after work.
After leaving Playboy, Art drew for hours every day
for 30 years, just imagine.
Among my favorites are doodles on notes,
cards and letters to me
and the sketches he does everywhere on anything he finds.
(gentle music)
Did anybody ever save so much school work? (laughing)
Ah!
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] Yet for a handful of small successes,
he never achieved the level he attained at the magazine.
Sometimes his work wasn't even selected,
as in this identity design
he created for Chicago's Lyric Opera.
As well as this logo
for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago,
but he never stopped creating.
He focused on his series of heads,
portraits that he'd been exploring for his entire life.
- [Suzanne] If he was told he would never ever have
an exhibition of his work in his whole lifetime or ever,
he would have still kept on drawing.
- Over the years I've watched Art's creative process,
which is boundless.
One example is his treatment of heads.
(upbeat jazz music)
- And There are probably 400 heads that were all 11 by 14.
Every single one was unique,
it was different, it was incredible.
- When he was a little boy
he had an obsession with masks.
He was afraid of masks.
- So he's obviously been observing and drawing faces
and heads ever since childhood.
He obviously thinks a lot about the human psyche
and the kind of masks that we put on in society,
- Very serious.
All the people in your pictures used to always be serious.
No one was ever smiling.
Now there's more smiling than not.
- They really look to me like self-portraits of Art.
But they're featureless, like jagged rocks
that kind of look like Art Paul.
- One night I started sorting.
I came across all of these pictures
that were about his macular degeneration.
He was doing pictures about losing his sight.
And they were so moving and I just sat there crying...
- Oh, I do love you, baby.
(energetic music)
- [Narrator] Despite dealing with the perils of aging
and macular degeneration, especially in his last decade,
Paul found himself the subject
of gallery exhibitions and talks.
The Chicago Design Museum organized a show
of his drawings and talking sketchbooks
in partnership with Cards Against Humanity.
- They went through his files and through his drawings
and pulled out all of these things
that he'd said that were just staggering individually.
And then when you look at them as a portfolio,
you realize what a poet he is as well.
(gentle music)
- I think the way he thinks about language, copy,
typography, it's very human to me.
Like I read a lot of personality
into every piece of type that he sets.
And you can almost imagine the voice
of the character saying it.
- He'll scrawl a note or a poem or even just a word
and it completely changes how you can think of it.
- Especially with the handwritten stuff,
there's like a destructive element to it.
There's a raw element to it.
There's a real humanity that starts to come through.
The stuff that he's writing, it's like so from the heart.
(gentle music)
(instrumental music)
- We had this event here at Cards Against Humanity
where we had an improv group called The Nerdologues
read the things that Art had written,
with musicians that would play in between
and would animate his words in some way
and use music to react to the things that he was writing.
- You lost time.
You gained time.
- When you really saw it in that context,
it changed the way that you look at Art Paul.
It changed the way you look at his design work.
It changed the way that you look at his publishing work.
And it was so amazing.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Narrator] The Coda Gallery in California
and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago
exhibited selections of his head series
and other drawings where he wowed people of all ages.
- The nature of his work is very timeless in general.
I think it's definitely cross-generational
and I wouldn't guessed he was 90 by looking at it.
- I had the first Playboy magazine.
I've read it for 60 years.
I've followed him all through his career
and because of him, my wife and I started
to collect all of the artists that he knew.
- This one I like, I'm very particularly partial to,
because on his left eye,
you can just vaguely see him looking at you,
but it's screened through this blue veil
and the blue veil is me.
- As you see he's gotten older,
his work has changed quite dramatically
and it's pretty varied, from quite colorful pieces,
and exuberant pieces, to much more gritty,
even cartoons in black and white.
You almost get the sense of he has made a journey
in graphic design and his work has done so as well.
(upbeat jazz music)
(mellow jazz music)
- [Narrator] Art covered a wide range
in his 93-year journey.
Most likely, his legacy will be the Playboy bunny.
Though some people feel otherwise.
- I think he'll be remembered as one
of the most inventive magazine art directors in the world.
- Art Paul is constantly running ahead of his time.
I think he's constantly creating things
that are useful in any capacity.
I think they were important at the moment they were created
and they stay important forever.
In some ways Art Paul is timeless.
(energetic jazz music)
- He found a way to take the most contemporary ideas
of his time and package them in a way where regular people,
it could come into their lives
and surprise them and mean something to them.
He brought the most cutting edge high design
into people's homes.
(upbeat jazz music)
- Art is kind of Renaissance in that he does so many things.
He gave so many people a chance.
He found people and then he gave them the freedom
to do whatever they wanted to do.
- Iconic design work, mentoring a school of artists
and doing really first-class work.
- I think there's another piece of his legacy
that maybe we haven't discovered yet,
which is his more personal work.
To me, that's a transition of Art from a graphic designer
you know, doing world-class client work
to becoming and transcending that and becoming an artist.
- I am an artist.
I have to be an artist.
(triumphant music)
(energetic jazz music)