Brad Holland was an artist who delighted conceptual work and iconic methods, and often delighted an art director of a crazy generation, who passed away on March 27th.
He was an early Bloomer.
His fellow ninth graders had won blue ribbons in art class for their paintings of cocker spaniels and hot rods, but he had previously collected letters of rejection to interviewers from Saturday's Evening Post and Walt Disney.
Mr. Holland received a big break when he was 23 years old. Arthur Paul, the well-known art director of Playboy Magazine, decided to downplay the company's policy by giving him an assignment despite his refusal to direct him.
Like most magazines, Playboy spoke about what it offers its illustrators – mostly a literal interpretation of the work. But Paul was enough to have him head on, setting a precedent for the Netherlands to follow for the rest of his life.
This particular challenge was to describe the essay by PG Wodehouse, the British author and humorist who created Jeeves, the perfect butler of the unfortunate Bertie Wooster. In Wodehouse's essay, on his own “servant matters,” Holland delivered a series of elaborate pen and ink drawings of Toffs operating a small servant doll, reminiscent of the satirical work of Thomas Nast of 19th century British caricatures.
“I find it quite difficult to pinpoint my feelings to the work of my domestic servants about these illustrations,” Wodehouse wrote to Paul after his work ran. “My initial reaction was surprising, 'Oh, my gaud!” But I love the feeling of the gradually wet fish fading away and slapping between my eyes. ”
It was probably a typical response to Mr. Holland's master. His strange and magical images (and his stubborn methods) have reinvented the illustrations.
Eventually, his work appeared to be everywhere with magazines, books, album covers, advertisements, theatrical works and posters of political causes. And Morland was considered one of the most popular and impactful commercial artists of the late 20th century.
When the New York Times introduced the Opinion Page in 1970, Holland was one of its signature artists, helping to document the Watergate scandal and oil crisis, among other national and global events.
“I didn't like illustrations,” Holland said. “They were ghosts of ideas, transparent and vapourous. I wanted to be involved in my drawings. When I worked on the Watergate hearing and shaping the OPEC, I internalized public issues. Then I was junk of preconceived notions.
Mr. Holland was primarily acrylic and worked in masonite panels or illustration boards, but he was governed and technically agnostic.
“My model has always been a writer and someone who can try out different approaches, whether it's essays, poetry, performances, whatever they choose,” he told art director Stephen Heller in 2005. Just an elephant.
One of Holland's final projects was to showcase a children's book on the trial of the Salem Witch, and a timely noteworthy tale of the power of rumors by Jonah Winter. The book's art director, Rita Marshall, had long admired Mr. Holland's work, but she was postponed to his famous thorny persona.
When she called him, she replied in an interview, “He replied to me for 40 years to give him a book. I said I was afraid of his bad boy's reputation and that he found it difficult for him to work with.
That happened, she said, he was.
