Fit to print

The exhibition “Fit to Print” brings together a selection of editorial illustration created by Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR – Strasbourg, France) graduates, commissioned for The New York Times Opinion section from 2011 to the present. NYT Opinion has a rich history of publishing exceptional illustration since the founding of the OpEd page in 1970, and today commissions around 1,500 original artworks per year.

The exhibition brings together 120 drawings published in the New York Times by 17 HEAR artists between 2011 and 2015. The first part proposes a side-by-side presentation of illustrators’ original drawings with their contextualization in the New York Times. Then follows a presentation of these artists’s personal work. This is the illustrator’s bread-and-butter occupation, at the same time equipping him to face the challenge represented by a commission. Finally, to conclude the exhibition there are the collective magazines which created the link between these HEAR graduates and the New York Times (Nyctalope, Psioriasis, Beautiful Illustrations, Thumbnail).

In early 2014, Alexandra Zsigmond, art director of the newspaper’s Opinion pages, noticed that a number of the illustrators whose work she had been publishing were graduates from the Strasbourg campus of the HEAR (Rhin Arts School). Some had published in the magazine Nyctalope and all had been students of Guillaume Dégé, who teaches in the school’s illustration workshop. In March 2014 a special workshop marked the first collaboration between the newspaper and this class. Then, following a meeting in April 2014 in New York between Alexandra Zsigmond and Guillaume Dégé, a project took shape to exhibit in both Strasbourg and New York the work of these illustrators who were graduates of the Rhin Arts School and had published Fit to Print images in the New York Times.

The illustrations here give visual form to pressing news topics – from gun violence and fracking to standardized testing and cancer treatment – and were created under quick deadlines, often with just 6-24 hours from start to finish. The work is visually striking, conceptually strong, and technically refined – all qualities of the best in editorial art. While diverse in style, the illustrations of HEAR graduates are united by a focus on the hand-drawn over the digital, and an often surreal, poetic approach to composition and concept.

until 10 April 2016
Fit to Print
Musée Tomi Ungerer – Centre International de l’Illustration
avenue de la Marseillaise 2, Strasbourg
Exhibition Curator: Alexandra Zsigmond, art director of the Opinion pages of the New York Times
Illustrators: Baptiste Alchourroun, Alexis Beauclair, Fanny Blanc, Guillaume Chauchat, Quentin Duckit, Juliette Etrivert, Marion Fayolle, Caroline Gamon, Lucie Larousse, Antoine Maillard, Bénédicte Muller, Mayumi Otero, Margaux Othats, Eugène Riousse, Marine Rivoal, Simon Roussin and Raphael Urwiller
Organised in partnership with: HEAR Haute école des arts du Rhin