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Excerpt: Steadman on Steadman interview (archives)

In February, writer Sally Vincent sat down in the home studio of artist Ralph Steadman, 70, in Kent, England for a cover story interview. Below is an excerpt of that conversation, available in full in

Stop Smiling: You stopped drawing politicians a while back. Have you ever been tempted to start again?

Ralph Steadman: I stopped in 1987 because it felt indecent to draw someone you wouldn’t ask home for supper. But that was just personal. I thought there was something unwholesome about political caricature based on the certain knowledge that each time you draw one of the bastards it feeds into their monstrous egos, because they always want to own the drawing. No matter how bad the likeness, how hideous the caricature, to them it’s a powerful rendition, fodder for their insatiable egos. The more wicked and cruel the portrait, the more passionately they want to own it, as though they have somehow earned the glory of this vicious, awful vituperation. It is only a one-man campaign to wither the inflated sense of self-importance of our venal representatives. I doubt there’s a politician alive who has felt the draught of my indifference. And no, I’ve never been tempted. I wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction.

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