Arthur Paul

Arthur Paul (January 18, 1925 – April 28, 2018) was an American graphic designer and the founding art director of Playboy magazine. During his time at Playboy, he commissioned illustrators and artists, including Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and James Rosenquist, as part of the illustration liberation movement. In addition to being an art director and graphic designer — in particular of Playboys rabbit logo — Art Paul was an illustrator, fine artist, curator, writer, and composer. There has been a surge of recent interest concerning both Art's past and present, with recent talks, books, exhibitions, and a documentary being made about him. At 91 years old, he put his drawings and writings into book form, creating projects focused on race, aging, animals, and graphic whimsy. Early life and education Paul was born on January 18, 1925, in the Southwest Side of Chicago. His family later moved to Rogers Park area on the north side. There, while attending Roger C. Sullivan High School, an art teacher recognized that he was talented enough to earn a scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which he attended from 1940 to 1943. After World War II service in the Army Air Corps, he attended the Institute of Design, known as the "Chicago Bauhaus" and now part of Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied with László Moholy-Nagy. "For Paul — student at the Institute of Design, commonly called the Chicago Bauhaus — Playboy was a laboratory for producing a model of contemporary magazine design and illustration ... Paul helped create a forum that demolished artistic and cultural boundaries. In doing so, he transformed magazine illustration." — Steven Heller, an American design critic.