A few months ago I had the fleeting thought to write a post about Stephen Biesty, the DK books cross-section legend. After learning he’d passed only just last year, I was disheartened to discover his personal website and galleries had gone offline, and there were no significant retrospectives of his career that I could find.
Now, after having looked through nearly every single work he produced and having read literally everything I could find online about him, I have come to find his quiet denouement rather touching. He certainly seemed to be private by design, offering only a handful of interviews in his lifetime. The longest profile I could find is weirdly condemning of his workmanlike ethos:
The artist himself is not quite as immediately engaging. Biesty is 35, with the smooth face and straight jeans of a Microsoft programmer. He lives in a Somerset cottage of grey-gold stone between a village church and a pair of wandering geese.
Biesty’s garden glows in the late-summer sun, yet he leads the way straight up to his studio and questions about his business. The room is almost bare of artist’s clutter, more an office with fax and easel and three paintbrushes laid parallel on a tissue to dry. ‘I don’t collect stuff,’ says Biesty.
He talks about his illustrating with a stern set to his chin, as if filling out a tricky detail. He doesn’t sketch – “There isn’t time to be doing reams of doodles” – but expands his work straight from thumbnail ideas to full-scale final pieces. These he completes, eyes close to the paper and hand in rhythm, layer by repetitive layer, between 7.30am and 5.30pm every weekday. “At lunchtime I go downstairs for half an hour and a sandwich.”
Biesty makes all this sound like mass production. “You’re employed to do one thing,” he says, straight as a factory manager. “Something that’s going to sell.” There are no posters of his pictures on his studio walls.
[…] Often, he answers with “we” rather than “I”.
I have to confess a great soft spot for all this. My great grandfather was studying technical illustration at Pratt before he was drafted into the war and lost at sea. His daughter became a graphic designer, as did her daughter — my mom. I appreciate that we all sat somewhere between art and science, heart and mind. Biesty’s seeming indifference towards an artistic identity gives his work more credibility for my tastes.
Biesty’s breakout moment came when the K of DK books asked Biesty to draw a steamboat in cross section. “I tried it lengthways and he said, ‘Fine. But try it the other way, like a loaf.’” And lo:
This became the centerpiece for his first book, Incredible Cross-Sections [here], and the seed for the rest of his career. Anyone around my age and above a certain threshold of autistic will have burned much library time on this amazing ‘90s run of DK books…
[Cole goes on to show and discuss other examples of Biesty’s work and to examine his influences…]
… Later in life, Biesty was able to admit some of the depth so evident in the work, as he accepted an award in 2011 for Into the Unknown [here]:
In a world where most information is stored and conveyed electronically, conventional non-fiction books for young people have taken a heavy hit. So is Into The Unknown a dinosaur, a final example of a Dying Breed? I believe not. In the years ahead, certainly fewer paper books will be produced. But those that are designed, written, and manufactured will be a bit like medieval manuscripts — special creations, works of art, unique, beautiful products to be collected and cherished. Into the Unknown, therefore, is not the end of a line but the beginning of a new, fresh and very beautiful one, and you have so kindly recognized that fact. Thank you all very much indeed…
* Robert J. Bezucha, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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As we show (in addition to telling), we might spare a thought for an illustrator of a different ilk, William Steig; he died on this date in 2003. A cartoonist (most notably, in The New Yorker), and illustrator and writer of children’s books, he’s best known for Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name, as well as others that included Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (which won the Caldecott Medal), Abel’s Island, and Doctor De Soto. He was the U.S. nominee for the biennial and international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as both a children’s book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988.
When asked his opinion about the movie based on his picture book, Shrek!, William Steig responded: “It’s vulgar, it’s disgusting — and I loved it.” (With the release of Shrek 2 in 2004, Steig became the first sole-creator of an animated movie franchise that went on to generate over $1 billion from theatrical and ancillary markets after only one sequel.)
Your correspondent is headed off on the road, so (R)D will be in temporary hiatus. Regular service should resume on/around October 13. To keep you occupied until then, this tasty tidbit from Neal.fun (Neal Agarwal): “I’m not a robot.”
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