Return of the Vampire Squid
For all the hostile response from the shills in business media and the business world itself to the writings of Matt Taibbi in ROLLING STONE, where he has been detailing the etiology of the financial crisis of the past 2 years, and in particular the ruinous misdeeds of Goldman Sachs, news keeps surfacing in dribs and drabs, from here and abroad, about this company or that country’s financial plight and, if you continue reading, you will find that Goldman had some sort of hand, or maybe tentacle, in the financial decisions and policies that have left said institutions in such a shitter. The ruinous misdeeds have extended far, and the recovery from the global financial meltdown will be, by most estimates, a long, hard, slog. Except for Goldman, it seems. They’ve managed to profit magnificently and have the self-justifying nerve to rub the noses of the rest of the world in their ill-gotten success.
Out on the stands now, with Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton gracing the cover, for your viewing and reading pleasure (Is it pleasure when it’s such bad news? Well, yes, when the writing is so good.) is the most recent piece of journalism from Matt for RS; a continuation of the saga of how Goldman has scammed the bailout.
Ironically, a week before starting on this most recent round of illustrations for a ‘National Affairs’ feature, I was standing at the lectern at the Society of Illustrators, accepting my silver medal for the ‘Hyenas’ illustration I had done for an earlier RS issue on the financial crisis. In my acceptance speech I made particular note of what a pleasure it has been working for editorial and art at the magazine and how things mesh so well even under the most pressing of deadlines. The irony was that a week later I was wondering if by speaking out loud the praises of a marvelous working relationship, I had set myself up for some cosmic kick in the ass (because I do believe in a mischievous God, if there is one at all), because it appeared that very little that I was producing in imagery was ringing a bell for the folks on the second floor of Wenner Media. The studio was a snowstorm of flying sketch paper, bond paper, a thousand false starts, pencils thrown, second guessing coming in tidal waves, whirling in a constant dread that I wasn’t nailing my visual solutions. And, it does happen. In an effort to outdo your last effort, (because you are only as good as your last effort) you can sometimes press so hard that you miss the forest for the trees. It was happening here. There were almost five days to work on the assignment and it wasn’t till day three and a half that it seemed like creative salvation was within reach. Even then, tweaking was recommended, slight adjustments in expression called for, communications were sometimes misunderstood- usually by me. However, when the brushes and pens were finally laid down at 5:30 AM on Friday morning and the files emailed, it was with the sense that mission was accomplished and it was a job well done. I was in such overdrive that a late request to do a caricature of Matt for the front credits was a smoking success on the first try. I got my three hours sleep, woke up and headed in my car for NYC three hours and change down the Thruway to prepare for a gallery reception of some recent work (almost all done for ROLLING STONE) at the Society of Illustrators. The coffee tightened up my “too old for overnighters” nausea.
Art direction, as usual, by the ever calm Steve Charny.