Polish artist selected as illustrator for New York Times
Tomasz Broda, a Polish artist, has been selected to create the so-called daily spots for the print edition of The New York Times.
The Daily Spot Illustrations - small, newspaper-themed drawings created each month by a different artist - have appeared in the traditional version of the NYT every day since 2017. They are published at the top of the paper's A3 page in the Inside The Times section.
"The proposal to create these illustrations came from the art director of the New York Times, who wrote to me on my Instagram profile," Broda told PAP "We had been following each other on Instagram for some time. Apparently, my work caught his eye, because he had been regularly reacting to it for some time.
"The idea behind this column is to show people interacting with a printed newspaper," Broda continued. "Each of these artists develops the theme in their own way. So it's a place in the newspaper where there is a drawing about a newspaper. About a printed newspaper, which, contrary to predictions about the end of print media, is still alive and can inspire.
"I think I am the second Pole to be invited. Two or three years ago, Wroclaw (city in south-western Poland - PAP) illustrator Gosia Herba took part. She drew a dog – she was working on a book whose main character was a dog, so she drew a dog with a newspaper. And she showed it in 30 different ways over the course of a month," Broda said.
"I decided to draw ordinary people. Ordinary people whom I sketch during my travels, holidays, somewhere on the street, in a park, in a restaurant, at the airport, on a plane. However, I would never have expected them to end up in the New York Times. But since the newspaper is for people, maybe it's worth giving these people a bit of space in the print media? To show that not only politicians can be heroes, but also ordinary readers who buy this newspaper," Broda explained, adding that the newspaper's art director liked the idea.
"Previously, the column featured people from the world of fashion, for example. A Japanese woman drew models in dresses and hairstyles from the newspaper, someone else drew characters from the world of music, and I decided to draw ordinary, anonymous people," he said.
Broda's illustrations have been published by the NYT since March 1.
"Most of the drawings for the NYT are ready, I still have about one third of them to do," Broda said.
This is how the NYT's art director Vinnie Neuberg describes the daily spots on the newspaper's website: "The illustrations don't pair with articles, so aside from fixed size limitations, the only stipulation is that each 'spot,' or small, free-floating illustration, features a newspaper in some way. Sometimes wholesome, often witty and whimsical and occasionally wacky (in the best kind of way), the spots inject personality into the page."
Tomasz Broda, an artist and caricaturist, graduated from the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wroclaw in 1992, now the Academy of Fine Arts, where he is a professor. His work includes drawing, illustration, puppetry and masks, which he creates from everyday objects. (PAP)
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