'My illustrations are like weapons': artist Edel Rodriguez on his latest Time cover
By Jesse Kinos-Goodin
Addressing last weekend's deadly turmoil in Charlottesville, Va., in which white supremacists clashed with protesters, U.S. President Trump referred to the violence on "both sides," leaving many people speechless.
You could say Edel Rodriguez was one of those people. An artist whose work has appeared on the cover of publications like Time and Der Spiegel, Rodriguez did what he always does — he drew. What he drew was a simple yet poignant depiction of a man raising his hands in a "Heil Hitler" salute while draped in the American flag.
Speechless, but not silent: this morning, his image appeared on the cover of the Aug. 28 issue of Time, accompanying the headline "Hate in America."
"I follow the news pretty regularly and I'm as outraged as many people, so as I see things, these images come to my mind," he says on the phone. "I think the one thing I was most outraged by is this idea that people are doing the 'Heil Hitler' sign in the United States after we spent five years and millions of people died to defeat that ideology, and here they are in the United States. At the same time they are wrapping themselves in the flag like they are the true Americans, and America First, white nationalist, whatever. This was almost like using a person for a flag pole. ... And now we have the President of the United States defending it. It's gone to this other level."
Rodriguez, who moved to America from Cuba in 1980, when he was nine, has been making a name for himself recently for his ability to synthesize the climate in America in drawings, focusing his pen in on Trump.
Rodriguez's style is simple yet sensational, something that spurs conversation on all sides, from the Time cover depicting a bust of Trump melting into a puddle, to the much talked-about Der Spiegel cover showing a blind Trump holding the severed head of the Statue of Liberty.
Rodriguez's images have gone viral, making him one of today's most in-demand cartoonists.
Below, Rodriguez talks about his creative process and his most recent work.
Can you talk about the timing of this illustration, which seems to have happened incredibly fast?
Maybe two weeks ago, [I] had kind of sketched out a rough idea but never developed it. When Time called me on Sunday night, because of what was going on, I did a bunch of ideas and worked on that one a little more and sent them all to Time, probably 15 different sketches in total. That's the one that stuck. I got the "OK" Monday night and finished it on Tuesday and it was out this morning.
What is your creative process for something like this?
I used to sit down and draw and try to figure out these ideas, but nowadays they really just manifest themselves as complete images in my head before I draw. That's just the way it works.
Is that a more recent process for you with this administration?
It's happened more in the last year or two as I've been watching. Maybe when you are more outraged by something, the images pop up quicker or easier than when you are not really feeling something. … When you are living in it, you're just in the zone. I hear about basketball players or musicians in a zone, and the way I feel right now, I'm in a zone. These things just pop up in my head all the time.
Outrage as inspiration, that makes a lot of sense.
To me, my illustrations are like weapons, that's what I'm fighting with. I'm putting up weapons and having people confront this stuff so it doesn't disappear.
Why do you think illustrations are so effective in addressing these things?
The way I think about it is that anybody can avoid words, can avoid stories — they can go into their little holes and deal with like-minded Nazis or whatever. But you can't avoid an image: it hits you in about a tenth of a second. You can look away but you've seen it already. Especially with the internet. These are magazine covers but most of my work has taken off on Twitter and Facebook first and that makes it this quick jolt of an image. You can't avoid it.
I also like that it's making images that are well understood, even by people who may not be highly educated. They can connect with people on all levels of understanding and education. My family is not very highly educated, and if it can be something that makes my father get it, I've been successful.
I mean, it's one of the oldest forms of journalism, right?
Exactly. I think ... a lot of people are feeling something inside, they are angry, but they don't know what to say. These images give them something to put up or grab onto because they are just tired of arguing with words.
To see more of Rodriguez's work, visit his website or Instagram page.