Caught via a Pinterest posting, the London-based illustrator Jack Hughes’s 2020 spread for Entertainment Weekly celebrating 18 LGBTQ entertainers:
(#1) top row, from left: Janelle Monáe, Freddie Mercury, Kate McKinnon, Ricky Martin, John Waters, Dan Levy; middle row, from left: Ellen DeGeneres, Rock Hudson, Laverne Cox, Lily Tomlin, Kristen Stewart, Lil Nas X, George Takei, Ryan Murphy, Cynthia Nixon, Marlene Dietrich; bottom row, from left: RuPaul, Elton John
And the cover of the issue, using the left half of #1:
(#2) Entertainment Weekly, “Pride Forever: EW’s LGBTQ issue celebrates new storytellers, enduring icons, and Hollywood history: Behind the making of an illustrated salute to LGBTQ stars” by JD Heyman, published on 5/13/20
Text from the story:
How do you gin up a celebration in the midst of a global pandemic? For our annual Pride issue, EW editors turned to the power of art.
Our June cover is always a salute to LGBTQ entertainers. But this year we were faced with some pretty daunting hurdles.
We had big dreams: To bring Pride festivities home to an audience an unable to participate in big parades and parties, and to pay homage to Hollywood’s LGBTQ storytellers — past, present, and future.
But marking the month with some big, elaborate, social distance shattering photo shoot was definitely out.
So, we teamed with London-based illustrator Jack Hughes to create a totally different kind of EW cover — one that pays tribute to the central role LGBTQ artists have had in Hollywood from its very beginnings.
Our inspiration came from the great murals and magazine covers of the 1920s and 1930s. And sort of like a mini-WPA, which employed artists across the country during that time period, we wanted to put the spotlight on talented artists at a time of great economic hardship.
… For our cover illustration and the opening spread of our Pride package, Hughes worked closely with EW deputy design director Chuck Kerr to place 18 iconic LGBTQ stars in an imaginary party in the Hollywood Hills.
“As an LGBTQ+ artist, I know how important representation in the media is,” says Hughes. With painstaking attention to detail, he juxtaposed legends of the past with stars of today and a rising new generation of talent.
The result? The kind of bash we’d all dream of going to: with Rock Hudson rubbing elbows with Ellen DeGeneres, Marlene Deitrich cutting a rug with Cynthia Nixon, Freddie Mercury warmly greeting Janelle Monáe, and Ryan Murphy showing up wearing Liberace’s cape.
And because EW loves an Easter egg, Hughes hid a few throughout our tableau — I won’t spoil your fun by calling them all out, but my favorite is a copy of EW’s very first issue, which came out in 1990, featuring groundbreaking singer k.d. lang on the cover.
About Jack Hughes. There are a lot of Jack Hugheses around. An entire collection of athletes, of whom the currently most prominent is an American professional ice hockey player for the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League. Then there’s a Welsh-born artist living and working in London, where he creates large-scale oil paintings. And then there’s our guy, who’s not only proudly and earnestly gay (as you can see from the above), but also a tremendously prolific artist creating both high-elegant designs and perceptive portraits.
He’s happy to talk about his illustrations, how he created them and what he was doing in them, but on other matters — like basic biographical facts and details of his personal life — he does the Artist thing of concealment. I know the basic facts of his higher education only because he’s included them in his LinkedIn profile, along with a photograph:
(#3) education: Wimbledon School of Art, 2007-08; Kingston University London, degree in illustration and design, 2008-11
He does self-portraits, but as far as I can tell, they’re all head shots; here’s one:
(#4) Hughes experiments with a variety of hair styles
Casual elegance. From the Evil Tender website (about working artists), “Casually Elegant: The Art of Jack Hughes” by Chris Jalufka on 3/27/17:
The work of London-based illustrator Jack Hughes lives in the tradition of 1920s editorial work — his men, sharp and elegant, carry the crisp charm of J.C. Leyendecker‘s ‘Arrow Collar Man,’ a cultured vision of the contemporary man. His women, intelligent. At ease in their beauty and strength.
(#5) From my 1/22/11 posting “J. C. Leyendecker” (the first of a series of postings on JCL): “elegant illustrations and advertisements, many depicting various styles of masculinity, served as inspiration for many later illustrators and artists”[Hughes’s] series of illustrations for Scottish whisky brand The Macallan paid homage to the golden age of travel, the passengers attractive and confident. No matter the environment or client, Hughes creates a world populated by people of purpose.
(#6) Illustration for The MacallanHughes accomplishes a great deal with simple shapes — a bowed arm, the white dress, a flock of hair. Each a bare form of solid color. The elements spartan by design. There are a variety of experimentations in his portfolio, the artist pushes the negative space and reduces the color palette. His illustration for Finnish ferry company Eckerö Line‘s summer campaign, the colors stay bright, bold. He takes the central figure into a palette of soft grays, adding an edge of contrast to the concept. His spate of portrait illustrations for The Village Voice gave Hughes the opportunity to take a more painterly approach with his digital work. His version of Iggy Pop does not leave the reality of the star behind, but updates it through Hughes’ own refined lens.
Through the industry of fashion and editorial, Hughes gives us a vision of a perfect world. A place of dramatic love, casual elegance, and beauty in the everyday.
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