Op-Art: How 'NYT' Drew Conclusions

By: Greg Mitchell For many people, 'Op-Ed' means text, but since pioneering the concept back in the 1970s, The New York Times has published some remarkable ?and at times controversial ? images on its opinion page as well. Now a new book brings some of them together ? with, yes, a fair bit of colorful explanatory text. The handsome hardbound volume comes from Columbia University Press ($34.95) and is titled All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't). Jerelle Krause, an art director at the paper for 30 years (including 13 years on the Op-Ed page) put together what she calls this "never-before-told adventure."

Ralph Steadman wrote the foreword. The selection spans the decades, from Nixon to Obama, and includes 142 artists; the first illustration in the chronology is a rejected David Levine portrait of a tattooed Henry Kissinger. Other illustrators whose published ? or rejected ? work appears here include Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Milton Glaser, Garry Trudeau, Charles Addams, Larry Rivers, Sue Coe, Saul Steinberg, Steve Brodner, Ben Shahn, Art Spiegelman, and Barbara Kruger. The very first Op-Ed page in 1970 featured a photo of China ? and a spoofy caricature of Spiro Agnew by the legendary Al Hirschfeld.