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Brad Holland – RIP

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Illustrator and cartoonist Brad Holland has passed away.

Bradford Wayne (Brad) Holland

October 16, 1943 – March 27, 2025

From Steven Heller:

Brad Holland died on Thursday March 27 at 2 a.m. after heart surgery. He was 81.

He was my first professional friend, critic and inspiration when at 17 I stumbled into the worlds of satiric art, illustration, magazines and graphic design.

We had a natural bond and tumultuous relationship that I think is endemic to all closely tied, emotionally driven, unforgettable and irreplaceable relationships. We had great adventures, illuminating experiences, deep respect for and loyalty to one another.

New York Ace, c. 1971
YOYO 1972

Steven Heller tells of his long ago working relationship and long time friendship with Brad Holland.

Holland had arrived in New York City from Kansas City, a year before by way of Tulsa, OK, and Freemont, Ohio [via Fort Smith, AR]; he worked as a design supervisor at the “rabbit department” of Hallmark cards in Kansas City and started getting hired for illustration work almost immediately after getting off the Greyhound bus. It was clear to me that he did not have to submit work to my semi-literate literary magazine.

Those early memories can be compared to Brad’s own recollections at his Drawger page.

All I knew back then is that the series of pictures I had done [for Playboy] on a short deadline in February of 1968 had been pushed back from its June ‘68 publication date to be showcased in the magazine’s blockbuster December issue. When that issue was finally published, however – the first week of November – these three pictures changed my life.

Brad Holland for Playboy, December 1968

To begin with, the double page spread paid well: $1,800 in 1968 money; $13,000 in today’s. For an artist who had just worked for two years at Hallmark to save a thousand bucks – and whose thousand bucks were quickly running out in New York – that Playboy check was a windfall.

Second, exposure in the magazine catapulted me at a young age into the ranks of an illustration field that in those days was still dominated by an elite group of middle-aged men.

By the early 1970s Holland had landed as a regular artist on The New York Times Ed-Op pages.

Brad Holland for The New York Times
Brad Holland for The New York Times

From an interview with Steven Heller:

So anyway, as far as JC Suares … Anyway, he took me up to The New York Times and introduced me to Harrison Salisbury. They were just starting the op-ed page, and Harrison asked me how I saw my work being used, how I saw illustration being used on the op-ed page … He called it illustration, and I said, well, I don’t really think of it as illustration. I didn’t know what to say. And I kind of stammered around for a second. And then I thought I had a great angle. I said “Just imagine that you lock the writer in one room and the artist in another, and you give them both the same assignment. And then you put this stuff together.” The writer gives you an article, and the artist gives you a picture, and you just put them together. As long as they run tangent to each other, that qualifies as a direction.

And so by age 30 Brad Holland was acknowledged as being an upper-tier artist in the popular media.

April 13, 2025 Update: The New York Times obituary:

“All the Art That’s Fit to Befuddle” read the headline of a 1977 New York magazine article by Michael R. Gordon about the upstart Op-Ed page, naming Mr. Holland as an avatar of the new form. Mr. Gordon pointed out that the work Mr. Suares chose not only pushed the boundaries of political cartoons but was also weird and abstract enough to satisfy a key Times mandate: that the artwork not express any overtly political point of view.

Political cartoonists carped that as a result, as Pat Oliphant, then at The Washington Star, put it, the Op-Ed art was “the sort of cop-out you can expect from a paper of record that wants to use art but doesn’t want comment.”

That view was not widely shared. If some readers were befuddled by Mr. Holland’s strange and magical imagery, graphic artists were entranced.

The Steven Heller remembrance ends with a number of links to further reading and biography.

Also: Playboy’s Ribald Classics illustrations by Brad Holland (recommended for adults only)

more recent fine art images by Brad Holland at Margarethe Hubauer

an appreciation of Brad Holland’s talent at NY Art World

a gallery of Brad Holland drawings and art from the Society of Illustrators

Brad Holland’s birth date found at Prabook.

Brad Holland for East Village Other 1971
Human Scandals by Brad Holland 1977
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Comments 10

  1. Nonwithstanding the fact that Brad Holland was a brilliant artist and deserved all the kudos we could pile on his head, does he qualify as a cartoonist?

    I would be ambivilent about it. His stuff wasn’t particularly “cartoony,” and he never used word balloons or captions. Stylistically, he was sort of like Edward Sorel, who WAS a cartoonist.

    So what are the limits of the definition?

    1. Both captions and word balloons are displayed on samples above.
      I am reminded of R. C. Harvey claiming word balloons were part and parcel of comic strips and anything without them could not, by definition, be a comic strip. He eventually had to admit that Prince Valiant, Lance, Ferd’nand, The Little King, and others were, in fact, comic strips.

  2. Steven Heller and Brad Holland were part of the transformation of the New York Times opinion and especially OpEd pages endorsed by publisher Punch Sulzberger. Those pages were largely structured and envisioned by Louis M. Silverstein, assistant managing editor. He was equally comfortable designing front pages, Business Day and Science Times as he was redesigning two of the most successful and profitable regional Florida dailies The Times then owned, The Ledger, Lakeland and the Ocala Star-Banner that I led 1980–94. He sketched our new logo on a bar napkin. Of course I still have it.
    Heller: Lou “introduced white space to the Times. He conceived of using allegorical and metaphorical art, rather than editorial cartoons, on the OpEd page. He ushered in the multi-section newspaper and designed them like magazines. He perfected conceptual data-graphics (or what he called “sides of beef”) prefiguring information graphics. He brought the “Old Grey Lady” out of the 19th Century. He took the period off The New York Times nameplate.”
    https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/louis-silverstein-godfather-of-modern-newspaper-design/
    Hollander, Heller, Silverstein and others in the 1970s-90s revultionized the content, design and impact of American newspaper commentary and news pages. It is sadly lacking at the Grey Lady today. Many dailies have abandoned their editorial pages after cutting loose cartoonists and local editorials.

  3. I can’t understand why there is no news about this on mainstream media, the guy was a giant in the illustration world. He was so highly influential and positive to an industry that is constantly under attack.

  4. I also wondered by the lack of news coverage of Brad’s recent death. I appreciate Steve’s heartfelt reflection. Brad was a trailblazer and an inspiration. May he rest in peace..

  5. I can’t let this go w/out a word of thanks and admiration. There are no bigger talents eulogized here. This man was a force re-defining op/ed illustration. I first saw his work in high school, followed him thru college and eventually as the Sunday op/ed. illustrator at the ATL JOURNAL. I was not in his league.
    God bless BH, his family and thank you. -ML

  6. Share Mike Lester’s longtime appreciation and admiration. Homage to Brad Holland, sorry for his loss.

  7. Brad was MORE than an artist, illustrator; he was a crusader. Brad spearheaded the fight against “Big Business” to have the copyright law changed to allow them to scan and place intellectual property on the Internet. (so, who is “Big Business”? GOOGLE). It was called the Orphan Works Bill, which would allow one to use copyrighted work if the artist/writer could not be found after a “diligent” search. He worked tirelessly, and at great expense to himself, to stop the “Orphan Works Bill”, which he – and others – did. And he had to do it TWICE. That experience virtually bankrupted him.
    I met Brad when I arrived in the Design Dept. at HALLMARK CARDS in 1965. Brad came to Hallmark in ’64 at age 21 from a small art studio in Chicago in order to earn a paycheck with regular hours so that he could work evenings on preparing a portfolio to take to NYC. The only connection that I know of that he had with Tulsa, OK, was a Hallmark friend, Gailard Sartain, who was from Tulsa. Brad grew up in Fremont OH and left at 17 for Chicago. He enrolled in the The Art Institute of Chicago but only attended for 2 months because he said the instructors wanted him to draw as they did.
    Brad’s portfolio was unique. He did not carry the usual oversized black folder with tie strings. Instead, he did black & white ink and acrylic drawings on gesso, and then sent them out to a service bureau for a line shot to insure total black or white and sized down to fit in his 8″X10″ black loose-leaf binder. All the samples were photo prints. No bulky canvas or illustration board to lug around. That was all he needed. I got to know Brad well in the two years we worked together. He would have Thanksgiving dinner with me and my wife. He allowed me to hang one of his early “Robert Vickrey” paintings over my mantel. (Still have it 60 years later.) When he had his portfolio ready, he stored his “stuff” in my attic, and I drove him to the station to take the bus to NYC. It was hard to see him leave, but it was the beginning of a new era in Illustration. He was a good and loyal friend. He will be missed. R.I.P., my friend.

  8. Not an artist but an appreciator. I’m “some guy” at the end of this article. https://drawger.com/holland/articles/10024

    Took one one of the Cowboy and Cossack prints to Antiques Roadshow in 2014, Bismarck, ND. The appraiser had never heard of Brad. Until he googled him. Said prints were worth $100. It was a quite a saga hunting Brad down 20 years ago. Finally found someone who had his email, wrote him, told him I would love prints from my wife’s favorite book, for her birthday. Brad said he would hunt around to find those prints. Days and weeks and a couple of months went by, no response. So what the hell.. I wrote one more time and he got back immediately, apologized profusely, blamed his cat for deleting my email. Had found the originals in storage and could make me prints.. and very reasonable I have to say. They were about $100 each. When they arrived, there was a letter in the package that said, “Dear Kent, Thanks for waiting so long for these prints. And thanks for reviving my interest in them. I had nearly forgotten about these pictures, but I was always fond of them– it was the series where I finally found my pen and ink style. I hope you’re happy with the prints. Best regards, Brad H. 1.1. 5”

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10166268020643682&set=p.10166268020643682&type=3

  9. Brad Holland was my first mentor. I had discovered his work on the Ribald Classics page of Playboy
    magazine in San Francisco at age 18. When starting at SVA in NYC at age 23 I was thrilled to see that he was my teacher in illustration. It was his first day like mine, and he honestly didn’t consider himself a
    teacher. He taught by example. He taught me how to speak in pictures. He got me my first job at Screw magazine and then my first job at the NY Times. He taught me integrity. He was honest as Abe and as intense as Ahab.
    His originality speaks for itself. He once showed me a recent drawings and I said, “Oh. Goya.” He replied,
    “Damn. Now I can’t use it.”
    He was a giant to me and I will always be in his debt artistically and tempermentally. There was not and will not be anyone like him.

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