Phil Hays, Illustrator and Teacher, Is Dead at 74
deb...@comcast.net
By STEVEN HELLER
Published: October 30, 2005
Phil Hays, an illustrator and teacher, whose lush watercolor portraits
of legendary blues artists like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday for LP
covers defined a distinctive graphic style of album art in the 1970's,
died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 74.
Front and back covers by Mr. Hays for a 1978 album by Muddy Waters.
Mr. Hays, who lived alone, was found in his apartment, said a friend,
the illustrator James McMullan. The cause of death was not officially
known, although he had been suffering from emphysema.
In the mid-1950's Mr. Hays was one of a young band of expressive and
interpretative illustrators, including Robert Weaver, Jack Potter, Tom
Allen and Robert Andrew Parker, who, rather than paint or draw literal
scenes based entirely on an author's prose, interpreted texts with an
eye toward expressive license. Mr. Hays said that representational
illustration was an art of nuance, and his work routinely dug below the
surface, drawing on Impressionist, Expressionist and Surrealist
influences. In 1957, Mr. Hays was hired by Silas H. Rhodes, a founder
of the School of Visual Arts in New York, to teach his first
illustration class, and later he became chairman of the illustration
department.
As a teacher he introduced novels, plays and films to students as a way
to increase their visual and verbal literacy. "Phil's favorite
expression is 'Why not?,' " wrote the poster artist Paul Davis, a
former student of his, on the occasion of Mr. Hays's being awarded the
Society of Illustrators 2000 Distinguished Educators in the Arts award.
"He welcomes experimentation and innovation."
At the time Mr. Hays was not much older than his students, but he was
already deep into a successful career. His editorial work appeared
regularly in Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, McCall's and Esquire.
One of his more notable advertising commissions was a very
painterly-looking piece for Coca-Cola.
Philip Harrison Hays was born in Sherman, Tex., on March 14, 1931. In
1936 his family moved to Shreveport, La., where he went to school until
joining the Air Force in 1950. In 1952 he enrolled at Art Center
College of Design in Pasadena, and in 1955 he moved to New York and
started a career as a freelance illustrator. His early watercolor
approach, partly inspired by Vuillard, was often quite loose but also
extremely detailed.
By the mid-1960's his approach to fiction in Esquire and visual
reportage in Sports Illustrated "had become darker and more serious,"
Mr. McMullan noted.
He also found a new métier doing portraits of blues and rock 'n' roll
musicians. His rendering of Bessie Smith for Columbia Records in the
early 70's glows out of the darkness in what appears to be a drug haze,
and his Jerry Lee Lewis looks to have stepped out of a seedy motel
room. "It was no accident that his most memorable portraits were of
performers that lent themselves to Phil's particular kind of visual
decadent glamour," Mr. McMullan said.
In 1979 Mr. Hays moved back to California to become chairman of the
illustration department at the Art Center College of Design. He retired
in 2002.
He is survived by a brother, Richard, who lives in Tennessee.