“An innovative new title that covers the emergence of an exciting new genre of illustration and art, this book presents a significant selection of work by over 20 of the world's hottest illustrators and artists. For many postmodern artists there is a very fine line between illustration and art, and that line occasionally disappears. As is demonstrated by many of the works published here the traditional border drawn between art as an autonomous project and illustration as a service product is becoming less and less clear. More and more illustrators are creating art for art's sake and in both the US and Europe their works are being shown in leading galleries and at art exhibitions”.
Patrick Hartl (Author, Editor), Yvonne Winkler (Editor).

How do illustration and art relate for you?
According to the classical definition illustration is regarded as a service.  It serves a customer and his text. On the other hand in art the creator is his own customer. Using the various views and positions of invited artists and illustrators we will try to discuss this phenomenon.

Today we can see that the illustration is still trying to show through and to defend its role in the art field among other disciplines. There are lots of changes in this subject, although vast quantities of artists brought some new ways of thinking into the illustration stream. My education was based on the traditional art such as painting, drawing, and graphics. These are my mediums. After my graduation, I started making illustrations, as I didn’t have a printmaking studio. I have always been into traditional techniques and along that I wanted to do something new. And I did not start from the text visualization, just the opposite, I wanted to show some thinking, serious pieces not only nice pictures. I approached technical aspects in the same way I used to design drawings and graphics. Generally I think we need to have serious graphic reason to start making this kind of works. And that was unacceptable in the illustration in the past. The illustration was used as a decoration for a story, basically to provide visual information for something described in text. In the world of visual arts an illustrator haven’t been considered as an artist and illustration as a fine arts discipline. Today’s illustration fights for originality, the discipline is fast growing and to work within it is a challenge. There are other issues, for instance commission practice. Getting paid for your work changed a lot. There are different terms, approvals of the image and so on. Fortunately there are still some artists who are not influenced by some of today’s collaboration issues too dramatically. The illustration today has a lot to do with advertising, design - it has its place in product promotion. Basically the task of good contemporary illustration is currently more difficult than it’s ever been. For me the illustration should not be obvious and banal, it should deliver subtle massage in exciting form.

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