Chip Kidd presents Batman Black and White

Award-winning book jacket designer and Batman afficionado Chip Kidd is bringing his Manhattan Society of Illustrators 80th anniversary Batman exhibition to mainspace ARTSPACE in downtown Shreveport on June 24.

HOLY HUNDREDS OF BLACK AND WHITE BATMAN COVERS!! Chip Kidd, one of the greatest and most renowned graphic designers in the world, is also known as one of the world’s greatest Batman afficionados, and he is bringing his Manhattan Batman exhibition, “Batman Black and White: Sketch Covers, Commissioned by Chip Kidd” to Mainspace ARTSPACE in downtown Shreveport on June 24, 2022. “BatFans” will have a chance to meet Kidd and hear him talk about his work on Saturday, June 25.

Kidd is unquestionably a “Batmaniac.” When he was commissioned by DC Comics in 2012 to write a Batman story for its “Batman: Black and White” anthology comics title, Kidd was inspired to invite some of the world’s greatest illustrators to sketch Batman black and white covers. Rob Pistella, a curator of the Society of Illustrators in New York City (where part of this exhibit originated), says that “Kidd has a profound understanding of the Batman character and likes having people who wouldn’t usually draw comics do covers for him that bring another richness to this collection. The result has been a magnificent exhibition of design creativity.”

“I was born in 1964 and two years later the Batman TV show came out. That was my gateway drug, which led quickly to the comic books,” says Kidd. “All the different elements about it really appealed to me visually. I was a kid watching escapist fantasy and it was exciting. And the way all of these fantastic creators over the years have contributed to the story--it's incredible,” adds Kidd.

It is this curiosity to see how others might portray Gotham’s vigilante that has resulted in the almost 150 Batman Black and White covers that will be on exhibition at artspace in downtown Shreveport. Beloved cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine Roz Chast put Batman and Robin arguing on a couch. Sutton Impact’s cartoonist Ward Sutton sketched “MadBatmen,” a spoof on the television series “Mad Men,” with a reference to the Joker stealing the Lucky Strike account. New York socialite Gloria Vanderbilt did a cover that portrayed Bat Woman with lush red lips and a sequined cat eyes mask. Shreveport’s former Moonbot Studios artist, Vanessa Del Ray, also opted for the feminine side—her cover showing a Batwoman with long, bright red hair. Hundreds of others jumped at the opportunity to pen their version of the caped crusaders including a cover illustrated by

Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, one by Pulitzer winner Art Spiegelman, one by Shreveport’s Academy Award-Winning illustrator William Joyce and another by Joyce’s son Jack.

Kidd muses that it might have been his obsession with the design of the Batman comics that led him to a design career. His first major credit as an author and designer was for Batman Collected (1996), a photographic timeline of Batman collectibles and memorabilia. He’s also the person chiefly responsible for bringing Jiro Kuwata’s fantastic Batmanga from Japan to the U.S. Kidd worked with fellow Batman collector Saul Ferris on Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan. He entered the world of graphic design via a passion for comic books, which has endured through the years, and today he is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Batman. He is fascinated with just where creativity can take you and how many ways Bruce Wayne can be portrayed.

Kidd will tell you straight up that he is not an illustrator. Kidd is America’s most in-demand book jacket designer, best known for the thousands of book covers he has drawn over the last 36 years as a graphic designer and associate art director for Alfred A. Knopf Publishing House. He is routinely referred to as “the world’s greatest book jacket designer,” and has also been described as “the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design today.” Louisiana’s Academy Award-Winning author and illustrator William Joyce says, ”Chip Kidd is the most consistently innovative cover designer of our time and maybe of all time.” His covers include Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, and Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs.

But Kidd’s creative credits don’t just include “designer.” In 2007, he won the National Design Award for Communications and was awarded the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for Use of Photography in Design in 1997. In 2014, he was awarded the American Institute of Graphic Arts most distinguished honor, the AIGA medal. He has also authored a number of books, including The Cheese Monkeys (his debut novel about a struggling college art major), The Learners, a sequel to The Cheese Monkeys that picks up where the previous novel left off, and his book dedicated to making graphic design fun for kids, GO: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design.

So…TO THE BATCAVE (not in Gotham City, but in artspace at 708 Texas St. in downtown Shreveport), on Friday, June 24, 2022, at 5:00 p.m. for the unmasking of Batman Black and White: Sketch Covers Selected by Chip Kidd.” It’s all happening just in time Shreveport’s Geek’d Con on August 19 and 20 and will remain up in artspace until August 27.

J. J. Abrams
Joel Adams
Josh Adams
Neal Adams
Rafael Albequerque
Brooke Allen
Thomas Allen
Mike Allred
Gabriel Ba’
Kyle Baker
Alison Bechdel
Tyler Bence
Simone Bianchi
Barry Blitt
Paige Braddock
Pier Brito
Lou Brooks
Chester Brown
Jeffrey Brown
Ivan Brunett
Dave Bullock
Chris Burnham
Charles Burns
Celia Cake
Eric Canete
Bob Camp
Jim Carrey
John Cassaday
Eliza Charretier
Roz Chast
Howard Chaykin
Mark Chiarello
Michael Cho
Seymour Chwast
Dan Clowes
Brian Cronin
Howard Cruse
Shawn Crystal
Geoff Darrow
Kim Deitch
Vanessa Del Ray
Peterde Sève
Pat Dorian
Stephen Doyle
Jules Feiffer
Nathon Fox
Drew Friedman
Gary Gianni
Milton Glaser
Randy Glass
Michael Golden
J. Gonzo
Rafael Grampá
Dave Gibbons
Michael T. Gilbert
Chadwick Haverland
Dean Haspiel
Gilbert Hernandez
Jamie Hernandez
Ryan Heshka
Drew Hodges
Jamil
Klaus Janson
Jiraya
DaveJohnson
R. KikouJohnson
J. G.Jones
William Joyce
Jack Joyce
Maira Kalman
Chip Kidd
Tom Kidd
Anita Runz
Peter Kuper
Jiro Kuwata
Zohar Lazar
Jae Lee
Jim Lee
Lars Leetaru
Gary Leib
Jeff Lemire
Sonny Liew
Liniers
Ed Luce
J. MacConnell
Ed McGuiness
Dave McKean
Kevin Maguire
Jim Mahfood
Manuel Martinez
Patrick McDonnell
Mike Mignola
Frank Miller
Debbie Millman
Tony Millionaire
Fabio Moon
Bill Morrison
Francoise Mouly
Dustin Nguyen
Christoph Niemann
Ander Nilson
Conor Nolan
Olivia
Patrick Owsley
Orhan Pamuk
Gary Panter
Gary Parkin
Pash
Philip Pearlstein
Raymond Pettibon
Sean Phillips
Dave Plunkert
Jason Polan
Pete Poplaski
Frank Quietly
Kirby Rosanes
Paul Rivoche
Alex Ross
Steve Rude
Joe Sacco
Tim Sale
Stephen Savage
Paula Scher
Damion Scott
Seth
Yuko Shimizu
Bill Sienkiewicz
Alex Sinclair
Elwood H. Smith
Jeff Smith
Bob Staake
Art Spiegelman
Kyle Starks
William Stout
Ward Sutton
Joost Swarte
Gengoroh Tagame
Gary Taxali
Dave Taylor
Bruce Timm
Adrian Tomine
Billy Tucci
Glora Vanderbilt
Maurice Vellenkoop
Dexter Vines
Chris Ware
José Villarrubia
Matt Wagner
Lee Weeks
Robert Williams