Why Did The New York Times Kill This Image of Henry Kissinger? (Not for His Naked Butt Cheeks!)

The Kissinger image below (by David Levine) is one of 320 illustrations – by 142 of the world's most acclaimed contemporary artists – that The New York Times itself originally commissioned for its Op-Ed Pages, but then got cold feet about running, and eventually paid more than $1 million in “kill fees” to hide from public view (sometimes for as long as 38 years).

What didn't the Times want you to see?

Can you imagine illustrations so "blasphemous," so "politically embarrassing," so sexually "over the line" that The New York Times gladly paid a fortune just to protect your delicate eyes from being exposed to them?

You’ll find hundreds of such allegedly “not-fit-to-print” illustrations – together with the bizarre and often ludicrous reasons for suppressing them – in a sly and deliciously funny new book called All The Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t), by Jerelle Kraus, former Art Editor of the Times Op-Ed and Editorial Pages, who reluctantly quit her "dream job" at the Times after 13 years in order to publish it.

And we're fortunate she did. Her book (published by Columbia University Press) rescues 320 eye-stopping illustrations by 142 of the world’s most provocative graphic artists, including David Levine, Jules Feiffer, Ronald Searle, Milton Glaser, Charles Addams, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Ralph Steadman, Larry Rivers, Saul Steinberg, Ben Shahn, Art Speigelman, Andy Warhol, Garry Trudeau, and many more.

Publishing these illustrations should have been an occasion for pride and rejoicing at the Times. Instead, many were killed by panicky editors – often just minutes before press time.

What spooked these worldly Times editors?

Ms Kraus, who is the longest serving art director of the Times Op-Ed Page (there have been 27), says that Times editors were convinced that illustrators were always trying to put something over on them, forever conspiring to sneak in hidden sexual or political statements. So they frequently watered down editorial art to near vacuity – even though, ironically, the articles they illustrated were often fearless and hard-hitting.

Although Times management believed that the pen was mightier than the sword, it had an uneasy suspicion that art might be more brutal than the pen. This resulted in weird, last-minute censorings – especially of caricatures of famous people, against which there was a puzzling, long-standing prohibition. "You could write it, and be as scathing as you liked,” says  Kraus says, "but you couldn't draw it."

For example, this rather mild Robert Grossman illustration of Bill Clinton from 1994 as a crusading soldier (which Clinton would probably have liked) was rejected by former Times Executive Editor Howell Raines, because “It's a nasty caricature of a sitting president" – even though the editorial it illustrated was far nastier.

Ward Sutton's illustration of George W. Bush — sweating out (literally)  the results of the 2000 election – was considered unflattering to the majesty of the office. (American presidents are not supposed to sweat.) So the art work was only permitted to run after the offending beads of sweat were banished from Bush’s brow – along with whatever point the artist was trying to make.

Another example of Executive Editor Raines’s rather vivid imagination: When presented with a Nancy Stahl drawing of a light bulb with a copyright symbol on its top (for an editorial commentary on patents), he exclaimed, "We can't publish a bare breast and a nipple!"

Even Andy Warhol, at the time arguably one of the most famous artists in the world, could be censored. In 1980, the paper commissioned Warhol to illustrate an unflattering editorial about Ted Kennedy as a “nebulous figure.” But his illustration was turned down by management as "meaningless" – to which Kraus replied (under her breath) that perhaps they could just run the signature.