Banyai’s work in museum show

It all started with a Mini Cooper.Istvan Banyai (he pronounces his first name isht-one) was already a successful illustrator, who had done covers for magazines such as The Atlantic and The New Yorker.It was around the year 2000 and he and his wife, Kati (pronounced kah-tee), had traveled one day to Darien, Conn., to pick up their new Mini Cooper. The couple, who have been married for 41 years and who are both natives of Hungary, had seen and liked the snug and sporty cars when they were living in Europe. As soon as the cars were introduced in America, they decided to buy one. “I was number 38,” he said, meaning he was the 38th person in this country to purchase one.And while they were here in Connecticut, up from their home in Manhattan, they were invited to journey a little farther north, to the farthest corner of Salisbury, on the shores of the Twin Lakes to visit their friend Chris Curry, who was an art director at The New Yorker.“And we drove up and fell in love with the area,” Banyai said — although those simple words sound more interesting when he speaks them in his soft Hungarian accent, accompanied by a fair amount of shrugging and hand gestures, and whimsical but subtle changes in his facial expressions. “We kept coming back and then we bought a house in Lake­ville,” he said. It was the home of Myron and Carolyn Neugeboren, who then moved down the street and around the corner to a larger residence.Although his wife is an attorney and her work doesn’t translate as easily to the rural Northwest Corner, Banyai is able to do his illustrations from almost anywhere. In fact, he is only one of many professional illustrators who live up here, and can work here thanks to improvements to the speed of the Internet.“At the beginning, it was funny, because the Internet was so slow, 56 bytes per hour, ” Banyai said. “Very slow. You had to wait a half hour to send a message. But cable came. “Otherwise,” he said, “it makes no difference. It’s fabulous working here. I was already known in the business. I was wondering how it would work out, but it’s perfect.”Life in the country hasn’t really changed his style, which has a gritty urban “noir” quality. It’s fairly easy to make the comparison in his old style versus what he’s done lately: There is now a retrospective of Banyai’s work at the Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge. The show opened March 9 and remains there until May 5. Banyai also gave a talk at the museum on Saturday, March 23.Banyai’s work can be found online, at www.ist-one.com. Many of his images have a style that seems familiar from the graphic novels that have become so popular in recent years, crossing the ocean from Japan, where they are known as manga.Banyai said he was influenced by Japanese art as a child, living in Budapest. “I had a grandfather who was in the Austro-Hungarian navy,” he said. He was stationed in Japan at a period before World War I when the Hungarians were backing the Asian nation against encroachment from Russia. While abroad he sent back many bits of Japanese art and culture to his wife. As a child Banyai pored over the albums of items his grandmother had received, and studied them. When he was old enough for university, he chose to study architecture first, but then decided to switch to graphic design. The early training he received in working with lines and capturing objects in space stayed with him and continues to influence his work. Another continuing influence was the Soviet dominance over life, culture and thought during his years in Hungary. He learned to be symbolic and even subversive with his drawings (which never or rarely include words or lettering of any kind). This served him well as an illustrator of opinion articles for American publications, including the op-ed pages of The New York Times (he frequently illustrates the columns of Maureen Dowd). “I draw concepts, mostly,” he said, adding that, “You are bombarded with many topics, political, economic, psychological. That’s what illustration is all about. It’s good to live in the woods. It soothes me a little bit.”He’s also done some books, including one called “Zoom” that remains in print. He described it as a sort of Russian doll, in which each image turns out to be a small piece of the next image.At his talk at the museum, he said that he first draws his images on paper, then he uploads them to a computer and works on them with Photoshop. This allows him to make minute adjustments to an illustration and fine-tune it to his editors’ specifications.Although his work is demanding and he has long hours, he and Kati can often be seen zipping around town in their car. Which is, by the way, the English racing green model with a checkered racing flag stenciled on the rearview mirrors. What could be a more appropriate car for the author of a book called, “Zoom”?