Civil Rights, Anti Racism Portrait of Black Politician Julian Bond

It's 1970 in America, and the vanguard thinking from the editors of Playboy magazine propelled them to do a cutting-edge feature on a new breed of politician. Enter Julian Bond - a young, brilliant, handsome, and black trailblazer. To illustrate their edgy article, "Now From the State that Brought you Lester Maddox," famed Art Director Art Paul hired Illustrator Jim Spanfeller. Paul wanted a visual that matched the text's intrigue and provocation. Spanfeller rose to the occasion with a work masterfully conceived and brilliantly executed, straight from the artist's rich imagination. He depicts Julian Bond wrapped in symbols of America—Good and Bad. Bonds' head is placed on an American Eagle body and set amid a complex floral arrangement, resting on a Confederate flag. The entire image is surreal and deeply symbolic, punctuated by a giant American Eagle perched atop the subject's head, like a hat—the eagle peers down at Bond with a questioning look.
Technically, it is rendered with complexity and acute attention to intricate detail, in a style uniquely the artist's. A sense of depth is created through a stipple technique and intricate floral observations.. The color scheme of an unworldly dayglow-like yellow deliberately clashes with the red, white, and blue of the Confederate flag.
Signed lower right - Exhibited at the Society of Illustrators Exhibition 13, New York, 1971.
The artwork appeared on page 104 of the January 1970 issue of Playboy Magazine, illustrating the profile by Douglas Kiker titled "Now, From the State that Brought you Lester Maddox..." with the caption "... Julian Bond--a new breed of politician hatched in Jim Crow country--who may be Black America's best hope for the future."