In New York in February 1968, Datuk Ibrahim Hussein discovered and developed a reverse transfer technique of mass-media print headlines he dubbed printage. He was there under the Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller III fellowships. Like a news editor, he orchestrated some selected news items of the day, to add currency and veracity, and for a little titillation for some were juicy bits of tabloid fodder. For the coup de grace, he let his inimitable ribbons of parallel lines take full rein. Ib, as the artist is popularly known, recommissioned his printage of the Popsy 60s. Some of his most notable work this period was He Says (1986), shown in his 1986 Retrospective. Ib gave his printage another hurrah in his China (heralding the rise of China) and Myanmar series (portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi). The dizzying cocktail of Sex and Money makes for a salacious brew, in a raft of headlines dominated by ‘B' (David) Beckham, Blondie (Debbie Henry), Bob Geldof, (Tony) Blair and (Michael) Bolton. The type of newspapers is distinguished by the headline fonts: sans serif for tabloids and the pedantic series for the staid conservative broadsheets or junior broadsheets. The sources were The Sun and The Daily Mail tabloids and The Times broadsheet. World Cup soccer fever was in the air, with the Mexico finals only a year away (2006), and there's much British chest-beating jingoism, touting (Wayne) Rooney as a chanticleer hero. The Brits were obviously expecting him to do a Geoff Hurst, who scored a hattrick in England's 4-2 defeat of West Germany in the 1966 World Cup finals in London. Out of turn, perhaps, are a focus on a British housewife as an unlikely best friend of Hitler, and a spicy take about exporting curry to Bangladesh. And if nothing catches the eye, there's always the eye-candy Page 3 Girl. With awards like the Crystal Award, participation in the hugely prestigious Venice Biennale in 1970, what with a tripartite exhibition in Kuwait in 1977 with Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is incontrovertibly Malaysia's most internationally iconic artist. Tutelage at Byam Shaw followed by the Royal Academy in London burnished his credentials like no other. Malaysia's National Art Gallery accorded Ib a Retrospective, followed with great fanfare, in 1986. A triple Datuk and awards such as the Anugerah Tokoh Terbilang (2007), the Japan Foundation Cultural Award (1988), the Order of Andres Bello of Venezuela (1993) and the Order of Bernardo O' Higgins of Chile (1996) made him an artist extraordinaire. Ib was also a visionary, setting up the Ibrahim Museum and Cultural Foundation in Langkawi in 2000 and celebrated it with the Langkawi International Festival of Arts. He also organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Cherating (Pahang) and Bali.