ALL MY EYES: mid-century

Showing posts with label mid-century. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The Many Sides of Le Corbusier

Even if you don’t get to MoMA to see the fantastic Le Corbusier show, you must visit the site of Fondation Le Corbusier. There, you will find the work of a prolific and multi-dimensional talent.

In addition to paintings, you

will find sculpture ...

Drawings ...

Furniture ...

Tapestries ...

Collage ...

Graphic design ...

And photographs, which are stills shot with a

movie camera between films.

Oh, I almost forgot, he was also an architect.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Roth Wrapped in Bacon?

What would his mother think?

Roth, of course, is recently minted octogenarian Philip Roth, and the wrapping in question is the unmistakable yellow cover of Portnoy’s Complaint designed by Paul Bacon.

The Rothmania that swept the literary world (and Newark, NJ) on the occasion of the author’s 80th birthday in March, has subsided by now, but it had me looking at early Philip Roth book covers. There’s a lovely Goodbye Columbus cover by Paul Rand, and quite a stylish constructivist cover for the Zuckerman Bound compilation. But nothing beats the 1969 cover of Portnoy’s Complaint for iconic simplicity.

The color yellow, in publishing, has always signified salacious or scandalous content (French yellow books, yellow journalism, etc,). Furthermore, the associative meaning of the color had recently been reinforced in the public mind with the release of the film, I Am Curious (Yellow). Given the amount of sex and nudity consumed today as standard fare on screens of all sizes, it is hard for us now to imagine the shock caused by the Swedish import when it opened here in 1967. The film is now famously remembered as America’s first exposure to explicit sex on the big screen outside of a porn house.

Likewise, Portnoy’s Complaint delivered explicit sexuality (often of a solitary nature) from a literary author, to a mainstream readership. The hilariously vulgar novel debuted to an outraged public that, immediately, put it on the bestseller list.

Paul Bacon had recently hit upon a very commerce-friendly approach to cover design, which became known as the Big Book Look. He could deftly distill a novel’s essence into a single, small conceptual image, which he would combine with bold typography for the book title and author’s name. In an interview with Steven Heller, Bacon explains the pivotal role Portnoy’s Complaint played in the evolution of his design style.

Asked why he avoided his signature conceptual image, Bacon says it was because of the difficulty in portraying the book’s most prominent element: masturbation. But also, “In color, it was just so simple and raw.” He continues: “This was one of the things I started to do for books like Sophie’s Choice – that were strictly lettering covers – which in some ways I suppose was a coward’s way out. But it just seemed appropriate for these enormously complicated books.” Given the epic roots of Sophie’s Choice and Ragtime, Bacon felt that attempting to do anything other than a solution that proclaimed “Important book – read it!” would not work. “I guess that’s kind of a dumb thing to say, but it was at the back of my mind,” he admits.

This is a terrific example of how often "brilliant design" is a matter of instinct. Though Bacon claimed that the lack of “content” was a “coward’s way out,” the cover’s broad expanse of the brightest yellow possible couldn’t have been more perfect. The blankness hints at the anonymity of the old plain brown paper wrapper, and the color assures us of sexual content. The blaring, oversized type, however, announces that this book's subject will not be kept under wraps.

And there’s actually some commonality between the designer and the author. Bacon too is having a big birthday this year—he’ll be 90 in December, both grew up in Newark NJ, and both have an astonishing number of best sellers under their belts. While Roth’s output is admirable for its consistent critical acclaim and commercial success, Bacon’s is staggering. He’s designed over 6,000 book covers.

You may be familiar with some of these …

Bacon designed some 200 record-album covers as well. In fact, it was through his involvement in the jazz world (read a four-part interview here) that he started designing record covers even before he concentrated on books.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Bonnie Cashin's Sweater Paintings

American sportswear designer Bonnie Cashin, is probably best known for the iconic bags she designed for Coach leather, from 1962 to 1974. As a pioneer of women’s sportswear, she was all about comfort and ease of movement to support the active lifestyle of the modern woman. Though her medium was clothing and accessories, her output was more art, sculpture, or design, than “fashion.”

In a piece about her for the 2001 “The Lives They Lived” section of the the New York Times Magazine, Amy Spindler wrote:

Her clothes alone were so colorful that she used them, in open closets and exposed shelves, as her apartment's primary decor. That decor blended beautifully with pieces by the designers of the day she considered her peers, people who didn't make clothes at all -- the Eamses, George Nelson and Isamu Noguchi. She had little patience for the inbred fashion industry, which she felt was devoted to hobbling women with its fussy clothes.

In 1964, she designed cashmere sweaters for Scottish company, Ballantyne of Peebles. These paintings of sweater bodies, are in the archive of her work at UCLA. They could so easily hang on the walls of a modern art museum.

I love these color names.

Above: anthracite and Robin red.

Below: Bursom, seaweed, sundew, and coral

Friday, April 13, 2012

Black & Blue, with Points

MoMA 25th Anniversary Bulletin. I think that what I like most about the bold cover design by Leo Leonni, are those quiet lines of type.

Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima, Japan.

Two works by California hard-edge painter John Barbour, mid 1960s.

Found Polaroids, subject matter, unknown.

I’m still working on a term for these images that share similarities in appearance, but otherwise have no connection (see Of eBay and Empires). Suggestions are welcome.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Better Magazine Covers … through Chemistry

The DuPont Company was already 111 years old when it started publishing a self promotional magazine in 1913. Hagley Museum and Library has a digital archive of all 640 issues published through 2003.

As you might expect, covers run the spectrum from cliché and repetitive to refreshing and unexpected, with some classic beauties in the mix.

While the production of the cover image was often discussed in an editor’s note, artistic attribution was rarely supplied. With very few exceptions, a designer or illustrator would simply (and quite mysteriously) be referred to as “the artist.”

November 1918

July-August 1922
“Answering the Clay Target’s Challenge”

April 1932
Photo of anhydrous ammonia cylinders.

February 1936
(seasonal image)

March 1937
(seasonal image)

September 1941
The Story of NYLON

June-July 1943
Nylon Goes Aloft

January-February 1947
This cover, about the auto industry, is by Domenico Mortellito (1906-1994). The Newark, NJ born artist worked for DuPont designing exhibits, most notably the 1965 World’s Fair Pavillion. Though a number of other illustrated covers over the next couple of years are stylistically very similar to this one, none are credited. Hmmm.