MODERN ART IN ADVERTISING
An Exhibition of Designs
for Container Corporation of America
Herbert Bayer, Walter Paepcke and Fernand Léger
Herbert Bayer, Walter Paepcke, Fernand Léger [essay]: MODERN ART IN ADVERTISING [An Exhibition of Designs for Container Corporation of America]. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1945. First Edition. Slim quarto. Printed stapled oatmeal wrappers. 32 pp. 18 black and white reproductions. Essays. Cover design and interior typography by Herbert Bayer, who was a design consultant for the Container Corporation of America at the time of publication. Trivial wear overall. A nearly fine copy of this inaugural exhibition catalog.
7 x 9.25-inch softcover catalog with 32 pages and 18 full-page black and white reproductions of advertising artwork commissioned by Chairman Paepcke for the Container Corporation of America. An excellent vintage snapshot of corporate America's embrace of the European Avant-Garde. Includes a Introduction by Carl O. Schniewind, and essays entitled "Art in Industry" by Walter Paepcke and “Relationship between Modern Art and Contemporary Industry” by Fernand Léger. This catalog is for premiere installation of this exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago from April 27 to June 23, 1945.
Includes work by A. M. Cassandre, György Kepes, Herbert Bayer, Fernand Léger, Richard Lindner, Jean Carlu, Herbert Matter, Jean Hélion, Miguel Covarrubias, George Korff, Ben Shahn, Sigurd Sodergaard, Henry Moore, Persia Abbas, Tibor Gergely, Leo Lionni, Zdzislaw Czermanski, and Juan Renau. This catalog also includes biographical information for all of the above-mentioned artists, as well as for Arshille Gorky, Edward Mcknight Kauffer, Philip Evergood, Paul Rand, Man Ray, Xanti Schawinsky Rufino Tamayo, Jean Varda, Toni Zepf and others whose work in in the exhibition, but not included in the catalog.
Herbert Bayer devised a cost-effective solution for the multiple editions of the travelling MODERN ART IN ADVERTISING Exhibition catalog — he designed the cover around "modern art in advertising" printed in white and "design for Container Corporation of America" in black. Black is also used for the dates and venues to be determined and a quarto fold provides the illusion of recto/verso presswork. These covers could be produced as easily customized pre-printed shells or changed with a restripped black plate. "Art and technology -- a new unity." Indeed. This exhibition originated at the Art Institute of Chicago, then traveled to Cranbrook, the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Los Angeles County Museum, Davenport Municipal Art Gallery and other stops over the next four years.
The Container Corporation of America [CCA], the largest domestic manufacturer of paperboard and packaging materials, was an early and influential patron of Modern design in the United States. Design work commissioned by the CCA reflected their progressive business approach as well as the growing consumer culture fueled by new attention being paid to the aesthetic shaping of products and advertising. In following its mission—and especially through its advertisements—CCA founded a style of institutional communication that influenced the field and prefigured contemporary socially oriented campaigns.
Beginning in 1937 a seminal series of ads directed by Charles Coiner [1898–1989] used illustrations by A. M. Cassandre, Jean Carlu, Leo Lionni, Herbert Bayer, Herbert Matter, and other European vanguard artists and designers. This campaign marked a unique integration of progressive art into mainstream American promotion and advertising.
CCA Chairman Paepcke deepened his impact on Modernism in America when he became the friend and financial supporter of Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy, who came to Chicago in 1937 to launch the New Bauhaus. Paepcke also became the patron of Bauhaus alumnus Herbert Bayer, who profoundly aided him in his goal of bettering humanity through his commercial products and advertising.
Walter Paepcke began redeveloping the resort town of Aspen, Colorado in 1945, the same year he hired Bayer as the Design Director for CCA. Bayer moved to Aspen in 1946 where he co-designed the Aspen Institute, oversaw the restoration of the Wheeler Opera House, and designed promotional posters that identified skiing with wit, excitement, and glamour. In 1956, he was promoted to Chairman of the Department of Design, where he was responsible for the corporation’s entire aesthetic environment, including graphic design, advertising, marketing, industrial design, architecture, and interiors — his first foray into the concept of creating a total corporate environment.
As a result of his relationship with Paepcke, Bayer pioneered the concept of collaboration between the artist and a corporation. Their shared vision of a symbiotic relationship between corporate culture and an aesthetic philosophy was Bayer’s realization of the true Bauhaus credo.
In 1938, advertising executive David Ogilvy had denigrated CCA advertising as “an exercise in amateur pretension” and predicted that “it would soon be consigned to oblivion.” Thirty-eight years later, he declared it to be “the best . . . corporate advertising that has ever appeared in print.”
Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985) is one of the individuals most closely identified with the famous Bauhaus program in Weimar, Germany. Together with Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky, Bayer helped shape a philosophy of functional design that extended across disciplines ranging from architecture to typography and graphic design. Endowed with enormous talent and energy, Bayer went on to produce an impressive body of work, including freelance graphics commissions, Modernist exhibition design, corporate identity programs, and architecture and environmental design.
He was born in Haag, Austria, and apprenticed in a local architectural design and graphic arts studio. By 1920 he was in Germany and a year later enrolled in a recently established, state-funded school of design called the Bauhaus. Then located in Weimar, the Bauhaus came to represent an almost utopian ideal that "modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influence of the modern industrial world and that good designs must pass the test of both aesthetic standards and sound engineering."
Though Bayer came to the Bauhaus as a student, he stayed on to become one of its most prominent faculty members. His design for a new Sans-serif type called Universal helped to define the Bauhaus aesthetic.
He left in 1928 and moved to Berlin where he opened a graphic design firm whose clients included the trend-setting magazine Vogue. During this period, he also created or art-directed a number of memorable exhibitions. As with other designers of his generation, Bayer became alarmed over the increasingly repressive political situation in Germany and finally left in 1938 for New York. Within a short period of time, he was well-established as a designer and, among other achievements, had organized a comprehensive exhibition at MoMA on the early Bauhaus years. He also formed important connections with the publishers of Life and Fortune magazines, General Electric, and Container Corporation of America. CCA's chief executive, Walter Paepcke, became an important patron of Bayer's in the years to come, beginning with an invitation to move to Aspen, Colorado, to become a design consultant for the company. Bayer also supervised the architectural design of the new Aspen Institute, and then many of its program graphics. Bayer remained in Aspen until 1974, when he moved to California. There he worked on various environmental projects until his death in 1985.