PM
February-March 1940
György Kepes, Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. NYC: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., Volume 6, No. 3: February-March 1940. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Perfect bound and sewn printed wrappers. 108 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. One of the finest issues of PM. Cover collage design by Howard W. Willard, printed via 4-color photo gelatine. Insect etching to top edge of front panel and along the spine juncture of the rear panel [see scans], otherwise a very good copy.
5.5 x 7.75 perfect-bound softcover magazine with 87 [21] pages of articles. Issue highlights are the 16-page insert on György Kepes, including a one-page original introduction by László Moholy-Nagy. This the first American article to showcase the efforts of Kepes, and includes work samples of photograms, advertising and magazine covers. Kepes also contributes an illustrated essay entitled The Task of Visual Advertising. Also, this issue includes a cover and 15-page insert on Howard Willard, including a one-page tribute to Willard's collage work written by Herbert Bayer.
Howard W. Willard: 15-page insert with layout by Howard Willard and letterpress printed.
Howard Willard's Collage by Herbert Bayer: one-page essay
William Sharp: 16 pages of gravure prints.
György Kepes by L. Moholy-Nagy with layout by György Kepes: 16-page insert on Gyorgy Kepes, including a one-page original introduction by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. This the first American article to showcase the efforts of Kepes, and includes work samples of photograms, advertising and magazine covers. Kepes also contributes an illustrated essay entitled The Task of Visual Advertising.
New Art Forms in Cardboard
Editorial Notes
Modern Art 600 bc to 1940 AD
Reprotype; Books and Pictures
PM Collaborators - 1939 - 40
Books Reviewed: Woodcuts and Wood Engravings: How I Make Them by Hans Alexander Mueller; The Penrose Annual - ed. R. B. Fishenden; Marionette in Motion by W. A. Dwiggens; Scylla The Beautiful by Albert and Helen Fowler; Retail Advertising and Sales Promotion by Charles M. Edwards; The Script Letter by Tommy Thompson.
PM Shorts mention: Howard Black, Lester Beall, Stewart H. Rae, School of Design, Chicago, L. Moholy-Nagy, Daniel Berkely Updike, Miguel Covarrubias, Walter Baermann, Clayton Whitehill, The Art Director's Club.
P-M magazine was the leading voice of the U. S. Graphic Arts Industry from its inception in 1934 to its end in 1942 (then called AD). As a publication produced by and for professionals, it spotlighted cutting-edge production technology and the highest possible quality reproduction techniques (from engraving to plates). PM and A-D also championed the Modern movement by showcasing work from the vanguard of the European Avant-Garde well before this type of work was known to a wide audience.
György Kepes (Hungary, 1906 – 2001) was educated at the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Kepes worked with fellow Hungarian Lazslo Moholy-Nagy first in Berlin and then in London before emigrating to the US in 1937. From 1930 to 1937 he worked off and on with Moholy-Nagy and through him, first in Berlin and then in London, met Walter Gropius and the science writer J. J. Crowther. In 1937, he was invited by Moholy to run the Color and Light Department at the New Bauhaus and later at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he taught until 1943. In 1944 he wrote his landmark book Language of Vision. This text was influential in articulating the Bauhaus principles as well as the Gestalt theories.
In 1947, Kepes accepted an invitation from the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT to initiate a program there in visual design, a division that later became the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (c. 1968). Some of the Center's early fellows included artists Otto Piene, Vassilakis Takis, Jack Burnham, Wen-Ying Tsai, Stan Vanderbeek, Maryanne Amacher, Joan Brigham, Lowry Burgess, Peter Campus, Muriel Cooper, Douglas Davis, Susan Gamble, Dieter Jung, Piotr Kowalski, Charlotte Moorman, Antoni Muntadas, Yvonne Rainer, Keiko Prince, Alan Sonfist, Aldo Tambellini, Joe Davis, Bill Seaman, Tamiko Thiel, Alejandro Sina, Don Ritter, Luc Courchesne, and Bill Parker.
While teaching at MIT (where he remained until his retirement in 1974), Kepes was in contact with a wide assortment of artists, designers, architects and scientists, among them Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller, Rudolf Arnheim, Marcel Breuer, Charles Eames, Erik Erikson, Walter Gropius, Maurice K Smith, and Jerome Wiesner. His own art having moved toward abstract painting, he developed a parallel interest in new scientific imagery, in part because it too had grown increasing "abstract." In 1956, what began as an exhibition became a highly unusual book, The New Landscape in Art and Science, in which Modern-era artwork was paired with scientific images that were made, not with the unaided eye, but with such then "high tech" devices as x-ray machines, stroboscopic photography, electron microscopes, sonar, radar, high-powered telescopes, infrared sensors and so on. His theories on visual perception and, particularly, his personal mentorship, had a profound influence on young MIT architecture, planning, and visual art students. These include Kevin Lynch (The Image of the City) and Maurice K Smith (Associative Form and Field theory).
In 1965-66, Kepes edited a set of six anthologies, published as a series called the Vision + Value Series. Each volume contained more than 200 pages of essays by some of the most prominent artists, designers, architects and scientists of the time. The richness of the volumes is reflected in their titles: The Education of Vision; Structure in Art and Science; The Nature and Art of Motion; Module, Symmetry, Proportion, Rhythm; Sign, Image, Symbol; and The Man-Made Object.
In his lifetime, Kepes produced other books of lasting importance, among them Graphic Forms: Art as Related to the Book (1949); Arts of Environment (1972); and The Visual Arts Today (1960). He was also a prolific painter and photographer, and his work is in major collections. In recognition of his achievements, there is a Kepes Visual Centre in Eger, Hungary. In 1973 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1978.