PRINTING ART QUARTERLY
László Moholy-Nagy et al.
László Moholy-Nagy et al.: PRINTING ART QUARTERLY. Chicago: Dartnell, 1938 [Volume 67, Number 3]. First edition. Small folio. Decorated glazed paper covered boards. White plastic coil-binding. 126 pp. Illustrated articles and trade advertisements. Elaborate design on a variety of paper stocks. The laminated cardboard boards are clean and bright with only faint wear to tips. Original coil-binding clean, intact and unbroken. Former owner signature to endpaper and first page of advertising, but a fine copy of this easily-abused title.
10 x 13.25 hardcover book with 126 pages printed on a variety of paper stocks. A stellar production that shows the publishing power of Chicago in the mid-thirties. Many examples of Chicago graphic design and photography from 1937, collected here for the first time. The large format of the PRINTING ART QUARTERLY page spreads made ideal canvases for presenting avant-garde design and typographic ideas. These layouts were more progressive and displayed the European avant-garde influence in American graphic design more aggresively than other contemporary American trade publications.
The highlights of this edition—in my opinion—is the Moholy-Nagy article, an early original document from the New Bauhaus. In addition, there are multiple examples of extraordinary american streamlined art deco graphic design, much of it in full-page, full-color reproduction. The A. M. Cassandre CCA pieces are nice to see, stripped bare of the N. W. Ayer advertising copy that normally accompanies these examples. The illustrated article on modern posters by Jospeh Binder is an excellent early document as well.
Contents:
- Portfolio of Drawings by A. M. Cassandre Five full-page black and white illustrations by Cassandre commissioned by the Container Corporation of America.
- Paths to the Unleashed Color Camera by László Moholy-Nagy. This five-page article includes three images by Moholy-Nagy, including a full-page color reproduction. Originally published in THE PENROSE ANNUAL [REVIEW OF THE GRAPHIC ARTS VOLUME 39. London: Lund Humphries, 1937].
- Fine illustrations for Physicians
- Problems of Art in Selling Men's Apparel
- Direct-mail Copy that Retailers use
- 27 Chicago Designers
- Letterhead Typography 1939
- International Poster Art by Joseph Binder
- And more.
This volume includes work by the following artists and designers: William Welsh (a beautiful full-page, full-color image; as well as three smaller black and white images), Norman Anderson, Joseph Binder, M. Leone Bracker, H. Brenner, Pierre Brisssaud, Pruett Carter, A. M. Cassandre, J. Francis Chase, Dean Cornwell, Anne Edwards, Stanley Ekman, Luis Hidalgo, Elmer Jacobs, J. C. Leyendecker, James MacArthur, Walto Malmiola, Edward McCabe, M. Vaughan Millbourn, Edgar Miller, Fredeic Mizen, Dale Nichols, Gregory Orloff, Taylor Poore, Weimar Pursell, Willard Grayson Smythe and others.
László Moholy-Nagy [Hungarian, 1895 – 1946] was a born teacher, convinced that everyone had talent. In 1923, he joined the staff of the Bauhaus, which had been founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar four years before. Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger and Schlemmer were already teaching there. He was brought in at a time when the school was undergoing a decisive change of policy, shedding its original emphasis on handcraft. The driving force was now "the unity of art and technology.” Moholy-Nagy was entrusted with teaching the preliminary course in principles of form, materials and construction - the basis of the Bauhaus's educational program. He shared teaching duties with the painter Josef Albers, whose career was to develop in parallel with his.
The hyper-energetic Moholy-Nagy also ran the metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar and later in the purpose-designed buildings at Dessau. The metal shop was the most successful of departments at the Bauhaus in fulfilling Gropius's vision of art for mass production, redefining the role of the artist to embrace that of designer as we have now come to understand the term. The workshop experimented with glass and Plexiglas as well as metal in developing the range of lighting that has almost come to define the Bauhaus. The lamps were produced in small production runs, and some were taken up by outside factories. The royalties made a welcome contribution to the school's always precarious finances.
Although always a painter and designer, Moholy-Nagy became a key figure in photography in Germany in the 1920's. In 1928 Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus and traveled to Amsterdam and London. His teachings and publications of photographic experimentations were crucial to the international development of the New Vision.
In 1937 former Bauhaus Master László Moholy-Nagy accepted the invitation of a group of Midwest business leaders to set up an Industrial Design school in Chicago. The New Bauhaus opened in the Fall of 1937 financed by the Association of Arts and Industries as a recreation of the Bauhaus curriculum with its workshops and holistic vision in the United States.
Moholy-Nagy drew on several émigrés affiliated with the former Bauhaus to fill the ranks of the faculty, including György Kepes and Marli Ehrman. The school struggled with financial issues and insufficient enrollment and survived only with the aid from grants of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations as well as from donations from numerous Chicago businesses. The New Bauhaus was renamed the Institute of Design in 1944 and the school finally merged with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1949.
In Chicago Moholy aimed at liberating the creative potential of his students through disciplined experimentation with materials, techniques, and forms. The focus on natural and human sciences was increased, and photography grew to play a more prominent role at the school in Chicago than it had done in Germany. Training in mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in Germany. Emerging from the basic course, various workshops were installed, such as "light, photography, film, publicity", "textile, weaving, fashion", "wood, metal, plastics", "color, painting, decorating" and "architecture". The most important achievement at the Chicago Bauhaus was probably in photography, under the guidance of teachers such as György Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegel or Harry Callahan.
Moholy-Nagy served as Director of the New Bauhaus in its various permutations until his death in 1946.
A. M. Cassandre [French, 1901–1968] combined surrealism and cubism through the rigors of commercial art and single-handedly defined an era. Born Adolphe Jean Edouard Mouron he studied at the Ecoles des Beaux Arts in Paris. He produced his first poster Au Bucheron at 22. Cassandre's work was seen as a bridge between the modern fine arts and the commercial arts. Despite his affinity to the fine arts he always believed there should be a separateness between disciplines. The success of his posters probably lies in his philosophy that his posters were meant to be seen by people who do not try to see them. In 1936 he traveled to America to work on several projects. While there he designed several surrealistic covers for Alexey Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar. In addition, he created for NW Ayers, the classic eye of the Ford billboard and several pieces for the Container Corporation of America. His career as a poster designer ended in 1939 when he changed disciplines and became a stage, set and theatrical designer.