Friday, May 25, 2012 12:00 AM UTC
Old handbooks about atomic annihilation allow a fascinating glimpse into some of our greatest fears
By Steven Heller, Imprint
This article originally appeared on
Imprint.
England has a long tradition of dystopian prophecy in literature and cinema. The likes of H.G. Wells, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and Ridley Scott all seem to revel in presenting doomsday scenarios. Films such as 1961′s “The Day the Earth Caught Fire,” and the 1965 BBC docudrama “The War Game,” depicting a Soviet nuclear strike on England, as well as books like Raymond Briggs’ “When the Wind Blows,” a deceivingly innocent tale of untold horror, are among the works that underscore the British fascination with and fixation on nuclear devastation.
Fascination? More like well-earned trepidation. After all, during World War II, London was blitzed nightly by German bombs and rockets, its citizenry enduring what most civilized beings could barely imagine. If Hitler had developed the atomic bomb, England would have suffered the same fate as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
England was forced to develop a sophisticated civil-defense apparatus, which included publishing cautionary guides like this handbook “Advising The Householder on Protection Against Nuclear Attack.” With the same kind of low-key narrative that a “householder” might read on how to survive a bug or rodent infestation, this “training publication for the civil defense, the police and fire services” addresses protective measures, needed equipment, what to do after an attack, and how to “manage” life “under fall-out conditions.” The text is reservedly quaint, underplaying the tragic impact of nuclear war, and the illustrations lack the slightest hint of horror. Indeed, by Jove, it is actually kind of comforting.
Similar handbooks in the United States were shrill by comparison. While they suggested that survival was possible, the magnitude of a nuclear attack was never minimized.
This handbook was republished by the V&A in 2008—for what purpose, other than nostalgia, is unclear. I reproduce it here as a curio from a time when our biggest enemy was the Soviet Union. With all the natural and man-made potential catastrophes at our doorstep, one almost longs for those days.
Thursday, May 17, 2012 12:00 AM UTC
The Palestine Poster Project reveals attempts to entice settlers into what is now Israel
By Steven Heller, Imprint
This article originally appeared on
Imprint.
Dan Walsh’s incredibly rich Palestine Poster Project Archives includes much in the way of protest, but it also contains a trove of rare Zionist/Israeli posters from the 1920s through the ’50s, largely before partition. The ones excerpted here are from the Mahmoud Darwish Memorial Gallery, which includes a collection of Zionist Worker agency posters calling for increased development of Palestine.
The affairs of the workers of Eretz Israel should be in the hands of the workers of Eretz Israel, 1935.
To experience the role of posters in the birth, growing pains, and ultimate conflict, this is perhaps the best online resource. Here’s what Walsh collects: 1) international artists and agencies; 2) Zionist and Israeli artists and agencies; 3) Palestinian nationalist artists and agencies; 4) Arab and Muslim artists and agencies. And here is what he says about his collection of over 6,700 posters:
I first began collecting Palestine posters when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the mid-1970s. By 1980 I had acquired about 300 Palestine posters. A small grant awarded with the support of the late Dr. Edward Said allowed me to organize them into an educational slideshow to further the “third goal” of the Peace Corps: to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. Over the ensuing years, while running my design company, Liberation Graphics, the number of internationally published Palestine posters I acquired steadily grew. Today the archives include some 3,000 Palestine posters from myriad sources making it what many library science specialists say is the largest such archives in the world.
To fortify our home - use Hebrew cement, 1937.
Come and See the Palestine Exhibition - Vienna, 1925.
Text in logo in upper left hand corner - The Worker, 1937.
Build Industries In Palestine!, 1927
Thursday, Apr 26, 2012 12:00 AM UTC
Despite being witty and smart, much of the famed art director's work was never preserved
By Steven Heller
This article originally appeared on
Imprint.
When Paul Rand was art director of the William Weintraub Agency in New York, he did scores of advertising campaigns, most with his distinct drawing or collage styles. Much of this work, though smart and witty, especially when compared to the heavy-handed advertisements in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was neither saved on film nor in original printed formats. When I was writing “Paul Rand” (Phaidon), I had only limited access to his Weintraub-era tear sheets, which were not in job bags like the work he did after leaving the agency. These ads for Shur-Edge knives and Stafford fabrics, printed on newsprint, appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. One just has to look at the poor typographic ads on the verso side of these sheets to see how much better Rand’s work was.
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Thursday, Apr 5, 2012 12:00 AM UTC
Despite seeming relatively tame today, Playboy and the like fought the early censorship battles in '50s and '60s
By Steven Heller, Imprint
This article originally appeared on
Imprint.
If you were one of the “Mad Men” (which boringly premiered the new season on March 25) or any other kind of man in the late ’50s and early ’60s, you probably subscribed to Playboy and/or any one or more of the many so-called “skin magazines,” “stag magazines” and “girlie magazines” that copied the pioneer’s form and content. Playboy, art directed by Art Paul, was an original, but others including Escapade, Cavalier, Dude and the Gent (shown here) were helping to define the era’s maleness. Even more significant, each of these magazines became an outlet and launch-pad for some major literary and art talents. The names on the covers were impressive, Nelson Algren, Groucho Marx, Tennessee Williams, Tom Lehrer — and they are just among the writers. The best were hired by the Gent, which was better than average, even had a virtual line-for-line Jules Feiffer doppelganger doing similarly themed socially satiric cartoons.
By today’s standards of legal and social acceptability, the skin mags were rather tame. Some evocative nudity was sprinkled lightly between the fiction and lifestyle stories. There was the requisite fashion feature that never did anything to mar the product. Rarely if ever did anything step to far over the line — the imitators let Playboy take the first steps. In retrospect, there is something almost quaint about the Gent and others. The layouts are modern without being avant garde. The illustrations are contemporary without eschewing old-fashioned verities, like realism. And the texts, while a little more racy than the pictures, stayed within the bounds we would today call propriety.
Still, these magazines were hounded by the authorities (especially the U.S. Post Office) and by fighting the early censorship battles, helped open media up to what we see, hear and experience today.
Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.
Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.
Thursday, Mar 29, 2012 12:00 AM UTC
A Berlin museum is ordered to give a Jewish man thousands of rare prints seized from his father
By Steven Heller, Imprint
This article originally appeared on
Imprint.
Germany’s top federal appeals court finally ruled earlier this month that the Berlin-based German Historical Museum must return to “a Jewish man from the U.S. thousands of rare posters that were seized from his father,” Dr. Hans Sachs, publisher of the famed Das Plakat magazine, by the Gestapo, “saying that for the institution to keep them would be perpetuating the crimes of the Nazis.” The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe said Peter Sachs, 74, was the rightful owner of the posters collected by his father, now estimated to be worth between $6 million and $21 million. The outcome of this hard fought court case allows Mr. Sachs to demand the posters be returned to him.
Dr. Sach’s proudest accomplishment, Das Plakat, was launched in 1910 as the official publication of the Verein der Plakat Freunde (the Society for Friends of the Poster) founded in 1905 to advocate poster collecting and increase scholarship. The society was one of a number of collectors’ groups based in Europe, but the magazine was a unique entity that during its comparatively short span (1910 to 1921) raised theretofore unexplored aesthetic, cultural and legal issues about posters and graphic design. In addition to surveying the most significant German (and ultimately international) work, the magazine was concerned with plagiarism and originality, art in the service of commerce, and the art of politics. Over the years the magazine’s influence on design increased proportionately with its circulation, from a first print run of 200 copies to over 5,000 at its peak.
Hans Josef Sachs, a doctor and chemist by training and a dentist by profession, as a teenager became obsessed with French posters (he owned a Sarah Bernhardt affiche signed by the artist Alphons Mucha) and in his twenties became the leading private poster collector in Germany. Without his passion and dedication German commercial art would have developed apace, but as co-founder of the Verein and editor (along with a board of advisors) of Das Plakat he was almost single-handedly responsible for promoting German gebrausgraphik (commercial art) as an internationally respected applied art form.
Until 1935 Dr. Sachs was listed in the German Dentist registry, and was allowed to practice. In 1936 the Nazis nullified his license. In 1937 he mounted his last poster exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. That same year he was detained for 24 hours by the Gestapo, and later forbidden from owning any politically related materials. That is when his entire collection was confiscated. Goebels himself donated it to the Kunstgewerbe Museum, dedicated to the art of commerce.
Sachs was arrested in November 1938 and brought to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After a few weeks he was fortunately released and left Germany with his family, first to London and then established residence in New York City, where he was allowed to practice dentistry after passing his exams. Sachs was able to export a few choice posters, and garnered needed funds by selling his Lautrec collection. In 1965 the German government offered reparation for his collection. but kept a large portion in Berlin Museum of German history. Sachs died in 1974.
I wrote about the case in Eye 74 (here) and the most recent Associated Press story can be found here.
Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.
Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.
Tuesday, Mar 20, 2012 12:00 AM UTC
These vintage window posters were once the first line of promotions for films, plays and dances
By Steven Heller, Imprint
This article originally appeared on
Imprint.
In the age of LED and plasma screens at least one grass-roots design business will never go out of style … or need: the common window sign. Once a major source of income for print shops, these posters, also known as “show prints,” were the staple of everyday advertising and communications. Now, the old ones are valued as antiques and the new ones, which lack the vintage patina, are taken for granted. But if you drive through any small town in America, you’ll see these show prints promoting a county fair or other local spectacular. The days when they were the first line of promotion for films, plays and dances may be over, but they exist, just waiting to be collected.
Most people have heard of the Hatch Show Print company in Nashville, but this virtually forgotten Bower Show Print Company, “specializing in cardboard posters,” from Fowler, Ind. (where the telephone number was “80″), is one of hundreds of mid-size printing businesses that served communities all over the nation. Here are some examples from their colorful catalog — and a word from Mr. Bower, himself. (Note: The company name still exists in Waynetown and Veedersburg, Ind.)
Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.
Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.
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