Grosz Injustice

Above Photograph of George Grosz (1930). Photographer unknown. 

...

Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997, p. 145—

One day [artist Kurt] Schwitters decided he wanted to meet George Grosz. George Grosz was decidedly surly; the hatred in his pictures often overflowed into his private life. But Schwitters was not one to be put off. He wanted to meet Grosz, so [Walter] Mehring took him up to Grosz’s flat. Schwitters rang the bell and Grosz opened the door. 

“Good morning, Herr Grosz. My name is Schwitters.” “I am not Grosz,” answered the other and slammed the door. There was nothing to be done. 

Half way down the stairs, Schwitters stopped suddenly and said, “Just a moment.” 

Up the stairs he went, and once more rang Grosz’s bell. Grosz, enraged by this continual jangling, opened the door, but before he could say a word, Schwitters said “I am not Schwitters either.” And went downstairs again. Finis. They never met again.

UNI Art History Symposium | Roger Shimomura

Symposium Poster |  Desiree Dahl (2013)

About eight years ago, art historian William Lew (who was once my department head) produced an exhibition catalog about the artwork of Japanese-American artist Roger Shimomura. During World War II, simply because of their ethnicity, three generations of Shimomura's family (as a child, he was among them) were imprisoned in an American concentration camp, called Minidoka, in south central Idaho, about 20 miles from Twin Falls. That catalog, titled Minidoka Revisited: The Paintings of Roger Shimomura, was published by the Lee Gallery at Clemson University (2005), where Lew was teaching at the time. It was beautifully designed by one of our former students, Jessica Barness, who now teaches graphic design at Kent State University. I reviewed it for Leonardo Reviews, which I saw as an opportunity to remind myself and others of that deplorable episode in American history.

On Friday, April 19, on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa, there will be another chance to remember these injustices, in relation to the artwork of Roger Shimomura. Through the efforts of two UNI colleagues, art historians Charles Adelman and Elizabeth Sutton, William Lew is coming back to serve as the juror and guest lecturer at the UNI Department of Art's 3rd Annual Art History Symposium. The evening's events (to be held in the auditorium of the Kamerick Art Building) begin at 5:30 pm, with scholarly presentations by two current undergraduate art history students, Carlton James Miller ("Mauricio: For an Eye an Eye") and Brittany Deal ("Romare Bearden: The Great Migration as a Black Odyssey"). Following that, at 6:00 pm, will be the announcement of juror's awards, and the keynote address by William Lew, titled "Messages: An Asian American Perspective (The Art of Roger Shimomura)." This annual symposium, which is always interesting, is free and open to the public.

One final note: A hint of Shimomura's work can be seen on this web page, where I've posted two variations on the symposium poster, designed by Desiree Dahl, one of our current graphic design students who works as an intern in the publicity section (directed by Sarah Pauls) of the Dean's Office of the College of Humanities, Arts and Sciences. The second version (below) was the one that was actually published, but the first one is equally poignant, and, like King Solomon, I could not choose between the two.

Symposium Poster | Desiree Dahl (2013)

Schedule Posted for UNI Design Conference

Click here for complete schedule

Available online is the complete schedule of events for ENVISIONING DESIGN: Education, Culture, Practice, a two-day series of presentations, panels, films and exhibits for design professionals, design educators, students and alumni. Events begin late Friday afternoon and evening, April 26, and continue throughout the day until 4:00 pm on Saturday, April 27, 2013.

Keynote speakers include designer Sang-Duck Seo, graphic design professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who will focus on various aspects of his experiences in design and design education (7:00 pm on Friday), and Claudia Covert, research scholar and librarian at the Fleet Library, Rhode Island School of Design, who will discuss that school's collection of 455 WWI dazzle camouflage plans, made by designers and artists (11:00 am on Saturday).

All events will be held in the Kamerick Art Building on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls. The conference is open to the public. Everyone is invited, and there is no charge for attendance. For complete information click here.

Book Review | Taliesin Diary

Cover of Taliesin Diary (2012)

Priscilla J. Henken, Taliesin Diary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright. New York, Norton, 2012. 272 pp., illus. 30 b&w photographs. Trade, $34.95. ISBN 978-0-393-73380-8.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

IN 1934, AMERICAN expatriate author Gertrude Stein returned to the US for the first time since moving to Paris in 1905. Accompanied by her companion, Alice B. Toklas (whom she had secretly married in 1908), she toured the country giving talks to promote her new (and perhaps most enduring) book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

When she spoke at the University of Wisconsin, architect Frank Lloyd Wright was in the audience (she said he looked familiar, but could not remember why). Apparently, Frank and Gertrude and Alice had met earlier in Paris, at which time (as this diary notes) his impression was that Stein was “the most unattractive, uninteresting and dull person he had ever spoken to.” She dominated the conversation, he recalled, while the mute compliance of Alice gave new significance to her name—she was of course, reported Wright, “Alice be talkless.” In Madison, Wright invited the pair to return with him to Taliesin, his famous home and school nearby, en route to their next engagement. But they demurred (exchanging nudge-nudge glances) for the reason, they said, that they liked to travel by airplane. “We want to fly to Milwaukee,” they said.

This book is called Taliesin Diary because its primary text is the diary of an American Jewish woman who lived (along with her husband) with Wright and his wife Oglivanna, their family, and student apprentices for nearly a year at Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin. The diarist was Priscilla Henken, a New York-born high school English teacher, who traveled to Taliesin in October 1942 with her husband, research engineer David Henken. Together, they “slaved” as apprentices in Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship until she left (apparently rather abruptly) in August 1943, to return to teaching in New York, while her husband stayed on until later.

I have read dozens of published diaries from which I have concluded that not all diaries are worth reading. But this one is fascinating, largely because it is candid (albeit often painfully so) and well written. It is especially honest about the corrosive influence of Wright’s third wife Oglivanna (they had married in 1928), who, by more than one account, was the Rasputin of Taliesin. In page after page, don’t be surprised to be taken aback by the abrupt and usually damaging ways in which Mrs. Wright (“La Dame”) jostled to assert control over the apprentices, her aging husband (he was in his seventies then, and incapable of standing up to her), and others who were living and/or on the staff at Taliesin. more>>>

Book Review | Faking It Before Photoshop

Cover of Faking It, with photomontage by Wanda Wulz (1932)

Mia Fineman, Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. Distributed by Yale University Press. 288 pp, illus (278 color & b&w). Hardcover, $60.00. ISBN 9780300185010.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

THE TITLE of this book is well-chosen. But another appropriate title would be "Protoshop" (which is in fact the title of one of its chapters). Even more helpful is the subtitle—Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop—in the sense that its readers are forewarned about the thorny concerns and discussions inside. Better yet, inside is a bushel of visual delights since it turns out that this is the catalog for an ongoing exhibition that premiered in October 2012 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, during 2013, will also be exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Not surprisingly, a major sponsor for all of this was the Adobe Corporation, whose Photoshop 1.0 was released in January 1990. Since then, as an essay in the catalog states, that now-famous software is commonly blamed for having undermined “photographic truthfulness” because of the widespread assumption “that photographs shot before 1990 captured the unvarnished truth and that the manipulations made possible by Photoshop compromised the truth.”

Anon, photomontage (photo collage rephotographed), c1930

After reading this book, you will probably reach the conclusion that image alteration tricks attributed to Photoshop are nothing new, and that equivalent techniques have been commonly practiced since 1840 and before. Photoshop’s main contribution has been to make photo manipulation less time staking and far less dependent on manual skills. It has provided the greatest variety of people with access to the tricks long used by photographers, despite our naïve assumption that a photograph is “a mirror with a memory,” and, to follow, that the camera is an “innocent eye,” a “pencil of nature,” or an objective observation device that “never lies.” Surely, that was never the case, as this book shows persuasively. At best, as Picasso once said of all guises of art, a photograph is “a lie that [sometimes] tells the truth.”

In the process of showing the history of pre-Photoshop manipulation from about 1835 through 1990, this volume inevitably also becomes a history of photography. Admittedly, it doesn’t cover everything. For example, it lacks the time and space to say very much about “faking it” by other means, like setting up a “factual” scene and claiming it was found that way, or purposely posing ones subjects to look unposed, or providing exotic subjects with culturally inappropriate props to make them more compliant with ethnic stereotypes. more>>>

Envisioning Design | 2013 Conference

Designed by Kimberly Breuer, UNI graphic design student

Recently announced is ENVISIONING DESIGN: Education, Culture, Practice, a two-day series of events for design professionals, design educators, students and alumni. Events are scheduled to take place on late Friday afternoon and evening, April 26, and throughout the day until 4:00 pm on Saturday, April 27, 2013. Everything will be held in the Kamerick Art Building on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls. This is open to the public. Everyone is invited, and there is no charge for attendance. For complete information click here.

Synergistic Postage Stamp | Stephanie Mathena

Synergistic Stamp (2012) © Stephanie Mathena

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design a synergistic postage stamp. This was done in two stages: First, they designed a single stamp, and second, they repeated that stamp so that it became a block (above). Once assembled as a block, the stamps produced new, unanticipated pattern consequences. In this particular solution, there's a wonderful interplay of figure and ground.

Animated Currency | Randy Timm

Self-Portrait Currency (2012) © Randy Timm

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design paper currency, for a fictitious country whose name was somehow related to theirs. It had to be self-portrait currency (in one way or another), with proposals for both front and back (as shown above). And then to make it more challenging, they were also asked to design an animated gif, based on the same banknote (below).

Animated Self-Portrait Currency (2012) © Randy Timm

Synergistic Postage Stamp | Danielle Shearer

Synergistic Stamp (2012) © Danielle Shearer

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design a synergistic postage stamp. This was done in two stages: First, they designed a single stamp (above), and second, they repeated that stamp so that it became a block (below). Once assembled as a block, the stamps produced new, unanticipated pattern consequences.

Block of Stamps (2012) © Danielle Shearer

Animated Currency | Kimber Bates

Animated Self-Portrait Currency (2012) © Kimber Bates

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design paper currency, for a fictitious country whose name was somehow related to theirs. It had to be self-portrait currency (in one way or another). And then to make it more challenging, they were also asked to design an animated gif, based on the same banknote.

Versluis | Behrens Beetle Montage

David Versluis & Roy R. Behrens, Beetle (©2012)

In two earlier posts, I talked about a recent collaboration with my friend and fellow designer David Versluis, in which (in early 2012) we worked together on a series of digital montages about Iowa insects. We did all this by email, by taking turns (as if we were playing chess) while passing files back and forth. One of my favorites is Yellow Jacket, and another is Cicada. But a third one that I like a lot is shown above, titled Beetle.

•••

Kenneth Williams, in R. Davies, ed., The Kenneth Williams Diaries (1993)—

How impossible it is for me to make regular entries in the diary. I suddenly remember how I used to puzzle over that word at school. Always wondering why diary was so like Dairy and what the connection was. Never found out.

•••

Anon (an old joke)—

Question: What do you call a Frenchman in sandals?
Answer: Philippe Philoppe.

Synergistic Postage Stamp | Randy Timm

Synergistic Stamp (2012) © Randy Timm

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design a synergistic postage stamp. This was done in two stages: First, they designed a single stamp (above), and second, they repeated that stamp so that it became a block (below). Once assembled as a block, the stamps produced new, unanticipated pattern consequences.

Block of Stamps (2012) © Randy Timm

Animated Currency | Christian Gargano

Animated Self-Portrait Currency (2012) © Christian Gargano

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design paper currency, for a fictitious country whose name was somehow related to them. It had to be self-portrait currency (in one way or another). And then to make it more challenging, they were also asked to design an animated gif, based on the same banknote.

Animated Currency | Kellie Heath

Animated Self-Portrait Currency (2012) © Kellie Heath

In the fall semester of 2012, I asked my beginning graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa to design paper currency, for a fictitious country whose name was somehow related to them. It had to be self-portrait currency (in one way or another). And then to make it more challenging, they were also asked to design an animated gif, based on the same banknote.

A Farewell to Artist Les Coleman

Les Coleman / RIP

Our friend of many years has died.

British artist Les Coleman liked to say that he was born "one day before peace broke out," making him one of the last World War II "war babies." He died peacefully on January 17, 2013, at Trinity Hospice in Clapham. I recall that we were introduced by another friend, Patrick Hughes. We never met, but for many years he sent me a torrent of "unthunks." In one of them, for example, he simply printed up a card (blank on the verso) that on the recto reads like this: THIS CARD IS TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK.

At the conclusion of one of his books, titled Meet the Art Students (1997), he added a brilliantly absurd author's note. Here it is—

Les Coleman moved to Clapham Junction in 1967. During the summer of that year, The Summer of Love, he lost his wallet on Dartmoor containing two pound notes. A doctor found the wallet and handed it in to the police. It took until the autumn to trace Coleman to his new address. He collected the wallet from the Lavender Hill Police Station to discover the money was still inside. In the autumn of 1996 he painted the walls of his front room Sunbeam with Moonshine on the woodwork. In keeping with this color scheme the room has a blue fitted carpet (80% wool) and yellow venetian blinds (made to measure). Among his possessions Coleman owns a small African sculpture which stands on his mantelpiece despite having one leg shorter than the other. 

Over the years, I republished many of his unthunks and his drawings, some in Ballast Quarterly Review, and more recently on this blog. I "thunk" he would have chuckled at the gravestone that I've made for him (see above). His humor lives on—

The three letters of the alphabet I most dislike are D, I and Y.

One day America will turn into one big gun.

Why do rabbit droppings look like currants and taste like shit?

Once dead the artist falls into a rut.

He put on his dark glasses and rode off into the sunset.

Is turvy-topsy the same as topsy-turvy?

Book Review | Dard Hunter as Designer

Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works
by Lawrence Kreisman
Pomegranate, Petaluma, CA, 2012
112 pp., illus. 120 col. Trade, $29.95
ISBN: 978-0764961854.

In 1903, an Ohio chalk talk artist named William J. (Dard) Hunter (1883-1966) was touring the U.S. as an assistant for his brother, a stage magician. On a terribly hot day in California, their act was scheduled to follow a lecture by orator William Jennings Bryan (now famously remembered as the villain in Inherit the Wind). All the show props were in place when Bryan arrived, but backstage as he groped for the curtain, he became hopelessly entangled and ripped out wires, strings and threads. Annoyed by the great man’s clumsiness, Hunter secretly dumped red chalk dust into Bryan’s hat, which he had left backstage. After the talk, Bryan jauntily placed his hat on his already perspiring bald pate and walked out into the blazing sun, where he became—literally—red-faced.

I got that from Hunter’s autobiography, My Life with Paper (easily one of my favorite memoirs). That story is not in this welcome new book because its space is limited, and it is an effort to try to zoom in on his achievements as a graphic designer. In fact, it may be the first book to focus so intently on that aspect of his life, because he is far better known as the last century’s foremost authority on handmade papers, an interest that led him to travel the world and to write twenty books about the craft and history of papermaking. There is even a group that meets annually called Friends of Dard Hunter: American Contemporary Hand Papermaking.

Dard Hunter had come from a family of Ohio job printers and newspaper publishers, so, from a youthful age, he was well acquainted with type, inks, paper and printing. During that 1903 tour with his brother’s magic act, he stayed at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, an early Arts and Crafts landmark. To see that building (and its interior furnishings) piqued his interest and changed his life.

In 1904, he moved to East Aurora, New York (near Buffalo), where he joined the Roycroft Workshops, headed by Arts and Crafts guru Elbert Hubbard. While there (he was allied with Roycroft, off and on, for about six years), he was able to experiment (without having to earn a living) with a range of handicraft media (especially jewelry, furniture and stained glass) and the design of such hand printed items as letterheads, business cards, postcards, advertising booklets, catalogs, bookplates, initial letters, title pages, and entire books. This book reproduces about 85 full-color images of his designs for print and stained glass, the majority of which most readers, even die-hard Hunter fans, are unlikely to have seen before.

Dard Hunter design for an Elbert Hubbard aphorism (1908)

During and after his years with Roycroft, Hunter was able to make two research trips to Europe, initially to Vienna in 1908 (newly married, the trip was also a honeymoon), where he witnessed first hand the work of artist-designers allied with the Wiener Werkstatte. He met briefly with Vienna Secession leaders Josef Hoffman and Otto Wagner (neither of whom spoke English), and with architect Adolf Loos (who did speak English, and was especially gracious).

Returning to East Aurora, Hunter was excited about the possibilities of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Almost immediately, he began to prepare to return to Europe in 1910, this time not just as a tourist, but to stay longer and to study in Vienna, to visit Arts and Crafts centers in Germany, and lastly to live briefly in London, where he worked as a designer. In late 1911, he returned from Europe with his wife, distanced himself from the Roycroft Workshops, and soon set up a paper mill in Marlborough-on-Hudson in New York State, where he committed himself to the handmade production of paper. He eventually resettled in Ohio, where, in essence, he devoted his remaining life to the art, craft and science of papermaking. more…

Book Review | Design Before Designers

Ad for Chromatic Jobber printing press (c1886)

Graphic Design Before Graphic Designers:
The Printer as Designer and Craftsman 1700-1914
by David Jury
Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 2012
312 pp., illus. 219 b&w/560 col. Trade, $60.00
ISBN: 978-0-500-51646-1.

This is a richly illustrated book on the history of printing—or, more accurately, on one area of printing. It is not a history of “book printing,” but of a less exalted branch called “job printing.” Historically, book printers (or so it has long been widely assumed) are prestigious purveyors of culture, while job printers are those who produce “ephemera,” the everyday stuff that is rarely preserved—handbills, posters, tickets, advertisements, trade cards, stationery, labels, receipts, passports, charts, certificates, postage stamps, banknotes and so on.

When Samuel Johnson wrote his Dictionary (1755), he made no distinction between designing and printing—a typographer, by his definition, was “a printer.” Continuing well into the twentieth century, arranging elements on a page was part and parcel of printing, so there was no additional cost for “graphic design,” a phrase that is commonly said (erroneously, I think) to have been used for the first time by book designer W.A. Dwiggins in 1921. Today, as designers and their clients know, graphic design is its own thriving category, and the work of a graphic designer is billed in addition to printing.

This well-written and beautiful book, titled Graphic Design Before Graphic Designers: The Printer as Designer and Craftsman 1700-1914, is a history of what printers did, as clandestine designers, in advance of the formal establishment of graphic design as a career field. It also provides an account of how the design services of craft-based printers were deliberately discredited by graphic and advertising designers in order to justify charging for a service that had once been gratis. Surely, it must have been argued, the author writes, “the modern businessman’s media requirements could only be addressed by a new profession made up of university-trained communication strategists.”

The book is organized in chronological, alternating chapters (there are six in all, plus other parts), each of which offers two components: First, a persuasively-written historical text, detailing what took place, in what order and why, including the names and achievements of individuals who were major players. These narratives are illustrated by well-chosen informative images from the history of printing. Second, each chapter also features about 30 pages of the most wonderful full-color images of examples of job printing, from every category imaginable. more…

Versluis | Behrens Cicada Montage

Cicada Digital Collage (2012) © David Versluis & Roy R. Behrens

Above In an earlier post, I talked about a series of digital collages (or montages) in which graphic designer David Versluis and I collaborated (exchanging files by email) during a period of several weeks in the winter of 2011-2012. I can't remember how many works were in the series (probably ten). Each work progressed through stages. Often, an earlier stage might be just as compelling as a later one. I think this is the final stage of one of my favorites. It began when David emailed me a scan of a cicada from his Iowa insect collection.

•••

From R.V. Jones, “The theory of practical joking—its relevance to physics,” in R.L. Weber, compiler, A Random Walk in Science. London: Institute of Physics, 1973, pp. 10-11—

[American physicist] R.W. Wood is said to have spent some time in a flat in Paris where he discovered that the lady in the flat below kept a tortoise in a window pen. Wood fashioned a collecting device from a broom-handle,and bought a supply of tortoises of dispersed sizes. While the lady was out shopping, Wood replaced her tortoise by one slightly larger. He repeated this operation each day until the growth of the tortoise became so obvious to its owner that she consulted Wood who, having first played a subsidiary joke by sending her to consult a professor at the Sorbonne whom he considered to be devoid of humor, advised her to write the press. When the tortoise had grown to such a size that several pressmen were taking a daily interest, Wood then reversed the process, and in a week or so the tortoise mysteriously contracted to its original dimensions.

•••

From Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, pp. 57-58—

Combining frequent spraying with baby talk, Margaret [a co-worker at a newspaper] worked hard to keep a bevy of plants alive in her work area. She paid special attention to a demagnetized cactus plant she kept next to her computer. This prompted a newsroom prank.

A.L. (Al) Blackerby’s wife ran the Cacti City store in New Camden. With her cooperation, Al and I sneaked back to the office each Friday night to substitute a slightly larger cactus for the one Margaret had grown used to that week. As someone with an art background, I drew the job of finding a cactus that matched the shape of the one to be replaced. The intervention of the weekend helped mask any inconsistencies. The growth change was just enough to catch her attention each Monday. She even wrote a feature, “Computer Nearness Spurs Cactus Growth,” about the phenomenon.

Then, of course, we reversed the process, making the plant grow smaller each week. Eventually we made the changes so dramatic and erratic that she couldn’t help but catch on. She traced the prank to Al and me, and, for a time, she wouldn’t speak to either of us.

One day, after we became friends again, she came to me to ask if I would teach her to drive. It was something I didn’t particularly want to do.

"What about your husband?" I asked.

"Oh, he already knows how."

Book Review | Graphic Design Process

Cover of Graphic Design Process (2012)

Graphic Design Process: From Problem to Solution
by Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell
Laurence King Publishing, London, UK, 2012
192 pp., illus. Paper, £19.95
ISBN: 978-1-85669-826-9.

...
 
A solution to a design problem (a poster, book or web design) is a noun: it is a tangible, knowable thing. But the process it develops from is closer to a verb. It is made up of constantly flowing events (like William James’ “stream of consciousness”) and is typically so faint, non-linear, and elusive that we hardly know it’s going on, much less how to grasp and define it.

While its authors admit to the challenge, this book makes a valiant attempt to shed light on the perpetually “moving target” of problem solving in design (a subject that’s closely related, of course, to innovation in any discipline), and it does so in a clever way. It does it by purposely looking aside, not unlike how stars appear more clearly at times by looking at them indirectly. It introduces 20 case studies, by discussing the widely varying work of design teams and designers from throughout the world, by talking with those designers (about their influences, work strategies and beliefs), and by looking for evidence of the process itself, however that might be discernible from thumbnail sketches, experimental studies, preparatory models, and revision proofs.

The works in the book are highly diverse, in part because graphic design is no longer as tightly defined as it was. Today, as the authors remind us, it “spans many media, offers exposure to endless subject material, and reaches into countless other disciplines for inspiration.” Even more distinctions arise because “there is no single way to conduct a design practice” and “every project demands its own way of working.”

The structure of this book reflects the often-bewildering manner in which problems progress toward solutions, sometimes by loopy, meandering routes. The book begins by focusing on two widely shared initial concerns, “research” and “inspiration” (which can and do take many forms), and concludes with “collaboration.” Propped up by these structural bookends are four other sections that deal with more specific means for exploring potential solutions: “drawing,” “narrative,” “abstraction,” and “development.”

What struck the authors (they are teachers as well as designers) is how seemingly little agreement they found among the 23 designers, whose primary zones of concurrence were three: “[T]he busier a designer is, the more ideas mix in the mind for inventive solutions; ideas usually come when a designer least expects them; and exposure to visual art at a young age, through a relative, teacher, or friend, opened a path to design.” more…

Book Review | Nostaglia

Emir of Bukhara in Bukhara (1911), from Nostalgia

Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. The Russia of Czar Nicholas II in laboriously restored historical color photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii; Robert Klanten, Editor
Gestalten, Berlin, 2012

...
 
In 1914 the Russian Empire was among the Allied Powers who went to war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Central Powers. Three years later, in the upheaval of the Bolshevik Revolution, Czar Nicholas II abdicated, Russia withdrew from the conflict, and in 1918, the czar and his family were murdered.

That same year, among the native Russians who left the country, was a chemist and pioneering photographer named Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). He was wise to leave because his family had ties to the aristocracy and the military, and in recent years, he had been working for the czar. Beginning in 1909, he had been given financial support, a mobile darkroom, and unusually lenient permission to travel, for the purpose of documenting the people, architecture, landmarks and natural surroundings of what was then the largest, most diverse empire in history. That achievement in itself is amazing, but there is another dimension that makes it more extraordinary—Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs were made in color, at a time when color photography was rudimentary. Indeed, it would not be widely available for another 25 years.

This impressive volume is a large-sized “coffee table book” in which are collected (in maximum page size) more than 300 of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs. There are also informative essays about the purpose and range of his travels. Many of these photographs can only be said to be stunning, because of their richness of color, of course, but also because they provide us with eyewitness views of what it was like to be alive under the rule of Nicholas II, as distinct from the later infamous regimes of the Communists. more>>>

Walt Whitman | Sarah Hedeen

Portrait of Walt Whitman (2012) © Sarah Hedeen

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. Sarah Hedeen chose to portray American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the so-called "father of free verse."

•••

Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist: An Illustrated Story. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, p. 55—

Suddenly he got up, walked to the door, looked out, closed the door, bolted it, and came back in conspiratorial silence. He unfolded a worn sheet to reveal an elaborate but poorly drawn diagram of the male reproduction system with lots of marginal notes.

"This is for an idea I have for a new contraceptive to be taken by men the morning after," he explained. "Don't say anything about this to Mrs. Griffith."

Amelia Earhart | Megan Lehman

Portrait of Amelia Earhart (2012) © Megan Lehman

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. Megan Lehman chose American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), who died when she was 39.

•••

Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist: An Illustrated Story. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, pp. 66-67—

At the time a graduate student in engineering, Ryan had once worked for an American automaker, but he was fired for installing the steering wheels on the right sides of the dashboards. That was his first inkling that he had dyslexia. Fortunately, he got a job with an automaker in England, where he did quite well.

Film Review | Herbert Matter

The Visual Language of Herbert Matter
by Reto Caduff, Director and Writer
PiXiu Films, Zurich, Switzerland, 2011
DVD. 79 mins. Sales, $29.95
Distributor’s website: http://www.herbertmatter.net/home.htm.
 
 ...

In 1927, a twenty-five-year-old American aviator named Charles Lindbergh successfully crossed the Atlantic in a single-engine monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Flying non-stop from New York to Paris, Lindbergh was met on his arrival by 150,000 spectators. As revealed in this film biography, in the enormous, frenzied crowd that day was a young Swiss graphic designer (five years younger than Lindbergh) named Herbert Matter.

Matter (1907-1984) was born and raised in Engelberg, Switzerland, an Alpine village and mountain resort where his family owned a bakery and tearoom. Initially, he studied art in Geneva, but in 1927 (the year of Lindbergh’s famous flight) he moved to Paris, where he studied with French artists Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, and worked with architect Le Corbusier (who was Ozenfant’s associate in their quasi-cubist movement called Purism).

Of greater consequence, Matter also worked with graphic designer A.M. Cassandre. It was during those same years in Paris that he was lastingly influenced by Russian Constructivism, DeStijl, the Bauhaus, and Surrealism. To some extent, his later achievements as a designer, illustrator, photographer and filmmaker can be seen as an individualized blend of selected aspects and attitudes from these earlier, once precarious styles. more>>>

Film Review | Linotype: The Film

Linotype type casting machine

Linotype: The Film
by Douglas Wilson, Director and Producer
Onpaperwings Productions
Springfield, MO, 2012
 DVD, 1 hours 17 mins.
Distributor's website:
http://www.linotypefilm.com

•••

I have had “printing” in my blood since I was ten or eleven. One summer at about that age, having read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I sped downtown on my 20-inch Hiawatha bicycle, strolled into the local “job printing” firm, and inquired of the aging (and greatly amused) owner if he might be willing to take me on as a “printer’s devil.” Kindly, he responded “no” (I was far too young) but he did talk to me for awhile and gave me a tour of the “tools of the trade.” This was about fifty-five years ago, yet, even now, I still remember the moment that day when I saw a linotype type casting machine for the first time. 

I myself don’t know a way to describe how it feels to stand next to a functioning linotype (much less to actually operate one, which can be hazardous at times because of the hot molten metal it spurts). In general, one could simply say that it is a huge complex mechanism for casting metal type that was invented in 1884 by Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899), a U.S. German immigrant. Amazingly, it revolutionized printing to such an extent that its inventor is sometimes said to have been “the second Gutenberg.” But that is at best an inadequate way to convey the feeling of standing in the presence of this clackety, stinky, hot, intimidating, almost room-sized monster that casts lines of hot lead type—one line at a time, hence its quaint historic name “line-o’-type.” more>>>

Al Capone | Jenni Lehmann

Portrait of Al Capone (2012) © Jenni Lehmann

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung, heroic or not. Jenni Lehmann chose Chicago gangster Al Capone.

•••

Saul Steinberg—

People who see a drawing in the New Yorker will think automatically that it's funny because it is a cartoon. If they see it in a museum, they think it is artistic; and if they find it in a fortune cookie, they think it is a prediction.

•••

Anon—

At a local auction, he bought an antique writing desk. When he got home, he opened it up, and a dozen people fell out. It was a missing persons bureau.

Frank Lloyd Wright | Benjamin Uhl

Portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright (2012) © Benjamin Uhl

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. This is Ben Uhl's provocative portrayal of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).

***

Henry Miller, quoted in Robert Snyder, ed., This is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn. Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1974, p. 25—

My mother did the first terrible thing for which I never forgave her, y'know…my mother…She says to me, "Henry, I have a wart." I'm only four years old and I'm sitting in this little chair and she says, "Henry, what shall I do with this?" And I say, "Cut it off. With a scissors." Two days later she got blood poisoning and she says, "And you told me to cut it off!" and bang bang bang she slaps me, for telling her to do this. How do you like a mother who'd do that?

Versluis | Behrens Collaborative Bugs

Yellow Jacket Digital Collage (2012) © David Versluis & Roy R. Behrens

Many months ago, coincident with the New Year 2012, my fine friend David Versluis (a Dutch Master) and I decided to try something. He has a collection of Iowa bugs (dead ones) of which he made exquisite scans at high resolution. He began to send me the scan files, one at a time, with the challenge that I should respond to them by beginning to build a digital montage, using Adobe Photoshop. I could do whatever I liked. Then I would pass that back to him, in response to which he'd make a move—and pass it back to me again. And so on, usually with five or six back-and-forth turns, until we mutually came to suspect that the work was finished. So that's how we proceeded—with a beetle, a cicada, a dragon fly, and other creatures, including (here) a hornet (which, in the end, was discovered to be not a hornet but a yellow jacket wasp). I can't recall how many of these montages we made, but in a few short weeks we ended up with a substantial and interesting series. Posted above is a gif (pronounced jiff) animation of the stages in our process for the collaborative yellow jacket (the stages are not in the order, I think, in which the piece evolved). The final stage for this montage (which was recently selected for a national juried exhibition) is posted here.

Animated Currency | Dusty Kriegel

Animated Self-Portrait Currency (2012) © Dusty Kriegel

Above Teaching is so unbelievably difficult. I suppose it doesn't have to be, if you only pretend to do it (an ever present temptation), if you don't put your heart into it. If you do, there is nothing quite as devastating emotionally (when it fails) nor any greater source of joy (when it succeeds). This semester, I've been working with two groups of especially wonderful students in a beginning course in graphic design in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa. When the semester started in late August, many of them had little or no experience with Adobe Photoshop or other bewildering software (increasingly bewildering with each, more frequent, update). There were some who could only do email. Now they are soaring at perilous heights that I can barely imagine at times. Most recently, for example, I asked them to design the front and back of a hypothetical banknote (paper money). To complicate the problem, I told them that it had to be "self-portrait currency." I also threw in a subsequent stage: Having designed the banknote as such, they were then required to animate the face side of it (which they did in Photoshop, using the gif animation technique). We critiqued the initial results yesterday, and a number of their pieces were utterly amazing. I was especially taken aback by this extraordinary solution (above) by Dusty Kreigel. Delights like this restore my faith in a world that I find so disturbing, in education—and in a baffling human race.

Clara Barton | Kenneth Meisner

Portrait of Clara Barton (2012) © Kenneth Meisner

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. Kenneth Meisner chose to celebrate the achievements of teacher, nurse and humanitarian Clara Barton (1821-1912).

***

Clara Barton, The Story of My Childhood—

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.

P.G. Wodehouse | Benjamin Rendall

Portrait of P.G. Wodehouse (2012) © Benjamin Rendall

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. It's not often these days that I find a student who is familiar with (much less a devoté of) British humorist Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975). But Benjamin Rendall is one of those, and this is his portrait of P.G. Wodehouse.

***

Sean O'Casey, Letter to the editor. The Daily Telegraph, July 1941 [referring to Wodehouse]—

If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English literature's performing flea.

...

P.G. Wodehouse—

There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

...

P.G. Wodehouse—

The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.

...

P.G. Wodehouse—

It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.

Emigré Online Index | Jessica Barness

Emigré Magazine Index | designed by Jessica Barness

Many years ago (okay, maybe it wasn't that many years ago), my graphic design colleagues and I at the University of Northern Iowa had the distinct pleasure of working with a young student named Jessica Barness. She earned a BA in 1999 and an MA in 2001, in the process of which she accomplished a substantial body of amazing and unforgettable work (I can still vividly picture those stark Ingmar Bergman film posters). Following graduation, she worked as a designer in Chicago, and then applied to the MFA program at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. She embarked this year on a new career as an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication Design at Kent State University, one of the country's leading design programs.

Above In 2011, while still in graduate school, Jessica was awarded the Joss Internship by the Goldstein Museum of Design. In completion of that, she designed an Emigré Magazine Index, an extraordinary online interface that enables us all to have access to the Goldstein Museum's collection of the full set of 69 issues (between 1984 and 2005) of that celebrated publication, a magazine that "assisted in elevating typography and graphic design to a serious and respected field of study." More >>>

Thomas Edison | Jessica Libberton

Portrait of Thomas Edison (2012) © Jessica Libberton

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. This is a portrayal of genius and inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) by Jessica Libberton.

...

Thomas Edison—

Great music and art are earthly wonders, but I think cubist songs and paintings are hideous.

...

Richard Armour, It All Started with Columbus—

Since Edison suffered from insomnia, he invented the electric light, so he could read at night.

...

Keith Ellis, Thomas Edison: Genius of Electricity—

Edison was a giant. He had gigantic successes and gigantic failures. He had a giant's zest, a giant's power of recuperation, and a giant's vision.

Jesse James | Beau Heyenga

Portrait of Jesse James (2012) © Beau Heyenga

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung, heroic or not. Beau Heyenga chose the notorious desperado Jesse James (1847-1882).

***

Anon, The Ballad of Jesse James—

Jesse had a wife to mourn all her life.
Two children they were brave.
'Twas a dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard
And laid Jesse James in his grave.

Susan B. Anthony | Morgan Johnson

Portrait of Susan B. Anthony (2012) © Morgan Johnson

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. A number of the students chose historic civil rights leaders, as in this portrayal of suffragette Susan B. Anthony by Morgan Johnson.

***

Anon, in Ida Husted Harper, Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (originally published in the Denver News)—

The press sneers at Miss Anthony, men tell her she is out of her proper sphere, people call her a scold, good women call her masculine, a monstrosity in petticoats; but if one half of her sex possessed one half of her acquirements, her intellectual culture, her self-reliance and independence of character, the world would be better for it.

Charlie Chaplin | Derek Miller

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. I didn't know who they would choose, since our generations are increasingly familiar with vastly different views of the past, the present and the future. Most of the time, I don't think they get my jokes (these days, even my obvious humor is dry), and, likewise, I sometimes don't have a clue about what they're alluding to. So, it is reassuring when someone in the class chooses a subject, in this case the British-born American film comedian Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), whom we both know and admire. This zingy and fittingly colorful portrait of Chaplin was designed by Derek Miller.

***

Robert Hatch, in the Reporter (November 25, 1939)—

There were two sides to Charlie [Chaplin's film character], as there are to most clowns. The first was Charlie the fantastic cock of the walk who kidded our sacred institutions ans solemn paraphernalia with merciless acumen. He kept a slop bucket in a safe and investigated a clock with a can opener. He slapped bankers on the back, and pinched a pretty cheek when he saw one. He had nothing but wit, grace, and agility with which to oppose the awful strength of custom and authority, but his weapons were a good deal more than sufficient.

The other Charlie was a beggar for sympathy and an apostle of pity. He pitied everything that stumbled or whimpered or wagged a tail, particularly he pitied himself. There has never been a portrait of self-pity so vivid or so shocking as Charlie with a rose in his hand.

Victoria Woodhull | Megan Vande Lune

Portrait of Victoria Woodhull (2012) © Megan Vande Lune

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. I thought I knew quite a bit about the struggle for American women's civil rights, but I had never heard of Victoria Woodhull (1938-1927), an important leader of the suffrage movement, and the first woman to run for US President. This is a provocative portrait of her by Megan Vande Lune.

George A. Custer | Margo Niemeyer

Portrait of George A. Custer (2012) © Margo Niemeyer

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. In recent months, I've been reading about the dreadful so-called "Indian Wars" in this country, and I was especially struck by this powerful, beautifully designed portrait of US General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876), created by Margo Niemeyer.

Amelia Earhart | Danielle Firkins

Portrait of Amelia Earhart (2012) © Danielle Firkins

Above Recently, in a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. One of my favorite results is this complex, astonishing portrait of American woman aviator Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), designed by Danielle Firkins.

Walt Whitman | Maggie Reifert

Portrait of Walt Whitman (2012) © Maggie Reifert

Above A few weeks ago, in a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. One of the most interesting results was this image of American writer (poet, essayist, journalist) Walt Whitman (1819-1892), designed by Maggie Reifert.

***

Algernon C. Swinburne—

…he [Whitman] is a writer of something occasionally like English, and a man of something occasionally like genius.

***

John Jay Chapman—

In Whitman's works the elemental parts of a man's mind and the fragments of imperfect education may be seen merging together, floating and sinking in a sea of insensate egotism and rhapsody, repellent, divine, disgusting, extraordinary.