American Modernism: Graphic Design, 1920 to 1960 (review)

To the extent that any country is a melting pot, its culture is indebted to the traditions that are brought in by its immigrants, whether European, Asian, African or whatever. But with luck those same traditions mix, through synergistic alchemy, into new and original cultural forms, of which the most famous example is jazz. At times, related claims are made about a cluster of graphic designers who flourished in the U.S. in the years before and after World War II and whose styles are sufficiently different from other influences as to merit the special, distinguishing tag of American Modernism. A surprising number of these designers were born and raised in the Midwest (e.g., Merle Armitage, Lester Beall, Bradbury Thompson, Noel Martin and Charles Eames), while others grew up in the cities (Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Alvin Lustig). Without exception, they were wonderfully smart and resourceful; they were also eager for experimentation, so much so that they all embraced the European avant-garde (in particular De Stijl, Surrealism, the Bauhaus and Tschichold's New Typography), acquired firsthand in some cases by working side by side with recent emigrants, among them Ladislav Sutnar, Alexey Brodovitch, Herbert Bayer and Will Burtin. At the same time, they did not align complacently with that influence, but practiced what in retrospect is a seamless amalgam of European Modernism and American Regionalism, in the sense that its softened geometry is not unlike the art produced by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler and others who were active in the WPA-era.

The author of this beautiful book, design historian R. Roger Remington, is as well-informed about this subject as anyone and is widely known for his efforts as the founder of the Graphic Design Archives, a large collection of printed ephemera and other research materials in the Wallace Library at the

Rochester Institute of Technology. This volume, which is his fourth and largest study of various aspects of this segment of design history, begins in the 19th century and retraces the emergence of the European avant-garde. It slows down as it looks more reflectively at the major representatives of American Modernism, then resumes speed as it surveys the 40-year period near the end of the 20th century, when Modernism is replaced by the maze in which we currently find ourselves. In addition to Remington's wonderful text, the book is exquisitely designed (as it really has to be, to practice what its text promotes) by Brad Yendle and stunningly illustrated with 250 color illustrations of the finest, most unforgettable works from a historic period in which not just graphic design, but also cinema, literature, dance, popular music and other forms of expression were produced at a very high level.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2003-2004.)