Art in Progress: Published by MOMA 1944

By the People: For the People - POSTERS

Mildred Constantine

 

The following is a letter from Mildred Constantine - April 5, 2005

 

"In January, 1942 an exhibition of 150 posters from central and South America, and Mexico collected by Mildred Constantine was inaugurated at the Library of Congress. This selection spanned a period of about 3 years. Also on display at the same time was a selection of posters by the United States government agencies.

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who attended the opening, made the following observation in her column MY DAY,... " A few of our own posters are shown, but I do not think we have yet learned to use our best artists, so our posters do not seem to be quite as vivid and colorful as some of those from the South American countries."

 

These observations were accurate and to the point. The three individuals responsible for the selection, myself included, did not look beyond the time period indicated. What was missing was the recent history of the non-stop imagery of the years of the New Deal brought into being by the Great Depression of 1929. During that period, the Federal Arts Projects and its programs throughout the United States had a great impact, no only on the economy, but on the Arts. It accelerated the country's consciousness of the abundance and diversity of the creative artists in the bleak period of our lives. Artists were creating murals, easel paintings, photographs, lithographs, etchings and other graphic media. It also revealed the poster both as an art form as well as communications that went straight to the heart of the subject.

 

Mercantile values had little or no impact. The concerns and needs of our nation were expressed by posters. I refer to the posters from Farm Security, the Rural Electrification Project, The Conservation Corps, The Resettlement Administration, The United States Housing Authority, among others. Prior to the 1940's, several of the programs that were brought to life in order to build the economy after the depression made major use of posters. The war years also reflected the concerns of our nation: The Office for Emergency Management (1941-1942), The office of War Information, The CIO Political Action Committee (Artists Lester Beall, Leo Lionni, Velonis brothers and Ben Shahn).

 

These ware invaluable documents from the viewpoint of the development of graphic media that engaged the work of creative artists in important social vehicles. The artists then functioned as part of the world in which they are living. The creative artist applied probing insight, deep understanding, dynamic imagination with which presentations can be translated into the universal language of poster; human, scientific, and educational factors which must reach a vast public; enduring metaphors.

 

In 1937, the Rural Electrification Administration produced a poster by Lester Beall, which was a silk screen print, 40 x 30, with both image and type simplified so that the direct message could be easily communicated. The same artist in 1941 produced a poster for the United States Housing Authority -- "Cross Out Slums" --- which combined photography and typography. In 1937, Ben Shahn produced "Years of Dust" for the Resettlement Administration.

 

The ubiquitous use of san serif lettering in poster design held sway. They were used in other graphic works as well. Look at the hand lettering used by Ben Shahn in the Sacco-Vanzetti letter (1958) - the unorthodox balance of light and dark, thick or thin lines - the artist's version of the san serif for rhythmic emphasis.

 

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In ulysses the free-lance advertising salesman, Leopold Bloom wanders the city in search of "some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life."

 

Here is a cogent and perhaps ironic definition of the poster, embodying the criteria by which the form is usually assessed. But what raises the poster above such short-lived impact, what raises its finest examples to the level of art is the magic of its elements intentionally simplified, summing up the aesthetic aspiration of the times, and even leading to new kinds of visual experience.

 

My own experience in the graphic field is to go beyond acceptance of the poster as a combination of word and image which intends to convey a message in a passing glance, a simplistic and conventionalized notion of advertising formulas. This came to an end in the pre-war and war years. The power of the poster lines in its coherence and concentration as a visual medium for education, propaganda and advertising. These are combined to become communications stripped to its pith.

 

• Subjective perception

• Objective reality

• Narration - mixture of elements

• Metaphors

 

Highly influential were schools such as the School of Design in Chicago organized by Laszlo Moholy-Nagi in 1939. It provided an environment for experimentation in the work of artists which carried the force of universal language - the human, scientific and educational factors destined for a vast public. Both staff and students were dedicated to exploring the power of the poster, which is contained in its coherence and concentration, a visual medium for education, propaganda and advertising. The school was renamed in 1949 as the Institute of Design.

 

Also of note were the exhibitions as promoted by the Museum of Modern Art, among them the Modern Poster 1930-42. "Modern Lettering and Arrangement in Poster Design" 1939-44 designed especially for educational programs for schools. Featured were posters by Ben Shahn, Lester Beall, Paul Rand and Alex Steinweiss as well as work by Jean Carlu, Herbert Bayer, Alexey Brodovitch already in residence in this country.

Public collections are often built up by the donations of private collectors. This was true of the Museum of Modern Art where two major gifts filled important gaps in the collection. One was in 1950 by Mr. Bernard Davis including examples of the late twenties and early thirties. Mr. Davis, who was a well known collector and philanthropist felt that posters "are a very important art medium and the form of modern art most available to the greatest portion of people who see it on the streets -- these works can change the appreciation of people for art."

 

Jan Tschichold was a master typographer. His collection emphasizes the role of lettering in the poster composition.

 

In 1949 the Museum of Modern Art exhibited an exhibition of advertising and editorial art sponsored by the Art Directors Club of New York. The jury was made up of art historians, museum personnel, art directors at agencies and publications.

 

It was of course over whelming in the work done for industry through the various agencies and their art directors. It is curious to observe that very few posters were included, but one is particularly outstanding and that is the "Wipe out Discrimination" poster by Milton Ackoff, for the CIO.

 

In 1944 the Museum of Modern Art presented both an exhibition and a publication entitled Art In Progress. Illustrated in the book were several posters from the museum's collection. However, only one poster of the war years by Jean Carlu - "America's Answer" - dated 1942 was illustrated in this publication. Although in the listing, the work of John Atherton, Lester Beall, Herbert Matter, Ben Shahn were listed as being part of the MOMA collection.

 

Non-stop imagery surrounds us today. There is, of course, a continued use of posters to present, but those are mostly illustrations of news broadcasts and commercials, as well as the posters issued by our cultural institutions. There are also flyers, hand lettering on hand held signs, banners, cartoons, caricatures and of course, television [This article was written prior to the computer being the main source of communications and no social media]

 

Does this mean that he poster, never superficial, full of meaning, with the intention to penetrate with aggressive graphics means, has diminished in importance and relevance? This question remains unanswered."