Fluttering Hearts in a Storage Bin

I love my job, I really do. Three days ago I had to root through a plastic storage bin looking for an issue of DIRECTION magazine -- with a classic Paul Rand cover -- that had just been sold. I knew where it was, I just needed to extract it -- I would find my DIRECTION in the storage bin full of miscellaneous periodicals purchased from a Boston estate a few years ago.

This particular estate belonged to an NYC-based Art Director and Commercial Artist straight from the Old School. He studied with Alexey Brodovitch in Philadelphia (and was credited with snapping the frontis portrait in BRODOVITCH by Kerry William Purcell) before heading to NYC to work for the Mutual Broadcasting System. Assigned to the Office of War Information for the duration of World War II, he was very active in both the AIGA and NYC ADC, as well as holding teaching and administrative positions at Pratt and the Cooper Union.

I learned all this backstory after moving 15 boxes of Design material from the Back Bay Condominium where this Art Director retired after his years as a serious Gotham Scenester. Judging from the amount of Gallery Exhibition Guides he saved, he went to every NYC-Modern Art event from the mid-thirties to the late seventies. He saved everything, making his living situation somewhat cluttered; and complicating the lives of his heirs. His daughter contacted me after his death with the opportunity to make an offer on the remains of her father's Design Library. I always love going back to Boston .

Several years later, the ever-dwindling, miscellaneous ephemera and periodicals from this estate are now stored in a single plastic bin in my office. I was pretty sure the DIRECTION was near the bottom of this bin. I carefully unstacked the magazines in the bin, all the time wishing I had the time to catalog every single item: Zwart, Tanning, Zwart, Avedon, Sutnar, Tschichold -- no shortage of good stuff here. Burrowing halfway through the stack, I uncovered an old, oversized magazine in stiff wrappers covered with a plain, hand-made white cover. I lifted the flap and pulled back the cover and my eyes dilated over Marcel Duchamp's brilliantly lithographed Coeurs Volants -- his Fluttering Hearts cover for Cahiers D'Art Nos 1/2, 1936.



Back in 1936 at the height of the Great Depression, this struggling Commercial artist in New York City acquired this Parisian Avant-Garde Broadside and fully comprehended the importance of Duchamp's cover contribution. He had the prescience to hand-make an archival paper slipcover for this magazine, so the grasping fingers of time wouldn't mar the beautiful vibrating Duchamp surface. The cover was neatly detached from the textblock along the spine juncture, but otherwise in wonderful unfingered condition. Finding an original print of one of the iconic images of Modern Art makes you forget about DIRECTION magazine for a little while. Examining the slipcover felt like overhearing a conversation in a crowded bistro, one artist speaking to another.

From the catalogue raisonne on Marcel Duchamp by Arturo Schwarz: "[that particular] issue contained Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia's essay 'Coeurs Volants' ('Fluttering Hearts'), a study of Duchamp's optical works. Duchamp made a paper collage composed of three hearts alternating the blue, red, and blue. The strong color contrasts between the red and blue create the illusion of 'fluttering' hearts. He spoke of the project at a later date: 'At a time when I was working on the Rotorelief series in 1935 or thereabouts, I remember having a conversation with an optical physicist who told me about 'Fluttering Hearts' as one of the classic examples in the study of optics. Without carrying my investigations any further than that, I applied this old idea of 'Fluttering Hearts' to my cover (without even looking at any of the reproductions, probably in colour, in the official textbooks). I kept the title 'Fluttering Hearts'. There are many combinations of 2 colors that give the desired effect, especially in dim light."

The flat winter sun streamed through my office window and bounced around on the Cahiers cover. The magazine vibrated in my hands. Life was good. Then I noticed more of the Art Director's artistic handiwork -- he had signed his name in a tiny cursive scrawl to form the crossbar of the A in CAHIERS. Like R. Mutt before him, he had sketched his own little mustache on a masterpiece -- signing his name on another work and forever shifting the art world a tiny bit off its axis, forever defacing and changing it.

I leaned back in my Aeron Chair and recalled George C. Scott chewing the scenery in Patton: "Rommel, you magnificent bastard -- I read your book!" I replaced the lid to the storage bin and said " Rommel-- you magnificent bastard -- I have your book ..." Nobody heard me.

What's in a Name [Change]?

As a collector and dealer in rare and unusual Design ephemera, I have a special relationship with the publishing sub-genre commonly referred to as "Little Magazines." I love them.

The term "Little Magazine" has become synonymous with the vessels that chronicled the parallel risings and subsequent high-water marks left by both organized Labor and unorganized Literature in the early years of the 20th- century. If you're interested in the little histories of those movements, I politely suggest googling THE LITTLE MAGAZINE: A HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY by Frederick J. Hoffman (et al) -- published by the Princeton University Press. It's the standard reference on the subject.

But if you have a strong interest in the Graphic Arts and are endlessly fascinated (like me) by exactly how the fruitful seeds of European Modernism found purchase in the often-barren rocky landscape of North America, I strongly recommend getting acquainted (maybe even intimate) with my favorite little magazine -- the one with the supersized name: PM [AN INTIMATE JOURNAL FOR ART DIRECTORS, PRODUCTION MANAGERS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATES].

The story of PM (short for Production Managers) gets bibliographically complicated by a name change during their sixth year of publication in 1940 to A-D (short for Art Directors). You certainly couldn't argue with the name change from a marketing standpoint, but the name change truly reflected an editorial and ideological shift that helped make PM/AD the gold standard for Graphic Arts magazines in the United States. Look no further than Martin Pederson's emasculation of the once-virile GRAPHIS for the hintermost end of the measurable spectrum.

Both names -- PM and A-D -- were appropriate for their times. But times change, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of Graphic Arts. When PM started publishing in 1934, the Graphic Arts was the realm of typesetters, job printers and the afore-mentioned production managers. By 1942, when wartime restrictions forced the renamed A-D to cease publication, the Graphic Arts industry had undergone a transformation, thanks in a large part to the pre-war influx of European emigrants. The Production Manager had been replaced by the Art Director. The Industry and our visual culture has never been the same.

PM started publication in 1934 as the House Organ for the Composing Room in New York City, a typesetting firm run by Dr. Robert Leslie and Sol Cantor. Way back in the thirties, production artists and designers hired typesetters to set and produce type -- it was actually a pretty big and competitive industry. Dr. Leslie set his firm apart by offering exceptional service and bringing an artistic sensibility to the table. He also used PM to showcase the high standards of the Composing Room.

If you've never handled an issue of PM, please allow me: each issue measured 5.5 x 7.75 with a variety of bindings, including saddle-stitching, perfect-binding and spiral and wire-o-bindings. Paper stocks varied as widely as the production methods. A true "why-not?" spirit infected the publication from day one, with covers screen-printed on Japanese wood veneers, dry-mat stamping, our old friend Pyroxylin paper, embossed & foil stamped with gold leaf, Unifoil stock -- and that's only a sampling from the first year of publication.

Regardless of how adventuresome the production technologies for the covers were, the editorial content suffered from the dusty fustiness of the age, with articles on the joys of typesetting, half-tone engraving and the rapidly expanding field of color separation. As we have witnessed the ruthless march of technology, we know the inherent hazards of documenting industry milestones. In the early years, PM was more William Morris than Walter Gropius. If PM had contented itself to merely semaphoring combat dispatches from the typesetting trenches, it would mainly be remembered by Bruce Rogers and Frederic Goudy completists. But these are not my people.

New York in the thirties was apparently a pretty exciting place, the Great Depression nonewithstanding. By 1936 it was obvious that the lights were starting to go out all over Europe, and immigrants and refugees were starting to come to the United States. Dr. Leslie opened the doors of the Composing Room to European artists and designers looking for opportunities in the New World. He understood the value of community and his role as an educator and liaison to the NYC-based advertising and publishing communities. By 1936 it was obvious that the times were indeed changing, with tastemakers like Philip Johnson, Alfred Barr and the other mandarins at the nascent Museum of Modern Art calling the shots and loudly naming the tunes. By March, Dr. Leslie decided it was time to dance.

The March 1936 PM presented an original cover design by Lucien Bernhard as well as a 24-page section devoted to the Poster work of the Modern German master. This was the first time an American magazine so prominently featured the work of a European emigre. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated. By rejecting the past, Dr. Leslie put all his chips on the future.

After the Bernhard cover and feature, the race to outrun the spotlight was on: covers and features on George Salter, and Gustav Jensen immediately followed in 1936. 1937 started with A.M Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer (not technically an emigrant, but work with me here) and finally the home team was represented by Lester Beall's classic cover and feature in November.

Beall's cover can be seen as a cornerstone of the ongoing dialogue between the Cream of the American Advertising industry and the ever-growing influence of the Europeans. It is also one of the most widely-recognized images in the history of Graphic Design -- a perfect synthesis of the European Avant-Garde neue typographie, interpreted by an extremely sensitive Designer from Missouri.

In February/March 1938 Walter Gropius contributed an article on the Bauhaus and Architectural education (designed by Herbert Matter) and in June/July L. Sandusky wrote THE BAUHAUS TRADITION AND THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY -- the first published account in English of the Bauhaus Typographic philosophy. Sandusky wrote the text and Lester Beall provided the design work for the 34-page, 2-color insert that has become one of the standard bibliographic references for the cross-pollination of European and American avant-garde typography. This article features work by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Archipenko, Walter Gropius, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, Piet Mondrian, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Herbert Bayer, M. Peter Piening and many others. While it seems common today to attach these names together under the common avant-garde umbrella, it was quite an intellectual stretch to merge the plastic arts of architecture, painting, typography, printing and sculpture into a coherent argument in 1938.

And the hits kept on coming: the first feature on the rising star Paul Rand in October/ November 1938; Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha featured in August / September 1939; Herbert Bayer owned December 1939; Gyorgy Kepes was introduced by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in February / March 1940 ; and followed by Joseph Binder, Jean Carlu, George Giusti, Alex Steinweiss, Will Burtin and many others before war shortages forced the now-named A-D to cease publication in 1942.

Dr. Robert Leslie was a true American Modernist in every respect -- a facilitator, an educator, an advocate and a patron. His talents as a cultural barometer and an astute businessman allowed him to unfurl his sails right when the wind started to pick up.

In April 1937, the editors of PM announced their intent to devote an issue entirely to the Bauhaus: "This issue will be the most ambitious expression of the editors' belief that those engaged in a given art of design should be aware of their common interest with those in other branches if design, whether it be poster art, typography, scenic design, furniture design, or architecture."

When PM changed its name and editorial focus from the nameless and faceless Industry Production Managers to A-D for the Art Directors who were rapidly becoming the cultural agenda setters of pre-war America, the magazine made the leap from being an insular House Organ to a Little Magazine which cast a long shadow over the cultural landscape of the 20-century.

If you don't believe me, pick up and issue and see for yourself. Go ahead, get intimate.

Now is the perfect time, since it is my good fortune to have just acquired an exceptional run of PM and A-D consisting of 47 of the 66 total issues, including all of the above-mentioned highlights.

For an exceptional overview of PM Magazine and its founder, Dr. Robert Leslie, I strongly recommend a lengthy visit here -- a website that serves as a virtual tribute to Erin K. Malone's MFA Thesis project from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Authenticity Is a Commodity

As October turned into November, I became the very proud owner of an excellent selection of books from the library of Charles Niedringhaus -- a man who shares a quality with five other individuals in the whole, wide world: one of five students in the first graduating class of the Institute of Design in May, 1942. As a student, he served Institute Director Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as an assistant in the Basic and Product Design Workshop, as well as assisting the Director in two seminars on Contemporary Art and Design problems. As all top-shelf students of my website know, I am into all things Bauhaus, especially the peculiar Midwest institution known as the New Bauhaus.

When I heard that a shelf of Niedringhaus books were coming onto the market, I did exactly what I had to do: I bought them. The 45-book lot arrived in Austin and I had a blast extracting the long-forgotten ephemera and examining inscriptions from fellow travellers Sigfried Giedion, Harry Bertoia, James Prestini and Moholy himself. Collating these books was as much fun as I can possibly have with all my clothes on. As a recovering graphic designer, I believe it better to sell a product than a service. But my mercantile lifestyle tends to jade me. The shock of the new quickly wore off, and I rolled up my sleeves and started my due diligence, researching the man and the shadow he cast through his books.

I discovered Niedringhaus' student work was well-represented in VISION IN MOTION, with multiple b/w reproductions of molded plywood furniture formed by a machine co-developed with Nathan Lerner. This furniture was infinitely more useful than the prototype machine dubbed the “Smell-O-Meter," featured in the slim Wittenborn edition of THE NEW VISION and ABSTRACT OF AN ARTIST. Anybody credited with the furniture design at the New Bauhaus was okay by me. I cross-referenced Niedringhaus (along with Bertoia) as a design research assistant to Herbert Matter on the production of the KNOLL INDEX OF DESIGNS in 1950. I was onto something.

Bouncing between books in the stacks and that Internet, I picked up his tracks long after Niedringhaus' skills in furniture design and production had come to the attention of Hans Knoll -- always on the lookout for designers to work for what was then Knoll Associates. Niedringhaus enjoyed a long and fruitful career with Knoll; earning a patent with Florence Knoll on July 21, 1953 for their design of a sofa/daybed on angular steel frame. Throughout his long career with Knoll, Niedringhaus often acted as an artistic liaison linking the inspired visions of designers such as Isamu Noguchi with Knoll's engineers, draughtsmen, and marketing departments. This confluence of art and business was fundamental to Knoll's identity and success. That same confluence of art and business first encountered as Moholy-Nagy's student in Chicago helped Charles Niedringhaus secure his rightful spot in the pantheon of American Modernism. And here I was, with a nice selection from his personal library, reading his history like a botanist examining the rings of a redwood tree. But as the most advanced form of hunter and gatherer -- the collector -- I wanted more.

Like every collector (except for possibly Merrill Berman), I thought my primary source material was somewhat ... lacking. I needed to know more about the hierarchy at 247 Ontario Street: who did what, where, when and why. Who was responsible for bringing the doughnuts? There were gaps that needed to be plugged, credit that needed attribution. After a certain point, there is only one avenue left to the Modern seeker -- eBay.

The auction listing titled 1941 Moholy-Nagy ~ School of Design BROCHURE, Bauhaus caught my attention -- an original enrollment form for the 1941 Summer classes in Chicago and Sommonauk, Illinois. Unlike old issues of National Geographic, this is not the kind of ephemera that has been actively preserved. It is rare. And very desirable to certain individuals. I did what I had to do: I bought it.

The Brochure arrived a week later. I tore open the priority envelope and examined the brochure. Let me pause here for a moment to remind you that I am a recovering Graphic Designer. I love examining old books, periodicals and ephemera and tracing my fingertips along the embossed ridges flanking hand-set lines of letterpressed type. I use a 10-X engravers loupe to marvel at crisply-cut halftone plates. In the right context, the production methodology is frequently as significant as the material being presented; you know that whole form and function thing. This was one of those times.

I was the less-than-proud owner of a Canon color copy of a 1941 School of Design Brochure. It was a damn good copy -- full-color on two sides of a glossy oversized sheet trimmed and hand-folded to resemble an original document. Anybody that has ever had their breath taken away by a printed item produced before World War II would not be fooled by the heavy blacks and the weird, off-kilter CMYK replication of spot color and 100% K type. Maybe I'm kidding myself. In terms of technical skill, this was not a bad knock-off; the premeditation literally dripped off the page. Maybe there's a graphic designer or production artist out there who has this wonderful original document and is actively counterfeiting it -- thinking that nobody will know the difference.

If you're out there and come across this post, I can only ask: Why Are You Doing This? I can understand the desire to duplicate $20 bills, food stamps, stock certificates, drivers licenses, etc. But if you took the time to counterfeit the Brochure for Two Summer Sessions of the School of Design in Chicago, ask yourself: don't you have something better to do than attacking our common Design heritage?

IT'S TIME TO SHOW SOME SPINE.

As a passionate fan of modern design, I spend an unhealthy amount of time looking at slickly-produced object catalogues. As a bookseller who specializes in modern design, I confess to obsessively reading the spines of the stacked and shelved books that strategically litter most lifestyle catalog product shots. Eventually a pattern emerged.

I deducted with certainty that all of the prop and decorating perfessionals shop at the same bookstore. And that this particular bookstore never runs out of Hans Wingler's behemoth Bauhaus Slipcased Edition. This is sad for many reasons.

A high-end catalog like DWR retains so many stylists and aesthetes that Nothing is Left to Chance. That's why you can reliably find the Wingler Bauhaus (not yet used as a doorstop), a tasteful assortment of Photography monographs and a few Contemporary Travel Books (Judd, Marfa, et al) in whatever setting needs that extra layer of sophistication. Let's face it -- nothing says Modern quite like a stack of books on the floor. That's what I tell my wife, anyway.

After a DWR photography session is over, it wouldn't surprise me if all the prop books were returned to the shelves in some mid-level cubicle at Pentagram's San Francisco Office. The people at DWR are smart enough to let a creative type select appropriate signifying props for surrounding their furniture and ever-increasing amounts of housewares. I suspect it is easier to get somebody to volunteer selections from their library than it is to get somebody to agree not to bring potato salad to the Company Picnic. People who love books love showing off their books. A good, honest book collection is a mirror of the person who built the collection. The DWR people know all this - they know books speak volumes about where a person has been and where that person is going. I'm okay with that.

When I redesigned this website, I believed there were enough people like me out there who spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at the book spines in the latest DWR catalogs. Hence my Front Page -- form meets function: book spines could visually cue my audience to this websites' essence more efficiently than any Jive Flash presentation. I thought it was a Pentagram-worthy concept.

Like the faceless SF Pentagram team-member, I eagerly raided my booksheleves, volunteering my signifiers and projecting my modern sensibilities. It was just like making a sexy Mix Tape for my college Girlfriend. That girlfried is now my wife and together we had a blast combing our shelves for some books to attract the attention of all those restless, spine studiers out there. You may not care for my website, but you have to agree: my bookshelves are cooler than the ones DWR use.

And we do have a copy of the Wingler book.