GRAPHIC DESIGN IN THE MECHANICAL AGE

Deborah Rothschild, Ellen Lupton and Darra Goldstein

9 x 11 hardcover book with 222 pages and 100 b/w and 100 color plates selected from Merrill C. Berman¹s spectacular private collection of twentieth-century posters, ads, photomontages, and graphic ephemera. All schools of early design are well-represented here: the Russian Constructivists, the Bauhaus, DaDa, American Depression Moderne, Suirrealism, etc. My highest recommendation.

This book showcases over two hundred examples of progressive graphic design from the 1920s and 30s. European, Soviet, and American avant-garde designers and artists of the time, using new technologies of mass production and mass distribution, marketed everything from salad oil and cigarettes to communism, utopian socialism, and the avant-garde itself. These selections from the Berman Collection, most never before shown or reproduced in the United States, include works by well-known artists (Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Cassandre, Man Ray, and others) and by lesser known masters. The book begins by detailing Berman¹s pivotal role in shaping the history of graphic design as he amassed his collection. The authors then investigate the filtering of avant-garde design into mass produced posters and advertisements, the evolution of design production techniques in the Machine Age, and the avant-garde¹s promotion of itself.

This book accompanies an exhibition that opens at the Williams College Museum of Art in April 1998, then travels to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in February 1999, and later to Spain, Japan, and The Henry Museum in Seattle.

Contents:

• Graphic Design In The Mechanical Age: Writing A History
• Dada Networking: How To Forment A Revolution In Graphic Design
• Design And Production In The Mechanical Age
• Design And The Avant-Garde
• The Fate Of The WPA Posters
• Selling An Idea: Modernism And Consumer Cullture
• Design And Commerce: Social Change Politics
• Artists Biographies
• Checklist Of The Exhibition

This book contains work by the following artists: Raoul Hausmann, Giacomo Balla, Herbert Bayer, Lester Beall, Henryk Berlewi, Francis Bernard, Marianne Brandt, Max Burchartz, Jean Carlu, A. M. Cassandre, Charles Coiner, Fortunato Deprero, Walter Dexel, Theo van Doesburg, Cesar Domela, George Grosz, John heartfield, Hannah Hoch, Vilmos Huszar, marcel janco, E. McKnight kauffer, Gustav Klutsis, Bart van der leck, El Lissitzky, Filippo marinetti, Laszlo moholy-Nagy, Farkas molnar, Liobov popova, Man Ray, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Xanti Schawinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, joost Schmidt, paul Schuitema, Kurt Schwitters, Otis Shepherd, the Stenberg Brothers, Varvara Stepanova, ladislav Sutnar, Solomon Teligater, jan Tschichold, Tristan Tzara, Hendrik Werkman, Piet Zwart and many others.

Selected from his superb collection by Merrill Berman himself, this book features a richly diverse group of artists and styles linked by their ³forward-looking² posture and visual ³punch.² All of the major European avant-garde movements, which flourished between the two World Wars, are well-represented. As with Berman¹s entire collection, the exhibition demonstrated a ³personalized² cut through 20th Century visual culture ³authored² by a collector with an extremely keen and knowledgeable eye. Rather than acquiring only important names (although the collection has more than its share of these, as well), Berman has considered the ³aesthetic² aspect of each work and its historical context in deciding whether to add it to his collection. Berman is best known as a collector of graphic design‹both the final printed works and the original art works used in their creation‹and his collection consists of well in excess of 20,000 pieces.

out of stock