Brodovitch Before Bazaar

A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY

Curtis A. Lund

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Dr. Barbara Martinson Dr. Brad Hokanson

June 2020

© 2020 Curtis A. Lund

Images in this dissertation are used in accordance with the College Art Association’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts (2015). Additional permissions, where required, are acknowledged in the Illustrations section.

Quotations from Arnold Newman are used with permission from David Newman, Arnold Newman Studios.

Acknowledgments

This project could not have happened without the kindness, generosity, and support of many, many people.

First, I want to thank my committee members and extended Gopher family: • Barbara Martinson, your mentorship put me on the right path, in so many ways, and I’ll be forever grateful; • Brad Hokanson, for tangoing in to save the day, and for your support and guidance in this last stretch; • Jenn Marshall, for welcoming a stranger from that other campus, for your brilliant writing which has been a guidepost, and for generously sharing your time and talents all along the way; • James Boyd Brent, for your patience (and for talking me down) the first time through, and for helping keep my eye on the art in design; • Lyn Bruin, for teaching me to be a more careful listener, and for modeling that rigor and kindness can go hand-in-hand in the classroom; • Char Klarquist, the best ally and advocate a grad student could ever have asked for; • Marilyn DeLong, for introducing me to the world of material culture studies and showing me that everything I was interested in studying had a name and a home; • Liz Goebel and Hyunjoo Im, for your guidance in getting across the finish line; • and all the faculty in the Department of Design, Housing and Apparel, especially the Graphic Design track, from whom and with whom I’ve learned so much.

The seeds of this project were planted in 2013–2015, with the preparation and installation of Alexey Brodovitch: Art Director at the Goldstein Museum of Design in St. Paul, MN. Huge thanks to Ron Ott, co-curator and researcher and photographer extraordinaire; and to the GMD staff who worked diligently to make our exhibition a success: Jean McElvain, Eunice Haugen, Mary Alice Chaney, Emily Marti, Kathleen Campbell, and Lin Nelson-Mayson. Thanks also to the sponsors and funders of the GMD’s Jerome Joss Research Internship.

Thanks to Marlys McGuire and Amy Gmur, who were instrumental in the 2015 exhibition and in my continuing research. Thanks also to Rachel Cagle and Emilia Kaczynski for their support in translating source materials.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have participated in the UMN Writing Center’s 2018 Dissertation Writing Retreat. Many thanks to Katie Levin, the whole Writing Center crew, and my fellow summer writer-retreaters for the accountability and camaraderie.

An early version of Chapter Two was first presented at “Design and Displacement,” the 2018 international conference of the Design History Society. Many thanks to the organizers of the conference, my co-panelists and moderator, and the attendees.

i Even in this era of Digital Humanities initiatives and growing digitization of archival materials, this study still involved a whole lot of old-fashioned digging. My unending gratitude goes out to the many archivists, librarians, and curators who so often and so generously went out of their way to help me navigate the unnavigable, access the inaccessible, and come to know many of these artifacts up close: at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: archivist Susie Anderson Laquer, who introduced me to William Campbell and knocked down the first domino to set all this in motion; Morgan Little, Registrar of Collections and unearther of treasures and finder of abandoned lens caps; Miriam Cady and the staff of the PMA library and archives; and Kathy Hiesinger, who was as kind a host as she is legendary a curator; at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia: Phoebe Kowalewski, Laura Grutzeck, and especially Sara MacDonald, unfailingly generous and all-knowing;

Steve Galbraith, Curator of the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection, Professor R. Roger Remington, and library special collections staff at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY;

Wendy Scheir of the New School Archives and Special Collections, New York City;

Emily Una Weirich of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ;

Paul Galloway, Architecture & Design Collection Specialist at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; at the New York Public Library: Cara Dellatte, reference archivist; proxy researcher Brice Corder; and the generous staff of the NYPL Manuscripts and Archives division and the Library for the Performing Arts Special Collections division;

Ann Mosher of the Temple University Special Collections Research Center, Philadelphia;

Weckea Dejura Lilly of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia;

Susannah Carroll of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia;

Nicole Westerdahl and Deborah Bauder of the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY;

Nathaniel Parks of the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago;

Sylvie Pitoiset of the Bibliothèque Forney, Paris;

Karyn Hinkle of the Northwestern University Libraries, Evanston, IL;

ii

Katie LaBarbera of the Saint Louis Public Libraries, St Louis, MO;

Vallie Pettersen, president of Paasche Airbrush Co., Kenosha, WI; and the ReclameArsenaal Foundation of Laren, the Netherlands, hosts of the International Advertising and Design DataBase.

Special thanks to the marvelous community of scholars — fellow faculty, staff, and students — at Hamline University; to my generous and supportive co-workers and artists at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, for their encouragement and flexibility throughout my graduate studies; and to all the friends and family and DHA and ArtH classmates who have supported me along the way with their humor, gentle prodding, and sympathetic procrastination.

Thanks to my husband, Benjamin Imker, for allowing Brodovitch such a large presence in our household — mentally and in wall and shelf space — for so many years, and for not immediately divorcing me after I turned our honeymoon itinerary into a string of site visits and research interviews and a conference. At least we found the sparkling water dispenser. Three cheers for “design grandpa”!

iii Dedication

Ad astra, per alia porci.

iv Abstract

Alexey Brodovitch is a figure not well known outside the field of graphic design.

Remembered best for his generation-long tenure at the fashion journal Harper’s Bazaar, he helped usher in a new aesthetic to the world of American magazine design. But who he was outside that narrow frame, and how he rose to such success, has been largely relegated to the margins of design history. The significance of his influence, loudly trumpeted by industry leaders of the generation succeeding him, has since gone quiet.

This dissertation explores the period of Brodovitch’s life and career least explored in historical texts and underrepresented in archives of graphic design history —

Brodovitch before Bazaar. This encompasses, specifically, his rise to prominence in Paris during the 1920s; his revitalization of the Advertising Design program at the

Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts (PMSIA) between 1930 and 1938; and the earliest period of his critically acclaimed work as a freelance artist, designer, and curator in Philadelphia and New York. In finer detail, it examines how Brodovitch’s Paris work — and Brodovitch himself — came to embody the phenomenon of cross-cultural influence and positioned him as an optimal “transmitter” of European Modernist design to the U.S. during the interwar era. It also analyzes Brodovitch’s teaching philosophy and classroom pedagogy, particularly his use of photography and the body of work leading to his only publication, Ballet (1945).

v Table of Contents

List of Figures vii

Chapter 1 1 Brodovitch Before Bazaar: Background, Methodology, and Corrective Historiography

Chapter 2 52 “U.S. Picks Russian to Teach French Commercial Art”: Tracing Cross-Cultural Exchange in Brodovitch’s Interwar Graphic Design

Chapter 3 107 Brodovitch’s Laboratory: Teaching, Making, Experimenting, Breaking Rules

Illustrations 170

Bibliography 192

Appendix: Concluding Statement 206

vi List of Figures

Figure 1 Alexey Brodovitch, La Rotonde, c.1930 p. 11

Figure 2 Alexey Brodovitch, Bal Banal, 1924 13

Figure 3 Alexey Brodovitch, Le Cercle business card, c.1928 14

Figure 4 Alexey Brodovitch, Le joueur de flûte, 1922 18

Figure 5 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled icon painting, 1922 19

Figure 6 Interior of Restaurant Prunier, 2019 27

Figure 7 Alexey Brodovitch, Prunier signage plaque, 1924 27

Figure 8 Alexey Brodovitch, Prunier menu cover, 1924 / 2019 27

Figure 9 Alexey Brodovitch, Composition aux poissons, 1924 28

Figure 10 Pavilion Pomone, 1925 29

Figure 11 Becker Fils boutique, 1925 31

Figure 12 Alexey Brodovitch, catalogs for Donnet, c.1928 33

Figure 13 Alexey Brodovitch, La trapeziste, 1928 34

Figure 14 Alexey Brodovitch, engraved galalith print, 1928 34

Figure 15 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled design, c.1930 34

Figure 16 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled design, 1929 34

Figure 17 Advertisement in Advertising Arts, 1934 34

Figures 18–19 Alexey Brodovitch, illustrations from Monsieur de Bougrelon, 1928 34

Figure 20 Façade of Aux Trois Quartiers, c.1929 35

Figure 21 Alexey Brodovitch, catalog cover for Aux Trois Quartiers, 1930 35

Figure 22 Alexey Brodovitch, poster for Bieres Veuve J. Petit & Fils, c.1926–30 48

Figure 23 uncredited advertisement in Bulletin, 1930 53

Figure 24 Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for Cunard Line, 1930 53

Figure 25 Alexey Brodovitch, wrapper for Le Ramayana, 1927 80

Figure 26 Alexey Brodovitch, illustration from A Brief History of Moscovia, 1928 81

vii Figure 27 Alexey Brodovitch, frontispiece from A Brief History of Moscovia, 1928 p. 81

Figure 28 Vilmos Huszar, poster for Miss Blanche cigarettes, 1926 84

Figure 29 Jacob Jongert, drawn alphabet, 1929 85

Figure 30 Alexey Brodovitch, construction barrier for Printemps, c.1927 85

Figure 31 uncredited student design, c.1932–1933 86

Figure 32 Alexey Brodovitch, cover of Aquatone Today, c.1933 87

Figure 33 Alexey Brodovitch, inside spread of Aquatone Today, c.1933 87

Figure 34 Alexey Brodovitch, fold-out spread of Aquatone Today, c.1933 87

Figure 35 Alexey Brodovitch, “Tail-piece for a work on the modern aesthetic,” 1930 88

Figure 36 Alexey Brodovitch, Plate 1, from Dessins, 1930 89

Figure 37 Alexey Brodovitch, Plate 2, from Dessins, 1930 89

Figure 38 Alexey Brodovitch, Graphisme, 1930 91

Figure 39 Alexey Brodovitch, cover of exhibition invitation, 1930 91

Figure 40 Google ngram graphs for “graphisme,” 1800–2000 93

Figure 41 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled illustration, 1930 99

Figure 42 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled illustration, 1930 99

Figure 43 page from Arts et Metiers Graphiques, July 1930 99

Figure 44 detail of page from Arts et Metiers Graphiques, July 1930 99

Figure 45 Alexey Brodovitch, gallery guide for Design for the Machine, 1932 100

Figure 46 page from Modern Publicity, January 1930 100

Figure 47 Alexey Brodovitch, detail of brochure for Design Engineers, c.1933–34 100

Figure 48 Alexey Brodovitch, Schaum beer poster concept, 1933 101

Figure 49 Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for New Jersey Zinc Co., 1934 101

Figure 50 Alexey Brodovitch, cover of Advertising Arts, September 1934 102

Figure 51 Alexey Brodovitch, Chapel, from 3 Poems, 1935 102

Figure 52 Alexey Brodovitch, Mechanism, from 3 Poems, 1935 102

Figure 53 Alexey Brodovitch, October, from 3 Poems, 1935 102

viii Figure 54 Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for The Whispering Ghost, 1932 p. 103

Figure 55 Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Dead Man’s Music, 1932 103

Figure 56 Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Fuller’s Earth, 1932 103

Figure 57 Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for The Sound of Footsteps, 1931 103

Figure 58 Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for The Perils and Fortune of the Duke of Osuna, 1932 103

Figure 59 Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Dead Mrs. Stratton, 1933 103

Figures 60–63 Alexey Brodovitch, advertisements for Climax Molybdenum, 1935–36 104

Figure 64 Alexey Brodovitch, Steel, c.1933–37 105

Figure 65 page from Paasche Airbrush Co. catalog, July 1938 105

Figure 66 William Campbell, handwritten note on back of mounted photo, 1936 121

Figures 67–68 Alexey Brodovitch, from Ballet, 1945 156

Figures 69–70 Alexey Brodovitch, from Ballet, 1945 157

Figures 71–72 Alexey Brodovitch, from Ballet, 1945 161

Figure 73 Alexey Brodovitch, Choreartium, from Ballet, 1945 162

Figure 74 page spread from Infinity, July 1965 164

Figure 75 William Campbell, thumbnail proof photos, 1936 166

Figures 76–77 William Campbell, untitled photos, 1936 166

Figure 78 Ben Rose, photo of Al Gold and Sol Mednick, 1936 167

Figure 79 Ben Rose, photo of William Campbell, 1936 167

Figure 80 Ben Rose, photo of William Campbell sketching, 1936 167

ix Chapter One Brodovitch Before Bazaar: Background, Methodology, and Corrective Historiography

“Take everything I say with a grain of salt.” — Alexey Brodovitch, 19611

Alexey Brodovitch is a figure not well known outside the field of graphic design.

Remembered best for his generation-long tenure at the fashion journal Harper’s Bazaar, he helped usher in a new aesthetic to the world of American magazine design. But who he was outside that narrow frame, and how he rose to such success, has been largely relegated to the margins of design history. The power of his influence, loudly trumpeted by industry leaders of the generation succeeding him, has since gone quiet.

In this dissertation I set out to explore the period of Brodovitch’s life and career least explored in existing texts — Brodovitch before Bazaar. This encompasses, in particular, his rise to prominence in Paris during the 1920s; his revitalization of the

Advertising Design program at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts

(PMSIA) between 1930 and 1938; and the earliest period of his critically acclaimed work as a freelance artist, designer, and curator in Philadelphia and New York. This era of

Brodovitch’s career is underrepresented in historical texts and in historical archives of graphic design; my goal in this study is to help contribute to a more thorough understanding of Brodovitch’s legacy and lasting influence. At the same time, I am conscious of the role Brodovitch’s own storytelling has played in painting our current understanding of his history; my methodological objective is to maintain rigorous

1 quoted in Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 92.

1 historiographical practice by grounding my own interpretations in reliable and verifiable scholarly sources and firsthand object analysis which may, at times, corroborate

Brodovitch’s own accounts and/or more contemporary biographical writings, and may at other times expose inconsistencies therein. Archival research is, essentially, detective work; ultimately, as King warns, “our forays into the archives, no matter how meticulous and exhaustive, only ever yield partial understandings.”2 So in the process of putting this puzzle together I strive to be open and transparent as to where pieces remain missing.

The monographs and biographies that do consider his work prior to Bazaar invariably begin their visual timelines with his 1924 Bal Banal poster (fig. 2).

Particularly valuable to this study, then, are two works that predate Bal Banal, representing the earliest known artifacts of Brodovitch’s artistry: a previously unpublished 1922 religious icon painting (fig. 5), demonstrating Brodovitch’s interest in that long-standing Russian tradition; and a 1922 pochoir design, Le joueur de flûte (fig.

4), 500 prints of which were included in a limited edition 1924 Belgian compendium on postcard collecting. Also never before seen in scholarly record is Brodovitch’s 1924

Composition aux Poissons (fig. 9), a gouache concept study or maquette which marked the beginning of his famed work for the Restaurant Prunier.

Background: Early Life

What biographers know of Brodovitch’s upbringing and his early life in Russia is known primarily from his own storytelling. His two most comprehensive first-person recollections were recorded toward the end of his life: a 1967 interview with Allen Porter

2 King, “Working with/in the Archives,” 20.

2 published in the February 1968 issue of Camera magazine, and an undated3 interview whose transcript is held in the George R. Bunker Papers of the Smithsonian Archives of

American Art.4 By these accounts, Brodovitch was born at the end of the nineteenth century at a remote hunting lodge in northern Russia near the Finnish border, though official documents place his birth in Ogolitchi, a rural village in a region that had at various times been part of Poland (Brodovitch’s father is of Polish descent), Russia, and now Belarus. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, his family moved to Moscow due to his father’s assignment to a military hospital there. Shortly thereafter, Brodovitch’s maternal grandfather died, passing down ownership of a number of family businesses in

Russia’s capital city, St. Petersburg; the family moved there sometime after 1905, and remained until the revolutions of 1917 forced them into exile.5

Brodovitch’s childhood was, by his own account, comfortably well-off: his father was a doctor and military general, continued operation of the inherited businesses brought additional wealth, and the children were educated in highly regarded schools.

Russian/Slavic scholar Leonid Livak observes a strong historic connection to France and

French culture among the Russian aristocracy6; this connection was evident within the

Brodovitch family. The family regularly wintered in France; they employed a French

3 Identified only as “Hospital interview transcript,” the date and location are not specified, and the interviewer is identified only as “Voice.” Judging by the content, the interview took place sometime between 1961 (after his wife Nina’s death) and 1966. He was hospitalized a number of times during this period, sometimes for months at a time; see, for example, Brodovitch, “Letter to Charles Coiner, June 17, 1963.” 4 Bunker, Dean of the Philadelphia College of Art (formerly the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art), had gathered a variety of materials on Brodovitch for a retrospective exhibition, at which the school planned to honor Brodovitch with an honorary degree. Unfortunately, Brodovitch died shortly before the exhibition was to be completed. For further detail, see Bunker, Alexey Brodovitch and His Influence. 5 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 6. 6 Livak, How It Was Done in Paris, 5.

3 governess, and the children were taught French as a first language.7 Hassell notes that

Brodovitch’s generation represents the end of this era of strong affinity between Russia and France — “the last generation to share [such] intellectual and cultural values with western Europeans”8 — as the subsequent Soviet government changed the relationship between these powers significantly.

Largely rural and agricultural through the 18th and 19th centuries, Russia’s industrial revolution and corresponding modernization came relatively late in comparison to other European nations. But when it came, it came quickly, particularly to urban centers such as St. Petersburg. At the turn of the century St. Petersburg was Russia’s largest metropolis, comparable in population to Chicago and, notes Hermitage curator

Vincent Boele, “as luxurious as Berlin, London, Paris, or Vienna.”9 Residents and visitors enjoyed movie houses, grand department stores, recital halls and art galleries; upper-class homes featured electric power, indoor plumbing and water supply, and telephone service. On the city’s streets pedestrians dodged automobiles and motorcycles, while storefronts beckoned with lit windows and loud typography; within the first decade of the 20th century, a system of electric streetcars was added, and citizens could witness airplanes flying overhead.10

By his own account Brodovitch was never formally trained in art. There were, however, early influences: biographers note that his mother Ludmilla was a hobbyist painter, and Brodovitch recalled that his father gifted him his first camera in Moscow in

7 Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, 15. 8 Hassell, Russian Refugees in France and the United States between the World Wars, 2. 9 quoted in Gosling, “How the Imagery of the Russian Revolution Married Ideology, Politics and Progressive Graphic Design,” n.p. 10 Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920, 46,106; Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, 11.

4 1905.11 During the time of Brodovitch’s childhood, the fine and performing arts in Russia were experiencing a “Silver Age,” as historians have termed the period between the turn of the twentieth century and the revolutions of 1917. As members of the aristocracy, it is likely that his family would have been consumers of a wide variety of cultural opportunities and performances; a young Alexey Brodovitch would certainly have had the opportunity to take in performances of traditional Russian ballet, an artform that would continue to fascinate him and inspire his work throughout his career. Other aspects of Russian popular culture beyond the typical fine and performing arts would have also been widely available to Brodovitch, such as wrestling and boxing matches, gymnastics and acrobatics exhibitions, and circuses.12 Brodovitch’s Le Trapiziste (fig. 13) pictures an aerial performer flying high above crowded bleachers in a striped tent; the work’s dedication, to his brother Nicolas, suggests that perhaps the imaginative print may have been inspired by a shared memory from their childhood.

Like any city in the midst of technological and cultural transitions, the city’s visual culture would have been a pastiche of styles old and new. For centuries, the primary vehicle of Russian mass communication was the lubok (plural: lubki) — a term inclusive of a variety of types of printing and printmaking, but predominantly seen as woodcut prints, often printed in black and then hand-colored.13 Originating in the seventeenth century, these prints, cheap and plentiful, would decorate the walls of less- affluent households in place of expensive hand-painted icons or other types of religious

11 Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, 11; Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 1. 12 Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920, 285. 13 see Rosenfeld, Defining Russian Graphic Arts.

5 art.14 But the lubok format would grow to include secular topics as well, including visual interpretations of folktales and fables, current events, and political propaganda.15 Even as late as 1900, only around half of the Russian population were literate,16 so a primarily visual method of communicating was still crucial for reaching the broad populace, and lubki maintained a significant presence in Russian visual culture of the Silver Age.

At the same time, St. Petersburg was the major metropolitan center of Russia and, just like any European cultural center, one found many of the hallmark sites and events of early avant-garde modernist expression: small theatres, cabarets, and cinemas, often dedicated to the presentation of experimental works. Cultural transfer and influence from western Europe was also evident in many of the work being presented; indeed, many artists spent significant time in Paris and other cultural centers, studying art and/or socializing with other artists and movements.17 Well before the Bolshevik Revolution and more widely known Russian/Soviet art movements such as Constructivism and

Suprematism, artists among the Russian avant-garde were actively debating new methods and approaches in artmaking. Such debates often took shape as exhibitions and salons, such as those organized around the turn of the century by Serge Diaghilev, founder and publisher of the avant-garde journal Mir iskusstva (World of Art; est. c.1899).18 In terms of commercial art, St. Petersburg was also on the leading edge as a major center of the printing, publishing, and advertising industries — including the relatively new

14 Norris, “Tsarist Russia, Lubok Style,” 102. 15 Norris, 102. 16 Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920, 34. 17 Bowlt, “Art in Exile,” 216. 18 Sharp, “The Russian Avant-Garde and Its Audience: Moscow, 1913,” 95.

6 phenomenon of outdoor advertising and the billboard.19

St. Petersburg thus represented a unique hybridity — at once embodying the most traditional and the most modern aspects of Russian identity. Roman and Marquardt note that forward-looking Russian artists had been exploiting this and parallel dualities —

“nationalism and internationalism, aestheticism and primitivism” — and mixing homegrown expressions and foreign influences since the mid-1800s.20 This experimentation continued into the Silver Age: the typically coarse markmaking of the lubok, for example, made it a natural choice for exploring bold graphic shapes and simplification and abstraction of subjects, such as in the Cubo-Futurist imagery of Olga

Rozinova, Mikhail Larionov, and Natalia Goncharova.21 We will later see evidence in

Brodovitch’s early work of influence from all of these areas -- the traditional and folk art practices of the religious icon and the lubok, the experimental spirit of Silver Age painters and printmakers, and the purposeful blending of traditional and cutting-edge techniques.

Wartime and Flight from Russia

Upon the mobilization of Russian troops in World War I, Brodovitch’s father deployed to head a military hospital unit. Young Alexey also desired to join Russian forces and twice ran away from school — he uses the term “escaped”22 — to enlist.

Twice he was returned home; the second time he was enrolled at the Corps de Pages, a

19 Rosenfeld, Defining Russian Graphic Arts, 16–18. 20 Roman and Marquardt, The Avant-Garde Frontier, 1. 21 Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920, 288–89; Mayer, “The Impact of the Ballets Russes on Design in the West, 1909-1914,” 16. 22 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 2.

7 military academy. In one account, Brodovitch claims to have attended the Corps for four years23; by another account, only one24; by yet another, the war had only been underway for eight months when he graduated.25 In any case, upon leaving the Corps, Brodovitch recounts joining an Imperial hussar (cavalry) regiment based in the Caucasus region near the Black Sea. He mentions battles at Podolsk, near Moscow, and along the Eastern Front in Romania.

Brodovitch notes that by the end of 1917 the tenor of the fighting had changed; now Russians were battling amongst themselves. A civil war had broken out, pitting the

“White Army” (loyalists to the pre-revolution government of Tsar [Emperor] Nicolas II) against the “Red Army” (Bolshevik revolutionary fighters intent on overthrowing the government). Brodovitch’s regiment found themselves on the defense; he recounts being wounded in a battle in 1918, and evacuated to a hospital in the Russian city of

Kislovodsk, just north of the Caucasus Mountains. Late in 1918 the White Army was forced to flee, outnumbered and outgunned.

Brodovitch characterized the subsequent events as “a long period of miracles”26 and a “story [that] reads like a Hollywood film.”27 Brodovitch, his brother and fellow soldier Nicolas, and a small cohort made their way to the Black Sea port of

Novorossiysk. It was during this escape, Brodovitch notes, when he met his future wife,

Nina, who was helping treat and transport the wounded. Then, through a number of

23 Brodovitch, 2. 24 Smith, “Notes for ‘Alexey Brodovitch and the Emigre Mind’ [Presentation at Art Center College of Design],” 1. 25 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 19. 26 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 4. 27 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 19.

8 extraordinary coincidences, Brodovitch was reunited first with his father (by that time serving on a White Army ship stationed in the Black Sea), then with his mother and other relatives, as the group fled Russia via Constantinople (now Istanbul) and other

Mediterranean ports westward toward France.28

Montparnasse

Brodovitch and his family were among a significant community of Russian exiles who would come to rebuild their lives in France; estimates range from 150,000 to upwards of 400,000 exiles settling across France.29 The family disembarked at Nice, on the southern coast of France, and made their way to Paris (with the exception of Nina, who would join them a few months later). There, having just escaped one type of revolution, Brodovitch found himself at the epicenter of another: an explosion of vastly diverse artistic movements from across Europe was converging in Paris, under the banner of “Modernism.” Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had already seen radical shifts in artistic expression; the adoption of new technologies such as photography, photomontage, and filmmaking; experimental approaches to typography; and the blending of commercial art — posters, advertisements, and branding — with fine art. The

1920s exploded with further aesthetic revolution: daring visual experimentation, dynamic visual compositions, and an emphasis on innovation and looking forward. There is no one definition of “Modernism,” no one approach or set of tenets agreed upon across the various movements all claiming to be in service to it; curator Robert Storr suggests we

28 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 3–5; Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 19, 25. 29 Cahan, “Russia’s Former Ruling Classes at Home and in Exile,” 195.

9 consider Modernism an “omnibus label” applicable to this “wide range of aesthetic tendencies” rather than struggle to define it in terms of what it must include or exclude.30

This “big tent” approach serves a study of Brodovitch best, as he would go on to borrow and absorb influence from every possible source, and never limited his expression or affiliation to any one narrower definition.

By all accounts, Brodovitch thrived in the diverse artistic milieu of Paris. With no formal background in art or design, his entry into these fields certainly suggests he was greatly inspired by what — and whom — he found himself surrounded. Many of his early artistic opportunities can be traced to interpersonal connections made within the tight-knit

Russian exile community based along Boulevard du Montparnasse. In Montparnasse,

Russian emigres established a “cultural microcosm”31; the neighborhood was the center of “political, literary, artistic [and] religious life of the émigrés.”32 A wide variety of

Russian-language journals and newspapers — at its peak nearly 7033 — were published in Paris, and Montparnasse cafés La Rotonde and Le Dome (or Cafe du Dome) brought people together for what may have been the most important pastime of this era:

“passionate, inspired talk.”34 Montparnasse historians Billy Klüver and Julie Martin paint a picture of the importance — for artists in particular — of such camaraderie:

Artists of all nationalities met and mixed daily at the Dome and the Rotonde, talked endlessly, became friends, and created a sense of community and common commitment to a life in art. Most of these artists had no intention of returning to their home countries; and they became to each other the closest thing most of

30 Storr, Modern Art Despite Modernism [Exhibition Catalog], 25. 31 Rubins, Russian Montparnasse, 2. 32 Obolensky, Bread of Exile, 211. 33 Rubins, Russian Montparnasse, 2; Yanovsky, Elysian Fields, 295–98. 34 Yanovsky, Elysian Fields, 32.

10 them had to a family.35

From their apartment at 19 Boulevard de Port-Royal,36 Brodovitch was just a brief stroll from these cafés. An engraving of the facade of La Rotonde (fig. 1), published in 1930 in

German design journal Gebrauchsgraphik, suggests Brodovitch’s lasting fondness for the venue.37

One of the most significant figures in the establishment of the Montparnasse artistic community was Marie Vassilieff, a Russian artist who had emigrated a decade prior to the revolution. Around 1907, she studied under painter Henri Matisse at his eponymous Académie Matisse, but soon left to establish two art academies of her own: first, in 1911, in partnership with other Russian-born artists, she led l’Académie Russe.

After disagreements with her partners (including being accused, then acquitted, of embezzlement), she split off and in 1912 founded l'Académie Vassilieff.38 Her academy would last only a few years; in late 1914 / early 1915 she converted the space to a canteen, essentially a soup kitchen providing relief for artists — Russian and non — left destitute by World War I.39 Most importantly, in both of its iterations, Vassilieff's institutions created space for conviviality and community-building. She hosted musical performances, lectures, and exhibitions by avant-garde artists working in these new movements, including Marc Chagall, Fernand Leger, Jean Cocteau, Georges Braque,

Amadeo Modigliani, and many others, helping to proliferate radical new philosophies of

35 Klüver and Martin, Kiki’s Paris, 10. 36 Société des artistes indépendants, Catalogue de La 33me Exposition, 33. 37 Dupuy, “A. Brodovitch: A Graphic Alchemist,” 45. 38 Bernès and Noël, Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957), 50–53; Blume, “Marie Vassilieff: A Splash of Montparnasse Color”; Richard, “Les poupées de Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957),” 64. 39 Bernès and Noël, Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957), 20–21, 63–65; Klüver and Martin, Kiki’s Paris, 71.

11 expression and experimentation. During wartime, Paris bars and restaurants had to observe a nightly curfew; as Vassilieff’s canteen was legally considered a private club, the curfew did not apply and gatherings would often stretch into the early hours.40

Vassilieff's canteen ceased operations permanently in January 1917,41 prior to

Brodovitch’s arrival in Paris, but nevertheless the two would meet, through the Union des

Artistes Russes (UdAR). The organization, which took shape in various ways between

1917 and 1921, was founded as a “mutual aid society” for Russian artists in Paris.42 The group’s founders included Vassilieff, Ilya Zdanevich, David Widhopff, Mikhail

Larionov, and Natalia Goncharova — all avant-garde artists of Russian origin who lived and worked in Paris (though none, and this distinction would become important later, had arrived as refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution).43 Involvement was not restricted to

Russian artists alone — the organization’s efforts were supported by numerous non-

Russian members of the Montparnasse artist circle, including Pablo Picasso, Jean

Cocteau, Andre Derain, Fernand Leger, Francis Picabia, and Tristan Tzara. The Union organized a number of exhibitions to promote its members’ work,44 but the group was primarily known for its massive parties — immersive experiences that were part costume ball, part poetry recital, theatrical performance, fashion show, concert, dance performance, and all-around spectacle — which the artists considered not mere fundraisers but “avant-garde works of art themselves, and intended that attendees

40 Egger, Vassilieff, 41–42; Klüver and Martin, Kiki’s Paris, 71. 41 Bernès and Noël, Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957), 79. 42 Bibliotheque Nationale de France, “Union Des Artistes Russes.” 43 Gayraud, “Russian Avant-Garde Groups and Journals in Paris (1920-1940),” 66; Egger, Vassilieff, 116. 44 Richard, “Les poupées de Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957),” 65.

12 ‘participat[e] in Modernity in the making’.”45 UdAR artists were responsible for all aspects of decor, costume, promotions, and programming. One such event provided the opportunity for one of Brodovitch’s earliest high-profile designs: his proposal for the poster for 1924’s Bal Banal (fig. 2) was selected above other competitors, including

Picasso, and was produced as a lithograph in great quantities to be seen around the city.

The closeness of the Montparnasse artist community facilitated many meaningful connections including, in 1921, fellow emigre Alexandre Alexieff.46 Alexieff’s early life was, in some regards, quite parallel to Brodovitch’s: he was raised speaking French, attended a cadet school in St. Petersburg, served in the White Army during the Russian

Civil War, and in retreat, made his way to Paris. Alexeieff arrived in Paris in 1921 and, like Brodovitch, first took a job painting sets for theatres.47 Both started their families around the same time: Alexeieff’s daughter, Svetlana, born in 1923; Alexey and Nina’s son Nikita born the following year. Both men were largely self-taught, though Alexeieff had more formal instruction in his early school years.48 Both men took up printmaking, and found great success illustrating books in the blossoming limited-edition fine-press publishing market — Brodovitch’s first book illustrations appeared in editions published in 1927, Alexeieff’s in 1926. Brodovitch and Alexeieff also shared billing in June 1928 with a joint show of their illustrative prints at Galerie Povolotsky49 — a Left Bank gallery which was supportive of the efforts of UdAR and of avant-garde artists generally50 —

45 Richard, 70, quoting historian Bernard Houri. 46 Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, 18. 47 Kiblitsky, Petrova, and Allende-Blin, Russian Paris, 100. 48 Hofstede, “Alexandre Alexeïeff and the Art of Illustration,” 11–12. 49 Remington, Smith, and Cattaruzza, The Enduring Legacy of Alexey Brodovitch, 24. 50 Gee, Dealers, Critics and Collectors of Modern Painting, 74.

13 and prints by both men were published in the compendium Paris 1928, published by the

Librairie des Arts Decoratifs. Around this time (c. 1927-28), the two men would join together, along with illustrator and photographer Roger Parry, to form Le Cercle, a creative firm primarily providing advertising design services.51 The group considered themselves, in their own words, an “association for the study of graphic problems”

[Association pour l'Etude de Problemes Graphiques] (fig. 3) — an interesting articulation of design philosophy that I argue is an important precursor to Brodovitch’s later philosophies and teaching methods.

The Ballets Russes

As Brodovitch became enmeshed into the Montparnasse community, each new connection inevitably led to others, generating a network of opportunities for the young artist. One opportunity in particular would influence his work for decades to come: an invitation to work for one of the most influential cultural forces in Paris, Serge

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

The year 1920 marked the Brodovitch family’s arrival in France; however, it’s unclear precisely when in 1920 they may have arrived, or how immediately they continued their journey from Nice to Paris. Thus, the exact chronology of Brodovitch’s involvement with the Ballets Russes necessarily involves an element of guesswork. By one account Brodovitch suggests that he began working with the company in 1920:

[Brodovitch:] I was twenty or twenty-five -- something like that. [Interviewer:] 1920? [B:] 1920, yes. [I:] You were older than that then.

51 Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, 30; Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France, 73.

14 [B:] Yes, a little older maybe. The first job I had was executing decor for Allegry [sic]... Just by Russian connection I met Allegry. Allegry was executor of the decor [for the Ballets Russes]... I got something like seven dollars a day.52

The “Allegry” mentioned in the interview was Oreste Allegri Sr., a fellow native of St. Petersburg and “chief decorator” of that city’s Imperial Theatre prior to the revolution.53 Allegri began working for Diaghilev as a set designer and scene painter upon the company’s founding in 1909; he is credited for the sets for Le Pavillon d’Armide, which premiered as part of their inaugural season.54

In a conflicting account, Brodovitch recollects he had spent his first “three or four months” in Paris working as a house painter.55 According to this timeline, even if his family had arrived in Paris at the very beginning of 1920, he could not have worked under Allegri until after the launch of the 1920 touring season, which began in February of that year. Joining the company in preparation for their 1921 season is more credible also as he is more consistent in one additional detail: that Nina did not arrive in Paris, due to visa issues, until several months after him. Most accounts wherein he recalls working as a house painter also mention the fact that Nina was working at that same time as a seamstress; thus, if Nina were with him at that time. it’s most likely he had been in Paris for at least several months before engaging with the ballet company.

Regardless of his start date, his work painting sets for the company allowed him to continue building his professional and artistic networks. Later in the same exchange

52 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 5–6. 53 Lyckyj, “‘Come out from behind the Pre-Cambrian Shield’: The Politics of Memory and Identity in the Art of Paraskeva Clark,” 337. 54 Pritchard, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929: When Art Danced with Music, 231. 55 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 25.

15 quoted above, Brodovitch mentions meeting several high-profile artists during this time, including Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Henri Matisse, and Igor Stravinsky. He claims to have met these men through his work with the Ballets Russes,56 but the timeline makes it more likely that he met Matisse and Derain socially, rather than working with them.

Matisse designed the sets, costumes and curtain for the company’s February 1920 production of Le Chant du Rossignol, but is not credited for any subsequent designs, so in all probability any production work for Matisse was completed before Brodovitch came on board. Derain‘s credits include sets and costumes for productions in 1919 and 1926, but none between those years, so Brodovitch undoubtedly did not work on any of

Derain’s designs.57 Picasso designed sets and costumes for Pulcinella, which premiered in May 1920, as well as for the 1921 season’s Cuadro Flamenco. Igor Stravinsky composed music for one production in the 1920 season (Le Chant du Rossignol), none in the 1921 season, and two (Le Renard and Mavra) in the 1922 season.58 This timing suggests that Brodovitch may have worked directly with these two artists. During this time, Brodovitch may have also had the opportunity to work directly with Russian artists

Mikhail Larionov, Leon Bakst (both active during the 1921 season), Natalia Goncharova,

Alexandre Benois, and Boris Kochno (each commissioned for the 1922 season). It is possible that he met Larionov and Goncharova through the ballet, and that they encouraged him to become involved in UdAR, if he hadn’t already joined by that time.

56 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 5–6. 57 Library of Congress, Music Division, “Timeline of Ballets Russes.” 58 Library of Congress, Music Division.

16 It is unclear how long Brodovitch worked for the company. Some biographers describe it as only a short while,59 but none of Brodovitch’s own accounts, nor the company’s archival records, specify precisely. What is certain is that in 1923, the company moved its headquarters from Paris to Monte Carlo, making it improbable that

Brodovitch would have remained in their employ. So the 1922 season was likely

Brodovitch’s last direct contact with the company in Paris. (He would reengage with the company in the U.S. more than a decade later; see Chapter 3.)

Early Artworks: Influence and Experimentation

While executing others’ designs for the Ballets Russes, Brodovitch was also beginning to make his own artwork, exploring and experimenting with numerous techniques and mediums. His earliest documented works were easel paintings. In what was likely the first public presentation of his artwork, Brodovitch submitted three paintings to the 1922 Salon des Independants: two portraits, and a still life.60 The Salon was unjuried and open to any artists who could pay the small entry fee.61 This resulted in a massive, sprawling exhibition — the number of artworks in the 1922 exhibit totaled nearly 3,800 — and yet Brodovitch’s work was noticed by art critic Gustave Kahn. In his review Kahn remarked on the great diversity of new talent — “all these young artists of such different temperaments, cultures and expressions” — and amongst some 28 artists

59 Grundberg, Alexey Brodovitch, 35; Remington, Smith, and Cattaruzza, The Enduring Legacy of Alexey Brodovitch, 24. 60 Société des artistes indépendants, Catalogue de La 33me Exposition. 61 Klüver and Martin, Kiki’s Paris, 386.

17 mentioned by name, he included an appreciation of Brodovitch’s “vibrant” [éclatantes] still life.62

Though Brodovitch’s submissions to the Salon are not known to survive today, two other works from 1922 do. Interestingly, these two early works both illustrate

Brodovitch’s interest in melding his Russian heritage with the influences of modern art prevalent in Paris during this time. Specifically, influence of two Russian artistic traditions can be seen in these works. The first, mentioned earlier, is the lubok print.

Though evidence of the tradition’s influence is perhaps stronger in Brodovitch’s later etchings and engravings, it can be seen in certain characteristics here — especially, in the case of figure 4, in his simplification and abstraction of imagery, his use of line, silhouette, and solid shapes, and his restraint to flat solid colors. This work is likely

Brodovitch’s first published print: in 1924, historian Lionel Renieu published a compendium on the history of illustrated postcards [la carte postale illustrée], in which he describes in detail many of the printing techniques, common and uncommon, used in the production of such cards. An example of each printing technique was included; representing pochoir was a card entitled “Le joueur de flûte” (fig. 4): a figure drawn in outline using multiple bright colors, attributed to Brodovitch and dated “22” in the lower left corner.

Pochoir is a historical printmaking technique — “older than type itself,” suggests

Tolmer63 — which was reinvigorated in France during the first decades of the 20th century. The pochoir technique is similar to lubok (woodcut relief) printing in that

62 Kahn, “L’exposition Des Indépendants,” 492. 63 Tolmer, Mise En Page, 65.

18 imagery is created to be printed as a single color; designs using multiple colors require a separate component — for pochoir, a separate stencil; for relief, a separate block — for each color used, a prepress process called color separation. Each color separation is cut from cardboard or thin metal to create the stencil, then color is applied by hand to build each print layer by layer.64 Due to the labor required, pochoir printing was costlier than other more automated techniques such as chromolithography.65

The second Russian artistic tradition referenced in these works is icon painting.

Russian artists have embraced the religious icon format since the first millennium; artists of Brodovitch’s generation, including Marc Chagall and Natalia Goncharova, kept the tradition alive in their own work. Brodovitch, too, valued the tradition; he displayed icons in his homes66 and created at least one of his own: a 1922 painting of a saint beleaguered by serpents and monsters, outside a church with a traditional Russian Orthodox cross atop its spire (fig. 5). Certain characteristics such as the unrealistic depiction of depth and flattening of volumes, highly stylized figures, and use of gold all suggest a very traditional approach to icon painting inspired by (or, indeed, in practice since) medieval or Romanesque painters and illuminators.

To better understand the stories being told in these works, the content can be analyzed iconographically. The subjects of traditional lubok prints were often based in

Russian folklore and children’s tales. Several such folk tales include a shepherd boy, as depicted by Brodovitch: in some, he plays his flute to herd sheep, in others to woo a

64 Lamond, “Le Pochoir, une Specificite Francaise,” 15. 65 Calahan and Zachary, Fashion and the Art of Pochoir, 6–8. 66 see, for example, Dewolf, Portrait of Brodovitch at Le Thor, 1971; reproduced in Remington, Smith, and Cattaruzza, The Enduring Legacy of Alexey Brodovitch, 29; Icons were also noted at his Sagaponack, Long Island home at the time of a 1958 fire; see Prohaska, “Of Horses and Heroes,” II–6.

19 young maiden, and in another to enchant a scheming farmer (somewhat similar to the better-known legend of the Pied Piper). The figure in Brodovitch’s pochoir print, the flute-player, could be any one of these characters. The style of illustration is childlike, using basic lines and shapes to create flat, filled or silhouetted forms. Details such as the boy’s hands are simplified and heavily abstracted, perhaps in part as a stylistic choice but perhaps also as a function of the pochoir method: very fine lines and details would have been difficult to cut and even more difficult to successfully print. The yellow pigment has bled out into the substrate; the other pigments, however, have remained stable, and nearly

100 years later the colors remain bright and vibrant.

Though the two images share certain characteristics — the flute/trumpets are rendered nearly identically in both images, for example, and there is some similarity in the simplification and basic geometry of the faces — the scene in figure 5 is much more complex. Throughout its long history, Russian icon painting often revisits common common subjects and themes; the presence of a man and a dragon-like animal in figure 5 leads one to think of St. George, one of the most popular subjects of Russian icon painting. However, St. George is traditionally depicted as youthful, and our subject appears quite old. Also, depictions of St. George almost always capture the victorious moment of slaying the dragon; the mood of this painting is quite different. Other references — the seven trumpets emerging from the background, the seven heads of the beast in the foreground — point instead to the Biblical prophecy of the Apocalypse. It follows, then, that the figure may be John of Patmos, credited as author of the Book of

Revelation. John is pictured in a number of apocalyptic illustrations and tapestries, particularly those of Anglo-French origin, often holding a book and writing his prophecy

20 as the scene plays out in front of him.67 In Brodovitch’s icon, John is not just seeing but experiencing the prophecy, becoming physically entangled with the monsters in his vision. This approach — disturbing the boundary between the “real” world and the world of dreams — is a signature of Surrealism, an artistic movement centered in Paris that was still nascent in 1922.

Brodovitch, the Surrealist?

Though not considered to have officially formed until 1924 with the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto, the spirit of the movement had evolved from the preceding Dada movement (c. 1915), and the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud

(c. 1895).68 The term “surrealism” was coined by poet Guillaume Apolinnaire, in reference to a 1917 ballet, Parade, written for the Ballets Russes by Jean Cocteau and

Eric Satie, with contributions by Pablo Picasso.69 The term suggests the ability of art to channel experiences and meaning that push beyond the limitations of our rational world, the “waking state.”70 This interest in engaging with the unconscious realm of dreams also manifests itself formally, in bizarre imagery and peculiar approaches to space and perspective.

Both of the works analyzed here demonstrate influence from traditional Russian techniques, as described, but also influences from Surrealism that were not typical of those traditional approaches: e.g. penetration of the boundary between the “real” and

67 Emmerson, Apocalypse Illuminated, 114, 126, 150. 68 Baum, “The Surrealist Revolution,” 31; Pierre, “To Be or Not to Be Surrealist,” 37. 69 Breton, Manifeste Du Surréalisme; Doyle, “Erik Satie’s Ballet Parade: An Arrangement for Woodwind Quintet and Percussion with Historical Summary,” 51–52. 70 Breton, Manifeste Du Surréalisme.

21 “imagined” worlds in fig. 5; the “naive” child-like stylization of the characters and setting in fig. 4. This suggests Brodovitch was familiar with some of the movement’s philosophies and approaches, and intrigued enough by them to dabble or experiment with them in his own work during this period. Though there’s no indication he ever officially identified or aligned himself with the Surrealist movement in Paris, and never mentioned the movement by name in any of his writings, he would have certainly engaged with a number of its practitioners socially, through the Ballets Russes and the UdAR. Indeed, the UdAR bals were heavily influenced by Surrealist expression and performance.

Surrealists Cocteau, Tzara and Picabia were active supporters of UdAR, as was Robert

Delauney — a contributor to Breton’s 1924 manifesto — and his wife and fellow artist/designer Sonia Delaunay-Turk. Another early leader of the literary arm of the movement, Philippe Soupault, would become a friend and great admirer of Brodovitch’s work.71

Despite never self-identifying as such, Brodovitch’s work in the United States would continue to be seen as connected to Surrealism. In 1933, the Philadelphia Evening

Ledger referred to Brodovitch as “Russian Leader of Surrealist School” and a “leading exponent in America of the Surrealist school of painting”72; at this point the term was possibly being misused to associate Brodovitch with a broader conception of modern art rather than to the specifics of Surrealist expression, which at that point had only been elevated in the U.S. less than two years prior, and wouldn’t achieve major fanfare in the

United States until later into the 1930s. It’s also possible that in his illustrative work, his

71 “L’Expression Graphique de La Publicite Des Trois Quartiers.” 72 “Brodovitch Art Goes on Display.”

22 preferences in terms of style, medium, and subject matter connected his work to the movement in the eyes of art writers and curators. In a 1935 analysis of book jacket design, industrial designer and Brodovitch collaborator George Nathan Horwitt read

Surrealist influence into the use of “phantom shape and line, borrowed jointly from engineering, photography and X-ray... the fourth dimension of illustration”73 — characteristics found in many of Brodovitch’s book jacket designs of this era (figs. 55–

60), as well as advertising illustrations such as those for New Jersey Zinc. And in 1936,

New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell mentioned “several paintings by Alexey

Brodovitz [sic], who... seems to have a certain — indeed a quite definite — leaning toward surrealism”74 in an exhibition at the Seligmann Galleries. A New York Sun review of the same exhibition compares one of Brodovitch’s works, a painting entitled

Purple Haze, to the work of Surrealist Joan Miró.75

A 1931 illustration by Brodovitch for the International Printing Ink Corp was included in a 1949 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition, “Modern Art in your

Life.” MoMA curator Robert Goldwater and museum director Rene d'Harnoncourt installed the illustration, among other works of advertising and commercial design, in their “Surrealism and the Fantastic” gallery — interspersed among such masterpieces as

Dali's Persistence of Time — demonstrating how the Surrealist movement’s emphases on

“psychological connotations” and the “power of mystery and suggestion,” they surmised, influenced image-making in the commercial design world.76 An alternative interpretation

73 Horwitt, “Jacketeer Hawkins.” 74 Jewell, “Group of Artists Has Varied Show: Work of All 17 Exhibitors Is in Addition to Regular Jobs in Advertising,” 25. 75 “New Sources of Art: Private Work of Commercial Artists at Seligmann’s.” 76 Goldwater, Modern Art in Your Life, 36, 38.

23 might be that those emphases — use of suggestive metaphor and an interest in psychological effects of and appeals in advertising on a reader/viewer — had been brewing in the world of commercial art and advertising well prior to the popularization of

Surrealism.77 Such topics were debated regularly in the major advertising journals of

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and occasionally in the United States as well, throughout the 1920s and ’30s.

As art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Brodovitch clearly appreciated and encouraged the Surrealist aesthetic, particularly by commissioning covers by A.M.

Cassandre, and by giving numerous assignments to photographer Man Ray; the work of both men played with perceptions of reality, often including exaggerated or disembodied parts of the female figure, and optical illusions or distortions. Smith suggests that, of all the varied movements Brodovitch encountered in Paris, “it was Surrealism which seemed most to impress Brodovitch, perhaps because of the possibility of fantasy and imagination which it held.”78 Certain of Brodovitch’s own page layouts for the magazine were themselves pointed to as examples of Surrealism in graphic design. George Herrick, in a 1939 article in Art and Industry, lauded Brodovitch’s layouts as “a surrealist masterpiece” for frequently defying traditional standards of legibility and organization:

“Brodovitch often uses type so flexibly as to depict an idea by form rather than the

77 For one example, Dupuy (1930) offers a summary of the transformation from representative to evocative approaches, including the role of psychology and metaphor, in French advertising in the early decades of the 20th century. The author also includes his opinion on how American approaches compare: he considers the American advertising industry quite advanced in certain aspects, but not in its approach to artwork, which he considers too literal. He suggests American consumers have an inability to abstract ["incapacite d’abstraire"] and no imagination [“pas d’imagination”]. See Dupuy, “Panorama de La Publicite Francaise.” 78 Smith, “Notes for ‘Alexey Brodovitch and the Emigre Mind’ [Presentation at Art Center College of Design],” 7.

24 context of the printed word.”79 I would argue Brodovitch’s approaches to typography in such examples as lauded by Herrick were not in fact Surrealist-influenced, but more accurately Futurist in nature. Once again, it’s possible that “surrealist” was being used less as a specific reference to that art movement and more as a catchword for non- traditional and experimental approaches more generally.

1924–25: Restaurant Prunier and the Paris Expo

The years of 1924–25 marked a turning point in Brodovitch’s life in Paris, personally and professionally. As noted, his poster for UdAR’s 1924 Bal Banal launched him into the world of commercial advertisement and poster design; his involvement with the Union, however, would quickly come to an end. By 1924, preparations for the monumental 1925 International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts

[Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes] were underway, and organizers had invited nations from around the world to present pavilions of their most modern developments in furniture, architecture, industrial design, fashion, book design, and other decorative and applied arts. An invitation was extended to the nascent

U.S.S.R., and was accepted. This was seen by some Russian emigres as an opportunity: some members (including certain leaders) of the UdAR decided in 1925 to embrace the new Soviet government as legitimate — some going so far as to apply for Soviet citizenship80 — in the hopes that the government would allow them to exhibit their artwork in the Soviet Pavilion. One member, Victor Bart, claimed that the move was an

79 Herrick, “America Sells the Page,” 181–82. 80 Gayraud, “Russian Avant-Garde Groups and Journals in Paris (1920-1940),” 69.

25 attempt to “build bridges with the avant-garde artists remaining behind in the Soviet

Union.”81 This argument did not convince Brodovitch; he and several other prominent members were moved to resign in protest, and refused to participate in future Union exhibitions and activities. This must have been disappointing to Brodovitch, who by this point had moved out of Montparnasse and was likely already alienated, if only by distance, from many in his prior circle. However, new opportunities began to bloom outside of the Montparnasse community.

In 1923–24, Brodovitch received two major commissions that would elevate his reputation to new heights. Both were projects being designed by architect Louis-

Hippolyte Boileau. It’s not clear how Brodovitch and Boileau met, but Brodovitch had related, during and after his work with the Ballets Russes, his efforts to continue building his professional network in Paris beyond Montparnasse, including selling freelance designs for textiles, ceramics, and jewelry to some of the city’s premiere couturiers.82

Boileau was the third generation in his family to practice architecture in Paris, and was likely well connected in the art and design communities; if not directly connected to each other prior to the commissions, it’s likely they had any number of mutual acquaintances who may have recommended Brodovitch.

The first commission originated from a family of restaurateurs known for their elite seafood restaurant. The patron, Emile Prunier, hired Boileau to develop a second branch, at avenue Victor Hugo and rue de Traktir, a location which he had been scouting since 1921.83 The decor of the new restaurant, known as Prunier-Traktir, embraced all of

81 Tolstoy, “Russian Montparnasse in the 1920s: The Moscow Episode,” 32. 82 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 25. 83 Barnagaud-Prunier, La Maison: The History of Prunier’s, 169.

26 the new visual expressions and sensibilities of Art Deco — ”the most modern in Paris,”

Emile Prunier is said to have demanded.84 The facade of the building featured an elaborately patterned tile mosaic by Auguste Labouret in blues and aquamarines with circular and organic motifs suggestive of water and ocean life, and signage with heavily stylized typography. Interior fixtures and walls were done in brass, copper, marble, and glass, with an emphasis on angular geometry. Every window featured heavily patterned glass panels, and over the entrance was a large mirrored glass relief sculpture of a bountiful catch of fish tumbling out of a basket. The interior space was punctuated by copper plaques hanging from the ceiling: abstracted illustrations of the various specialties and highlights of the restaurant’s gourmet offerings (figs. 6–8). The designs of the copper plaques were Brodovitch’s work. Using a technique quite similar to the production of stencils for pochoir printing,85 he cut his designs and accompanying text out of thin copper sheets. The content of each plaque — a sturgeon representing caviar, a lobster, an oyster shell, champagne, vodka, and several others — thus appear in negative space, legible due to an additional sheet of material with a contrasting texture laid behind.

Elements of this coordinated system of imagery were also used in the company’s logo and on the covers of menus, and remain in use to this day (fig. 8). The restaurant still operates today with nearly all original decor still intact, and was declared a Monument

Historique (protected heritage site) by the French Ministry of Culture in 1989.86

Brodovitch’s graphic work for Prunier was recognized in its day for its inventiveness, and published in anthologies of top design work including the 1929

84 Barnagaud-Prunier, 177. 85 Calahan and Zachary, Fashion and the Art of Pochoir, 8. 86 French Ministry of Culture, “La Mediatheque de l’Architecture et Du Patrimoine.”

27 Encyclopedie des Metiers d'Art.87 He also produced prototypes and maquettes for other sculptural and decorative elements for the restaurant. Many of these objects were unknown until the restaurant’s owners deaccessioned them in an August 2003 auction.

The auction house Deauville published a catalog listing a wide variety of objects from the restaurant’s collection including antique silver servingware, light sconces, chairs by

Thonet, and a number of artworks including three gouache paintings and three charcoal drawings credited to Brodovitch. At least two additional fish sculptures by Brodovitch were sold at later auctions. Composition aux Poissons (fig. 9), one of the paintings included in the 2003 auction, is the only work that is both signed and dated (1924); the catalog appropriately approximates the other artworks to 1923–24.88

By its similarity to the glass bas-relief artwork installed above the entrance

(visible in fig. 6), it is likely that Composition aux Poissons was a study or maquette for that glass design. The style of rendering is quite different from the rest of the work

Brodovitch carried out for Prunier; one likely reason for this departure in style was his understanding of the work’s intended manufacture. His flattened, Purist/Cubist-inspired geometrically abstracted style used for the interior signage may not have translated well into a three-dimensional glass relief. Thus, the elements within the painting are still abstracted to a degree, but are rendered with a heightened chiaroscuro effect, resulting in a stronger illusion of depth. The final piece, as well as other sandblasted and engraved glass work for the restaurant, was executed by artist Paul Binet.89

87 Editions Albert Morance, Encyclopedie Des Metiers d’Art, Tome II: Decoration Moderne, 14–15. 88 Deauville Auction, Mobilier et Objects d’Art Des XVIIe, XVIIIe et XIXe Siecles; et Du Debut Du XXe Siecle Provenant Du Restaurant Prunier a Paris, August 16, 2003 [Auction Catalog], 52. 89 Marrey, La Mosaique Dans l’architecture à Paris Aux XIXe et XXe Siècles, 67.

28 Binet also collaborated on the second of Brodovitch’s commissions with Boileau: construction of a pavilion for the 1925 Paris Expo, to house and showcase the designs of

Pomone, the interior design studio of department store Le Bon Marche. The 1925 Paris

Expo was a monumental event for those working in the industrial, decorative, and commercial arts. Exhibition spaces were established by foreign governments, French ministries, museums, a few select individual artists/designers, and major commercial vendors. Many of Paris’s famed colossal department stores [grands magazins] were represented with their own pavilions. Boileau, who had recently completed an addition to

Bon Marche, was selected to design that store’s presence at the expo: Pavilion Pomone

(fig. 10). During this time, such department stores frequently housed design ateliers, which not only offered interior decorators to consult with customers, but also designed and manufactured their own lines of furniture, textiles and other items of decor. Bon

Marche’s design studio, Pomone, was founded in 1922 and headed by designer and architect Paul Follot.90 The 1925 Paris Expo would be a prominent showcase for such design studios to promote their work and, thus, drive business to the department store.

The Pavilion Pomone won a Silver Medal in the Expo’s Architecture division. In the official documentation — an enormous 12-volume encyclopédie — Brodovitch is credited for “décor mural”91; his exact contributions are not documented, and the pavilion does not feature a “mural” artwork as the term is commonly understood, but taken literally (“décor mural”: “wall decoration”) he was most likely responsible for the elaborate abstract geometric pattern that was applied across the entire facade of the

90 Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Pomone, Renée Schils”; Marrey, La Mosaique Dans l’architecture à Paris Aux XIXe et XXe Siècles, 59. 91 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, 1925, Encyclopédie Des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes Au XXe Siècle [Twelve Volumes], Class 1, Section Francaise, Plate IV.

29 pavilion. Crediting Brodovitch with the design of the wall pattern also makes sense considering one of his other Expo jury honors: a Gold Medal for textile design (Class 13).

He had, by 1925, designed a number of pattern designs for use in fabric, upholstery and/or wallcoverings, and in later interviews recounted selling his designs to couturiers in the years leading up to the Expo.92 On a 1930s resume, Brodovitch names clients for whom he performed “Free Lance [sic] Work” (or purports to have done such work, as there are no records to support some claims93) during the 1920s in a number of categories: Textiles, Jewelry, Porcelain, Furniture, Rugs, among others. On the same resume, and in later interviews, he claims he had earned not one but multiple awards for textiles at the 1925 Expo; it is certainly possible that another of his designs may have been honored, but official credit given to the couturier or manufacturer rather than to him. One company named on his resume as a Textiles client — Coudurier, Fructus et

Descher, a fabric manufacturer established in 1896, headquartered in Lyon with offices in

Paris, New York, and London94 — was awarded a Grand Prix by Expo jurors. It is possible that their winning work was a Brodovitch design, despite him not being credited personally.

The official record of honors bestowed at the Expo lists a third award for

Brodovitch (under a misspelling of his name, “Brodovisch”): a Silver Medal in Class 26,

“Art of the Street” [Art de la Rue] or perhaps, less literally, “Outdoor Art” or “Public

92 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 25. 93 In regards to another listed client, Bianchini, a prior researcher combed the company’s archives and records but did not find any indication of designs by Brodovitch. A later auction of the company’s archival holdings, with detailed provenances, also did not turn up any work credited to Brodovitch. See Sednaoui, “Research Notes for Alexey Brodovitch Thesis”; Christie’s, Two Centuries of Design. 94 Trentenaire de la maison Coudurier Fructus, Descher, 20.

30 Art.”95 This class included subsections for urban planning [“Plans de Villes et

Amenagements Urbains”]; outdoor furnishings and decor [“Decor et Mobilier de la

Rue”], examples of which included retail storefronts; advertising art [“Art Publicitaire”]; and public celebrations, parades, and light displays [“Fetes Publiques, Corteges,

Illuminations”]. No further detail is available on what project earned Brodovitch this medal. It would be easy to assume that an early poster was awarded under the subsection for advertising. There is, however, another possibility. In his Devantures et Vitrines de

Magasins a l'Exposition de 1925, designer Rene Herbst documented a number of award- winning storefronts throughout the exposition, particularly along Pont Alexandre III

— due to its concentration of shops and retail displays, the bridge became known as Rue des Boutiques or Galerie des Boutiques. Brodovitch (again misspelled: “Brodovicht”) is credited as decorateur for Becker Fils (fig. 11), a short-lived Parisian couturier that specialized in contemporary designs.96 His specific contributions, again, are not documented, but in this case a confident hypothesis can be made that he designed the typography/signage component of the storefront. Brodovitch also designed newspaper advertisements for Becker Fils from 1925 through at least 1927; one 1927 ad featured type stylized with curls and heavy ball terminals, much like the type used on the storefront signage in 1925. The type in both cases is similar, in their extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, to “modern” typefaces Bodoni and Didot — faces

Brodovitch would use incessantly in his later American work — but more heavily stylized and ornamental. Brodovitch revisited and further refined this type design over

95 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, Liste des rècompenses, 139. 96 Herbst, Devantures Vitrines Installations de Magasins a l’Exposition Internationale Des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1925., 14; Fitzgerald and Hibbert, Seed and Spirit of Modernism: An Exploration through Textiles, 36.

31 the years, ultimately publishing it in 1950, under the name Albro, in the design journal

Portfolio (for which Brodovitch was Art Director).

Brodovitch’s claims regarding the awards awarded to him at the Expo have varied: on his resume circa 1936, he claims two medals for textiles, two for architecture, and one for jewelry.97 In his interview with Porter, he claims two medals for textiles, a medal for jewelry, a medal for “kiosk design” (“kiosk” could be a reference to the Becker

Fils storefront), and an award associated with the pavilion for art journal Amour de l’Art.98 Herrick likewise notes five total awards, “covering jewellery and silverware design, textile design, architectural work and advertising.”99 Ettenberg counts seven total medals “for textile, silver, china, and jewelry designs.”100 Cattaruzza credits Brodovitch’s work for Becker Fils under Class 21, Clothing Accessories [Accessoires de Vetement], rather than Class 26.101 A gold medal was awarded to Becker Fils in Class 21, but no more specific detail is available as to what object or objects. It is certainly possible that, in addition to his advertising and storefront design work for Becker Fils, Brodovitch may have designed some additional fashion accessory/ies for their showcase. This would not have been an item of jewelry, however, as jewelry had its own category (Class 24). The award for jewelry, mentioned consistently among sources but not documented in official

Expo documents, may reference another freelance project similar to the earlier textile example. One client mentioned on Brodovitch’s resume under the Jewelry freelance

97 Brodovitch, “Biographical Notes; List of Activities.” 98 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 25. 99 Herrick, “Alexey Brodovitch,” 165. 100 Ettenberg, “The Remarkable Alexey Brodovitch,” 28. 101 Remington, Smith, and Cattaruzza, The Enduring Legacy of Alexey Brodovitch, 24.

32 category — Parisian jewelers Linzeler et Marchak — were awarded a Diplome d'Honneur during the Expo.102

1926–1930: Brodovitch’s Reputation Grows

After his successes at Prunier and the Paris Expo, Brodovitch continued to expand his footprint in the world of advertising and commercial design. His accomplishments between the years of 1926 and 1930 can be categorized into three main bodies of work: advertising design, book illustrations, and design for retail.

During this time period, Brodovitch produced posters and advertisements for a wide variety of clients. He continued to work under the auspices of agencies such as that of Maximilen Vox, but also established his own business brand, “Atelier A.B.” For Vox, in 1926, he created a much-lauded poster for Martini vermouth. The poster was admired in its day, but even more valued in decades to follow, acquired into museum collections around the world and hung in exhibitions alongside other masters of poster art.103 As

“Atelier A.B.” Brodovitch produced posters, catalogs, and magazine and newspaper advertisements for a wide variety of clients. He counted Cunard Lines and Donnet automobiles (fig. 12) among his highest profile campaigns, and his client list continued to grow after establishing Le Cercle with Alexeieff and Parry.

Brodovitch’s interest in printmaking also grew during these years. He continued to practice in pochoir and lithography, but also explored other techniques, including etching (likely influenced by Alexeieff) as well as engraving, using relatively novel

102 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, Liste des rècompenses, 131. 103 Museum of Modern Art, “Alexey Brodovitch: Martini, 1926.”

33 materials such as linoleum and galalith (an early plastic). Some works were produced out of personal interest and distributed as prints, such as his 1928 linocut La Trapeziste (fig.

13); others were commissioned by book publishers to accompany limited-edition fine press books. He also repurposed prints; at least twice, print illustrations appearing in a published project can be traced back to earlier origins (figs. 14–17).

Brodovitch and many of his contemporaries contributed to a style of publication popularized in Paris during this time under the moniker livre d’artiste.104 This field evolved from the typical relationship between book publisher and illustrator: whereas an illustrator would traditionally create imagery secondary to the text, in the practice of livres d’artiste a book’s artistic content was regarded as more in partnership with the text.

Imagery also moved from being a more-or-less literal interpretation of the text, to the artist having more flexibility, the presence of the artist’s work being as important a draw to a collector as the text it accompanies. In one such volume for publisher Henri

Jonquieres, Brodovitch produced a series of dark and moody etchings for the title

Monsieur de Bougrelon. The imagery, with suggestions of Cubist and Expressionist influence, is inspired by the sights, sounds, people, and even the weather of Amsterdam, the setting of the text (fig. 18-19).

Brodovitch’s work for Prunier attracted the attention of Robert Block, a Swiss furniture designer who was hired in 1928 as the founding director of Athelia, the design studio [atelier] at Parisian department store Aux Trois Quartiers (ATQ). By this time

ATQ was almost a century old, but lagged behind its competitors in establishing an in-

104 Drucker, The Century of Artists’ Books Chapter 1; Adamowicz, “The Livre d’artiste in Twentieth- Century France.”

34 house atelier,105 and had missed the opportunity to raise its profile by constructing a pavilion for the 1925 Expo. Block hired Brodovitch as the store’s Art Director; the two men’s plan to reinvigorate the company included a new modern corporate identity system, and a corresponding graphic treatment of the store’s facade (fig. 20). Thanks in large part to his unique approaches to the design of the store’s catalog covers and advertising (e.g. fig. 21), Brodovitch’s work for ATQ was celebrated and reproduced in a number of anthologies and magazines. In a 1929 article in Arts et Metiers Graphiques,

Block credited Brodovitch for “recaptur[ing] the public’s imagination through curious originality” and bringing ATQ back into competition with the best of the grands magasins among “a public who, though more cultivated than before, were never indifferent to clever efforts to interest or distract.”106

Departure for America

In 1930, Brodovitch received an invitation from John Story Jenks, a trustee of the

Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA) in Philadelphia, to join the school’s faculty and begin a new chapter in his and his family’s lives in the United States.

How the two men met is unclear: by one account, they had a mutual acquaintance in the

United States who was also an exile from the Russian White Army.107 What is clearer is that the two families got to know each other in Paris between 1928 and 1930, and that both Alexey and Nina cared for the Jenks’ teen daughter Ann while there, including

105 Laurent, “The Artist-Decorator,” 167–70. 106 “L’Expression Graphique de La Publicite Des Trois Quartiers,” 853, trans. Rachel Cagle. 107 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 6.

35 chaperoning her to museums and artistic events.108 One source suggests that Brodovitch served as Ann’s painting teacher in Paris109; others suggest she studied under him in

Philadelphia. There’s no record of Ann Jenks being a student of Brodovitch at PMSIA, but he notes in a letter to Charles Coiner, who was preparing an essay on Brodovitch’s teaching, that she “participated on many projects” with him and that he remained “very closely associated” with the Jenks family.110 The latter statement is also supported by the fact that Ann Jenks served as a reference and witness for both Alexey’s and Nina’s U.S. citizenship naturalization applications in 1939.111

Brodovitch and other Russian exiles benefited from the establishment in 1922 of

“Nansen passports,” issued under the authority of the League of Nations. These documents provided an official identification for refugees whom political revolutions had rendered “stateless.” Initially the Nansen passport was made available for “any person of

Russian origin who does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics and who has not acquired any other nationality.”112 In subsequent years the program was expanded to include refugees from other conflicts, filling the absence of official identification documentation without requiring them to establish citizenship in their host country (and, reciprocally, without requiring the host country to naturalize all refugees within their borders). Without documentation, refugees were often constrained to their host country, and may not have been able to reunite with

108 Brodovitch, 6; Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 25; Brodovitch, “Letter to Charles Coiner, October 5, 1962”; Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, 36. 109 Smith, “Notes for ‘Alexey Brodovitch and the Emigre Mind’ [Presentation at Art Center College of Design],” 2. 110 Brodovitch, “Letter to Charles Coiner, October 5, 1962.” 111 Brodovitch, “Petition for Naturalization #327017.” 112 Kaprielian-Churchill, “Rejecting ‘Misfits,’” 283.

36 their family or find work, or were forced to obtain falsified papers to do so. Holders of

Nansen passports were allowed to travel — though still subject to visa requirements of their desired destination if applicable, and not guaranteed return to the country they were departing.113

With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the United States established a variety of restrictions on admittance into the country. One such restriction reflected the government’s concern over immigrants, particularly refugees, arriving without the means to support themselves and becoming a “public charge.” Indemnity bonds, which acted as an insurance policy against such an outcome, were required. The necessary bonds were secured by PMSIA — $500 each for Alexey, Nina, young Nikita, and their nanny — guaranteeing that “they will depart from the United States, without expense to the United

States on or before September 2, 1931, if required by the Government.”114

Brodovitch recalled that his status and professional reputation helped facilitate securing the family’s visas.115 John Story Jenks vouched personally for the family, and was listed on their entry paperwork as their “Reason for Visiting.” Interestingly,

Brodovitch was not entirely truthful on the documentation of the family’s first arrival: when asked “[w]hether coming by reason of any offer, solicitation, promise, or agreement, expressed or implied, to labor in the United States,” he answered No.116 This was certainly untrue; Brodovitch’s offer and his salary — the highest in the school’s Art

113 Kaprielian-Churchill, 283; Nansen, “Rescuing Millions of War Victims from Disease and Starvation,” 572–73; Reale, “The Passport Question,” 507. 114 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees, October 9, 1930,” 339. 115 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 25. 116 “Ship Manifest, SS Lapland, August 23, 1930.”

37 Department — had been approved and finalized three months prior.117 The lie was most certainly a strategic decision, likely worked out in advance between Brodovitch and

Jenks, and likely having to do with restrictions tied to the classification of visa ("Non-

Immigrant") that the Brodovitches had secured — presumably the only type of visa they could qualify for under the restrictive Immigration Act. This meant that, among other stipulations, their residence in the U.S. would be limited to 12 months; at the end of that year, the family would be required to travel back to France, at which point they could apply for another visa to return for another year. The indemnity bond would then have to be renewed for each member as well. This pattern continued each 12 months until 1933, when Brodovitch returned to France with the intent to apply and re-enter the United

States under “non-quota status” — a legal classification under the Immigration Act which would allow him (as well as Nina and young Nikita) to apply for American citizenship.

By this point, he could claim the profession of Professor of Advertising; in the HISCO classification of occupations, teachers were designated as a highly skilled occupation on par with lawyers and clerics.118 (Artists, too, were included in this top tier classification.)

This classification certainly would bolster his case. However, receiving the desired visa status was not guaranteed; in fact, before departing, Brodovitch and the school’s Board of

Trustees agreed to a contingency plan should the U.S. government not allow him to return for the 1933-34 school year.119 He did successfully receive non-quota immigration status, and made “lawful entry” to the U.S. in September 1933. Seven months later, he filed his “Declaration of Intention,” the preliminary step of the naturalization process. On

117 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees, May 8, 1930.” 118 Wulfers, “Skill Selection and American Immigration Policy in the Interwar Period.” 119 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, June 22, 1933,” 191.

38 both his Declaration of Intention and the eventual Petition for Naturalization (1939),

Brodovitch used an Americanized version of his name: “Alexis.” At some point prior to the finalization of his naturalization process, Brodovitch apparently changed his mind and maintained Alexey as his legal name, as that is the only name included in official documents such as Social Security records.120

1930–34: Philadelphia to New York

Brodovitch’s years teaching at PMSIA from 1930-34, and in a more limited capacity from 1934-37, are detailed briefly in Chapter 2 and more fully in Chapter 3.

Though he was recruited to the U.S. to teach, Brodovitch quickly found his skills as a designer were also in great demand, and within a year of arriving in the United States, his freelance illustrations and advertising designs were being honored by such American organizations as the Art Director’s Club (ADC) of New York. The ADC recognized

Brodovitch for exemplary designs in their 1931, ’32 and ’33 competitions, then commissioned him to design the exhibition of their 1934 honorees. During the installation of that exhibition (which he carried out in collaboration with several PMSIA students, as described in Chapter 3), a mutual friend, photographer Ralph Steiner, insisted that fashion icon Carmel Snow stop by to meet Brodovitch. Snow, former fashion editor of Vogue who had recently become editor-in-chief at competitor Harper’s Bazaar, was so impressed by his vision, she quickly recruited him to help her revamp Bazaar. This resulted in Brodovitch and his family moving from Philadelphia to New York. Most surveys of design history pick up on Brodovitch at this point in his career, and highlight

120 “Social Security Administration Death Index.”

39 the revolutionary innovations he brought to American editorial design during his 24-year tenure as Art Director of Bazaar (1934–58). Most history texts also note Brodovitch’s continued teaching and mentorship of photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving

Penn, Lillian Bassman, Robert Frank, among many others. Brodovitch maintained an active slate of side clients concurrent with his work at Bazaar — he served as art director for department stores and art journals, designed book covers and jackets for a number of publishers, he was even recruited to create propaganda posters for the United States government’s Latin American outreach efforts during World War II. As this period in

Brodovitch’s career is well-covered in other publications, I need not go into further detail here; however, select projects during this period will be examined in subsequent chapters where relevant, e.g. Brodovitch’s coordination of a 1937 poster exhibition for the

Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and the 1945 publication of his photobook Ballet.

Unfortunately, due to a series of personal and family tragedies, including the loss of his position at Bazaar in 1958 and the death of his wife Nina in 1960, his health declined rapidly. He and son Nikita, who still lived with his father, retired to France to be closer to their surviving family there; less than five years later, in 1971, Brodovitch passed away.

Methodology: Design History and Historiography

For this research study, source documents take many shapes: legal records; personal accounts and interviews; artworks, photographs, and other visual objects; and a wide variety of other types of archival and interpretive documents. Use of these documents and objects is, then, also supported by scholarly work from other historians,

40 art historians and curatorial researchers. The variety of sources necessitates a variety of methods to be used as appropriate for each task at hand. Visual and material culture methodologies will be blended with textual and historical analysis, with an overarching concern toward accurate historiography of Brodovitch’s life and work.

Historiography, the writing of history (alternately, the critical examination of how existing histories have been written), is widely acknowledged as a specialized form of writing, a narrative, even a form of storytelling.121 Historians Gunn and Faire describe this act of writing, what de Certeau called the historiographical operation, as a process through which “the past, or its documentary traces, are turned into history.”122

Historiography requires a critical examination of such traces of the past, and should also take into account an understanding of other precedent historical texts and the worldviews, contexts, and conditions within which each account was created.123

King notes archival research as “a taken-for-granted historical method” and “the bread and butter of [historians’] professional existence.”124 That is not to say, however, that archival work should be taken at face value. Theorists such as Foucault and Derrida are often invoked when exploring the archive's biases in capturing and interpreting history, in that inclusion or suppression of materials within archives and control of access to such content has historically been used — indeed, abused — to legitimize and assert authority by various bodies politic. When exploring this or that collection, I have tried to

121 see Carrard, “History as a Kind of Writing.” 122 Gunn and Faire, Research Methods for History, 5. 123 Drucker, “Publications: Designing History.” 124 King, “Working with/in the Archives,” 13.

41 be conscious of the ability of the archive to paint one particular version of history through the selective presence or absence of materials.

Undertaking a thorough historiography of knowledge about Brodovitch has turned out to be a tricky task. Though he is mentioned in most textbooks, anthologies, and surveys of design history, major biographies and monographs on Brodovitch are limited.

Some of these publications focus almost exclusively on visuals, with little attention to or analysis of the historical context. For example, book publisher Assouline produced a large Brodovitch monograph in 1999, in coordination with an exhibition at the Maison

Européenne de la Photographie. The volume featured over 100 pages of full-color reproductions of Brodovitch’s work, largely spreads from Bazaar, but fewer than 10 pages of textual information, which one reviewer panned as consisting “only of a bunch of factlets and ill-supported assertions.”125

One concern about the available breadth and depth of biographical information about Brodovitch is that, as noted in the introduction, many details of his life story had only been recounted by Brodovitch himself. On this or that occasion, a record of some remark or anecdote would appear in a book or magazine article; a subsequent article or book would take that remark as fact, print it, and then be cited as a source themselves by other writers. This is a problem faced by historians anytime one works with personal accounts such as interviews, diaries, or memoirs — what Howell and Prevenier refer to as

“ego documents.”126 We mustn’t simply ignore these types of texts simply because they offer thee challenges; they are often extremely fertile sources, offering “rich ore of lived-

125 King, “Alexey Brodovitch, Paul Rand,” 171. 126 Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, 21.

42 experience descriptions for phenomenological analysis.”127 We must, however, temper details gleaned from such accounts with the understanding that they do not necessarily represent truth, but rather “an index of what the author… considers his truth.”128

Attention to the context and conditions surrounding such “ego documents” is also critical for successful historiographic writing. Howell notes that it is important to avoid crediting an individual for accomplishments that were made in collaboration with (or concurrently by) others, or as part of a larger movement or confluence of ideas — “the situation that made it possible for one person to have such an effect.”129 Howell illustrates this caution with an example that is particularly pertinent to Brodovitch’s story:

In world capitals such as Vienna around 1900, Paris in the 1920s, and New York in the 1970s and 1980s, where creative individuals in many fields congregate, perform, discuss, test one another, share ideas — in such places it is much easier for a talented individual to find fellow artists ready to respond to and encourage his or her most outrageous experiments, easier to develop an audience receptive to such experimentation.130

A consideration of context (even multiple contexts) is key not only in the analysis of texts, but also in the interpretation of visual and material objects. “Visual imagery,”

Rose warns, “is never innocent.” Researchers must be as critical of visual materials as we are of textual materials, as both are constructions reflective of the societal conditions, social practices, and power structures within which they are made.131 Jordanova suggests that a historical researcher must be willing to entertain multiple and flexible approaches to analysis of any visual source, to “probe all conceivable aspects of a thing made to be

127 van Manen, Researching Lived Experience, 72. 128 Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, 21. 129 Howell and Prevenier, 141. 130 Howell and Prevenier, 141. 131 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 21.

43 seen.”132 Further, just as a researcher must be wary of one’s own biases and assumptions when examining a text, we must also be aware of our “ways of seeing [which are] historically, geographically, culturally and socially specific.”133 As the boundaries between “fine art” and “commercial art” began to crumble in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, art collections — and what was considered collectible — also grew, and everyday objects began to be archived and studied alongside paintings, sculptures, and other singular objects. In her substantial text on the history of the early modern poster and the visual culture of Paris at the turn of the 20th century, Iskin asserts the need to consider such objects fully, in as wide a variety of their contexts and historical roles as possible: artistic, certainly, and commercial, but also as documents of popular culture and technological innovation, artifacts reflecting changes in urban space and in social values.134

Material culture analysis, particularly as outlined by theorist Jules Prown, puts great emphasis on the researcher’s understanding of an object’s presence within a particular time, place and cultural context. As Prown notes, the foundation of material culture studies is the understanding “that objects made... by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged.”135 Jordanova similarly suggests that visual objects should not be thought of as

“passive and inert [or] as mere reflections of past states of affairs,” but rather as “active

132 Jordanova, “Approaching Visual Materials,” 41. 133 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 22. 134 Iskin, The Poster. 135 Prown, “Mind in Matter,” 1–2.

44 commentaries by their makers.”136 Because many of the objects of attention in this study

— books, advertisements, retail signage — may take more familiar forms, and thus feel more approachable or more intuitively understood than other types of historical evidence,

Mayne warns against the temptations of a certain romantic notion of “innate immediacy” that “telescopes time and transcends cultural difference.”137 Approaching such an object with a strong understanding of its context in its own time, rooted in an ethnographic understanding of the native culture of the object, is seen as key to avoiding such traps.

Methodology: Role of the Researcher

Ideally, historiography allows a scholar to recognize and mitigate any biases or preconceptions present in such texts, and thus come to a broader and more balanced view of the topic in question. My interest in Alexey Brodovitch stems from a broader interest in design history, and in particular my affection for the unique and quirky character of

American design of the early modern era, best captured in the democratic objects of design still widely available today: book jackets, advertising, album covers, magazines, furniture, and other everyday products. I’ve collected examples of design from this era all of my adult life. This collecting activity heightened when I commenced my graduate studies and realized that the physical objects I admired could also be engaging teaching tools to give student-designers a deeper and broader understanding of the history of our field. Many of these passions — collecting, design, history, curation — merged

136 Jordanova, “Approaching Visual Materials,” 31. 137 Mayne, “Material Culture,” 55–56.

45 seamlessly once I came to know the field of material culture study, and began exploring opportunities to practice in that field.

In 2013, colleague Ron Ott and I proposed a study of Alexey Brodovitch’s work for the Goldstein Museum of Design’s Joss Graduate Research Internship. The proposal was accepted, and we commenced researching materials in the Goldstein’s collection, including their extensive holdings of Harper’s Bazaar from Brodovitch’s tenure as art director (1934–58). The internship findings took shape as an exhibition proposal, the proposal was accepted, and our work continued through 2014–15, with the culminating exhibition on display during the summer of 2015. In the process of developing this exhibition, I was particularly drawn to Brodovitch’s work prior to joining Bazaar: his early illustrations, advertisements, and book designs, completed in Paris during the 1920s and in Philadelphia during the early 1930s. This period is covered only briefly in most accounts of Brodovitch’s career. Sourcing artifacts for display in this exhibition became a little like detective work, and the “thrill of the hunt” continued even after the exhibition closed. Tracking down one object often generated leads on additional works; known works led to more obscure works, and finally to a number of works that had not previously been published or studied, as noted in the introduction and throughout the timeline.

Another objective for my “detective work” was to investigate and confirm or debunk previously reported details of certain circumstances of Brodovitch’s life and work that seemed questionable. Some such claims relate to the production of specific artworks or objects; others to aspects of Brodovitch’s biography. Working with archival documents — especially with what Hodder refers to as “mute evidence”: “material traces

46 for which informants are long dead or about which informants are not articulate”138 — brings with it a certain level of frustration, particularly when such documents and records contradict one another without an authoritative answer, leaving the truth essentially unknowable. Even on the most elementary of details — Brodovitch’s vital statistics, for example — one is faced with contradicting data and confounding conclusions. According to most governmental records, including his 1934 and 1939 U.S. naturalization documents, 1942 U.S. military draft registration, and Social Security Administration records, Brodovitch was born on April 30, 1894.139 However, at some point, Brodovitch began using the year 1898 as his birth year — see, for example, the “Biographical Notes” on his resume, circa 1936140 — and most biographers have elected to use that year. Other sources — including Charles Reynolds’ substantial profile of Brodovitch in December

1961, large portions of which were provided by Brodovitch in the first person — claim

1900 as his birth year.141 Some details in Brodovitch’s biographical accounts lend credence to an earlier birth date: for example, in one interview, Brodovitch related that he was 10 when he received his first camera;142 in another, he notes that this happened in

1905 while his family lived in Moscow during wartime,143 suggesting a birth year around

1895 may be accurate. Other details suggest the opposite: historians R. Roger Remington and Barbara Hodik write that Brodovitch’s enrollment in the Russian Corps du Pages military academy around 1914-15 suggest a later birth year, as the academy served

138 Hodder, “The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture,” 110, 121. 139 “Social Security Administration Death Index.” 140 Brodovitch, “Biographical Notes; List of Activities.” 141 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 80. 142 Downes, “Brodovitch and Ballet,” 34. 143 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 6.

47 students typically aged 10-18.144 However, as noted earlier in this chapter, Brodovitch offered differing accounts of when he attended the Corps. Further, due to the unusual and sudden demands of World War I, it’s certainly possible that the academy found itself training cadets of non-traditional ages. The academy was effectively shut down upon the

1917 revolution,145 and it is unknown whether Brodovitch graduated from the Corps or was simply absorbed directly into the White Army to fight in the Russian Civil War.

Other claims that contradict certain aspects of Brodovitch’s timeline are tougher to resolve. One such case originated from New York City art auction house Swann, regarding a poster for the French brewery Bieres Veuve J. Petit & Fils (fig. 22). The design of the poster includes a rendering of the company’s factory or brewery, with the number “1921” appearing on the building’s smokestack. This was interpreted by a Swann curator as the date of the production of the poster, who went so far as to suggest this was

“the earliest of Brodovitch’s posters to have surfaced” and “[proof] that as early as 1921 he was already working as a graphic designer and getting commissions.”146

I found this interpretation suspicious; the date in the design might have appeared for any number of reasons, and there hadn’t been any cross-reference to Brodovitch’s own accounts or other external sources that suggest he would have been working on commissioned posters by that early date. A close examination of the poster itself supported this suspicion. It was typical during this era for the printer or printing house

[imprimerie] to be credited on lithographic posters alongside the poster’s artist/designer, and the credit was often accompanied by a street address. The printing house of the poster

144 Remington and Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design, 171. 145 Chebotarev and Lyons, “Russian Imperial Corps of Pages [Exhibition], Columbia University Libraries.” 146 Swann Galleries, Modernist Posters [Public Auction Sale 2113], Lot 90, n.p.

48 in question was Grau, Nerfi & Co., Lille — a printing house for whom Brodovitch did at least one other poster design, for the Donnet automobile company, between 1925 and

1930. There is no definitive date on the poster in question, except for the “1921” appearing on the smokestack, but there was a street address accompanying the printing house’s credit: 20 rue des Pyramides, Lille. Cross-referencing other posters produced by

Grau, Nerfi & Co., many carried a street address and some were also marked with a month and year in the margin. This allowed me to formulate a timeline of the company’s locations. According to a newspaper listing, the company’s address in January 1923 was

67 rue de Douai, Lille. Sometime between then and December 1925, the company moved to 143 rue du Molinel, Lille, per a poster for Hurtu sewing machines. A later poster for

Brasserie Lengrand, dated September 1926, included the same address. It wasn’t until much later — June 1930 — that a dated example with the 20 rue des Pyramides address could be found: this on a poster for Bieres de Garde. Thus, though there remains no definitive date, I deduce that the printing company moved to the address shown on the

Bieres Veuve J. Petit et Fils poster between September 1926 and June 1930, and therefore the poster in question was produced by Brodovitch sometime during that window of time.

The wide variety of illustration and type styles used by Brodovitch during those years makes it difficult to pin down a more specific timeframe by stylistic reference alone.

Efforts to correct biographical details have been made in certain texts. For example, in the first edition (1983) of Philip Meggs’s seminal History of Graphic Design, a number of misstatements about Brodovitch are made, including the year and circumstances under which he came to the United States.147 Those misstatements have

147 Meggs, A History of Graphic Design, 366.

49 been corrected in subsequent editions of the text. Other misunderstandings persist, however. Sources including Wlassikoff (2005) and Heller and D’Onofrio (2017), for example, note Brodovitch was recruited by PMSIA “to create an advertising art department”148; in fact, an advertising art curriculum (all non-textile programs were offered through one unified Art Department) predated Brodovitch’s involvement by some fifteen years. The practice of students producing advertising posters goes back even further, to at least 1905 — PMSIA students were recognized for a strong showing in a poster competition that year; the school also hosted the resulting exhibition.149 As for advertising becoming an official program at the school, documentary evidence shows coursework in “the art of advertising” — including “the sketching of ‘lay outs’” and “the designing and execution of advertisements in various forms and mediums” — was approved in July 1915 to launch during the fall of the 1915-16 academic year.150 The significance of this detail may seem minor: does it really matter if he was starting a new program, or changing an existing one? I suggest the difference is important, in the implication it makes on the school’s motivation in hiring Brodovitch: to transform a fairly long-standing curriculum in light of the influences they saw emerging from Europe, influences they correctly predicted (informed, I suggest in Chapter 2, by reporting from the 1925 Paris Expo) would reshape American advertising and graphic design in years and decades to come. The fact that Brodovitch did not originate the program is not to say, of course, that the program did not change significantly under his leadership. To the

148 Heller and D’Onofrio, The Moderns, 36; Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France, 74. 149 “Philadelphia Art News.” 150 Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, 47–48; Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1915-16.

50 contrary, in the Spring 1935 issue of Sketchbook, a PMSIA student publication, William

Campbell reported that “Since Mr. Brodovitch took charge in 1930, the scope of the program has been enlarged from its limited beginnings to its present state.”151 (Several specific changes will be discussed in Chapter 3.)

Outline of Subsequent Chapters

Building on the timeline presented in this chapter, I focus the remaining chapters on specific aspects of Brodovitch’s artistic practices and pedagogical approaches. In

Chapter 2, I examine Brodovitch’s identity as a refugee, emigre, and outsider; how he cultivated that identity through his work and through his self-promotional rhetoric; and how that identity positioned him as an optimal conduit for the transfer of cultural influences. In Chapter 3, I explore Brodovitch’s practice of student apprenticeship, and intentional overlaps between his professional work and his educational work. This includes research on Brodovitch’s participation in two Philadelphia exhibitions — 1932’s

Design for the Machine at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Franklin Institute’s

New Poster International of 1937. The chapter goes on to examine Brodovitch’s seminal photobook publication Ballet; I offer a new interpretation of this work, informed by the discovery of previously unpublished archival materials which directly connect the book to his pedagogical practices at PMSIA some ten years prior to its publication.

151 Sketchbook [Alternately Sketch Book], 29.

51 Chapter Two “U.S. Picks Russian to Teach French Commercial Art”: Tracing Cross-Cultural Exchange in Brodovitch’s Interwar Graphic Design

Paris, August 1930. Perhaps over breakfast, or relaxing after a shopping trip or museum visit, fashionable women across the city opened their latest copy of the Bulletin, and read about a fascinating young artist who was, quite suddenly it seemed, receiving much attention in the world of posters and publicity. “Alexey Brodovitch,” the profile began, “by his determination, his perseverance and his character, has been able to dominate his artistic destiny.”152

Through art exhibitions, lectures, and articles in their monthly Bulletin, the

American Women's Club in Paris — an expatriate social club largely for wives of

American diplomats and businessmen153 — sought to expose emerging French and

American artists, writers, and intellectuals to “a public that counts,”154 that is to say, the cultured and wealthy elite. The August 1930 edition included a profile of Brodovitch recently published in Arts et Metiers Graphiques by French writer Philippe Soupault

(translated by Bulletin staff for the English-speaking audience), accompanied by reproductions of several of his designs. Curiously, the Bulletin highlighted Brodovitch’s role in the transformation of commercial art in one additional, and unintentional, way: on the inside-back-cover of this issue — in fact, in every issue of the Bulletin that year — one could find an advertisement for the Cunard Line transport company, designed by

152 Soupault, “Alexey Brodovitch,” 909. 153 Green, The Other Americans in Paris, 35. 154 “The American Women’s Club Appears in Paris.”

52 Brodovitch.155 On the inside-front-cover: an advertisement for a competing passenger line. The two could not be in starker contrast.

Both ads feature an illustration of a steam ship. The White Star Line ad (fig. 23) features a large image with characteristics typical of turn-of-the-20th-century engravings: rendered realistically and in high detail, with an ornate border and a jumble of type styles, sizes and cases commonly seen in American and British advertising dating back to the

Victorian era. Brodovitch’s Cunard Line advertisement (fig. 24) avoids such density and visual discord. A strong influence of geometric abstraction can be seen in both the highly stylized typography and the imagery: an illustration of a ship floating on water implied by a repeated motif of lines and shapes. The composition embodies a novel approach to space, balance, and hierarchy. This advertisement, a black-and-white reproduction of a late 1920s color poster, is but one example of Brodovitch’s place among the pioneers of the new style of advertising and publicity born of late-19th-century Paris.

This artifact is remarkable for the manifold layers of cultural exchange represented therein: a pair of advertisements for cross-continental travel, one designed by a refugee from one culture about to uproot his family for a second time, from their adopted homeland of Paris to a third, the United States, in a magazine published by and for those who had done the opposite: American expatriates living in France. The act of transatlantic travel, indeed the ocean liner itself, represented cultural and intellectual interchange: “symbol[s] of a very different new cross-pollinated cultural expression…

155 Because the ad was featured in a great number of issues, I understand its presence in this particular issue to be coincidental and not related to the publication of his profile. The ad as reproduced in the Bulletin is not credited to nor signed by Brodovitch; the original Cunard Line poster (occasionally referred to by the title “Mauretania”) was widely distributed and did include the credit line of Brodovitch’s studio, Atelier A.B., at the top right corner. See PaineWebber Art Gallery, “Ships of State.”

53 synecdoches for the experience of expatriation itself.”156 The flow of cultural and aesthetic influences within Europe and across the Atlantic colored nearly every aspect of art, design, and advertising during the interwar period. One is hard pressed to find an individual whose body of work captures the peculiar nature of this trans-cultural experience of this era more succinctly than Alexey Brodovitch.

Brodovitch the Outsider

Throughout Brodovitch’s career, his public identity was one of emigre and outsider. French writer Michel Maingois observed, “[i]t’s perhaps, indeed, because he appeared totally foreign to this civilisation [sic] that he was the one of our contemporaries who best understood its development and could so accurately express it in the midst of so much uncertainty and sham.”157 The title of this chapter — “U.S. Picks Russian to teach

French Commercial Art” — echoes the headline of a 1930 Philadelphia Enquirer article announcing Brodovitch’s hire at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art

(PMSIA). The premise of the headline shows up again in the article itself — “the unique choice of a Russian rather than a French man… to instruct American students in the

French-inspired commercial art-motifs.”158 — and highlights the fascination many had with the confluence of cultures and identities at play in his life and career. Through collection and analysis of Brodovitch’s commercially published works of this era, this chapter seeks to examine how this confluence of influences made Brodovitch an

156 Miller, “‘Home’ and ‘Homeless’ in Art Between the Wars,” 694. 157 Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Alexey Brodovitch, 124. 158 quoted in Cattaruzza, “Un Pionnier Du Graphisme Éditorial,” 67.

54 attractive candidate to translate European modernism to American audiences of the

1930s.

The matter of cross-cultural influence during the first half of the twentieth century was hotly debated, in both fine art and commercial art circles, with advocates and detractors on both sides. Historian Wanda Corn, in her monumental work on modern art and nationalism, The Great American Thing, provides a useful framework to consider these viewpoints. Corn’s focus is on the contributions of painters and writers to the development of an American strain of modernism; this study’s explorations are slightly different in terms of geography, chronology, and medium, but her framework remains just as effective.

Corn categorizes the trans-cultural interests of American artists into essentially three camps. First, she acknowledges expatriates, whom she suggests “more or less assimilat[e] to their adopted countries” and their work may be influenced by their experience of “deep alienation” from their homeland.159

Next, and in opposition to the first, were the “rooted”: those who stayed in the

U.S. and were particularly interested in ending America’s longstanding cultural inferiority complex and deference to Europe — in particular to the French — by defining a new distinctively American art practice. Among those in this camp are Alfred Stieglitz and his circle of artists in New York City; Corn includes a particularly pointed epigraph by Stieglitz from 1923, expressing his longing for “America without that damned French flavor!”160 The term “rooted” originated among earlier authors such as Paul Rosenfeld; in

159 Corn, The Great American Thing, 91. 160 Corn, 194.

55 the epilogue of his 1924 work Port of New York Rosenfeld, like Stieglitz, laments

Americans’ contentedness with “sponging on Europe for direction instead of developing our own.”161

In Corn’s third group are those who frequented travel between the U.S. and

Europe — the “transatlantiques.” The transatlantiques were less immigrants than migrants, agents of reciprocal cultural transfer, “carrying the ideas and values of one culture into the heart of another.”162

But there’s also a fourth group, or perhaps more accurately a subset of the third group. Among the transatlantiques, Corn notes certain individuals who took this transitional identity to an extreme, embracing the role of purposeful outsider and “living in a continual state of alienation” from either culture163; Corn observes that “rather than assimilate or disguise their foreign identity, they used their otherness to charm the locals.”164

Brodovitch’s own narrative illustrates this state of perpetual other-ness. However,

I argue that this was not a lamentable circumstance as the term “alienation” might suggest, but rather one that Brodovitch embraced, and formed his professional identity and career around — a unique angle that made him a particularly attractive candidate to help translate European modernism to a new generation of American consumers and designers. The novelty of, and the critical distance created by, this “other-ness” was, I suggest, as important to his trajectory as his technical prowess and creative ingenuity. As

161 Corn, 295. 162 Corn, 91. 163 Corn, 137. 164 Corn, 92.

56 we will see, throughout his work and particularly in his teaching, Brodovitch took steps to reinforce this perceived “outsider” identity, rooted in displacement and sustained alienation, as a personal “brand.”

Nationalism versus Cross-Cultural Influence in the Interwar Period

The first decades of the twentieth century were an intensely transformative period for the emerging field of graphic design.165 The professionalization of the field — considered broadly to include, in the language of the era, fields of “commercial art,”

“advertising art,” “layout,” “publicity,” “poster design,” “commercial illustration,” and the closely affiliated fields of type design, typography, and printing — began in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century; previously, design production was typically considered the responsibility of the printing agency — “a mere by-product of printing,” in the words of French designer Alfred Tolmer.166 Tolmer, in his 1931 work Mise en

Page, notes that it wasn’t until the late 19th century when advertising (in French, publicité) “began to feel its own feet.”167 Around this time, advertising professionals began to organize their own firms and agencies, both in Europe and in the United States.

Though independent advertising agents were registered in Philadelphia and New York as early as the 1840s,168 agencies did not become commonplace until much later;

Philadelphia’s N.W. Ayer, which started out in the newspaper business, bills itself as

165 The term “graphic design” has its origins in the early 1920s, used contemporaneously by American printer-designers W.A. Dwiggins, Daniel Berkeley Updike, and Fred Singleton, among others, but the term would not enter popular usage until years later. 166 Tolmer, Mise En Page, 40. 167 Tolmer, 34. 168 Assael and Craig, Printers’ Ink, 51.

57 America's oldest advertising agency, having entered the field in the mid-1880s.169

Supporting this trajectory of professionalization, printing agencies and type foundries began to publish journals focusing on modern advertising and commercial art, such as Reklame (Austria, 1919); The Poster (U.S., 1920); Commercial Art (Great

Britain, 1922); De Reclame (Netherlands, 1922); Vendre (France, 1923);

Gebrauchsgraphik (Germany, 1924); Typographische Mitteilungen (Germany, 1925);

Arts et Métiers Graphiques (France, 1927); and Advertising Arts (U.S., 1930). Trade organizations also began to form; in the United States, these associations included the

American Institute of Graphic Arts (1911/1914), the American Association of

Advertising Agencies (1917), the New York Art Directors’ Club (1920), the Society of

Typographic Arts (1927), and others.

By the “interwar” era (the years between World Wars I and II), four nations were generally acknowledged as the global powers in terms of commercial arts and advertising: France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Concerns over growing foreign influence upon each others’ industries, and competitiveness in terms of technological and artistic innovation, generated hotly contested debates among industry leaders in leading journals of the time. A survey of interwar publications from these four nations reveals both similarities and spirited differences in attitudes toward foreign influence and modernist reform.

Despite debates within its pages to the contrary, the vision of the British journal

Commercial Art included an openness to international exchange from its beginning. A subscription order card included in their second issue (November 1922) notes the

169 Hower, The history of an advertising agency, 13–15.

58 journal's intent to show British advertising professionals “the latest and finest examples of the World's Commercial Art,” specifically noting the United States, France, and

Germany but also allowing for “other countries.”170 The relationship seems warmest in terms of the United States; influential 20th century typographer Beatrice Warde noted

“the typographic histories of the two countries are intertwined.”171 In their inaugural issue of October 1922, two Commercial Art contributors see fit to use the U.S. as a foil for what they find lacking in British creativity: B. Leighton notes his admiration of American manufacturers of commercial packaging — “The American knows exactly how to pack his goods for market”172 — while G.V. Carter observes an American adeptness with

“advertising literature that exhibits plenty of ‘punch’” against which British copywriting

“lacks vitality and human interest.”173 The journal’s early issues feature mainly British and American examples, though the first issue also includes a reproduction of a Danish poster which the caption lauds as “probably the smartest, cleverest poster for the last twenty years,”174 and the second issue features one plate of French hand-lettered trademarks.

Subsequently, nearly every issue featured topical articles or profiles of specific designers from around the world — not only from the other three leading nations but also

Switzerland, Italy, and eastern Europe. The journal also played a significant role in bringing awareness and exposure of important works of ‘continental’ designers to

English-speaking audiences: in 1930, it published Jan Tschichold’s first English-language

170 Commercial Art, “Subscription Order Card [Insert].” 171 Warde, The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, 190–91. 172 Leighton, “Why the Package Should Be Elegant,” 6. 173 Carter, “Catalogues with a ‘Kick,’” 16. 174 Commercial Art, “Supplemental Plate 23.”

59 summary of his principles of modern typography, which editors described as “little short of a revolution” and “a matter of vital importance.”175 Commercial Art likewise offered

Brodovitch his first English-language publishing opportunity: an August 1930 essay entitled “What Pleases Modern Man,” wherein he offers his thoughts on modern society and on the commercial art world’s need to explore novel approaches and techniques to speak to the needs of this new society.

This is not to say that all British industry leaders agreed on the benefits of learning from foreign markets. Much to the contrary, some of the most spirited debates on this topic took place on the pages of British books and journals, often stemming from a general distaste for the styles and approaches favored “on the continent” (i.e. mainland

Europe). In his 1927 text Commercial Arts Practice, British advertising pioneer Charles

C. Knights describes the typical continental European poster as "a meaningless, futile conglomeration of lines, circles and blobs... a riot of painful colour... a chromatic nightmare.”176 In the February 1928 issue of Commercial Art, C. Maxwell Tregurtha’s

“The Picture’s Part in Advertisements” cautioned against imitating foreign avant-garde movements, particularly what he referred to as the “Germanesque,” an approach he writes off as “travesties” produced by “half-baked” German artists and a “gratuitous insult” to that country’s prior history in art and design.177 Herbert N. Casson echoes that warning in his March 1928 article "Is Advertising Art on the Wrong Road?", suggesting that British advertising producers had already allowed too much influence from 'the Continent' in the visual components of their advertising, and argued the case for a more "realistic and

175 Tschichold, “New Life in Print,” 1. 176 Knights, Commercial Art Practice, 113. 177 Tregurtha, “The Picture’s Part in Advertisements,” 63.

60 characteristically British" aesthetic to return, which he feels would be more successful in appealing to a broader British audience:

We are allowing Paris, Berlin and Vienna to dominate us. We have an inferiority complex. We allow Continental artists to call the tune, and the tune does not suit our way of dancing… On behalf of poor old inartistic England, I object to this.178

Calls like Casson’s, for a return to more nationalist approach, were not uncommon, but neither were they universally accepted. Horace Taylor, in a response published in April

1928, pushed back against Casson's line of thinking, suggesting it reflected “the backwardness of advertisement design in this country” and Casson's advocacy, as Taylor saw it, of an outmoded strategy.179 In the same issue, reader Gregory Brown decried

Casson's viewpoint as “completely devoid of the most elementary understanding of design or the psychology of advertising” and “very injurious to the advancement of good design in advertising.”180

Casson himself replied to these and other critics in the May issue, reiterating his concern but taking it one step further, characterizing the “Continental” style as

“grotesque nightmares that are being classed as artistic by Paris, Vienna and Berlin.”181

His appeal turned again to a nationalist sense of pride:

Two of my critics protest that art is international. I always know, when they say that, that they mean it must be non-British. Why cannot Paris learn from us once in a while? Why must we always be running, with our tails between our legs, to Paris?182

In its May 1928 issue, the Commercial Art editorial staff agreed at least in part with

178 Casson, “Is Advertising Art on the Wrong Road?,” 89. 179 Taylor, “Letter to the Editor,” 137. 180 Brown, “Letter to the Editor,” 138. 181 Casson, “Editorial,” 188. 182 Casson, 188.

61 Casson, claiming that “Paris is the world centre for painting, but Paris is not the centre of the world's advertising,”183 and making their own nationalist recommendations:

There is no one style for Britain only, it is true, but British characteristics must form a part of the advertising appeal, and British advertising design, it must be admitted, has yet to find for itself a recognisable degree of 'Englishness' in the same way as a German advertisement is unmistakably German and an American advertisement unmistakably American, even though in both cases the designers have taken artistic tips from France.184

The number of letters submitted in response to this debate was so great that, in the June issue, the editors had to publish a notice that they “regretfully apply the closure” and would publish no further replies.185

Art historian Juliette Hibou suggests that French commercial and decorative artists at the turn of the 20th century were also moving toward an interest in nationalism, fueled in part by “undisguised jealousy” over Germany’s emerging technical dominance in the decorative arts. German goods, particularly those representing the modern vanguard affiliated with the Munich Decorative Arts Society and the Deutsche

Werkbund, were “greeted with a mixture of awe at the Germans’ accomplishment and technical perfection, and hostile criticism of their aesthetic.”186 World War I soon cemented Germany’s separation not only from France but other allied nations; even after the war, German culture remained suspect, and the allies remained cautious in terms of allowing too much German influence into their industries. This official isolation sustained into the mid-1920s — in the most visible example, Germany was excluded from the 1925 Paris Expo despite their allies Austria, Hungary, and Italy receiving

183 Commercial Art, “Editorial,” May 1928, 187. 184 Commercial Art, 188. 185 Commercial Art, “Editorial,” June 1928, 286. 186 Hibou, “National Traditions,” 91.

62 invitations to participate. Jubert notes that the isolationism between France and Germany during this era was reciprocal: the residual suspicion against German culture amplified a nationalist desire to regain lost ground in progressing a French design culture, and in response, the innovative work of French poster and publicity artists were kept from

German audiences, and not published or exhibited publicly until 1928-29.187 This isolation contributed to an interesting divergence between the two nations’ leading typographers. For example, explorations at the Bauhaus by workshop masters Herbert

Bayer and Joseph Albers focused on a new “universal” typographic approach using simplified geometry and only lowercase characters. In stark contrast, French industry leaders such as Charles Peignot, head of the preeminent French type foundry Deberny et

Peignot, focused on highly stylized display type, including revivals of 19th-century “fat faces” such as Sphinx, and the development of Bifur, an arch-Deco script by A.M.

Cassandre that included only capital letters — thereby “respond[ing] to the German

‘ideologization’ of lowercase letters... by ideologizing the uppercase letter.”188

Despite the divergent ideals, other characteristics remained similar between the two nations, and some materials were able to breach the division between the two nations. A mixing of styles — including serif faces — continued in both regions. Though the covers of the Bauhausbuchen, a series of publications published by the Bauhaus’s print workshop, reinforced the supremacy of geometric sans-serif typefaces as the finest expressions of modernist typography, the body text of those same books was set in serif faces well into the late 1920s. Similarly, French typographers such as Francis Thibaudeau

187 Jubert, “The Bauhaus Context: Typography and Graphic Design in France,” 71–72. 188 Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France, 70.

63 felt empowered to advocate for the mixing of styles and the continued use of serif faces in his influential Manuel francais de typographie moderne of 1924. Some such materials were able to breach the division between the two nations: Bayer noted that, during his tenure as master of the school’s Werkstatt für Druck und Reklame (printing and commercial arts workshop, established upon the school’s relocation to Dessau), he was aware of major typographic developments in France such as the publication of

Thibaudeau’s Manuel.189 It took longer for French audiences to acknowledge German innovations such as Tschichold's theories of “The New Typography” — historian Kristof van Gansen suggests that part of this hesitation was a continued defensiveness over their own perceived shortcomings: “France did not have a Bauhaus, nor a modern typeface that could really compete with the internationally successful sans serifs championed by New

Typography”190 — by 1929, this lack drove French foundry Deberny et Peignot to secure a license for German type designer Paul Renner’s “Futura” (1927) within France. They marketed the typeface not as “Futura” but as “Europe,” seemingly in an effort to mask its origin, or at least to encourage it to be thought of as pan-European rather than German.

Even in its own marketing materials, the foundry’s anxiety was clear; on behalf of the foundry, designer Maximilen Vox expressed a mixture of regret and apology: “In order to pursue and complete the renovation of the image of the letter in France, we have to resort to the use of a foreign typeface.”191 Vox’s animosity toward German type was perhaps deepened as the nations went to war once again, and lingered even into the era of the

189 Cohen, Herbert Bayer, 352–54. 190 van Gansen, “Plaidoyer Pour Le Graphiste’. Arts et Métiers Graphiques and the French Typographer as an Artist and Craftsman,” 6. 191 Vox, Divertissements Typographiques No. 4; Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France, 71.

64 “Swiss” or “international” styles intended to dissolve nationalist approaches to design and type; American typographer Edward Rondthaler recalled, after a 1953 meeting with

Vox, that “Mr. Vox knew nothing about German type design and didn’t want to hear about it.”192

American typographer Douglas McMurtrie, in his 1929 text Modern Typography and Layout, observed “the French manner [as] distinctly lighter than that of the German designers,”193 but considered German practitioners, and in particular Frankfurt-based designer and educator Willi Baumeister, as more faithfully advancing the ideals of modernist design. McMurtrie carried on extensive correspondence with Baumeister and other avant-garde European designers during the production of his book,194 and his personal preferences became apparent through his descriptions of the nation’s respective experiments. He lauds the German "revision of type forms [that] renounce all traditions and relentlessly insist on underlying principles of simplicity”195; in stark contrast, he refers to the popular French typeface Bifur as "freak type... I do not think Bifur has much to recommend it.”196 French designers also popularized the use of typewriter-style typefaces; Cassandre, in fact, assigned a typewriter face to accompany the all-caps Bifur when a lowercase face was required.197 McMurtrie was equally disenchanted with this choice and “fail[ed] to see any merit” in the typewritten aesthetic.198

192 Rondthaler, Life with Letters, 81. 193 McMurtrie, Modern Typography and Layout, 182. 194 Lupton and Cohen, Letters from the Avant-Garde, 88. 195 McMurtrie, Modern Typography and Layout, 65. 196 McMurtrie, 97. 197 Agha, “What Makes a Magazine ‘Modern’?,” 14. 198 McMurtrie, Modern Typography and Layout, 75.

65 The relationships between French, German, and British design industries were complex and multilayered; the relationship between these nations and the United States, and vice versa, was younger but no less problematic. Historically, American design had developed as subordinate to Eurocentric traditions, and depended greatly on European movements and trends to guide its continued development; imitation rather than innovation was the major driver in American design. In his foreword to Modern

Typography and Layout, McMurtrie asks what progress American typography has made in recent years, and answers in one word: “None.”199

Graphic design was not alone in this perception; Martha Candler Cheney observed that “[t]he paradox of our American art [remains] its un-Americanness, its mobile, transitory, polyglot character”200; “our artists were European educated, and our

Academy drew its authority unquestioningly from European officialdom.”201 America had gained great stature in industrial manufacturing and technology, but culturally

France, specifically Paris, remained the art world’s focus.

The long-standing and ingrained sense of artistic subjugation to Europe, and

France in particular, was a critical element of the United States’ absence from the 1925

Paris Expo. President Hoover’s administration famously turned down France’s offer for the United States to present a pavilion, due to the perception by our own design industry leaders and government officials that “American manufacturers and craftsmen had almost nothing to exhibit conceived in the modern spirit and in harmony with the spirit of the

199 McMurtrie, 15–16. 200 Cheney, Modern Art in America, 170. 201 Cheney, 6.

66 official specifications.”202 Instead, they assembled a commission under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and sent representatives — 87 of them, mainly leaders of industry and trade associations — to Paris to visit the Expo and report back their findings.

The authors of the Commission’s report, led by chairman and museum director

Charles R. Richards,203 did not mince words in assessing the current state of American innovation:

As a nation we now live artistically largely on warmed-over dishes. In a number of lines of manufacture we are little more than producing antiquarians. We copy, modify and adapt the older styles with few suggestions of a new idea... the modern movement in industrial art if approached intelligently and courageously by American manufacturers may well be the means by which our country will achieve a larger measure of artistic independence.204

The report provided a clear warning to the American design industries that

“unless we are to be entirely dependent in this juncture upon foreign talent, manufacturers, designers and school authorities should take careful note of [the modern movement’s] course abroad and endeavor to initiate a parallel effort of our own.”205 C.A.

Glassgold suggested that the 1925 Paris Expo was proof that “Europe had brewed a stimulating potion while we were pottering about in our own unsavory stew”206 and urged

202 U.S. Department of Commerce, Report of Commission Appointed by the Secretary of Commerce to Visit and Report upon the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris 1925, 16. 203 Prior to the Expo, Richards, in his role as director of the American Association of Museums, disagreed with the opinion of the U.S. State Department and thought it was “of extreme importance” to have the U.S. represented. See “American Products to Be Represented at the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts to Be Held in Paris in 1925.” 204 U.S. Department of Commerce, Report of Commission Appointed by the Secretary of Commerce to Visit and Report upon the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris 1925, 22. 205 U.S. Department of Commerce, 21. 206 Glassgold, “Design in America,” 174.

67 American members to “emancipate [themselves] from European masters.”207

Commission member Henry Creange notes that the production of the exposition itself is a demonstration of leadership, “helping the French to retain style leadership in all their manufactured products, for it is focusing the attention of the world on French creative genius and French craftsmanship.”208 In their conclusion, the authors of the report warn American schools and manufacturers that “the [modern] movement will undoubtedly reach our own shores in the near future and unless we are to be entirely dependent in this juncture upon foreign talent, manufacturers, designers and school authorities should take careful note of its course abroad and endeavor to initiate a parallel effort of our own upon lines calculated to appeal to the American consumer.”209

Dissatisfaction over unfavorable comparisons to France continued after the Expo committee report was released, particularly from American critics who considered

France’s cultural dominance dangerous to the development and progress of American art.

Historian and critic Lewis Mumford was similarly concerned with America’s second-rate position; in his 1927 essay in Harper’s magazine Mumford bemoaned that over the course of the previous century, American designers had become mere “imitators” and their output had grown “sickly and derivative”; American taste has fallen into “collapse” and suffered from aesthetic “anemia — a pathetic state in which beauty lives for us only through repeated ‘transfusions’ from other cultures.”210

207 Glassgold, 175. 208 U.S. Department of Commerce, Report of Commission Appointed by the Secretary of Commerce to Visit and Report upon the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris 1925, 35. 209 U.S. Department of Commerce, 21. 210 Mumford, “American Taste,” 569.

68 Some of the most vociferous criticism of France's influence on American art during this era came from art critic Thomas Craven, who became known for his outspoken disdain of French modern art and its influence over American artists and craftspersons. In his 1929 article, “The Curse of French Culture,” Craven calls for

America’s would-be modernists to resist the “sharp, seductive, and insinuating” call of

French culture which can only result in base imitation.211 He concludes:

France no longer has anything to offer the genuine artist; she reigns as the paradise of second-raters. Paris is the place for pretenders and misfits. There they may loaf and dabble and blaspheme in surroundings so alluring that they suffer no remorses of conscience... They substitute bizarre typography for poetry, and abstractions for art.212

To American industrial designers, Craven publishes a similar caution against the infiltration of the machine aesthetic into American living spaces, pointing in particular to the work of Le Corbusier and his “machine-for-living” philosophy as a “shallow theory of beauty... slippery, sterilized commodities... eccentric trash [for] fiendish and excitable

Americans who maintain homes but do not inhabit them.”213 The article’s title, “Mad

Houses,” makes no attempt to hide Craven’s disdain for, in his words, “[t]he very nature of modernist decoration -- its glittering pretentiousness, its slick, machined artiness, its superficial ingenuity, and its inhuman rigidity.”214 In this criticism Craven appears to be critiquing not only Le Corbusier’s approach but also that of the ultra-functionalist

Bauhaus and other similar European schools of thought.

Similar antagonism was also present among American commercial artists —

211 Thomas Craven, “Forum,” July 1929, 59. 212 Thomas Craven, 62–63. 213 Thomas Craven, “Forum,” August 1929, 80. 214 Thomas Craven, 77–78.

69 including, curiously enough, a European native: Conde Nast art director Mehemed

Fehmy Agha. In a 1932 Advertising Arts essay, Agha chides American commercial artists to “Leave European Art in Europe,” due to the stark contrasts he observes between the two regions’ respective receptiveness to such artistic influence:

[The European reader's] reaction to advertising art is primarily aesthetic… Imaginative advertising is much easier in Europe not only because the readers have warmer blood and quicker reactions but also because they have more of the visual culture and the symbols of modernism are more legible to them than they would be to an American man in the street... Modern things are a reality to [Europeans], whereas in America they are only a passing fancy — just another style to be put on the market by alert manufacturers.215

This warning was necessitated by Agha’s observation of how eagerly American designers and art directors desired this European influence. In a 1929 article, he likened their situation to “standing at the end of [an] aesthetic toboggan and trying to catch as many ideas as possible.”216

Agha and Brodovitch were acquainted, and familiar with one another’s work; indeed, they would go on to become competitors with Brodovitch at the artistic helm of

Harper’s Bazaar, Agha at Vogue. It’s noteworthy that Agha never referred to Brodovitch or his work as “European” but rather “French.” This suggests that, in writing for an

American audience, Agha’s use of the term “European” was perhaps shorthand for any style or approach seen as modern, whereas when considering the work of a particular individual, Agha's own professionalization in Europe made him more acutely aware of the distinctions between, say, German (his own background) and French (Brodovitch's background) flavors of modernism.217

215 Agha, “Leave European Art in Europe,” 17–18. 216 Agha, “Sanserif Legerdemain Avoirdupois,” 43. 217 See, for example, Agha, “What Makes a Magazine ‘Modern’?”

70 European influences on typography in the U.S. — French and German both

— worried some American industry leaders of this era. Around 1927, modern typefaces from French foundry Deberny et Peignot and German foundry Bauer started to become available in the United States, sparking debate among printers and typographers as well as bootleg versions from American type designers. By this time, American type foundries were generating many new stylized typefaces to fill client's desires for the Art Moderne /

Art Deco aesthetic. McMurtrie warned against such “slavish imitation”:

The storm of the new typography rages principally in Europe… it must be remembered that while there is a new creative spirit abroad in the world, the spirit still has its national or at least geographic moods, and that the mood which correctly expresses the German or the Bohemian or even the English national consciousness will always speak with a foreign accent on our soil.218 (McMurtrie 1929 186-7)

Representatives from the American Typographers Association and other trade groups organized a National Board of Printing Types in late 1929 to lobby the restriction of new type designs — foreign and domestic of foreign influence — and to instead steer designers to a curated group of approved classic faces (nevermind that many of these classics also originated in Europe). Typefaces outside this group were classified under such terms as “novelty appeal” (Class 2, the “modernistic”219), or simply “no reason for existence” (Class 3, the “freakish”).220 The effort ultimately failed and the ad hoc board was dissolved.

218 McMurtrie, Modern Typography and Layout, 186–87. 219 The term ‘modernistic’ was often used as a slight against what was seen as a poor impersonation of “true” modernist ideals: “that little ‘-istic’ at the end signaling a pretension to, but failure to achieve, modernism’s authentically arrived-at forms.” See Marshall, Machine Art 1934, 122. 220 Shaw, “‘Stop Making Type’: The Quixiotic Quest of the National Board on Printing Type Faces,” 64.

71 As the 1930s approached, the relationships between these nations began to warm and self-imposed barriers to cross-cultural influence softened. The isolation suffered by

German designers in particular began to recede thanks in large part to Hermann Karl

(H.K.) Frenzel, editor of German commercial art journal Gebrauchsgraphik. Frenzel made significant efforts to repair international relationships and reinvigorate Germany's standing in the industry worldwide. He traveled extensively, supported branch offices of international advertising agencies,221 covered foreign designers in his journal, and even, eventually, published select articles bilingually — though, notably, in German and

English, not French. Frenzel was also largely responsible for bringing the 25th annual

International Advertising Convention to Berlin in 1929. Addressing professionals from across the globe gathered at the convention, Commercial Art co-editor William Gaunt declared, “The battle of the styles is over,”222 and called for abandoning previous conflicts over past nationalist approaches and unite in support of the continued progress of modernism.

By this time, the chilly relationship had warmed somewhat on France’s end as well, as evidenced by 1929’s Publicite, a luxuriously printed portfolio of advertising work from seven nations which demonstrated appreciation for the work of Bauhaus masters and other German proponents of the New Typography. But within just a few years of this reopening of relations, Charles Peignot would express concern once again that German design innovation was outpacing that of France. In a 1932 article in French news magazine Vu, Peignot lamented the state of French design education and its

221 see Aynsley, “‘Gebrauchsgraphik’ as an Early Graphic Design Journal, 1924-1938,” 55. 222 Gaunt, “The Spirit and the Letter of Modern Advertising Design,” 142.

72 “relative inadequacy” as compared to the Bauhaus.223 Peignot apparently had not foreseen the imminent shuttering of the Bauhaus after the rise of Nazi Party rule in

Germany, less than a year after the publication of his article.

The generally positive relationship between the design industries of the United

States and Great Britain continued to strengthen, and in some cases a desire for a stronger influence began to reveal itself. In March 1929, British advertising figurehead Charles C.

Knights offered a positive review of a new book Advertising Layout, by Frank H. Young, founder of the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Young advocated for such modern strategies as arranging compositions asymmetrically, allowing for a significant amount of white space around the body of the advertisement, and avoiding borders to allow for the

“annexation” of the margins of the page as additional white space — all ideals set out previously in Tschichold’s New Typography among other approaches originating in

Europe, but which Knights puzzlingly celebrates as “100 per cent Americanism.”224

Knights took liberty within this review to air some grievances he harbored about his own industry, noting as “notorious that the American advertiser has a far greater appreciation of the sales value of good art work than his British prototype.”225 This view was echoed by influential British author and advertising copywriter G.H. Saxon Mills, in a 1930 essay in Commercial Art, wherein he commends the practitioners of “America, where the technical and mechanical aspects of advertising have reached an unprecedented perfection.”226 Contrary to Knights, however, Saxon Mills doesn’t attribute these

223 quoted in Jubert, “The Bauhaus Context: Typography and Graphic Design in France,” 69. 224 Knights, “The Art of the Layout,” 118. 225 Knights, 118. 226 Saxon Mills, “And Now ‘Modern’ Copy -- ‘Commercial Art’ and the Revolution of the Word,” 204.

73 qualities as uniquely American; rather, he identifies particular practitioners from the U.K. and France whom he believes ushered in this new approach:

Outside of advertising, Art (with a capital A) is moving faster than Literature (with a capital L), while ‘art in advertising’ is moving even faster — so fast indeed that much that is most interesting in modern graphic forms is coming from the pencils of men like Kauffer, Ashley, Brodovitch, Cassandre, Carlu and others — advertising artists.227

In 1931, Saxon Mills again voiced his admiration of Brodovitch (who by then had moved to the U.S.), pointing to him and to leading British commercial artist Ashley Havinden

(known professionally as “Ashley of Crawford’s”228) as exemplars of the well-rounded expert in all the integrated arts of graphic design, necessary for success in this newly emerging profession:

...there is growing up the trained professional presentation man. This man has never existed before. He has been created by the problem. He is a compound of the advertising man, the artist, the typographer, the photographer, the production expert. (You have to be all these to be an Ashley or a Brodovitch.)229

Included among such illustrious company as these last few examples, it is clear that

Brodovitch’s reputation as a leader in the field and as an artist at the forefront of a new approach to advertising design had reached a broad, international audience.

“Living Transmitters”

One of the key shifts during the interwar period is the turn in overall perception of foreign influence — the “attribution of value to the cultural productions compared”230

227 Saxon Mills, 204, emphasis in original. 228 see Taylor, “Ashley of Crawford’s.” 229 Saxon Mills, “Is Modern Advertising in Touch with the Public?,” 66, emphasis in original. 230 Souza Dias, “International Design Organizations and the Study of Transnational Interactions,” 189.

74 — from a negative to a positive. Trade journals, and books such as Tschichold’s and

McMurtrie’s, were critical in helping spread ideas and philosophies from one geographical area to another, but the movement of designers themselves was perhaps most influential in this regard. Historian Patrick Rössler suggests that many design innovations of the early modernist era were shared — “co-orientation” or “unspecific similarities” — but that such shifts, particularly between Europe and the U.S., could be sparked or escalated “based on the mobility of individuals who served as living transmitters of new ideas.”231

The American commission’s report of the 1925 Paris Expo was wide-ranging, and included observations at length on a variety of exhibit categories and themes. Part II of the commission’s report, a summary of specific areas of the exposition, compares more explicitly the state of American versus French commercial arts and advertising in their observations on “Class 26: Arts of the Street”:

The French have developed much interesting work in this field of late years, work that has attracted much attention from Americans on the billboards of Paris. Perhaps the most striking feature of the most successful posters is the subordination of the representative feature to a design which catches the eye by its striking quality or by its artistic beauty. French criticism of our own art in this field is that we rely too much on the representation of the article to be advertised and in this way subordinate the aesthetic and telling qualities of the design.232

The suggestion that Americans could learn something from the French approach to commercial art surfaced again in committee members’ observations on Group V, the portion of the exposition displaying innovations in educational approaches. Here, more directly, the report suggested improvement through emulation of the French model:

231 Rössler, “Global Players, Émigrés, and Zeitgeist,” 578. 232 U.S. Department of Commerce, Report of Commission Appointed by the Secretary of Commerce to Visit and Report upon the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris 1925, 63.

75 To us in America the school exhibit has much to say. The extent to which we can profit by any adventure in the new field depends almost wholly on the extent to which the talents of strongly equipped designers are employed -- designers of such stature that they can create things of beauty in new terms and not merely exploit novelty and freakishness under the label of modernism.233

Perhaps most prescient to Brodovitch’s future were two specific observations on French industrial education:

Our art schools differ from those in Europe principally in two points: First, the instructing staff in European schools is composed of men of distinct reputation and ability. At times, indeed, they represent the most competent individuals in their respective fields. These persons are generally connected with the schools on a part-time basis, which allows them to retain active connection with practical work.234

Even prior to the 1925 Paris Expo, numerous accomplished designers had emigrated from Europe and found creative work in the U.S. — Agha, Lucian Bernhard,

Joseph Urban, and many others. Some, like Loja and Eliel Saarinen, would move from private design practice into art and design education, and would contribute to a significant re-shaping of design education methods in the United States. The Saarinens came to the U.S. in 1923 and, within two years, both took up positions at the Cranbrook

Educational Community (later the Cranbrook Academy of Art). But teaching hadn’t been the Saarinens’ intent. Brodovitch, in 1930, was among the earliest emigres — if not the earliest — to be recruited to the United States specifically to teach, to communicate the coveted European modern approach to the next generation of American designers. Others followed: also in 1930, Hans Hoffmann would leave Germany to begin teaching at the

University of California at Berkeley, later establishing his own school of art in the U.S. as

233 U.S. Department of Commerce, 65. 234 U.S. Department of Commerce, 65.

76 he had previously done in Munich.235 And in subsequent years — particularly as the Nazi party rose to power — a number of accomplished design educators, including Walter

Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, and Herbert Bayer, would leave Europe to continue their teaching in the United States.

As detailed in Chapter 1, Brodovitch was recruited by John Story Jenks, a trustee of the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts (PMSIA), to relocate to the U.S. and revamp the school’s Advertising Design program. Jenks and the school’s other trustees clearly put great faith in the Expo Commission’s recommendations: Brodovitch had no record of teaching success to offer — indeed, he had never taught formally, and in matters of art and design, he couldn’t even parrot his own experience, as he was entirely self-taught. Yet, upon his hire for the 1930-31 academic year, according to PMSIA Board of Trustee records, Brodovitch instantly became the highest paid faculty member in their

Art Department.236 In negotiating Brodovitch’s responsibilities, the school took to heart the Commission’s recommendation that the best instructors “retain active connection with practical work.” Though his position at the school was full-time, administrators did encourage his working on freelance advertising projects and other types of professional activity. He often incorporated his contract work into his classroom practices, and brought students on as apprentices and collaborators. (This practice will be examined in

Chapter 3.)

235 Agee, Modern Art in America 1908-68, 164. 236 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees, May 8, 1930,” 317.

77 Certainly, as recommended by the Commission, Brodovitch was a man of

“distinct reputation and ability.” His mentions in various art and design journals of that era read more like advertising testimonials, or even ceremonial toasts:

– “Brodovitch, whose name is a guarantee of success...”237 – “Brodovitch... has been able to dominate his artistic destiny...”238 – “Brodovitch... audacious, sincere, profound, and authentic...”239 – “Brodovitch, Graphic Alchemist”240

Many of these mentions also highlight his cultural “other-ness.” European journals often emphasized his Russian-ness:

– “He came from afar, from a country and an epoch beyond our ken and beyond our time…”241 – “Russian born and impregnated through and through with the super-largesse of mysticism [...and] sensibility which are at the roots of the Slavic soul…”242

American media, in contrast, typically emphasized not his Russian-ness but his French- ness:

– “one of the most prominent French modern advertising artists...”243 – “one time leader in Paris of the modern movement in advertising art...”244 – “[Brodovitch] has come to be considered one of the leading figures in modern art here, as he was previously in France.”245 – “His work, executed in the most advanced continental manner, is infinitely logical, practical and adaptable to present-day American needs.”246

Others focus on the seeming peculiarity of his multicultural backstory, as in the aforementioned Philadelphia Enquirer headline, or in the March 1931 issue of

237 Valotaire, “The Publicity of a French Store,” 200. 238 Soupault, “Alexey Brodovitch,” 909. 239 Soupault, 914. 240 Dupuy, “A. Brodovitch: A Graphic Alchemist,” 45. 241 Soupault, “Alexey Brodovitch,” 909. 242 Dupuy, “A. Brodovitch: A Graphic Alchemist,” 45. 243 Agha, “What Makes a Magazine ‘Modern’?,” 14. 244 “History of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, 1860-1935.” 245 “Brodovitch Art Goes on Display.” 246 New York School of Fine and Applied Art, “Announcement of Alexey Brodovitch Course.”

78 Advertising Arts: “We pause to honor... Alexey Brodovitch: Because after living in

Petrograd, Paris and Berlin,247 he is now in America with his definite ideas of

‘graphism’...”.248

Cross-Cultural Influences in Brodovitch’s Work

In surveying the body of work that gained Brodovitch such a reputation, one can see a consistent and pervasive blending of cultures and influences. Numerous works refer back to the pre-revolutionary Russian visual culture of his upbringing, particularly of the traditional Russian lubok print. The lubok acted as a source of inspiration for many artists and printmakers of this era249 — indeed, historian Mechella Yezernitskaya suggests artists of Brodovitch’s era, including Gontcharova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Olga

Rozanova, were responsible for reinvigorating the tradition and bringing it into their present day — creating the “modern lubok” or “today’s lubok.”250 But the reference would have been more meaningful for Brodovitch. His status as an exile, a very particular kind of alienation, complicated his relationships with his adopted homeland of France, with the Russia of his past, and with the Russia of his present, requiring constant negotiation — a phenomenon author David Bethea terms “cultural triangulation.”251

247 Though Berlin, like Paris, was home to a large Russian emigre community, there is no record of Brodovitch claiming to have lived in or even visited Berlin. Some sources (e.g. Sednaoui) suggest his mother moved to Germany for some part of the 1920s, returning to Paris during Brodovitch’s employ at Aux Trois Quartiers. If correct, it is certainly possible that Brodovitch visited. 248 “We Pause to Honor,” 26. 249 Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920, 288–89. 250 Yezernitskaya, “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: The Art of the Russian Avant-Garde”; Vassilieff and Larionov also worked in this tradition. See Luchert, “Franco-Russian Artistic Amity and the Section d’Or,” 26; Marcade and Marcade, “Russian Painting in Paris Between the Wars,” 14. 251 Bethea examines this phenomenon as experienced by the Russian exile community. See, for example, Bethea, “Joseph Brodsky and the American Seashore Poem.”

79 Brodovitch would return to the lubok again and again, despite that manifold alienation — or, perhaps, because of it; his embrace of a traditional pre-Soviet aesthetic may have been an intentional choice to express his desire to return to older ways.

A number of his book illustrations and advertising designs evoked the tradition of the lubok; its influence in Brodovitch’s work was evident as early as 1922. His poster for the Union des Artistes Russes masquerade Bal Banal (fig. 2), appropriate for a cultural event benefiting the Russian exile community, carried many of the characteristics of the lubok: imagery was simple, not highly detailed, and was flattened rather than rendered in depth. The poster was printed in black only, and then hand-painted; color variations can be seen in each surviving copy of the poster. This would have allowed the poster to be produced as cheaply as possible.

His wraparound jacket for the 1927 edition of La Ramayana (fig. 25) blends the lubok aesthetic with block printing traditions and ornamental motifs of India and

Southeast Asia. This and another 1927 commission, La Sultane de l'Amour, featured

Middle Eastern and Asian themes, testaments to an “Orientalisme” craze which had taken hold of Paris in the early 1910s (inspired, in part, by certain productions of the Ballets

Russes) and peaked with the rediscovery and looting of Egyptian pharaoh

Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

More reflective of his own Russian heritage, Brodovitch was selected to illustrate a 1928 edition of John Milton’s A Brief History of Moscovia — the first re-issue of that title in over 200 years the work had been re-issued since the 17th century, thanks to the efforts of Russian literature historian (and exiled Russian “Prince”) D.S. Mirsky.

Certainly the similarity of Brodovitch’s background to his own drove Mirsky’s selection.

80 Though critics have interpreted Milton’s impressions of Russia as quite bleak — “a country backward, sordid, pestilential”252 — Brodovitch’s illustrations fairly sparkle.

Milton’s text was compiled from a number of different sources, 16th- and 17th-century accounts of some of the earliest British contacts with the Russian region and its people

(Milton himself never traveled there). Brodovitch’s illustrations heading each chapter are fanciful and ornate vignettes of Russian architecture; the text mentions houses, monasteries, castles, but contains very few details thereof, so Brodovitch undoubtedly drew upon his own memories and knowledge of historical landmarks in his illustrations.

Present are the classic “onion domes” and orthodox crosses of Russian cathedrals, the crenellated walls of castles, even what appears to be an enormous theater proscenium, making the surrounding village seem like the set of some grand performance (fig. 26).

The frontispiece is another Brodovitch twist on the traditional practice of icon painting

(fig. 27). Rather than a religious subject, Brodovitch chose a secular one: the dominant figure holds an orb and scepter, ceremonial symbols of a Russian sovereign. The man, heavily bearded and dressed in a long, flowing robe, is not identified. However, historical portraits of the tsars during Milton’s era suggest those sovereigns did not traditionally wear beards, which suggests this illustration may instead be Brodovitch’s homage to

Russia’s last tsar, Nicolas II, whom Brodovitch recalls meeting during his time in the

Corps du Pages.253

As Brodovitch deepened his experience in graphic design and typography, one can identify his efforts to incorporate and synthesize multiple styles, creating hybrid

252 Cawley, Milton’s Literary Craftsmanship, 11. 253 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 19.

81 images and layouts with characteristics from a variety of artistic movements active in

Paris during the 1920s. Abstraction, both geometric and organic, would become a major influence on his work. Geometric abstraction was on display in his work for Restaurant

Prunier, in both illustration and typography (figs. 6–8) and his poster for Martini vermouth, for two examples; a more organic or biomorphic approach to abstracting forms can be seen in his prints Le Joueur de Flûte (fig. 4) and Le Trapiziste (fig. 13). Traces of influence from almost every style he encountered — Cubism; Purism; Futurism; Russian

Cubo-Futurism, Rayonism, and Neo-Primitivism; Dutch De Stijl; and particularly French

Art Deco practices — can be found throughout Brodovitch’s work in illustration and typography.

Art Deco is an expressive and often quite decorative style practiced by many

French designers in the 1920s; its many variations make it difficult to delineate its boundaries. Design historian Jan Middendorp observes Art Deco style as a continuation of two disparate branches of Art Nouveau: the “lush, curvillinear” expressions most prominent in French Art Nouveau and German Jugendstil, and the “more rational, geometric constructions” of the Secessionists and Dutch and Scottish designers.254 In his designs, Brodovitch experimented in both directions, producing expressive and highly stylized type and imagery for clients such as Becker Fils clothiers, while preferring more restrained and geometrically strict type for others including Donnet automobiles and

Nicolet gloves. Historian Katrien Van Haute suggests that, with such a diversity of stylistic experiments, it can be difficult to point to specific characteristics indicative of

Art Deco typography. Many feature a high contrast of thin strokes to thick strokes

254 Middendorp, Dutch Type, 66.

82 — many, but not all, nor is that characteristic unique to the Art Deco era. Likewise, many feature letterforms that are simplified in a manner that expresses the intrinsic geometry of the letterform, but that simplification was signature to numerous other type movements preceding and contemporary to Art Deco. Van Haute suggests that the most tell-tale characteristic of Art Deco typography is “the eccentrically placed horizontal midline, the

‘dislocated midline’, which is manifested in practically every letter form.”255

Brodovitch’s identity work for Parisian department store Aux Trois Quartiers (see figs. 20–21) was certainly his highest profile project to date, resulting in what Wlassikoff credits as “what can be considered the first global visual identity produced in France.”256

Interestingly, for this identity, rather than call upon the latest in French Art Deco type experiments as he did in many of his posters and advertisements, he embraced foreign influence and chose a treatment based on Dutch type of the preceding two decades.

The type style originated, it seems, in the work of influential Dutch architect

Hendrik Petrus (Pieter) Berlage. One of his most famous projects, the Amsterdam

Commodities Exchange (now known as the Beurs van Berlage), was completed around

1903,257 and included a number of typographic and signage elements which, at the time, would have been hand-rendered by members of his workshop.258 The type styles he used varied, a mix of historical Dutch type designs and Art Nouveau-inspired motifs; in certain pieces of signage one can find a uniquely stylized “S” — instead of Nouveau’s more sinewy curves, this “S” was relatively strict, geometrically speaking: long, straight,

255 van Haute, “The Indépendant, a Typeface as Period Document,” 8; the author credits the term “dislocated midline” to Priscilla Lena Farias. 256 Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France, 94. 257 “Beurs van Berlage History.” 258 Peters, “FontFont Focus: The FF Berlage Twins.”

83 parallel horizontal strokes, curves that were perfect half-circles, and uniform line weight

(thickness) throughout.

There is no definitive explanation of how Brodovitch would have become familiar with a type style originating in commercial building signage in Amsterdam. He was acquainted with certain aspects of Dutch culture and architecture, as demonstrated in his illustrations for Monsieur de Bougrelon (figs. 18–19); however, he never spoke or wrote about having actually visited the area, and though Berlage may have been well-known, knowledge or images of the particular type treatments of the building signage in question weren’t necessarily as widespread. It’s more likely that he became familiar with the style after it was adopted by other commercial artists, such as Dutch-Hungarian designer

Vilmos Huszar. Huszar’s advertising campaigns and packaging designs for Miss Blanche

Cigarettes featured a variety of different typefaces through the 1920s, beginning with a severe rectangular approach reminiscent of the designer’s early logo for the De Stijl art journal. By 1926 the type had evolved to blend softer curves with the strict square and rectangular De Stijl forms, a “hand-drawn variet[y] of a sanserif which owed as much to nineteenth-century grotesques as to geometry.”259 Huszar’s ultimate type treatment (fig.

28) maintained the signature “S” first seen in Berlage’s work, a detail that had not previously been seen commercially across Europe, but the letters had become squatter and thicker. The type was featured in outdoor advertisements painted directly onto the walls of buildings, as well as in printed advertisements and on the cigarette packaging itself.260 The letters were never released as a commercially manufactured metal or wood

259 Middendorp, Dutch Type, 79. 260 Middendorp, 77.

84 typeface during this era261 — and, thus, was never given an official name — but a full alphabet was drawn by Jacob Jongert around 1929 and published in 1937 (fig. 29).262

Brodovitch had been hand-lettering his own type in this style by at least 1928 in his work for ATQ, so could not have been influenced by Jongert’s publication.

Aspects of the type style changed in every successive adoption: certain characters in Huszar’s lettering show differences from Berlage’s work, yet other characters remained very similar. Brodovitch’s and Jongert’s subsequent versions showed further revisions and refinements from the earlier versions — not to mention significant differences between the two men’s respective versions. Brodovitch’s manipulations include changing the apex of the “A” from a more archetypically Dutch flat top to a sharp point, shifting (‘dislocating’) the midline in several characters to instill a more authentic

Art Deco feel, and adjusting the overall proportions of the letters to become more squarelike and widths more uniform.

Brodovitch’s version was featured prominently on ATQ’s facades along Paris thoroughfares Rue de la Madeleine and Rue Duphot, as well as in all of their catalogs and printed materials (fig. 20–21). Peculiarly, Brodovitch used this same type style in work for Printemps, a direct competitor to ATQ, for a temporary facade / construction barrier

(fig. 30), and some sources credit a third department store identity utilizing the same style

— Magasins Reunis, in the French city of Nancy — to Brodovitch as well.263 (Any

261 A digital version of the typeface was released by Donald Beekman in 2016, after nearly a decade of development. Beekman worked from Berlage originals held in the collection of the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach, Germany. The typeface is now available commercially in two versions: FF Berlage Burcht (featuring the signature “S”) and FF Berlage Beurs (in which, among other variations, the midline of the “S” is shifted off center). Peters, “FontFont Focus: The FF Berlage Twins.” 262 Vecht, Onze letterteekens en hun samenstelling, 81, fig. 62; see also Middendorp, Dutch Type, 75. 263 Maingois, quoted in Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Alexey Brodovitch, 125.

85 connection to Magasins Reunis is unproven.). The dates of these other projects are unknown, but as it’s unlikely he would have sought or accepted the commission of a competitor after taking a position at ATQ, the Printemps work is likely prior to 1928.

This type style would continue to spread across Europe, seen in works by such designers as Ib Andersen (Danish, e.g. 1929 Udstilling Forum) and Leon Gischia

(German, e.g. May 1931 cover of Gebrauchsgraphik), as well as on Jacob Jongert’s packaging and advertisements for Van Nelle’s coffee and tobacco. The lettering also found its way to the United States, via Brodovitch’s teaching. Examples of student work were regularly incorporated into PMSIA’s “Circular” [course catalog] each year; the modern type with the signature “S” can be seen in a Sunoco advertisement mock-up in the 1931-32 Circular, and in the 1933-34 Circular among a series of specimens representing type styles learned in the introductory lettering course (fig. 31), taught that year by Brodovitch alum Raymond Ballinger. In his 1952 textbook Lettering Art in

Modern Use, Ballinger included guides for hand-lettering a variety of typefaces, including Brodovitch’s. Ballinger’s version, like every version prior, is slightly modified from its predecessor, but still features the signature “S,” the sharp apexed “A,” and other manipulations made by Brodovitch for ATQ. The textbook does not identify the typeface by a name, but categorizes the style as “‘Mechanical,’ although [also] commonly called

‘Modern Gothic’.”264 Ballinger’s textbook notes that this typeface was “much used in

Europe around 1925–1930 by such fine designers as A.M. Cassandre and Alexey

Brodovitch,”265 giving some insight into how Brodovitch may have described the

264 Ballinger, Lettering Art in Modern Use, 45–47. 265 Ballinger, 45.

86 typeface’s background to his own students decades earlier — melting the details of its

Dutch origin and later regional variants into a more generic “European” amalgam.

Brodovitch may have been drawn to this particular style due to its reduction of letterforms to basic geometric lines and curves. Like many Art Deco-era artists,

Brodovitch was influenced by Cubism’s emphasis on abstraction, particularly the breaking-down of shapes and volumes embraced by Analytical Cubism, and the subsequent reengagement with basic forms of Purism which would dominate French advertising art (parallel, in some ways, with the Plakatstil in German advertising). Cubist influence is particularly evident in his work for Restaurant Prunier (figs. 6–8) and Martini vermouth, as well as his illustrations for Monsieur de Bougrelon (fig. 18–19). Brodovitch was a keen observer, and borrowed from everywhere — even from the Russian avant- garde, despite his demonstrated animosity toward the new Soviet regime. As early as

1926, suggestions of Constructivist and Suprematist aesthetics could be seen in his posters. The influence of Constructivism is particularly apparent in his work Aquatone

Today for Philadelphia printing company Edward Stern & Co., a luxurious hardcover booklet promoting their new Aquatone printing technology (fig. 32–34). In this volume,

Brodovitch combines a number of stylistic approaches: spreads with dramatic

Constructivist effects — bold geometry, photomontage, powerful movement — alongside rational text layouts that would have felt at home in a modernist typography manual by

Tschichold or Tolmer, alongside use of ornamental motifs ranging from machine-inspired

(gears and clock works) to folksy (the manicule, or pointing finger, repopularized in 19th century American advertising and wood type posters), all wrapped up inside a mysterious, ethereal, airbrushed cover (fig. 32). (As we saw in Chapter 1, Brodovitch

87 occasionally repurposed elements of his illustrations and prints; this is also true for

Aquatone Today. The glowing paned windows from the cover appear again in an advertisement for General Electric’s Mazda light bulbs; the gear montage in fig. 31 would be reused in its entirety on letterhead for Nathan George Horwitt, founding partner of Design Engineers.)

Beyond stylistic influence, one can identify a number of works that suggest

Brodovitch was thinking explicitly about the topic of cross-cultural transfer in his work between 1928 and 1930. Perhaps he and Jenks had already floated the idea of moving to the U.S. to teach; perhaps he was laying the groundwork for such an opportunity. Or perhaps he was simply intellectually interested in the topic.

In August 1930, Brodovitch published an article in the British journal

Commercial Art, a somewhat Futurist-inspired quasi-manifesto of sorts: “What Pleases the Modern Man.” In it he sets out his predictions for the future of the advertising (or

“publicity”) field. In the process, he also makes recommendations for what the designer of the future should focus on — in effect, laying out a curriculum for how someone might approach teaching these new approaches to design in a classroom setting.266

Accompanying the article are a number of illustrations: some created for specific clients or projects, others perhaps simply decorative. Then, there’s an illustration appearing to literally depict the concept of cross-cultural transfer: a map with the continents in silhouette, with thicker lines emanating outward from Paris, roughly, and reaching destinations across the world, including the United States (fig. 35). The caption for this illustration reads, “Tail-piece for a work on the modern aesthetic by Alexey Brodovitch,”

266 Brodovitch, “What Pleases the Modern Man.”

88 lending further credibility to the idea that this may be literally depicting the concept of cross-cultural influence of modernist ideals. It’s possible this piece was intended for an article or book that was never published; there’s no record of it or anything like it in any archives of Brodovitch’s surviving materials. It’s also possible, however, that the “work on the modern aesthetic” is the “Modern Man” article itself; it certainly fits the description of the caption, though it is unclear why the wording would have been left so vague.

A second item for consideration: for the 1930 portfolio Dessins, by French decorative arts publisher A. Calavas, Brodovitch contributed two visually arresting pochoir plates (figs. 36–37). In this portfolio, other designers contributed replicas of work created for clients; Brodovitch’s designs, in contrast, were bespoke for the portfolio. The plates are numbered by Brodovitch as “Planche 1” and “Planche 2.” On each plate there are multiple components: a series of small designs, lettered (A, B, C…) to suggest sequence; color swatches indicative of the presence of “color separations” in a mechanical printing process; and a title in French, “Idees Ornamentales” (“Decorative

Ideas”), written in French but following an arrow extended from North America. The second plate also includes a suggestion of “dummy” text, like a mock-up for a magazine layout indicating where body copy would be dropped in.

The letters, the dummy text, and the basic parts-and-pieces composition of the plates all make perfect sense; Brodovitch had been, for a number of years, art director for

Paris department store Aux Trois Quartiers. He designed catalogs. This was perfectly in line with that familiar visual idiom. The imagery and its possible meanings, however, is more opaque. Taking the plates in reverse order, the second plate appears to depict or be

89 inspired by scientific observations of visual phenomena. The imagery suggests rays, perhaps rays of light, bouncing and bending; he wrote extensively about light, lenses, rays, and prisms throughout “What Pleases the Modern Man.” Topographic contours, or possibly facial features with indication of an eye, suggest an interpretation of the sense of vision, the process by which an object in nature is broken down and converted to signals in the retina.

The first plate seems in some ways more representational, but no clearer in terms of the message. It is certainly possible to interpret all the strange suggestions made here as purely decorative — “ornamental ideas” as titled. However, the potency of the symbols used by Brodovitch suggests otherwise. Most prominent among the visual elements is a giant American flag, slightly abstracted, large enough to encompass all of

North and South America, with the United States border indicated (albeit inaccurately).

Elements of this design are certainly suggestive of transfer or exchange or communication. Particularly at letter B, the horizontal lines indicating some sort of travel across the blue field; if the white shape suggests a cloud, the blue becomes sky and the lines could suggest communication, radio waves, perhaps air travel. If the blue suggests a body of water as depicted on a traditional map, perhaps this could represent the Atlantic

Ocean; the yellow shape on the right slightly resembles the west coast of France, with the yellow shape on the left perhaps indicating some particular area of the U.S.’s east coast.

(The silhouette of the U.S. at large is quite inaccurate, which suggests an intentional abstraction were this truly intended to be a geographic depiction.)

90 Graphisme

Perhaps the most prominent evidence of Brodovitch’s reinforced alienation is his adoption of the word graphisme, and his consistent (and ultimately successful) efforts to be professionally and personally identified with this French term in America.

For the May 1929 issue of Arts et Metiers Graphiques, Brodovitch laid out and illustrated a special section on graphisme, with text by Pierre Mac Orlan. With Futurist fervor that certainly influenced Brodovitch’s later essay “What Pleases the Modern

Man.” Mac Orlan advocates for the embrace of the modern urban condition: bright lights, flashing signs, and in particular, new technologies for documenting human experience — photographs, phonographs, and cinematography — which he unites under the term graphisme, the common element graph — capturing or recording.

It’s unclear whether Brodovitch had used the term prior to his work on this layout.

What is clear is that he latched onto it immediately, and it became a cornerstone of his design philosophy. As part of Soupault’s article about him for AeMG in July 1930,

Brodovitch created a full-page “Photolith” offset print (fig. 38) within which the word features prominently, depicting, symbolically, the craft of graphic design.

During his first year in Philadelphia, he mounted an exhibition of his work at the school, which he titled Alexey Brodovitch’s Graphisme267 (fig. 39) — and in this exhibition title we see an important distinction being made. After his arrival in the U.S.,

Brodovitch continued to use the word in French. This reflects perfectly Corn’s observation of the aforementioned sub-group of Transatlantique artists, the self- determined outsiders: using a parallel term in English, or an Americanized version of the

267 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, November 7, 1930.”

91 French, would be assimilation. To maintain the French terminology is to reinforce one’s identity as an outsider, the French Russian — or was it now Russian Frenchman? — while now also alienated from both of those identities.

In analyzing the use of this word during this time period, one must defer to sources from that period that can better represent the word’s meaning and context, acknowledging that “the conventions of a particular time and place determine the meaning of language.”268 Luckily, on the inside of the exhibition invitation, Brodovitch included a concrete (and dated) definition for his understanding and use of the term:

GRAPHISME: System of writing Use of definite signs To express ideas Larousse – Paris – 1922

This varies from Mac Orlan’s earlier definition; Brodovitch now uses it to sum up the communicative and semiotic functions of graphic design. In the March 1930 issue of

Vendre, French advertising head R.L. DuPuy — who, two months earlier profiled

Brodovitch for the German commercial art journal Gebrauchsgraphik — suggests that graphisme, which he defines as “reducing [an idea or concept] to the essential,” is simply a new word for an old idea ("mot nouveau, idee antique").269 Authoritative dictionaries of the French language agree as to the relatively recent origin of this interpretation of graphisme. The Académie Française notes the definition “Manière de dessiner propre à un artiste” [“An artist’s own manner of designing”] as originating in the 20th century.270

268 Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, 99–100. 269 Dupuy, “Panorama de La Publicite Francaise,” 191. 270 Académie Française, 9th edition, “Graphisme.”

92 Le Tresor notes a connection to the graphic arts originating in 1912.271 Le Grand Robert traces an earlier (1875) etymology for the meaning connected to linguistics and the act of writing (l'écriture), but dates the definition having to do with “Aspect de signes graphiques (écriture, dessin, etc.), considérés sur le plan esthétique” ["Aspect of graphic signs (writing, drawing, etc.), considered aesthetically"] to 1920.272 And in the brochure mentioned above, Brodovitch dates the LaRousse definition to 1922.

A Google ngram analysis (fig. 40) suggests that in French-language literature, appearances of the word can be traced back to the late 1800s; in English-language literature, however, we can see the word originates closer to 1920, and sees a significant bump right around 1930 and immediately after. It seems possible that Brodovitch popularized — or rather, re-popularized into English — this old French word. Of the few appearances of the word in American advertising and art literature during the 1930s, nearly all are direct references to Brodovitch. Ironically, despite Brodovitch’s persistence in maintaining the word in French, many users American-ize it to “graphism.” A 1936 write-up by industrial designer Nathan George Horwitt, for example, refers to 1930 as

“the year Mr. Brodovitch came to America to teach his theories of Graphism.”273 Often it also appears with quotation marks around it, lending it an air of foreign-ness despite the

Americanization of the spelling, e.g.:

“[Brodovitch] is now in America, with his definite ideas of ‘graphism’ (the use of signs and symbols to express modern ideas)...”;274 “...call it ‘graphism,’ a la Brodovitch.”275

271 Le Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (TLFi), “Graphisme.” 272 Le Grand Robert, “Graphisme.” 273 Horwitt, “Untitled Article Regarding PMSIA ‘Million Dollar Show.’” 274 “We Pause to Honor,” 26. 275 Horwitt, “Jacketeer Hawkins,” 31.

93 The purposeful adherence to this French term unfamiliar to the American ear certainly has a performative aspect, as well. Brodovitch’s professional appeal was due at least in part to his ability to serve as a “living transmitter” of European methods and approaches.

Finding opportunities such as this exhibition to remind those around him of his enduring

“European-ness” may well have been a job security measure, in Brodovitch’s mind.

Job security may not have been a realistic concern, considering how quickly the

PMSIA administration came to admire Brodovitch’s methods and the work produced by his students. But there is certainly evidence that his presence at, and impact on, the school was, in the minds of his administrators, directly related to his European identity. In the

1931 annual report of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art (as at this time the school was a unit of the museum), Principal Edmondson Hussey credited Brodovitch for the successful transformation of the Advertising Design program, celebrating his new curriculum as

“contemporary in idea and European in concept.”276 Elizabeth Conway Clark, member of the school’s Committee of Women, lauded Brodovitch’s “new message in design — one that the School has needed… wholly European in conception.”277

Administrators were so eager to keep Brodovitch’s progress and momentum that, even after he accepted a position with Harper’s Bazaar in 1934 and moved his family to

New York City, the school negotiated with him to stay on as faculty part-time. (This negotiation was, in fact, Brodovitch’s idea, as he seemed unsure whether the position he had accepted at Bazaar would demand his full time.)278 Brodovitch continued leading his

Design Laboratory at PMSIA on the weekends, with recent alumni Mary Fullerton (later

276 Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Annual Report, 43. 277 Pennsylvania Museum of Art, 53. 278 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, June 27, 1934.”

94 Faulconer) and Raymond Ballinger heading the weekday classes; Faulconer led the

Design Laboratory, while Ballinger took over the Advertising Design program.279 This arrangement seemed to satisfy administrators, and continued to produce high-performing students who embraced Brodovitch’s methods and aesthetic to great commercial success.

In 1936, as a demonstration of Brodovitch’s impact on the creative field, PMSIA invited 42 recent alumni working in the advertising industry to exhibit ads and campaigns they’d created since graduation. For all the various advertising campaigns on display, the total “ad buy” — the amount spent by clients to place those ads in magazines and newspapers, and on billboards and subways/streetcars — totaled over one million dollars.

Brodovitch thus nicknamed the exhibition “The Million Dollar Art Show.” Coverage in

Art Digest and the Philadelphia Inquirer — articles with nearly identical content, suggesting they were based heavily on a press release from the school — quote PMSIA staff member Jay Raphael giving credit for the students’ remarkable success in no uncertain terms: “Brodovitch is responsible.” He describes Brodovitch’s approach as

“creat[ing] the new and unusual by use of surrealistic methods — depicting the effect of things on the mind rather than on the eye, in addition to more accepted styles.”280

Notably absent is any description of the work as “French” or “European” in style, and in both articles, Brodovitch is credited as “internationally famous advertising expert and illustrator” suggesting the school’s press release was without remark as to his origins as Russian artist or French designer. The novelty was no longer his identity, nor his

279 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, April 6, 1933.” 280 “$1,000,000 ÷ 42,” 26.

95 teaching of European approaches to the craft, but rather the innovative work accomplished by his flock of all-American students.

The “Machine Aesthetic” in Brodovitch’s American Work

Despite forming his artistic identity in Paris, the crucible of Modernism — or perhaps in part because of that — Brodovitch resisted what Smith refers to as “a singular party-line modernity”281; though he did have some consistent go-tos (his reliance on

Didot-style typefaces being perhaps the most infamous), he followed no set of artistic regulations and incorporated expressions and techniques from every movement he encountered. In his textbook Layout: Design of the Printed Page, Allen Hurlburt observes that “[Brodovitch’s] own work and the guidelines of his teaching cannot be directly identified with any of the formal movements in graphic design, [instead] he absorbed many of the best influences from these movements.”282 Herrick considered

Brodovitch’s stylistic versatility and “lack of a personal style that could label him” among his greatest strengths as a practitioner and as a teacher: “Brodovitch’s technique might be compared to the playing of a good actor who carries no personal peculiarity or mannerism from one role to another on the stage.”283

Arriving in the United States in 1930, and faced with the challenge of translating his experiences and sensibilities for a new audience somewhat less enthusiastic about challenging tradition, Brodovitch wisely maintained his openness, and sought out ways to sustain and cultivate his novel outsider status while also tempering his visual approach

281 Smith, Making the Modern, 5. 282 Hurlburt, Layout: Design of the Printed Page, 30. 283 Herrick, “America Sells the Page,” 169.

96 with “homegrown” influences that would resonate with his new audiences — in essence, propagating European influences into American design while remaining open to

American influences that resonated with his own interests, philosophies, and visual disposition. Brodovitch found this fusion in what would come to be known as the

“machine aesthetic.”

Machine-inspired imagery was not altogether new to Brodovitch. The world’s increasing dependence on and fascination with machines influenced numerous early modern art movements around the turn of the 20th century. The subject matter is referenced most literally among Italian Futurists, to which Brodovitch would have some exposure, but was also prevalent in France in the style and philosophy of Purism. Purist architecture and industrial design moved in a very functionalist direction, not dissimilar to the Bauhaus; Purist painters were heavily influenced by the visual analysis and abstraction of Cubism, but leaders saw this as the next evolution — their first manifesto was titled Après le Cubisme [After Cubism], which they saw as losing its potency.284

Their interest in the machine age was made explicit in their manifesto, and was reflected in their artistic approach. Formally, the works are often grounded in basic (“pure”) geometric shapes and volumes, and feature sharp and well-defined edges, and use of flat colors. Some Purist painters also utilized gradient, most often to accentuate depth or roundness; others avoided gradients and stuck to only flat colors.

As is often the case as influence trickles down from fine art movements to commercial art practitioners, formal influences persist but the philosophy behind them becomes relaxed, and boundaries become more porous. In the case of Purism, the key

284 Long, After Cubism: Purism and Geometric Abstraction.

97 visual characteristics — geometric simplicity, linearity, sleekness, limited color palette

— blend so compatibly with those of Art Deco as well as Futurism, it becomes difficult and perhaps meaningless to try to distinguish them from one another. Some sum up this amalgam of influences under the terms “pictorial modernism,” “linear realism,”285 or

“postcubism” (an appropriate appellation for a movement borne of After Cubism).

Interestingly, the connection back to machinery becomes even stronger in commercial art, thanks to literal depictions of machines and manufactured products (especially transportation), but also the frequent symbolic or metaphorical use of mechanical components (gears, belts, diagrams, etc.). Examples of those who embraced a mechanical aesthetic in commercial art include Jean Carlu, particularly in his work for the Theatre

Pigalle; Francis Bernard, and A.M. Cassandre. Purism movement leader Fernand Leger, like many easel painters of this era, also dabbled in posters and other commercial design

(e.g. his poster for the Machine-Age Exposition of 1927). Presence of gradient was further popularized by Cassandre and his use of a modern tool, the airbrush, to create ethereal backgrounds for his poster’s subjects, adding a dreamlike, quasi-Surrealist influence to this “postcubist” mix.

Brodovitch was similarly preoccupied by the accelerating mechanization of society and of his field. In his August 1930 essay “What Pleases the Modern Man?” he credits the field of engineering for bringing new understandings of visual principles —

“form, mass, plastic, dynamic, colour, light and shadow and perspective” — to the worlds of art and advertising.286 The essay was accompanied by several illustrations including an

285 Zurier, “Newness, Flatness and Other Myths: Looking for National Identity in European (and a Few British) Histories of American Art,” 32. 286 Brodovitch, “What Pleases the Modern Man,” 62.

98 untitled print highlighting the human circulatory system with blood vessels printed in red and blue in a posed male figure, overlaid with mechanical rollers and belts (fig. 41). A variation on this design (fig. 42) had been included in an issue of Arts et Metiers

Graphiques just one month prior, accompanying an article on innovations in graphic reproduction processes. With a different color scheme, the reference back to the circulatory system is replaced by a more ambiguous symbolism. One possible interpretation, based on the fact that the print was made to accompany an article about printing, is that it originated as an homage to the aesthetics of modern printing machinery. The print in question, an original lithograph printed by Mourlot Freres, is tipped-into the journal just after the last page of the article (fig. 43), which features a photo and a detail diagram (fig. 44) illustrating the complicated process behind offset lithography printing. In “Modern Man,” Brodovitch draws the attention of those involved in publicity to such details: “[s]tudy the screens and plates, watch the revolutions of cylinders in a printing press…”287 Earlier in the same essay he mentioned admiringly the

“lyricism,” “heroism and daring,” and “harmonious grace” of various industrial objects

(“steel pistons, connection-rods and cog-wheels in motion… the silhouette of an airplane… the wireless tower”).288 Having felt “lyricism” and “harmonious grace” in the function of other types of machinery, one wonders if perhaps this illustration may in fact be Brodovitch’s interpretation of the carefully coordinated whirring and spinning — the choreography — involved in the manufacture of such images.

287 Brodovitch, 65. 288 Brodovitch, 63.

99 Brodovitch’s design for the Pennsylvania Art Museum’s 1932 exhibition Design for the Machine (fig. 45) similarly utilized a hybrid of human anatomy and schematic, blueprint-like machine imagery. In this work, the elements combine to create a visual metaphor for the design process: an idea inside one’s head, emerging and taking form in the outer world. In a striking contradiction to his constant browbeating for new and original ideas from his students, Brodovitch borrowed heavily for this concept from an earlier design by Cassandre — an advertisement for Dr. Charpy cosmetics, circa 1929–

30. It is highly unlikely that Brodovitch wouldn’t have been familiar with Cassandre’s design; even if he had not encountered it in person before departing Paris, Cassandre’s design was reproduced on the same page as one of Brodovitch’s own ads in the January

1930 issue of Modern Publicity (fig. 46). French journal Vendre also highlighted the Dr.

Charpy ad later that same year, lauding Cassandre’s “wise contempt for conventional ideas” in conceptually merging the notion of scientific analysis with a more traditional depiction of feminine beauty.289 As we know Brodovitch kept up with such magazines and utilized them in his classroom, it’s hard to imagine this degree of similarity could be mere coincidence.

Despite the similarity (whether jurors were familiar with the Cassandre work is not known), Brodovitch’s exhibition poster design earned him a medal at the 1932 Art

Directors Club Annual. Brodovitch recycled the same imagery later, circa 1933–34, in a brochure for a firm he joined briefly: George Nathan Horwitt’s consultancy Design

Engineers (fig. 47).

289 “Publicite 1930,” 410.

100 Certain works around this time, such as his 1933 Schaum beer poster concept (fig.

48), seem to be held more rigorously to the tenets of Purist expression: both illustration and typography are restricted to simple geometric shapes, sharp edges, a flattening of space, and use of flat solid planes of color. (These characteristics also hearken back to

Brodovitch’s use of pochoir; see figs. 36–37.) The signature effect of the airbrush,

Brodovitch’s primary tool for illustrating, is much more restrained here, adding gradient only in select elements for a subtle sense of depth and semi-transparency. A 1934 illustration for the New Jersey Zinc Co. (fig. 49) offers an x-ray view of various mechanical components within a vehicle — the car is rendered in a more sharply defined and schematic manner than those of his Art Deco or “postcubist” posters for Donnet from the prior decade. This rekindling of interest in Purist characteristics was likely sparked by his encountering its American counterpart: Precisionism. This style was never formally organized as a movement — indeed, during the 1930s, the practitioners of the style may not have used the term themselves290 — but geographically, it had centered originally around Philadelphia. The region was the birthplace of three of the style’s early leaders:

Morris Schamberg, Charles Demuth, and “American Purist”291 Charles Sheeler; and was later home to affiliated artist Ralston Crawford. A Brodovitch painting hung alongside works by Schamberg, Sheeler, and Demuth — among numerous other artists labeled as

Precisionists including Joseph Stella, Georgia O'Keeffe, George Ault, Stuart Davis, and

Preston Dickinson — at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1935 exhibition

Abstract Painting in America.292 By that time he was likely acquainted personally with

290 Lazevnick, “What’s in a Name?,” 4–5. 291 Cheney and Cheney, Art and the Machine, 232. 292 Whitney Museum of American Art, Abstract Painting in America.

101 Sheeler through PMSIA colleague Earl Horter and/or mutual associates at N.W. Ayer —

Sheeler worked for N.W. Ayer just a few years prior to Brodovitch; he was on assignment for the agency when he took his famed River Rouge photographs in 1927.

Crawford was not part of the Whitney exhibition, but he and Brodovitch were both represented by Philadelphia’s Boyer Galleries.293

Brodovitch’s work demonstrates inspiration from Purism and Precisionism’s formal characteristics, but he should not be considered a Purist, or even necessarily a supporter of the movement, due to some significant philosophical differences. Le

Corbusier, Ozenfant, and other Purism founders sought “a single, unitary aesthetic”294;

Brodovitch, by contrast, was always dedicated to multiplicity and branching out into new and different expressions. As if to prove the point, at the very same time some of his works became more sharply defined and geometrically “pure,” other works fully embraced organic forms and the murky, atmospheric potential of his airbrush. His cover for the September 1934 issue of Advertising Arts (fig. 50) juxtaposed the mechanically gridded structure of a radio tower or construction girders against two butterflies, partly unfinished yet brightly contrasting against the drab gray setting. His illustrations for Tom

“T.J.” Maloney’s 3 Poems (figs. 51–53) similarly combine mechanical and organic, finished and unfinished. The illustrations were, coincidentally or not, featured in this same issue of Advertising Arts: Rene Clarke devoted four full pages of his article

“Cavalcade” to reproduce Brodovitch’s cover and illustrations for the book.295 The article was a historical survey of the recent past and evolution of advertising, and Clarke,

293 Bailey, “Fresh Paint.” 294 Corn, The Great American Thing, 122. 295 Clarke, “Cavalcade.”

102 influential art director and founding member of the NYC Art Directors Club, draws particular attention to the plight and value of the advertising illustrator in a time of increasing demand for photography. Brodovitch’s designs were obviously very important to him as exemplars of the power of illustration to represent, to evoke, in ways that photography hadn’t yet achieved.

A similar combination of Purist/Precisionist and Surrealist characteristics, and use of mechanical imagery, can be seen on book covers and book dust jackets designed by

Brodovitch for publishers Lippincott and Doubleday in the 1930s and early ’40s (figs.

54–59). Though publishers had their own internal art departments, bibliographer Ellen

Nehr observed that “outside artists were frequently assigned to design jackets, principally for the major Crime Club Selections”296 and credits the attention-grabbing jackets of this era as one of the strategies publishers used to ride out the Great Depression, rendering the books more desirable and ultimately collectible. Marion B. Cottren suggests the creative freedom of jacket commissions offered “more lure for the artist’s brush”297 — though, in return, the commissions tended to pay less than advertising projects, and designers were often not credited for the work.298 Both Nehr and Cottren include Boris Artzybasheff —

Brodovitch contemporary and fellow Imperial Army soldier-turned-exile299 — among the

“Who’s Who” of most frequently commissioned “jacketeers.” Brodovitch and

Artzybasheff hadn’t met until the 1930s (when the Russian White Army fell,

Artzybasheff fled to New York rather than Paris), but they quickly became close;

296 Nehr, Doubleday Crime Club Compendium, 1928-1991, xv. 297 Cottren, “Book Jackets,” 28. 298 Salisbury, The Illustrated Dust Jacket, 1920-1970, 16. 299 Iacono, “The Art of Boris Artzybasheff.”

103 historian Virginia Smith notes Brodovitch students’ memories of both Arzybasheff and

Alexeieff visiting their classes at PMSIA.300

A similar approach was taken, though in black and white, in Brodovitch’s illustrations for Climax Molybdenum, a long-term client through N. W. Ayer (see examples, figs. 60–63). Brodovitch completed more than 20 ads for this campaign, which appeared in Fortune magazine between 1935 and 1937. One ad from this campaign (not pictured) was analyzed in the 1934-35 volume of the British annual Modern Publicity as an example of Brodovitch’s symbolism- and metaphor-heavy approach:

Technical advertising need not be dull because it has to transmit a complicated message. More than half the space in [the] advertisement is occupied by A. Brodovitch’s drawing, which is not an attempt to show the technical man an accurate illustration of a crucible. He already knows what annealing pots look like, so he is presented with a design which conveys heat, connected with the word ‘Moly’; a good example of the study of psychological effect.”301

Brodovitch’s book jacket and “Moly” illustrations were painted by airbrush. The airbrush allowed him great flexibility and control in creating his imagery. In his essay

“What Pleases the Modern Man,” he mentions the airbrush among other modern implements — including surgical and dental tools, and even lasers (“a thin ray of light”)

— that he predicted would supplant traditional “undurable and clumsy” art supplies.302

He taught the use of the airbrush in his classes, but his reputation in that medium put his students at a particular disadvantage, as Ray Ballinger recalled:

I remember the shocking day when a friendly art director looked at my portfolio and then told me that if he wanted to buy airbrush art, he’d buy Brodovitch, and I would be wise to use some other technique.303

300 Smith, “Notes for ‘Alexey Brodovitch and the Emigre Mind’ [Presentation at Art Center College of Design],” 7. 301 Mercer and Gaunt, “Press Advertisements,” 67. 302 Brodovitch, “What Pleases the Modern Man,” 64–65. 303 Ettenberg, “The Remarkable Alexey Brodovitch,” 72.

104

His prowess was also recognized by the leading airbrush manufacturer at the time,

Paasche. Headquartered in Chicago, the company held a nationwide competition for

“Airpainting” around 1937–38. Brodovitch’s “dynamic advertisement for Bethlehem

Steel”304 (fig. 64) was awarded first prize in the contest’s Design and Lettering division, and the design was reproduced in the company’s July 1938 catalog (fig. 65).

The “Steel” design came to represent more than an example of fine airbrush technique, or a way to promote a client’s business. Industrial designer Nathan George

Horwitt pointed to this particular design as an illustration of Brodovitch’s mastery of symbolism and visual communication: “[the design] doesn’t disclose so much as a steel pin yet reflects all the unmistakable characteristics of the material in the blinding glare of the acetylene arc and the dull red glow of the type.” Brodovitch’s approach, he says, “as a medium for selling the Machine and what critics call ‘Machine Esthetic’ [is] in a class by itself.”305

Brodovitch brought a just-foreign-enough amalgam of influences to America, and the “machine aesthetic” was America’s reciprocal influence on Brodovitch, a new language to master. A visual language, it seemed, of confidence, of progress, of

“capitalist ethos”306 particularly in its application in advertising — even, some believed, of sheer “American-ness”: a “new definition of national identity.”307

304 Herrick, “Alexey Brodovitch,” 169. 305 Horwitt, “Untitled Article Regarding PMSIA ‘Million Dollar Show.’” 306 Zurier, “Newness, Flatness and Other Myths: Looking for National Identity in European (and a Few British) Histories of American Art,” 32. 307 Corn, The Great American Thing, xvii.

105 And Brodovitch didn’t stop at being influenced by this new visual embodiment of

American identity, he became its exemplar. In their November 1934 “Parade” of contemporary designs, the editors of Advertising Arts named him a chosen evangelist of this new visual language, not just among New York elites, but to a mass audience across the nation: “Brodovitch has already sowed the seeds that will explain the beautiful aesthetic of the machine to the taste of the most isolated farmer in Peoria.”308

308 “Parade: A Review of Current Advertising,” 9.

106 Chapter Three Brodovitch’s Laboratory: Teaching, Making, and Experimenting in the Age of the Machine

According to Alexey Brodovitch, he was not a teacher. Despite being recruited halfway around the world to lead an academic program, he steadfastly resisted the title of

“teacher.” Instead, over the decades he used a variety of metaphors, from a can-opener309 to an irritant — the grain of sand that causes an oyster to produce a pearl.310 His students, however, had no such reticence about the term:

“There is no question of whether Brodovitch is the best teacher in photography. In my opinion he is the only teacher of photography.”311 (Richard Avedon) “Brodovitch was the greatest teacher I ever met. He opened his vision of the world to me. He became my visual father.”312 (Irving Penn) “...a rare teaching talent.”313 (Ben Rose) “...an incredible teacher.”314 (Mary Fullerton Faulconer) “[Others] taught me techniques. Brodovitch taught me to think.”315 (Hans Namuth) “The roster of designers and photographers developed by A.B. is a Who’s Who of the entire field.”316 (Rose) “All designers, all photographers, all art directors are, whether they know it or not, students of Alexey Brodovitch.”317 (Penn)

From 1930-34, Brodovitch taught full-time in the Philadelphia Museum School of

Industrial Art (PMSIA)’s Advertising Design program; after accepting the position of Art

309 “Alexey Brodovitch, 76, Is Dead; Leader in Fashion Photography,” 32. 310 Remington and Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design, 36; see also quote by Ted Croner in Bunker, Alexey Brodovitch and His Influence, 16. 311 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 87, emphasis in original. 312 Knight, “What Philadelphia Means to Irving Penn,” 8. 313 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 86. 314 Rowlands, A Dash of Daring: The Life of Carmel Snow, 179. 315 Namuth, Oral history interview with Hans Namuth. 316 Rose et al., “A.B.,” 12. 317 Finke, “Pro.Files: The Great Graphic Innovators (Alexey Brodovitch),” 9.

107 Director at Harper’s Bazaar and moving to New York, Brodovitch stayed on at PMSIA as supervisor of the Advertising Design and, later, Design Laboratory programs through

1938.318 As Brodovitch biographer Nathalie Cattaruzza notes, our understanding of the man’s working methods, in both design and teaching, is based mainly on testimonials of former students and assistants.319 However, the majority of these published testimonials are from his highest-profile and most celebrated students and protégés — Richard

Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Robert Frank, Art Kane, Eve Arnold, Hans Namuth, Garry

Winogrand, among others — who knew and studied under Brodovitch later in his career.

During his tenure at Harper’s Bazaar, Brodovitch continued teaching: as an instructor at the New School for Social Research, as a visiting critic for Yale’s graphic design graduate program, and by leading critique sessions for working professionals under the

Design Laboratory moniker at various photography studios and ad agencies in New York

City. Many times, students in one or another of these settings were tapped for photography assignments or to serve as an assistant to Brodovitch at Bazaar, and the prospect of these opportunities motivated many of the participants. So naturally,

Brodovitch may not have approached those sessions the same way as he did his classroom as a novice college professor.

So, how best to understand his philosophies and approaches to teaching during those earliest years in Philadelphia? To delve as deeply as possible into that particular period, whenever possible commentary and anecdotes will be drawn from students he taught at PMSIA between 1930 and 1938, with a further focus on elevating personal

318 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, September 26, 1934,” 236. 319 Cattaruzza, “Un Pionnier Du Graphisme Éditorial,” 72.

108 stories that haven’t been featured in a commercial biography of Brodovitch. (A few exceptions are made for particularly evocative anecdotes or recollections from later students.) The sources for these stories are varied: school records, student publications, student work and classroom assignments, unpublished memoirs, and audio and video recordings of oral history interviews, among others. Efforts were made to identify and contact surviving family members of PMSIA students who studied under Brodovitch; in fact, several of these attempts were successful, but unfortunately, as is too often the case, descendents had no surviving documentation and little insight into those family members’ stories, and had lost track of or discarded any records or materials that might have been passed down from that long ago. Some small pockets of such materials had found their way into various archives around the country, however, and those materials proved invaluable for their ability to chronicle those experiences and narratives firsthand.

This is an existential dilemma intrinsic to the study of graphic design history, a field whose artifacts are by nature ephemeral, so ubiquitous as to be implausible to collect comprehensively, and rather unpredictable in terms of what materials or objects may turn out to be historically significant. This challenge, these tensions, were among my main motivations to take on this project, and they sustain my passionate belief that the continued and expanded collection, documentation, and preservation of the traces of such histories are so critical.

Brodovitch’s “Revolution”

As clarified in Chapter 1, Brodovitch was not recruited to establish a new program at PMSIA; an Advertising Design curriculum, in one form or another, had

109 existed for several decades. He was, however, charged with a significant task: to bring the program into the new century. To start, in Charles Coiner’s words, a “Revolution on

Pine Street.” The phrase — the title of an unpublished essay Coiner wrote in 1962 — refers to the location of PMSIA’s main building, at the intersection of Broad and Pine

Streets in Philadelphia, a “drab neo-classic Greek structure” that “hardly seemed the place to inspire a modern movement in any branch of the arts.”320 Since 1924, Coiner had been employed at N.W. Ayer & Son, not only the largest advertising agency in

Philadelphia, but one of the largest (and by their own account, the oldest) in the nation. In his role as the agency’s leading art director, he was well-positioned to observe that the city — despite a wealth of art schools/programs, and its longstanding status as a hub of the printing and publishing industries — was “anything but progressive in the development of outstanding commercial designers.”321 Brodovitch’s arrival at PMSIA quickly and permanently changed the make-up of the city’s creative force in ways,

Coiner says, that he and the school’s leadership couldn’t have anticipated.

At PMSIA, curriculum for the first or “Preparatory” year included introductions to design principles, color theory, drawing, modeling, lettering, and lectures in art history and industrial art practices. During the second year, historically, students selected one of two courses of study, choosing between a more traditional fine-arts focus, expanding on the topics of the first year, and a more industrial-art focus, which incorporated work in a variety of craft areas (wood, metals, clay, textiles, costume and furniture design). During

Brodovitch’s tenure (but most likely unrelated to it), the two paths were unified,

320 Coiner, “Manuscript Draft of ‘Revolution on Pine Street,’” 1. 321 Coiner, 1.

110 integrating coursework from all aforementioned areas. It was among the second-year elective courses where advertising design was first offered as an option, among other specialized topics. In each subsequent year, students’ courses of study were narrowed and further specialized, focusing on between three and five specific subjects during the third year, while integrating professional industry experience in the fourth year.322

Brodovitch reported that the previous advertising design curriculum was “very conservative”323 and he was afraid that “people [would feel] his approach to teaching would be too modern and too European.”324 Historian Virginia Smith described the traditional curriculum of image-making at PMSIA as “nineteenth century... romantic realism.”325 Thus, it was up to Brodovitch, as biographer Andy Grundberg observed, to

“create a climate receptive to the modern spirit of graphic design.”326

One way Brodovitch accomplished this was to share with his students the most contemporary work available. Typography had been, up until this era, widely considered the responsibility of the printer. Those in the printing trade might reference guidebooks published by practitioners (e.g. Benjamin Sherbow, Making Type Work, 1916, and

Effective Type-Use for Advertising, 1922) or by labor associations such as the United

Typothetae of America (e.g. Harry Lawrence Gage, Applied Design for Printers, 1920;

Walter Gress, Advanced Typography, 1931). This traditional separation of disciplines was falling out of practice, however; especially in poster design but also advertising and

322 Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1931-32. 323 Brodovitch, “Transcript of Hospital Interview,” 9. 324 Campbell, “Advertising: A Few Points of Interest Concerning One of the School’s Principal Courses,” 29. 325 quoted in Rowlands, A Dash of Daring: The Life of Carmel Snow, 178. 326 Grundberg, Alexey Brodovitch, 55.

111 editorial layout, type was becoming the responsibility of the artist. This meant expanded responsibility, but also expanded opportunity to explore hand-lettering styles and creative methods of integrating type and image. Just becoming available were compendiums of the latest developments in modern design, including Douglas C. McMurtrie’s Modern

Typography and Layout (1929) and Alfred Tolmer’s Mise en Page: the Theory and

Practice of Lay-out (1931). These volumes were designed to expose English-language audiences to the latest in integrated European approaches, such as “pictorial modern” posters and “New Typography” approaches to magazine layout, business stationery, advertisements, and more. Brodovitch also used less orthodox materials: popular magazines, art journals, and newspapers. He would bring old French books, recent copies of Arts et Metiers Graphiques and Gebrauchsgraphik, and other vernacular materials into his classroom for students to analyze. Brodovitch reinforced that such materials “should be used for inspiration and not for imitation. These works should be something to be built upon, not to be repeated,”327 and, “[w]hen we see an interesting picture in a magazine, the idea is not to copy it but to be stimulated by it to go out and discover something different.”328

His students were also exposed to a wide variety of art and design through field trips. The school’s affiliation with the Pennsylvania Museum of Art made it a natural site for inspiration; for one example, poster design projects referencing works of African art in the PMA collection were reproduced in the school’s 1932–33 and 1933–34 Circulars.

Various classes also visited New York City museums and galleries, and over the years

327 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 82. 328 Reynolds, 108.

112 took in shows on Picasso, Goya, and Dali; exhibitions at the fledgling Museum of

Modern Art, including Philip Johnson’s 1934 Machine Art and the museum’s first major survey of photographic art, Photography 1839-1937 (for which Brodovitch served as an advisor to curator Beaumont Newhall329); and important shows of industrial and commercial art, including the New York Art Directors Club (ADC) Annual exhibition.330

During this era, the ADC Annual was the most prestigious recognition in the nation for work in the fields that would come to be known as graphic design. Moreover, the show made a powerful statement that the work done by commercial illustrators, art directors, and advertising designers was worthy of consideration as art. PMSIA faculty member

Henry Pitz noted the Annual’s importance in “open[ing] the eyes of the ‘fine art’ people”

[to the fact] that a lot of this is fine art, done by master craftsmen.” He continues:

It is American folk art at its best, and as such, perhaps our most vital art form. Not only has modern commercial art done much to popularize fine art movements, as seen by the designs of Covarrubias, Alexander Brook, Grant Wood, or Cassandre, but it has also stimulated in the average man a new appreciation of all art, since it is the most widely influential of all contemporary art.331

Brodovitch was adamant about students using these types of resources and experiences as inspiration for generating original ideas and approaches. never for copying or duplicating. This flew in the face of some of the school’s more traditional methods of developing drawing and modeling skills through replication, such as drawing from casts of ancient or Renaissance sculpture. PMSIA student Morris Berd recalled, “The emphasis was on duplication rather than expression... You were so busy trying to duplicate this

329 Newhall, Photography 1839-1937 [Exhibition Catalog]. 330 Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Annual Report, 1934; Hambourg and Rosenheim, Irving Penn: Centennial, 12. 331 “Art Directors Show,” 1.

113 cast, the art part never came through.”332 Berd looked to Brodovitch’s classes for an opportunity to shift from imitating the past to working toward the present and future:

I thought I'd take advertising, because they had gotten a new teacher into the school at that time, Alexey Brodovitch. He was known as a designer, he had just come from Paris, he was one of the leading designers there... And he was a painter himself, he painted, I hadn't seen any of his paintings at that time. But he was a fascinating teacher; students, the word had got around that he was very good. So I took Advertising Design. And I was very grateful for that, because immediately I got into an environment in that class where instead of going back — the illustration people were still being taught Howard Pyle and all the people before him — [Brodovitch] was teaching us all about the French artists at that time, because he had just come from that environment and he personally knew a lot of the people who were doing the work. So it was a very good excitement for me at that time... And the illustrations we were shown were also contemporary illustrations, so we had this kind of difference between that whole Renaissance period which we had gotten first-year, to something was happening in the second year which was more up-to-date.333

Raymond Ballinger would later join Brodovitch among the PMSIA faculty, but as a student, he had sought out the same opportunity as Berd: “Brodovitch contributed the contemporary outlook which my colleagues and I desperately needed at that period.”334

Another student-turned-teacher, Mary Fullerton (later Faulconer), describes transferring to Brodovitch’s program:

The very beginning of Brodovitch started when I was enrolled in a class for illustration, directed by Thornton Oakley. He had studied with Howard Pyle and was a ‘tweedy’ man, very pompass [sic]… I happened to see some work from the advertising class and persuaded my friends to look into it with me. Twelve of the students moved with me.335

332 Berd, Senior Artists Initiative: Morris Berd. 333 Berd. 334 Ettenberg, “The Remarkable Alexey Brodovitch,” 72. 335 Faulconer, “Untitled Manuscript, Typewritten on Author’s Letterhead.”

114 Brodovitch’s reinvigoration of the advertising design program, and the sudden contrast between that program and the illustration program, sparked some good-natured rivalry between students from the two areas, as reflected in this bit of anonymous gossip from the student publication Sketchbook:

The eternal feud between the advertisers and the illustrators still rages. Milton Ackoff dealt the first blow by posting a clipping about babooish Brodovitch on the bulletin board. Waldo (Archbishop) Sheldon retaliated with a clipping concerning the onomatopoeic Oakley, mounted on cardboard. [Advertising student Victor] Trasoff said Sheldon’s layout was absol-oakley awful.336

The resulting enthusiasm over Brodovitch’s classes — Ballinger called them

“spellbinders”337 — spread beyond the classroom. Arnold Newman didn’t attend PMSIA, but was close friends with student Ben Rose, and Newman benefited from the environment sparked by Brodovitch’s presence:

It was a big movement, it was an excitement, you know, it was the old equivalent to what went on in Paris when young kids got together and re-excited each other, staying up to three in the morning talking...338

Brodovitch’s influence in Philadelphia quickly extended even beyond his home campus; Allen Hurlburt, who was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, recalls first encountering Brodovitch’s work at a 1931 exhibition in the gallery of the N. W. Ayer advertising agency. Years later, in New York, Hurlburt would take the opportunity to study under Brodovitch, and credited him as a major influence on his work.339

336 “The Scratcher” [anonymous], “Charcoal Dust,” 26. 337 Ettenberg, “The Remarkable Alexey Brodovitch,” 31. 338 Newman, Oral history interview with Arnold Newman, 7. 339 Art Directors Club, “ADC Hall of Fame: Allen Hurlburt.”

115 Brodovitch brought his students more than simply an appreciation for contemporary art and modern aesthetics to his classroom. His teaching methods, based not on academic traditions but on his own practices in Paris, encouraged a novel way of thinking about the practice and process of design.

Graphic “Problems”

During the mid-1920s, Brodovitch and partners formed Le Cercle, a commercial art agency which practiced under the banner, “Association for the Study of Graphic

Problems” [“Association pour l'Etude de Problemes Graphiques”]. He carried this approach through to his teaching — framing design projects not as tasks with clear guidelines and step-by-step instructions, but rather as problems to be creatively “solved,” with no predetermined endpoint. This, too, felt revolutionary to the students.

Brodovitch’s intent with each prompt or “problem” was to keep it “general enough so that each [student] can interpret it in terms of his own interest and personal direction.”340 Often these design problems would take them out of the classroom, where

Brodovitch hoped an unusual environment — “factories, to housing developments, shopping centers, to anything industrial” — might spark unique ideas. The assignment on these trips, as Smith notes, was to create “a ‘graphic impression’ of what they had seen, something on paper resulting from the experience.”341 Back in the classroom, then,

Brodovitch and the students would critique and try to understand which aspects of which approaches were most successful and why.

340 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 108. 341 Smith, “Notes for ‘Alexey Brodovitch and the Emigre Mind’ [Presentation at Art Center College of Design],” 3.

116 Problems ranged from specific products, perhaps for hypothetical advertisement layouts (liquors and champagne; cigarette; lipstick; hot dogs); to specific locations as if on an editorial assignment (cafeterias; Harlem; a horse race; the United Nations); to broad themes (fantasy; personalities; juvenile delinquency); to formal experiments

(reflections; light and shadow; metals; a crumpled sheet of paper).342 PMSIA student

William Campbell and classmates visited a rail yard in south Philadelphia to capture ideas for a design problem on “Depression” — though it’s not clear from Campbell’s notes whether the prompt referenced the economic depression, emotional depression, or a geological depression — and it’s likely that Brodovitch would have been open to any of the above, if the student’s “graphic impression” was clever enough.

Brodovitch found such success with this open-ended teaching method, he made it the center-point of his later teaching as instructor at the New School of Social Research, as a visiting critic in the Graphic Design graduate program at Yale University, and in his independently run Design Laboratory sessions of the 1950s–60s. Yale design student

Sam Antiput related his first encounter with Brodovitch’s unorthodox method — the assigned problem: “a filling station.”

Nobody knew what he meant… It was like the blind men and the elephant. Everybody took a different piece of it and got something different out of it. One woman, a textile designer… did uniforms for the gas station attendants… A couple of people did logos, and one guy who was in love with silk screen did immense signs. I designed a gas station and built a model of it from plexiglass [sic], complete with working electric signs. Two people did oil and gas containers and designed packaging for other products. Brodovitch was the only teacher I ever had who inspired the class by that kind of confusion.343

342 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 89; Remington and Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design, 171. 343 Remington and Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design, 37.

117 In his memoirs, designer Rob Roy Kelly shared his recollection of a graphic problem that pitted Brodovitch’s students against Mother Nature:

Alexey Brodovitch emphasized experiments. He once gave a photo assignment to cover a hurricane which was headed for New Haven. The storm veered inland sixty miles south and left students with only wind and rain. When students showed their photographs, his comments were that the photography did not reflect a hurricane. When students protested the difficulty of photographing an event which did not take place, his reply was to send them into the darkroom and create a hurricane!344

Brodovitch often affirmed that the end result was never to be predetermined, saying in a 1961 interview that “I don't care if the student produces a photograph, or a design, or a collage, or a sculpture. If he has avoided the cliché and captured the essence of the problem, this is the important thing.”345 He famously once told Richard Avedon, who wasn’t confident he had the drawing skills necessary to complete a project on neon signs, to instead “use spaghetti.”346

His ultimate objectives as a teacher were, it seems, to open his students to experimentation, steer them clear of predictable or cliché solutions, and pass down what

Grundberg referred to as his insatiable “thirst for newness.”347 “I believe that the only way to be creative is to try everything,” Brodovitch once said. “We learn by making mistakes. We must be critical of ourselves and have the courage to start all over again after each failure. Only then do we really absorb, really start to know.”348

344 Kelly, Everything Is a Work in Progress, 20. 345 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 108. 346 Forman, “He Lifted the Lid on Talent: Brodovitch, the Complete Designer,” 1. 347 Grundberg, Alexey Brodovitch, 55. 348 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 45.

118 PMSIA student Ben Rose found Brodovitch supportive of his interests in working across different mediums; Rose referred to him as “an expansionist. He was interested in all things... He was fascinated by my experiments and encouraged me to think uniquely.”349 In fact, Brodovitch wasn’t just open to students acting on a variety of interests, he encouraged it — even warning students against too narrow a specialization.

For an article in the PMSIA student publication Sketchbook, Brodovitch illustrated the importance of versatility by sharing a cautionary tale with interviewer William Campbell:

As a striking example of why one should study all branches of advertising instead of specializing, Mr. Brodovitch tells of the case of one of his best pupils who has been partially unsuccessful in securing work, while less talented graduates have been successful. One reason for his difficulty is his lack of confidence, his inability to visit agencies and sell himself, plus his failure to experiment in many fields. A New York store offered him charge of their window display. However, he had to refuse this fine position because he had never taken the chance to study this phase of advertising.350

Brodovitch viewed it as his job to push each individual student into this space of exploration, of originality — “to stimulate the intelligence of the student, bringing [them] to pose questions about life and art for which [they] alone could provide the right answers,” suggests Michel Maingois, equating such practice to “a revival of Socratic discourse.”351 “I do not believe in labels such as ‘talent’ and ‘genius’,” Brodovitch once said:

Artistic creation is, in my opinion, ‘instantaneous combustion’… What forces us to create? Curiosity, escape from self, normality, abnormality, intuition, desire for knowledge of the unknown — Who or What? We cannot explain… we can

349 Edwards, “Zen and the Art of Alexey Brodovitch,” 57. 350 Campbell, “Advertising: A Few Points of Interest Concerning One of the School’s Principal Courses,” 28. 351 Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Alexey Brodovitch, 125.

119 discover only by will, courage, trust, desire, need, patience and work. Work, work, and more work.352

Brodovitch’s emphasis on the ability of the individual, and the importance of dedication and diligence, is reflected in Mary Fullerton Faulconer’s early impression of his approach:

The students in Brodovitch’s class were a very mixed group. There were girls that came from the main line. There were Italian boys, with the aroma of garlic (a new thing for me). Effimate [sic] boys, a few boyish girls (with a suggestion of moustashs), Jewish boys and girls and I think one black. One thing that I remember, that seemed and was new in my life, was Brodovitch treated us all the same. He never swayed from what his course and assignment was, and expected us to answer the problem with great ideas. It was his belief and demand that made us succeed.353

Brodovitch’s extremely high standards were accompanied by perhaps the least admired aspect of his personality: a merciless approach to critique that some felt bordered on cruelty. Knowing Brodovitch would read them, Charles Coiner chose his words very delicately when he addressed Brodovitch’s rancor in “Revolution on Pine Street”: “A complacent body of students was soon made to realize that anyone under Brodovitch’s eye must either succeed or get out of the class.”354 Hans Namuth, a later student of

Brodovitch, was more candid: “Ruthless, absolutely ruthless… He was absolutely devastating. And so often quite negative.”355 Irving Penn described his early experiences with this side of Brodovitch at PMSIA thusly:

I must say that Brodovitch differed greatly from my idea of the great teacher. He was rarely supportive, had little human concern, showed only minor pleasure in a student’s burst of growth and achievement. The climate around him was never

352 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 45. 353 Faulconer, “Untitled Manuscript, Typewritten on Author’s Letterhead.” 354 Coiner, “Manuscript Draft of ‘Revolution on Pine Street,’” 1. 355 Namuth, Oral history interview with Hans Namuth.

120 warm and easy, there was no room for levity, students were expected never to have a financial problem, an upset stomach, or even a private life.356

This made any praise, Penn noted, even more conspicuous: “it seemed that the very sparseness of his recognition lent it an intensity of meaning and importance hard to explain to someone who did not actually experience it.”357 This phenomenon is uniquely captured in the archives of William Campbell. Among more than a dozen photos, drawings, and layout comp assignments, all mounted on boards for classroom presentation, Campbell scrawled a note on the back of just one: “Brodey liked this.” (fig.

66) Even Richard Avedon, who would become Brodovitch’s most celebrated protégé, described the same phenomenon: “He liked so few of my pictures that when he was enthusiastic over one, I was so elated I could go on that energy for another three or four months.”358

This unorthodox approach turned off many, perhaps most famously the photographer Diane Arbus who, in 1957, joined one of Brodovitch’s Design Laboratory classes but dropped out shortly after due to the “forbidding atmosphere” that Brodovitch created and his style of criticism which she felt bordered on abuse.359 To others,

Brodovitch’s reputation became a kind of punchline. Harper’s Bazaar contributor Robert

Frank, after a particularly negative exchange in 1947, shot a photo of a horse’s rear end and titled it “Hello Mr. Brodovitch.” Charles Coiner, unable to attend a dinner honoring

356 Edwards, “Zen and the Art of Alexey Brodovitch,” 53, 55. 357 Edwards, 55. 358 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 85. 359 Bosworth, Diane Arbus: A Biography, 122–23.

121 Brodovitch in 1956, sent a congratulatory telegram with a toast to “the most extortionary critic a student ever had.”360

In retrospect, many students and collaborators described a certain ambivalence about Brodovitch’s antagonism, and ultimately an understanding of the motivating intent behind it:

I found Brodovitch uncompromising, often unkind, but not unfair, in his criticism... If his criticism had been a little less severe, I might have become discouraged, but it enraged me and in some peculiar way I was forced to explore many paths which I otherwise would have neglected.361

Brodovitch teaches you to rebel constantly and not to accept any generally accepted standards. I even admired the way he contradicted himself. This irritated and annoyed me. It kept me always re-evaluating and forced me to find things out for myself.362

He taught me something that I’ve always remembered: after we did the initial assignment, he contradicted what he said the first week, and I said, ‘Okay.’ The next week, he contradicted what he said the second week. We went through 10 weeks of contradicting and I thought maybe he was drunk. At the end, he said, “You may think I’ve contradicted myself, but there’s no one way to do anything.”363

“Brodovitch’s students had to be able to take it,” Ray Shorr observes, “because all of us took many rebuffs and countless instances of no recognition whatever. It takes a very determined student to survive under Brodovitch but those who do are better for it.”364

360 Coiner, “Telegram to Alexey Brodovitch, June 14, 1956.” 361 Stephen D. Colhoun, in Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 86. 362 Art Kane, in Reynolds, 87. 363 Jerry Schatzberg, in Hammond, “The Arrogance & Influence of Alexey Brodovitch.” 364 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 87.

122 “Putting Apprentices to Work”

Another key component of Brodovitch’s approach to teaching was involving his students in professional work. Apprenticeship has long been a traditional training practice in many trades, including printing and publishing, but was less commonly found in formal education during this era. It was also less widely practiced in the United States than elsewhere. Charles Coiner referred to this aspect of Brodovitch’s methods as a

“European idea”; though it’s not exclusively European by any means, strengthening connections between education and industry was a strategy highlighted by those tasked to evaluate European practices at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts

Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. As argued in Chapter 2, the U.S. Department of

Commerce expo commission’s recommendations informed, at least in part, PMSIA’s recruitment of Brodovitch; the report also pointed out that “a more sympathetic and more generous cooperation from manufacturers” would also bring American applied art more in line with the conditions that brought European, particularly French, schools such success.365

Certain areas within PMSIA were, perhaps, ahead of the curve in terms of meaningful connection to industry: the textile department (known formally as the

Philadelphia Textile School), for example, had very strong connections to local and regional manufacturers.366 The art department curricula were less focused on such connections — and PMSIA was not alone in that regard. Zara Boyce Kimmey, an administrator for the New York State Department of Education, noted in the January

365 U.S. Department of Commerce, Report of Commission Appointed by the Secretary of Commerce to Visit and Report upon the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris 1925, 66. 366 Corzo, The University of the Arts: The Power to Transform, 17, 22.

123 1930 issue of The Poster, that “[t]he business of education is to bridge the gap by bringing together art and industry,”367 and advocated for widespread efforts to forge a

“closer articulation with industry” in graphic arts programs:

It is difficult to obtain fully trained teachers who know not only the necessities of the pupils, but also the requirements of the trade. This state of affairs has been brought about by the fact that students in art schools have heretofore had so little contact with industry. This condition is improving through the co-operation of industry with education, and we are looking forward to a future when art graduates will have the practical knowledge as well as the technical skill so necessary if art is to be on a practical basis.368

The main method endorsed in Kimmey’s article was the staging of public contests and competitions for student designers, organized by private companies or industry associations; there didn’t exist yet the infrastructure for more individualized experiences such as working first-hand on commercial projects or shadowing working professionals.

It was felt that to attempt this would be too labor-intensive, and opportunities too scarce, to succeed on a large scale. However, Brodovitch’s connections in Philadelphia and, later, New York, made it feasible on the scale necessary for his classes.

Coiner — who, as an art director at N.W. Ayer, regularly supplied Brodovitch with freelance projects — considered his practice of “putting apprentices to work on actual jobs” as an admirable tactic for practical education,369 thus (one assumes) giving tacit approval for Brodovitch to involve his students on Ayer projects. It’s unlikely

Coiner was aware of the details of such arrangements; Mary Fullerton Faulconer noted

367 Kimmey, “The Study of Poster Art Advances,” 23. 368 Kimmey, 22. 369 Coiner, “Manuscript Draft of ‘Revolution on Pine Street,’” 2.

124 that students would often be left uncredited for such contributions, and that Brodovitch

“never revealed [who did what], as we were learning and he could accept more work.”370

Brodovitch’s apprenticeships took a variety of forms. Particularly in later years, freelance projects were presented as classroom “problems,” as Faulconer described to

Virginia Smith:

The classroom assignments in the Design Lab were sometimes things Brodovitch ‘had not resolved.’ He would tell the students what kind of thing Elizabeth Arden expected, and the students would work it out. Some were doing covers for Vanity Fair, others advertising for Bonwit’s and Saks. At times the students would not only do the work but deliver it in New York to the art directors. They loved being in contact with the real world and knew Brodovitch was pushing them into the active professional world of advertising and magazines.371

On other projects, he would work with students individually. Ben Rose remembered Brodovitch’s “[s]ingling out youth for special assignments and opportunities, at a time when most of the establishment played it safe with pragmatists” as part of what made such work seem so “daring.”372 Morris Berd recalled being recruited to assist Brodovitch with an advertisement for one of his freelance clients through N.W.

Ayer — Climax Molybdenum, a mining and metals company known in shorthand as

“Moly” (see figs. 60–63):

I was lucky, I was able, later, to do some work for him, with him. I remember some awful experiences, I was scared to death. He wanted me to work on one of his paintings, he’d do these airbrush paintings for one of the big companies, and it was an airbrush drawing, very delicately airbrushed, of machinery… And somehow he wanted me to do the lettering on top, the word ‘Moly’, M-O-L-Y. And I was really frightened to work with the surface, and I did it, I was so nervous I spilled some paint on his airbrush part of it, and I thought, ‘oh God.’

370 Faulconer, untitled manuscript; interestingly, in this manuscript Faulconer later crossed out the typewritten words “the students” and handwrote “his assistants” in its place. This may suggest this practice continued in his role at Harper’s Bazaar, where Faulconer also served as his assistant. 371 Smith, “Notes for ‘Alexey Brodovitch and the Emigre Mind’ [Presentation at Art Center College of Design],” 5. 372 Rose et al., “A.B.,” 16.

125 And he saw that, I thought he’d have a hemorrhage. Because he had to have this in the next day. He was really upset. So I said, ‘I'll fix it, don't worry, nobody will know that I retouched it, I’ll fix it for you.’ And I worked all night on it, I sort of stippled in this thing, and I did get it all out, you couldn’t really see where I’d spilled. He was so relieved in the morning.373

For larger projects that were not suited for individual work, Brodovitch would employ the whole class as a team. One such opportunity came in early 1932, through the school’s affiliation with the Pennsylvania Museum of Art (PMA), in connection with an exhibition of contemporary furniture and industrial design entitled Design for the

Machine. A majority of the exhibition was furnished in partnership with the American

Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC), a New York-based organization for contemporary furniture and industrial designers. PMA decorative arts curator Joseph

Downs headed the museum’s team, working closely with Brodovitch on a number of aspects from production of the exhibition poster and catalogue brochure to the curation of a late-addition kitchen room setting.

In a series of letters to Downs in January and February of that year, AUDAC secretary David Barr requests some additional signage for the galleries. At some point

Downs must have offered the services of Brodovitch’s class, as Barr repeatedly reminds him:

It has [been] suggested that the placards which accompany our exhibit could be done most effectively and with least cost to you if Mr. Brodovitch could be induced to put his museum class at your disposal to print these placards. The material will probably be ready about four or five days before the exhibit and should make interesting products and work for Mr. Brodovitch’s pupils.374 (January 28)

373 Berd, Senior Artists Initiative: Morris Berd. 374 Barr, Letter to Joseph Downs, January 28, 1932.

126 I hope the suggestion to use Alexey Brodovitch’s pupils for signs and poster work will materialize.375 (February 1)

I believe that you said you could get the pupils of Alexey Brodovitch to do this for you. It would save a good deal of time and fuss here if this could be done for us.376 (February 24)

In his “Report of the Director” in the museum’s 1933 annual report, Fiske Kimball thanked Brodovitch and three others for “the generous devotion, the ingenuity and taste displayed” in their contributions to the museum's exhibitions that season, but no mention of his students.377

A later exhibition design project sent several of Brodovitch’s students up one of

New York City’s newest skyscrapers. After winning honors in their 1931, ’32 and ’33 annual competitions, Brodovitch was hired by the New York Art Directors Club to design the culminating exhibition of their 1934 competition, to be shown on the 34th floor of the newly completed RCA Building at Rockefeller Center.378 A credit placard identified nine

PMSIA contributors (four current students and five recent graduates) who, under

Brodovitch's direction, facilitated the installation of the exhibition: Raymond Ballinger,

Ralph Belcher, Roy Faulconer, John Fischer, Mary Fullerton, Nelson Gruppo, Joseph

Jones, Robert Scheirer, and Edward Schwartzer.379 Custom displays were designed by

Brodovitch and manufactured by Bliss Display Company; winning works were shown in

375 Barr, Letter to Joseph Downs, February 1, 1932. 376 Barr, Letter to Joseph Downs, February 24, 1932. 377 Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Annual Report, 1933, 18. 378 Coiner, “Exhibition.” 379 Art Directors Club of New York, “Credits Placard for ADC 13th Annual Exhibition of Advertising Art.”

127 ways and at scales never previously seen by ADC — including a full-scale billboard

[“24-sheet poster”] of roughly 9 by 20 feet.

Such a high-profile engagement of their students grabbed the attention of PMSIA leadership. School principal Edward Warwick and board secretary Julius Zieget visited the show and reported to the Committee on Instruction that “Mr, Brodovitch and his class in advertising design figured very prominently.”380 Later, in the 1934 annual report, it was celebrated that the students “entrusted with the arrangement and hanging of the

Thirteenth Annual Art Directors Show... were highly complimented by those in charge for the splendid arrangement of the works on exhibition.”381

The show’s prominence also attracted major figures from across the design and advertising industries. The overall experience of the exhibit was evocative of

Brodovitch’s works on paper: “bold and arresting,” said Carmel Snow, who visited the show as it was still in the process of being installed. Snow, who had recently taken the helm as editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, was sufficiently moved by Brodovitch’s vision that she invited him for cocktails that very evening to talk about a position for him at her magazine.382

The prospect of Brodovitch leaving the school for a new job in New York called the future of PMSIA’s advertising design program into question. In June 1934, the school’s Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction entertained a possible solution that would keep Brodovitch on faculty part-time. For the 1934-35 academic year, the day-to-

380 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, April 25, 1934.” 381 Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Annual Report, 1934, 32. 382 Rowlands, A Dash of Daring: The Life of Carmel Snow, 177–78.

128 day instruction in Advertising Design would fall to two recent alumni: Raymond

Ballinger and Mary Fullerton. The two would run the program under the continued supervision of Brodovitch who, according to a plan developed after the committee meeting in June and approved at the subsequent September meeting, “will come over from New York three times a month – on Saturday mornings. He will meet the students of all the sections for criticism. Mr. Ballinger and Miss Fullerton will carry out the execution of the work planned by Mr. Brodovitch during the week.”383 Ballinger had graduated from Brodovitch’s class and joined the PMSIA faculty the year prior, teaching first-year Lettering courses. Fullerton matriculated at PMSIA the same term Brodovitch began teaching, had already assisted Brodovitch on several projects, and was among his closest students. No doubt these two were hand-picked by Brodovitch to carry on his high standards for the program. This arrangement continued, by all accounts successfully, through the 1935-36 academic year.

In the 1936-37 academic year, the arrangement changed slightly. Advertising

Design courses would proceed under Ballinger and a local “consultant,” Fred S.

Malcolm. A new course run by Brodovitch and Fullerton was branded “Design

Laboratory.” Both Advertising Design and Design Laboratory were listed in the 1936-37

Circular as separate, though nearly identical, courses of study. Teaching objectives and methods were worded differently but with significant overlap, e.g.:

Advertising Design: “The course in Advertising Design is planned to prepare the student to work in the ever-expanding field of National Campaigns in the publicity field.” Design Laboratory: “The purpose of Design Laboratory is to prepare students not only as professional free lance [sic] artists, but also as stylists and Art Directors… Design Laboratory is planned for the purpose of supplying up-to-date leading

383 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, September 26, 1934,” 236.

129 American concerns as well as industrial organizations with new and original designs.”

Advertising Design: “The student will be encouraged to experiment with different mediums and will be instructed in the needs and possibilities of reproduction.” Design Laboratory: “The work of Design Laboratory is conducted in the way of experiments, discussions and analysis, to develop and crystallize new ideas, conception, and technique, guided by the study of psychology, fashion, and needs of the market.”384

Brodovitch’s first mention of the term “laboratory” at PMSIA appears to be in a

Spring 1935 interview by student William Campbell, where it was used in reference to the experimental nature of his advertising design classes.385 However, the first use of the term in relation to Brodovitch’s teaching appears several years earlier, in material unrelated to PMSIA. During the 1932–33 academic year, Brodovitch was brought to New

York to offer a special advanced course at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art

(known familiarly as “Parsons”), running for six hours every Saturday from October through April. The course, open only to graduates of the school or people working professionally in the field, was advertised to be “conducted as a laboratory of design conception and technique.”386 It is unclear whether this particular phrase was

Brodovitch’s own suggestion or a product of Parsons marketing. What is clear is that the term became central to Brodovitch’s approach to teaching for the next 30-plus years.

The laboratory was a popular metaphor in the artistic experimentation and agitation of early Modernism, and remains popular today when hearkening back to that era. Curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist uses the phrase “the laboratory years” to refer to German

384 Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1936-37, 12–15. 385 Campbell, “Advertising: A Few Points of Interest Concerning One of the School’s Principal Courses,” 27. 386 New York School of Fine and Applied Art, “Announcement of Alexey Brodovitch Course.”

130 museum exhibition practices of the 1920s and ’30s.387 Art historian Mary Anne

Staniszewski alternately uses “laboratory years” and “laboratory period” to describe founding director Alfred Barr’s tenure as founding director of the Museum of Modern

Art (1929-43).388 She traces her use of the term back to Barr himself; in one example from 1938, Barr refers to MoMA as “a laboratory [in whose] experiments the public is invited to participate.”389 In 1936, an unrelated Design Laboratory was established in

New York City: as part of the Federal Art Project (the visual arts division of the U.S.

Government’s Works Progress Administration), free professional training was offered in fine arts, graphic arts (including advertising design), industrial design, and related disciplines under that name.390 The program ran for two years under the auspices of the

WPA; in 1937 the program was discontinued by the government, and its offerings were absorbed by another NYC technical and trade school.391 The Federal Art Project’s choice of the term “laboratory” was a deliberate reference to the teaching philosophy of the

Bauhaus.392 Though “workshop” was more widely used, the use of the term “laboratory” in reference to the Bauhaus’s approach to art education can be found in Bauhaus- produced materials as early as 1925 (Bauhausbucher 5), and in popular press as early as

May 1931, when Gebrauchsgraphik editor H.K. Frenzel describes the Dessau Bauhaus as an “experimental laboratory of applied art.”393

387 Obrist, “Battery, Kraftwerk, and Laboratory (Alexander Dorner Revisited).” 388 Staniszewski, The Power of Display, 70; Barragán, “Dialogues for a New Millenium: Interview with Mary Anne Staniszewski,” 67. 389 “Alfred H. Barr Jr. Biographical Notes,” 1. 390 Archives of American Art, “Finding Aid to the Federal Art Project, Photographic Division Collection, circa 1920-1965.” 391 “WPA Art School Goes On; Design Laboratory Is Absorbed by Technical Federation.” 392 Mavigliano, “The Chicago Design Workshop,” 34. 393 Frenzel, “Herbert Bayer,” 3.

131 As noted in Chapter 2, PMSIA staff explicitly identified Brodovitch’s European background as a major part of his value to the school. So, too, did Parsons: the course announcement lauded Brodovitch’s work as “executed in the most advanced continental manner” and his approach as “infinitely logical, practical and adaptable to present-day

American needs.”394 Thus, it is possible that Parsons liked the marketing appeal of the

European-evocative term and utilized it to amplify the perception of Brodovitch’s novelty and modernity. I do not believe Brodovitch’s use of “laboratory” at any point was a reference to the Bauhaus, but rather a reference more literally to his own fascination with science and engineering, the role of those fields in the general modernization of art and design tools and practices, and the connections he saw between the design process and the process of scientific research. One of several documents drafted to outline his Design

Laboratory curriculum begins with a dedication “to the conviction that the Science of

Industrial Art stands today on the threshold of new discoveries and achievements”; another states his intent to “conduct [the class] in the way of laboratory research to prepare students as industrial designers, art directors, and freelance artists.” It is also a convenient way to further reinforce his obsession with “the new” — laboratories being the location of discoveries, of “studying new formulas, new materials, new ideas, devices of the past in order to establish new devices for the future.”395 He even went so far as to use the research parlance of “Field Work” when talking about class field trips and tours.

The model of Brodovitch’s 1932–33 course offered at Parsons — a lengthy

Saturday session to review work assigned the week prior and completed during the

394 New York School of Fine and Applied Art, “Announcement of Alexey Brodovitch Course.” 395 Brodovitch, “Design Laboratory Documents.”

132 interim — is very similar to the model Brodovitch used to continue teaching at PMSIA after he accepted his position at Harper’s Bazaar. It’s possible that, at PMSIA, Design

Laboratory was originally envisioned as a more advanced or more professionally oriented track for advertising design students, considering the rigorous goals set out in

Brodovitch’s planning documents — but in practice, any division between the two was not strictly enforced. William Campbell, for one example, was recognized in the 1937 commencement program as a graduate in the Advertising Design program, yet had also attended class that year under Brodovitch who, according to the Circular, was affiliated only with Design Laboratory courses by that point.

Draft documents suggest that, originally, the Design Laboratory was planned to be led jointly between Brodovitch and Earl Horter, a Philadelphia advertising artist and art director.396 Horter and Brodovitch were acquainted through their work for N. W.

Ayer, the leading advertising agency in Philadelphia; in fact, the two men had created work for some of the same clients, including Steinway and Sons pianos (Horter in the

1920s, Brodovitch in ’33). Horter did join the PMSIA faculty in 1934, along with illustrator and PMSIA alum Henry Pitz, but to co-lead another new program — “Pictorial

Expression” — and Fullerton moved from Advertising Design to run Design Laboratory with Brodovitch.

A new opportunity to employ his class came at the end of the 1936–1937 school year through Brodovitch’s involvement in a major exhibition of contemporary poster art at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. The Franklin Institute is one of the nation’s oldest museums/centers for science education; due to Franklin’s profession as a printer and

396 Brodovitch.

133 publisher, a section of the center’s programming has always been dedicated to the study and display of graphic arts. New Poster: International Exposition of Design in Outdoor

Advertising, staged in April–June 1937, was billed by art critic Christian Brinton (in an essay for the show’s catalog) as “the only comprehensive, consistently presented résumé of contemporary poster activity and achievement thus far attempted.”397 Some 300 posters from twelve countries formed the bulk of the exhibit, to which were added between 15 and 25 American posters. A more specific goal for this pairing, in the estimation of editors of British magazine Art In Industry, was to not just show modern approaches but to highlight traces of influence, “to emphasize the artistic value of these

[foreign] tendencies to American poster design.”398 Working under Russell L. Davis, the

Institute’s associate director in charge of graphic arts programming, the exhibition was planned by a committee which included Charles Coiner. A parallel committee, chaired by

Brodovitch, was charged with the exhibition design and execution; Brodovitch would also design the exhibition poster and catalog, and undoubtedly also had a hand in the show’s curation.

In his statement in the catalog, Henry Butler Allen, Secretary and Director of the

Franklin Institute, graciously acknowledged the contributions of the PMSIA students,

“under the supervision of Mrs. Mary Faulconer and Mr. T.H. MacNamee.” Mary

(Fullerton) Faulconer was now coordinating Brodovitch’s Design Laboratory;

MacNamee was technically not yet a graduate of PMSIA, but according to a mention in the Philadelphia Art News, had demonstrated such success in Design Laboratory he left

397 Brinton, “The Poster in Time and Space.” 398 “‘New Poster’ Exposition,” 253.

134 the program a year early to begin teaching fashion illustration.399 Brodovitch’s students were likely charged with the heavy labor of installing the show, as in prior exhibition design projects. But in one regard this case was unique; several students were also invited to create work for the exhibition, to hang alongside the world’s leading poster artists. A review in the May 1937 issue of Architectural Forum explained how this was made possible:

A number of shows of modern posters have been held this year, most notably the ones at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. For the most stimulating idea in such exhibits, however, Franklin Institute in Philadelphia takes first place with its engagingly titled exhibit, New Poster. To give young artists a chance to show what they could do, and to raise the money needed for the exhibition, a number of Philadelphia business men were approached for contributions, in return for which an advertising poster would be designed for each contributor. The stipulation was also made that no contributor could say anything about the design of the posters, or even see them before the exhibition opened on April 16. The idea met with enthusiastic support, and produced interesting results.400

Brodovitch and Faulconer were among the Americans included, as were

Brodovitch students and alumni Carl Albrecht, Raymond Ballinger, Lester Bushman,

Paul Dannheiser, Nelson Gruppo, David Stech, and Victor Trasoff. Brinton lauded the sum of artworks on display as “marvels of the Machine Age,” and advised visitors to the gallery to "not seek pedantically to analyze, to dissect New Poster, the creation of these poster prestidigitators. Capitulate, rather, to the daring enchantment of their spells.”401

In regards to the terms of his employment and the structure of Advertising Design and Design Laboratory, Brodovitch maintained the same arrangement for the 1937–38

399 Boyle, “Design Laboratory,” 7. 400 “Forum of Events: New Poster,” 16. 401 Brinton, “The Poster in Time and Space.”

135 academic year as the preceding year, except Malcolm was replaced by a recent

Brodovitch alumnus, Nelson Gruppo, who led a course in Advertising Photography.402

By the 1938–39 academic year, Brodovitch was no longer affiliated with

Advertising Design, and Design Laboratory disappeared entirely from the school’s offerings. He did, however, visit the school that year to deliver talks on professional practice and “the evolution in Industrial Arts,” a lecture series he entitled “Yesterday—

Today—and Tomorrow.”403 He delivered the same course of lectures that following year; this last remaining affiliation with the school ended after the 1939–40 school year concluded.

Even after his departure from PMSIA, relationships remained strong particularly among those who worked most closely with him. And he felt especially close to this group himself — “my first crop of students from Philadelphia”; in a letter to Charles

Coiner some 30 years later, he mentioned the members of this special group “were always in contact with me, and I hope will always be in the future.”404

Many of them would indeed, and the network that grew out of this cohort clearly persisted long after graduation in ways that supported and advanced each other’s careers.

Though several of these students’ first interaction with the Art Directors Club (ADC) was the grueling task of installing the 1934 exhibition, that wouldn’t be their last. As they began their careers in the advertising, art directing, and publishing industries, their work was consistently awarded in ADC’s annual competitions, year after year. But just as

402 Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1937-38, 13. 403 Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1938-39; Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1939-40. 404 Brodovitch, “Letter to Charles Coiner, October 5, 1962,” 2.

136 remarkable as the quantity and frequency of their honors was the cohesiveness of the group, and their continued collaboration with one another. The 1939 and 1940 Annuals, for example, honor a total of five collaborative works by Morris Berd (class of 1936) and

Raymond Ballinger (’31), both of whom joined the PMSIA faculty after graduating from

Brodovitch’s program. Illustrations by Fred Chance (class of ’32) were honored multiple times between 1938 and 1945, working under the art direction of former classmates Roy

Faulconer (’33), Mary Fullerton Faulconer (’33), and Victor Trasoff (’37). An advertisement by Irving Penn (’38), under the art direction of Elizabeth “Betty” Godfrey

(’36), was honored in the 1943 Annual. Even Brodovitch himself, in a peculiar turning- of-tables, would be honored for work he produced under the art direction of his former student and assistant Nelson Gruppo.

In his 1956 textbook Layout, Ballinger included works by Brodovitch, Fullerton

Faulconer, Ackoff, Mednick, Berd and Trasoff, as examples to illustrate the various principles and techniques of page composition and typography.

There are more personal symbols of these relationships as well: Nelson Gruppo’s signature on the marriage certificate as witness when Mary Fullerton Faulconer re- married, after her first husband (Roy Faulconer; all three were PMSIA classmates and close friends) died in rather tragic circumstances. Or the tender correspondence that continued between Faulconer and Penn in which, even decades later, Penn still teasingly referred to her as “Teach.”405

Another lasting association formed between classmates Irving Penn, Ben Rose,

Ben Somoroff, and Sol Mednick, along with friends Arnold Newman and Louis Faurer

405 “Mary [Fullerton] Faulconer Papers.”

137 who never studied at PMSIA but met and became close with Brodovitch through the others. (Newman once joked to Brodovitch that he was his student by ‘osmosis,’ and was

“amused and flattered to find that after that time he always listed me as one of his students.”406) Over the decade after graduation (c.1937-49), one by one the classmates moved to New York to further their photographic careers, and the cohort became known as the “Philadelphia Group” or “Philadelphia School”407 — perhaps as an analogue to the

“New York School” of photographers working at the same time, though the approaches of the two groups were not dissimilar, and photographers from both groups acknowledge significant influence from Brodovitch.

Teaching Philosophy

Brodovitch didn’t address education explicitly in his early writings, but we can find elements of a teaching philosophy emerging on the closing page of his 1930 essay,

“What Pleases the Modern Man.” He ends with a list of six “maxims to be developed by the publicity artist of to-day”:

1. Individuality. 2. Universality. 3. Feeling and understanding for modern life 4. Feeling and understanding of the psychology of the consumer-spectator and the mob. 5. Facility to juggle with all the graphic possibilities which come with the study and improvement of modern materials and technique and of modern methods of presentation and reproduction. 6. Facility for realizing the advertising idea in materials by the use of elementary methods of enforcement and by presenting publicity in a utilitarian, simple, new, unusual and logical manner.408

406 Leslie and Seitlin, “Vanguard Photography by Two Young Americans,” 21; Bunker, Alexey Brodovitch and His Influence, 19–20. 407 Hostetler, “Photography and Everyday Life: The Case of Louis Faurer, 1937–1955”; “A Moment with Michael Somoroff.” 408 Brodovitch, “What Pleases the Modern Man,” 69–70.

138 Just as learning goals are articulated in a class syllabus, Brodovitch outlined precisely what he would come to expect from his later students — and after reading the first two items, which at first glance may appear to be polar opposites, those students would receive their first taste of the sometimes frustrating contradictions at the heart of

Brodovitch’s methods.

Upon establishing his Design Laboratory, Brodovitch crafted the first comprehensive articulation of his teaching philosophy, outlining in detail what he hoped the new program would provide to students. As noted earlier, some of the language was oriented toward a clinical or scientific framing of design work, and also explicitly emphasized connections between classwork and the professional world — perhaps a practical consideration, as job prospects would certainly have been a concern for prospective students during the Great Depression, but such connections had been central to Brodovitch’s practice throughout his teaching career regardless. As we will see, particular words and phrases throughout the document highlight the fact that Brodovitch was being extremely selective as to the words he chooses to use. The fact that there are multiple drafts and edits of this document further supports that intentionality.

Throughout his career, Brodovitch steadfastly resisted any approach that might give students the idea that the path to success was to think, or create, like him. He lamented later in life that, when reviewing portfolios for potential new hires, he could often tell what school someone graduated from by what their work looked like, or even how it was presented. “Art education,” he warned, “can be dangerous. It often kills individuality and establishes a mould. Certainly you must know the fundamental tools

139 and materials and how to use them, but you must do the discovering yourself.”409 This was the main reason Brodovitch resisted the term “teacher” — in his mind, “teaching” meant “dogma, pedagogy, and emulation of the master — an amalgam as repugnant to him as ‘art education’ was dangerous.”410

Among the documents he drafted to outline the Design Laboratory curriculum,

Brodovitch wrote out his expectations of the students — referred to here as “members,” another interesting language choice, further suggesting the breaking-down of traditional academic hierarchies — reiterating once again his emphasis on finding new approaches and new ways of addressing a problem:

The solutions (answers) of the problems given to the students (members of Design Laboratory) will require a high standard of sense of novelty and invention, creative and technical ability, taste and feeling (understanding) of up-to-dateness, and should reflect as well the tempo and evolution of the contemporary scene.411

Noteworthy here is how far Brodovitch goes to avoid the word modern. His chosen euphemism, “up-to-dateness,” and his reference to “the contemporary scene” very intentionally avoid the specificity, and baggage, of “modern”/“Modernism.” The perception of one particular set of rules for design (i.e. the “good” or “correct” way, as

Modernism often implies) was to be avoided, further illustrating Brodovitch’s strong desire to avoid dogma. This interpretation is supported more explicitly by William

Campbell in the Spring 1935 edition of Sketchbook, wherein he relates the experience of studying under Brodovitch:

The student is not trained to meet just the problems and fads of today; he does not learn to do just clever surface things that are popular for the moment; and he is

409 Porter, “Brodovitch on Brodovitch,” 45. 410 Finke, “Pro.Files: The Great Graphic Innovators (Alexey Brodovitch),” 9. 411 Brodovitch, “Design Laboratory Documents.”

140 not taught modernism. But he is prepared to meet the problems of tomorrow. The password of the advertising course seems to be ‘Not modern — up-to-date.’ Modernism is something that will end. If one is up-to-date he will always be progressing and ready for the future.412

According to photographer Art Kane, when asked later in his career about what inspired his teaching philosophy, Brodovitch recommended Kane read Education and the

Significance of Life, by Jiddu Krishnamurti. “It clued me in on his teaching, his thinking, and opened many doors for me,” Kane said. “I read it over and over again. I haven't been the same since. He taught me to stay young and curious.”413

Krishnamurti was a practitioner of Theosophy, a spiritual practice of the late 19th and 20th centuries, based in part on Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Adopted at age 12 by a leader of the movement, he was heralded as a prophet or messiah [maitreya], until he abdicated the role in 1929 — a 1936 profile in Time Magazine referred to him as an “ex- god”.414 (Deification is yet another thing Krishnamurti and Brodovitch had in common: photographer and art director Lillian Bassman once summed up her experience as

Brodovitch’s assistant with: “You didn’t get any money, but you worked with God.”415)

Krishnamurti’s Education and the Significance of Life wasn’t published until 1953; he had, however, offered lectures and publications throughout the prior decades, on many topics including education. A brief survey of these earlier works suggest their teachings were more general, more religiously and ethically oriented, and were distributed less widely than later publications; the early works also don’t resonate with Brodovitch’s own

412 Campbell, “Advertising: A Few Points of Interest Concerning One of the School’s Principal Courses,” 28. 413 Bunker, Alexey Brodovitch and His Influence, 13. 414 “Men, Masters and Messiahs,” 39. 415 Loke, “Inside Photography.”

141 writings or teachings to the same degree. It’s more likely that Brodovitch was introduced to Krishnamurti’s book in 1953 or after — either happening upon it himself, or possibly through a recommendation by either Harper’s Bazaar photographer Lisette Model, who is said to have thought highly of Krishnamurti’s teachings,416 or artist Jackson Pollock, who had studied under Krishnamurti as a young man in California around 1928-30.417

Acknowledging that some of the similarity in language might have been retrospective on Brodovitch’s part (applying Krishnamurti’s tenets to his own past practices and philosophies), the similarities between the two are still remarkable, and draw thought-provoking parallels between Krishnamurti’s concerns about religious dogma and Brodovitch’s concerns over the ideological tendencies of art education:

Krishnamurti: “Education is not merely a matter of training the mind... A mind that has merely been trained is the continuation of the past, and such a mind can never discover the new.”418 Brodovitch: “All young photographers imitate others to some degree when they are first starting out but they must know when to stop and discover their own visual language.”419

Krishnamurti: “Technique can never bring about creative understanding.”420 Brodovitch: “Every young photographer should understand that technique is only a means to an end. Anyone can learn to take a technically proficient picture and, once having learned all this, all that counts is the taste and the personal viewpoint of the person behind the camera.”421

Krishnamurti: “The right kind of educator, seeing the inward nature of freedom, helps each individual student to observe and understand his own self-projected values and impositions…”422

416 Bosworth, Diane Arbus: A Biography, Ch. 17. 417 Karmel, Jackson Pollock, 43, 243; Brodovitch and Pollock had become acquainted by the late 1940s: photographer Hans Namuth referenced his relationship to Brodovitch when introducing himself to Pollock around 1950 (see Namuth, Oral history interview with Hans Namuth). 418 Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life, 13. 419 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 82. 420 Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life, 18. 421 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 82. 422 Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life, 29.

142 Brodovitch: “Rather than a teacher in the accepted sense, what is required is someone to tease or irritate the student and to help him discover himself.”423

Krishnamurti: “The teacher who is sincere will protect the children and help them in every possible way to grow toward the right kind of freedom; but it will be impossible for him to do this if he himself is addicted to an ideology, if he is in any way dogmatic or self-seeking.”424 Brodovitch: “Students must certainly go through a certain basic training to discover facility of self-expression. Certainly, they must know technique. But the instructor or teacher should not be a pedant.”425 Ebin: “A photographer who looks to Alexey Brodovitch for a neat set of rules or a pocket map for finding the ‘Photographer’s Stone’ is doomed to disappointment… as a man of precise judgment and perceptive eye, he cautiously avoids any indoctrination or imposition of his taste.”426

Perhaps the one philosophical principle that Brodovitch and Krishnamurti shared most strongly was their forthright resistance to dogma and ideology. Having been raised as a figure of religious worship, it’s easy to presume how Krishnamurti came to that mindset; one wonders if Brodovitch’s extraordinary losses at the hand of an ideological revolution might be at the root of his motivation. (One might counter, and fairly so, that

Brodovitch grew so hostile to the expected and the cliché in his unending hunger for the new, that perhaps it had become an ideology itself.) One way this principle manifested itself in Brodovitch’s work is an openness to explore, experiment, and absorb inspiration from all sources.

423 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 107. 424 Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life, 31. 425 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 107. 426 Ebin, “A Master Teaches the Experts,” 122.

143 Photography in Brodovitch’s Curriculum

Just as he embraced the airbrush as the key to modern illustration, Brodovitch endorsed the camera as the most important visual communication tool of the future. In

April 1933, Brodovitch secured funding from the school’s trustees to purchase a camera for use in his advertising design classes.427 The camera, an Ansco Memo, was a “small- format” model and shot 18x23mm film (35mm film wouldn’t become an industry standard until the following year).428 Medium-format cameras were much more popular at this time, but a small-format camera would have been more portable for class excursions. This model offered another important benefit while out on assignment: because of the smaller format, each cartridge offered extended capacity — one could take around 50 shots on one film cartridge before having to reload.

The role of photography in the advertising design program grew quickly in subsequent years. Though examples of student work were printed in the school’s Circular every year since the 1920s, student photography wasn’t featured until the 1938-39 edition, reflecting the prior year’s addition of photography courses in both the

Advertising Design and Design Laboratory programs. That Circular featured work done the previous year by student photographers Richard Cummins, James A. Phillips, Vincent

Miller, Robert Haas, and Irving Penn; the accompanying caption noted photography as an

“important medium for the expression of advertising ideas” and (in language from

Brodovitch, no doubt) that “[e]mphasis is placed on experiment and the search for fresher visions and new techniques.”429 Penn’s inclusion in the Circular is credited by curator

427 “Minutes, Meeting of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Instruction, April 6, 1933.” 428 Lo, “Ansco Memo.” 429 Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Circular of the Art Department, 1938-39, 18.

144 Maria Morris Hambourg as his first published photo, and notes that it was generated in

“the sort of design exercise that was typical of European practice between the wars, an image almost certainly arising from an assignment by Brodovitch.”430

During the 1936-37 school year, Brodovitch presented his class with a number of twists on traditional photo assignments: two cameraless darkroom-based problems.

Students were to explore photograms — images made by placing objects on photosensitive paper, exposing the paper to light, and developing the result — and also to create abstract imagery on photosensitive paper using only chemicals.

Though not known as a photographer himself, during Brodovitch’s decade in

Paris he became acquainted with a number of artists exploring experimental photographic techniques. The photogram technique — a form as old as photography itself, indeed perhaps even older431 — was embraced by Dada and Surrealist artists of the early 20th century; its unconventional approach to conventional tools and materials, and the often hazy, abstract, dreamlike qualities of the resulting imagery, were particularly congruent with Surrealism’s philosophy.

The photochemical-based experiments, coined by Belgian artist Pierre Cordier as chemigrams, resulted in images ranging from purely abstract lines and shapes, to cartoon or sketch-like images created by “drawing” with chemicals on the paper. Cordier related the process not to photography but to painting: “its forms and colors appear progressively, gradually... [and] may be modified at any time by changing the solutions, varying their temperature, by intervening manually or with instruments, etc.”432

430 Hambourg and Rosenheim, Irving Penn: Centennial, 34. 431 Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, 393. 432 Cordier, “Chemigram: A New Approach to Lensless Photography,” 263.

145 Additional techniques of photographic experimentation in use prior to and during this era include double exposure, long exposure, multiple exposure/montage, physical manipulation of negatives (scratching, bleaching), and manipulation of light or chemicals during the development process. Of the coterie of artists working in experimental photography, closest to Brodovitch were the American expatriate Man Ray (who exhibited experimental photograms, dubbed rayographs, as early as 1923433), and early chemigram experimenter Maurice Tabard, who met Brodovitch through mutual acquaintance Philippe Soupault and whose studio assistant, Roger Parry, would join

Brodovitch at Le Cercle.434 Brodovitch would later commission both Ray and Tabard to contribute work to Harper’s Bazaar; Ray’s photograms and other photographic experiments accompanied some of Brodovitch’s most celebrated layouts of the 1930s and

’40s.

During this same era, numerous German artists including Germaine Krull, Herbert

Bayer, and husband-and-wife Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy, and Soviet

Russian artists including Aleksandr Rodchenko, were also experimenting with photographic and photo-based techniques. Due to preexisting tensions between Germany and France (described in Chapter 2), artistic influence between the nations was often delayed if not outright resisted. Brodovitch was likely not intimately familiar with, nor influenced by, the photographic experiments of Bayer or Moholy-Nagy and Moholy until after he was performing such experiments himself. Krull, however, lived in Paris

(moving between there, Berlin, and Amsterdam) in the mid- to late-1920s, and her work

433 Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France, 91. 434 Hoving, “Maurice Tabard,” 1529; Mekouar, Berthoud, and Todd, Roger Parry, 12–13. In their catalog for a 2007 exhibition of Parry’s work at the Jeu de Paume, Mekouar et al. do not mention Le Cercle, but the catalog does include examples of Parry’s photography for Aux Trois Quartiers under Brodovitch.

146 was thus more accessible. Examples of her work were published in the Librairie des Arts

Decoratifs portfolio Paris 1929 (Brodovitch work was featured in the 1928 and 1930 editions) and the magazine Vu, and she worked with many in Brodovitch’s circle including Sonia and Robert Delauney, Philippe Soupault, and Pierre Mac Orlan — making it likely that even if the two didn’t know each other personally, Brodovitch would have known of her experiments with multiple exposures and unconventional angles.435

Brodovitch’s feelings toward the Soviet regime in general, and in particular his animosity toward their presence at the 1925 Paris Expo (the provocation that led him to cut ties with the Union des Artistes Russes), suggests he would have likely avoided the writings of Aleksandr Rodchenko, whose designs formed the centerpiece of that Soviet

Pavilion. However, many of the propositions Rodchenko made in his 1928 essays

“Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot” and “The Paths of Modern

Photography” were very much in line with Brodovitch’s own interests, if more politically motivated. Rodchenko felt that the traditional notion of "art" was elitist, bourgeois, idealized, romantic; he viewed photographers who posed and shot their subjects in the same manner as a conventional painted portrait as playing into these “beautiful lies and deception.”436 In contrast, he endorsed the use of candid snapshots (subjects not posing, or even unaware) to orient photography toward truth and the everyday experience.

Another of Rodchenko’s concerns was the elimination of the traditional “from the navel” or “pictorial belly-button” viewpoint, which he wrote “gives you just the sweet kind of blob that you see reproduced on all the postcards ad nauseam.”437 Instead, he advocated

435 Sichel, Making Strange; Sichel, Germaine Krull; Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France. 436 “Aleksandr Rodchenko, ‘Against the Synthetic Portrait, for the Snapshot.’” 437 Rodchenko, “The Paths of Modern Photography [1928],” 3.

147 for “defamiliarizing angles of vision”438 — for photographers to explore the space and their subject in more innovative and dynamic ways:

Why bother to look at a factory if you only observe it from afar and from the middle viewpoint, instead of examining everything in detail — from inside, from above down, and from below up?439

One should shoot the subject from several different points and in varying positions in different photographs, as if encompassing it — not peer through one keyhole... in order to accustom people to seeing from new viewpoints it is essential to take photographs of everyday, familiar subjects from completely unexpected vantage points and in completely unexpected positions.440

In the United States, teaching photography through the use of such experiments would have been practically unheard of at this time. Regarding the photogram in particular, historian Naomi Rosenblum notes that “interest in this form of expression did not develop in the United States until after the Bauhaus relocated in Chicago in 1938 as the Institute of Design.”441 Yet Brodovitch’s students were carrying out such experiments in all of these areas by 1936. By some combination of influences from Paris and perhaps beyond, Brodovitch understood the evocative power of these unconventional photographic techniques. And, hand in hand with his philosophies of experimentation, individuality, and seeking out “the new,” he was convinced of their importance to pushing his students’ practice of art, design, and photography forward.

Brodovitch was not, by most measures, a professional photographer. He never claimed to be; in fact, he swore by his “amateur” status.442 But it could also be said that

438 Cronan, “Rodchenko’s Photographic Communism,” 31. 439 Rodchenko, “The Paths of Modern Photography [1928],” 3–4. 440 Rodchenko, 5. 441 Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, 394. 442 Downes, “Brodovitch and Ballet,” 34.

148 Brodovitch wasn’t a professional at most of the things he accomplished. He wasn’t a professional designer of jewelry, or textiles, or porcelain, when his designs in each of those areas were awarded at the 1925 Paris Expo. He wasn’t a professional painter when his paintings hung in the Whitney and other “serious” East Coast galleries. Neither was he a professional furniture designer, but his designs for a plywood chair and electric lamp would be honored in Museum of Modern Art competitions in 1942 and 1951, respectively.

Cattaruzza suggests that the “eclectic” range of projects taken on by Brodovitch and other graphic artists of the 1920s is a “tangible indication of a profession which was still not well-established.”443 It’s true the field of commercial art and design was just then beginning to split off from its historical embeddedness within other industries (printing, manufacturing, publishing, etc.) to form its own professional identity. But I would argue that such cross-disciplinary pursuits were a result neither of the immaturity of the design industry, nor isolated to the time of its emergence. Rather, disciplines within design, and within art more broadly, have always had porous boundaries. Painters build monuments and design apparel, architects craft ceramics, sculptors refashion landscapes. The tools and processes used in design are applicable in solving problems and crafting creative outcomes in practically any context. Then and now, designers, moreso than practitioners in perhaps any other field, are called upon to utilize their skills in a wide and divergent range of contexts simply by nature of their practice.

In the particular case of Brodovitch, though he specialized in print design, he never ceased work in other media. This wasn’t, as Edwards argues, a symptom of

443 Remington, Smith, and Cattaruzza, The Enduring Legacy of Alexey Brodovitch, 24.

149 “somewhat uncommitted talents”444; rather, it was a natural outgrowth of his interest in new ideas, his “refusal to be bound by convention,”445 his discomfort in standing still.

Critic David Schein described Brodovitch as “a man with an incredible range of creative ideas who wasn’t afraid to enter a large number of areas.”446 He was a textbook polymath. Student Morris Berd recalled him applying lessons from painting and music and ballet in his advertising classes: “he’d tie all these things together in a very interesting way and show us how integrated all these different arts were, which we hadn’t really realized too much. He spoke with such authority, and he knew so much about it.”447 Brodovitch’s partner in the design journal Portfolio, Frank Zachary, perhaps captured the phenomenon best: “Like all perfectionists, he is not satisfied to repeat himself. He must look at life new every day.”448

So, indeed, Brodovitch wasn’t a professional photographer. And in spite of that, or because of it, his photographs would go on to indelibly change the industry of photography.

The Photographs of Ballet

Brodovitch’s memories of the art of ballet originate from his childhood —

“poignantly butterfly-brilliant creatures on a magic stage.”449 As a young man in Paris, the ballet provided not only his first employment in the arts, but a direct connection to the

444 Edwards, “Zen and the Art of Alexey Brodovitch,” 50. 445 Herrick, “Alexey Brodovitch,” 169. 446 Schein, “Bride and Brodovitch: Lots of Art.” 447 Berd, Senior Artists Initiative: Morris Berd. 448 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 86. 449 Denby, “Introductory Essay [Untitled],” 22.

150 artistic revolutionaries of the day. That connection to the Ballets Russes ended by 1923, but in the United States he had an opportunity to rekindle the relationship in a uniquely creative way.

No longer the same company for which he worked in Paris, the group faced a number of transitions since their move to Monte Carlo in 1923 and Diaghilev’s death in

1929. In 1932, “Colonel” Wassily de Basil took the directorship, and the company was commonly referred to during this time as “de Basil’s Ballets Russes.” In 1936, de Basil and his artistic director, Rene Blum, separated and Blum formed his own company, “Les

Ballets de Monte Carlo”; de Basil in response rebranded his company as the “Original

Ballet Russe.” In 1938, dancer and choreographer Leonide Massine became Blum’s artistic director, and the name of that company changed again to “Ballet Russe de Monte

Carlo” (note the shift to singular, apparently as a legal distinction).450

During their U.S. tours between 1935 and 1938, Brodovitch visited the ballet company’s New York and Philadelphia engagements, and took candid photographs of members of the ensemble rehearsing, preparing for performances, and in moments of quiet backstage. These photos were later released in Brodovitch’s only published book, succinctly titled Ballet, published in 1945. Featuring photographs from 12 different ballets in total, the book represents a labor of many years and multiple tours. The book’s front matter indicates the photos were taken between 1935 and 1937, but that is contradicted in the introductory essay which states 1935–1939. The former range can’t be correct, as one of the ballets included therein — Septieme Symphonie — did not premiere until 1938. The latter, too, is in dispute: records vary, but a consensus suggests the

450 Anderson, The One and Only: The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; García-Marquez, The Ballets Russes; Walker, De Basil’s Ballets Russes.

151 company’s 1939 international tour did not have a U.S. leg (they travelled to Australia instead), so an ending date of 1938 seems most likely.

A typical performance program might contain two to four different acts, depending on length, and the content and sequence of the program might change from one stop on the tour to the next. At venues where the company held longer residencies, such as London’s Covent Garden, multiple different programs were offered to entice repeat visits. Several of the photographed ballets were perennial favorites long- established in the company's repertoire, and could have been included in any program within that timespan— a 1935 souvenir program indicated that there were 67 ballets in the repertoire at that time — making it difficult to date Brodovitch’s photographs to a specific tour or year. Others ballets had their American premiere during this time: in

1934, Union Pacific; in 1935, Choreartium; in 1936, Symphonie Fantastique and Les

Noces; in 1937, Les Cent Baisers. The newest of the twelve, Septieme Symphonie, had its

American premiere as part of the spring/summer 1938 tour.451

Popular Photography celebrated the 1945 publication of Ballet with a lengthy review by Bruce Downes, including technical details of interest to their audience of professional photographer readers, and background from Brodovitch about the origins of the project. The article observes that Brodovitch considered his earliest attempts at capturing live performance “a discouraging failure. He tried to get straightforward pictures... but when he enlarged them they were too blurred, the grain was distracting and the halation unpleasant.”452 Early images from this body of “motion stills,” as they were

451 Anderson, The One and Only: The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 280–82. 452 Downes, “Brodovitch and Ballet,” 31, 34.

152 billed, were exhibited in Philadelphia twice in 1935: at the Crillon Galleries, which had previously staged an exhibition of Brodovitch’s paintings in 1933; and at PMSIA.453 In his review, Downes noted that “[p]ublishers showed no interest at that time but ballet people were excited about them,” as were fellow photographers, including Harper’s

Bazaar collaborators Man Ray, Fritz Henle, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and Erwin

Blumenfeld.454 This encouraged Brodovitch to continue, and he moved from a straightforward documentary approach to embracing what he had previously considered errors, and expanding to an even wider variety of experimental techniques both in setting up his shots and in manipulating and printing the negatives, to capture the experience of ballet in a new way.

Brodovitch’s approach was in stark contrast to the conventional methods of ballet photography at the time: carefully posed scenes on stage or, more often, in a studio where the conditions (lighting, setting, background) could be more tightly controlled. These photos followed the tradition of studio portraiture but with subjects even more painstakingly posed, limbs precisely arranged and extended, poses often reproducing a particular moment of stage performance in the artist’s studio. The masters of the conventional approach during this era included Baron Adolf de Meyer, Cecil Beaton, and

George Platt Lynes. In an article in the December 1944 issue of Dance Index, just a year before Ballet would be released, Platt Lynes described his process and philosophy: “I love dancing, and my idea has been to make prints which will perpetuate what I have seen, as an adjunct to my own memory; and for those who have not seen it, a sort of

453 Downes, 34; Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, “Untitled Newspaper Clipping.” 454 Downes, “Brodovitch and Ballet,” 34.

153 substitute and consolation.” To most accurately simulate the stage movements for these

“adjuncts,” Platt Lynes noted he sometimes involved the company’s choreographer in the shoot.455 Critic Edwin Denby, in his introductory essay to Ballet, observes that such staged photos feel unnatural, dispirited, “preposterously affected… the more sharply you see it frozen… the more isolated the gesture looks and the more unlike dancing.”456

Several subsequent issues of Dance Index included profiles of photographers.

Walker Evans (February 1946) brought his social-realist documentary lens to the practice, and captured moments of costuming, make-up preparation, and warm-up, all interestingly set in the natural (unfinished, often cluttered) setting of a theatre’s backstage area. A feature on the work of Cecil Beaton, in the August 1946 issue, included some studio shots of dancers in very intentional poses, and other performance shots taken from a distance, dancers dwarfed by the massive expanse of a proscenium or the heights of the stage’s fly loft.

Though different in some aspects, one thing these approaches all had in common was their attempts to stop time, to arrest motion. Platt Lynes described his intent behind two photos as “showing [the dancers] in motion”457; what these photos actually captured were the dancers posed in positions stretching for or perhaps partway through a certain choreographed move. These photos do not show the subjects in motion (one of the two dancers is, in fact, seated) but rather reveal dance photography’s propensity to freeze motion. This was not unique to dance photography; indeed, it had been a goal of photography since the times of Muybridge and Marey. With faster film speeds and

455 Platt Lynes, “Photographs by George Platt Lynes,” 216–17. 456 Denby, “Introductory Essay [Untitled],” 22. 457 Platt Lynes, “Photographs by George Platt Lynes,” 217.

154 technological advances such as the stroboscopic flash, Downes suggests “Modern photography makes a fetish of its power to outdo the human eye” in its attempts to

“outstrip choreographic motion.”458

In a 1988 review, dance critic and author Mindy Aloff compared two methods of photographing dance: “those in which the photographer controls the situation and those in which he doesn't.” The former refers to the more conventional approach, affording greater opportunity for “technical refinement” and, as Platt Lynes related, the involvement of a choreographer, director, or others to guide and shape the image. As to the latter method, though less predictable, Aloff credits it for its access to a “spontaneous radiance,” a “mesmerizing geometry, muscular intelligence, and ballooning, dreamlike relationships unique to theatrical dancing”459 difficult or impossible to simulate in a studio setting. In this second category Aloff names Brodovitch among four “masters.”

Yet even though this group is oriented to live action rather than studio posing, the approaches of the other three — Fred Fehl, Martha Swope, and Paul Kolnik — are still relatively conventional in terms of their approach. Among this group only Brodovitch sought to bend convention to try to capture the experience in a more visceral way, “more interested in the fluidity than the sculpture, in the dance than the dancers.”460

His experimentation with slow shutter speeds also represented the fluidity of dance in a new way. Downes described Brodovitch’s process as “allowing the dancers to pass in time across his film. The result is blur, but since ballet dancers move rhythmically, the tracings they make on the film are themselves graceful and rhythmic…

458 Downes, “Brodovitch and Ballet,” 31. 459 Aloff, “Review: Robert Mapplethorpe by Richard Marshall...,” 53. 460 Downes, “Brodovitch and Ballet,” 31.

155 resembling the after-images of memory.”461 Downes adds a second metaphor: as the dancers cross Brodovitch’s lens their images “‘brush’ over his film,”462 suggesting a more painterly vision of the resulting image (e.g. figs. 67–68).

In formulating his new approach, Brodovitch likely drew inspiration from a photographer who was recruited to Harper’s Bazaar by Carmel Snow less than a year before him: Martin Munkacsi. Munkacsi had started his career as a sports writer and photographer, an unusual background for a fashion photographer. He brought a journalistic sensibility to his work in fashion: for his first shoot for Bazaar, he famously had a model run down the beach toward him and his camera, the first time, it’s said, that a model was shot in motion.463 This approach was totally unconventional; the resulting shots “showed the feel of an outfit at the expense of its all-important details — heresy in the fashion world.”464 Heresy perhaps, but Brodovitch reportedly saw in Munkacsi’s work a “pure, alchemical energy.”465

Motion and energy were critical to Munkacsi. In a November 1935 profile in

Bazaar (laid out by Brodovitch), he related it back to his journalistic roots:

In sport photographs and all exciting action snaps you have to anticipate the motion. Before [a player] leaps into the air, you have to push your shutter… Never pose your subjects. Let them move about naturally. All great photographs today are snapshots.466

461 Downes, 104. 462 Downes, 31. 463 Rowlands, A Dash of Daring: The Life of Carmel Snow, 166. 464 Rowlands, 166. 465 Edwards, “He Swept Fashion Off Its Feet: Munkacsi,” 26. 466 Munkacsi, “Think Before You Shoot,” 152.

156 He also advocated for unusual angles and viewpoints: “Take back views. Take running views... Pick unexpected angles, but never without reason. Lie down on your back. Climb ladders.”467 The article is illustrated by a number of photos, including one of

Munkacsi himself, floating on his back in Long Island Sound, resting his camera on his chest to capture a particularly unusual viewpoint.

Munkacsi’s approach paralleled many of the tenets Rodchenko set out for modern photography, a photography that captured the truth of everyday experience. Tenets

Brodovitch, despite any negative feelings toward Rodchenko, seemed eager to follow in his Ballet work. One such tenet particularly defied a fundamental principle of ballet choreography: its manner of creating scenes for an audience — “the privileging of ‘turn- out,’ that is, frontal legibility.”468 By varying his vantage point, viewers would see each ballet performance in ways that it wasn’t intended to be seen (e.g. figs. 69–70): views from behind, from the wings, from the fly looking down, from the orchestra pit looking up through the footlights. This also likely had a secondary effect on the performers. Even with an empty house, rehearsals would have remained focused on keeping their body and eye contact oriented toward the audience, making it less likely they were aware of

Brodovitch’s presence. In essence, they weren’t performing for Brodovitch. Philosopher

Roland Barthes, in his writings on photography, observes a difference when the subject of a photo is cognizant of the fact that they are being photographed: “once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing,’ I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an

467 Munkacsi, 152. 468 Summers-Bremner, “Reading Irigaray, Dancing,” 99.

157 image.”469 Denby appreciates this absence of pose or posturing in Brodovitch’s work,

“where you can catch several of [the dancers] half in, half out of their professional metamorphoses.”470

Brodovitch began taking these photos, he said, as “souvenirs.”471 Yet the photos transcend that definition. A souvenir, as characterized by poet and literary critic Susan

Stewart, is a physical trace of a past personal experience472; by that definition, these images and the resulting photographic prints certainly qualify, but by their abstraction they are also more. Brodovitch understood the power of such images to communicate beyond that personal experience -- to engross a viewer who was not present, who has no reference to the particular event at which the photo was made. Critic Edwin Denby, for example, stated that from Ballet he felt, “more than from any action sequence I know, the sense of a whole ballet company dancing... the ephemeral stage atmosphere.”473

Denby, a former dancer himself, would become known as one of the most important dance critics of the 20th century, but at the time he contributed the introductory essay for Ballet he was still establishing himself as a writer. His first published review was less than a decade prior, in 1936 — coincidentally, the very same production of Les

Noces as reflected in Brodovitch’s photographs.474 Aloff considers Denby’s essay in

469 Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 10. 470 Denby, “Introductory Essay [Untitled],” 27. 471 Denby, 11; Phillips, “Brodovitch on Ballet,” 78. 472 Stewart, On Longing, 134–35. 473 Denby, “Introductory Essay [Untitled],” 12. 474 Kodat, “Reviewing Cold War Culture with Edwin Denby,” 46.

158 Ballet a significant work of his literary corpus, and found it remarkable that it was left out of a 2008 anthology of his writings.475

Brodovitch recruited Hermann Landshoff, a Harper’s Bazaar contributor, to help him produce prints of his Ballet photos, for the book and to sell as individual photographs. Landshoff had fled Germany, only to have to flee again from Nazi-occupied

France, arriving in the U.S. in 1942. He credited Ballet as among the earliest efforts to

“free photography from the by then already sterile needle-sharpness, at the time the official orthodox credo... It was Brodovitch who first created a true and usable language to express motion and speed with the camera.”476

Once his images were complete, it still took Brodovitch several years to find a publisher interested in publishing the project. Brodovitch’s relationship with the book’s eventual publisher, J. J. Augustin, did not begin with Ballet: in 1943 he was commissioned to design dust jackets for two photobooks by frequent Harper’s Bazaar contributor George Hoyningen-Huene, and in 1945 for Andre Kertesz’s Day in Paris.

Kertesz was also a contributor to Bazaar and, same as Brodovitch, his book consisted of photographs he had taken around a decade earlier.477 It’s likely Brodovitch floated the idea for Ballet to his contacts at J. J. Augustin while working on these commissions.

Though the publisher had been in business in Europe since 1632, the New York branch was still quite young (est. 1936), and was interested in niche and limited-edition projects; the branch specialized in the fields of art, architecture, music, geography, and cultural studies, including several books on Native American culture and arts.

475 Aloff, “Review: Dance Writings by Edwin Denby.” 476 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 81. 477 Parr and Badger, The Photobook, 1:200.

159 Though Brodovitch’s work had previously been included in anthologies, this would be the first time that he had full control over how the viewer-reader would experience his work. Even within Bazaar his control wasn’t absolute; the issue was constantly interrupted by advertisements. Ballet would offer him an unprecedented opportunity to build the “cinematic flow” he strove for in his magazine work. Roth observes that the choice of format for artists’ photobooks is very intentional:

...no longer a mere summary of a project or a simple grouping together of individual works. Instead, it has consciously become a part of the tradition of photographers and artists who have recognized and taken advantage of its unique potential for design and the space it offers for contemplation.478

One choice that seemed rather straightforward for Brodovitch was to print the book with the images extending off the edges of the page, an effect called “full bleed.” Brodovitch was famous for using bleed in layouts at Harper’s Bazaar, one of the first major

American magazines to do so. Using the same approach in Ballet was one more way to add dynamic energy to the reading experience — critic Vince Aletti stated that it felt like

“the images can barely be confined to their pages.”479

Choosing a horizontal format, though somewhat unconventional for commercial books, was a more natural fit for Brodovitch’s landscape-oriented imagery. The exaggerated width also allowed for interesting combinations of images. Another practice he became known for at Bazaar was the consideration of the two-page spread — that is to say, thinking of the two facing pages of a book or magazine as one continuous design, building relationships between the pages and across the “gutter” (the gap along the

478 Roth, The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present, 26–27. 479 Aletti, “Alexey Brodovitch, ‘Ballet,’” 110.

160 ‘inside spine’ of the book). Several two-page spreads give the illusion of one continuous panoramic image, thanks to clever choices in terms of selection of images, placement, mirroring, and cropping (e.g. figs. 71–73).

Knowing how preoccupied Brodovitch was with visual sequence in his work at

Harper’s Bazaar, curating and controlling the viewer’s experience as they paged through an issue of the magazine, one can only assume he was as careful if not more so in orchestrating the contents of Ballet. The order of ballets does not follow any discernible system, alphabetical or chronological, so one assumes the sequence was determined by visual characteristics and Brodovitch’s instinct. Curiously, the order of ballets listed on the contents page is not the same order as the photos are laid out in the book. It’s possible

Brodovitch changed his mind about the sequence of photos late in the process (as he was known to do at Bazaar), and for some reason was not able to update the contents page, which perhaps wasn’t a priority. It’s also possible Brodovitch designed the page without regard to the order of the photos, simply in a composition he found exciting. It’s clear that the visual quality of the photogravure reproductions was the top priority for everyone involved and the textual elements were less important, as a number of other minor errors in the text escaped the eye of Brodovitch and his editors.

When the book was first released, in November 1945, it was not universally well- received among photographers; Phillips describes “a chorus of outrage [rising] from photographic purists.”480 Penn suggests the book “spat in the face of technique”481; perhaps it was natural, then, that some who formed their expertise and identity around

480 Phillips, “Brodovitch on Ballet,” 76. 481 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 81.

161 mastery of technique would react negatively. But as reflected in Brodovitch’s teaching and writings, technique was always secondary to him, after the quality and novelty of the concept. Another critic reportedly pointed to Ballet as “proof you could make an exciting book out of terrible pictures.”482

Others, however, recognized what it meant for the future of photographic practice.

Curator and critic Vince Aletti notes that despite its small press run, “Ballet had enormous impact among the design and photo cognoscenti. No wonder; more than half a century later, the book still looks radical, still feels exciting.”483 Photographer Fritz Henle credits Brodovitch for “[getting] photography out of a strait jacket [sic] that it had been in for many years.”484 And Parr and Badger credit Ballet as “one of the most successful attempts at suggesting motion in photography, and certainly one of the most cinematic and dynamic books ever published.”485 Indeed, Michel Maingois described the images in

Ballet as “like frames lifted from an imaginary film.”486

The book, and Brodovitch’s images, were featured in a number of reviews, profiles, and articles. One photo in particular — actually, two different photos, fused together across the book’s gutter to form one continuous image — was repeatedly used as an illustration in media coverage of the book and in profiles on Brodovitch. The work, from the production Choreartium (fig. 73), was prominently featured (and the only photo reproduced as a full-page image) in Downes’s review published just after Ballet’s publication. It also appeared in an article in Tricolor by H. Felix Kraus, published three

482 Reynolds, 81. 483 Aletti, “Alexey Brodovitch, ‘Ballet,’” 110. 484 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 87. 485 Parr and Badger, The Photobook, 1:241. 486 Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Alexey Brodovitch, 126.

162 months prior to the book’s release, arguing the case for photography as an art — “not only an art but the art of our time” — in defiance of critics who viewed it as solely the function of a “mechanical eye.”487 In later years, the same image was included by Porter

(1968) and Phillips (1981) and, in perhaps its most prominent use, reproduced on the dust jacket of a 2016 reissue of Ballet by Errata Editions488 — a complete spread-for-spread reproduction, at approximately 60% scale, of the of the 1945 edition.

Ballet stayed in the public eye, in one form or another, for decades. Curator

Edward Steichen selected three of Brodovitch’s photos (one each from Choreartium, Les

Noces, and Le Tricorne) for his 1951 exhibition Abstraction in Photography at the

Museum of Modern Art; one (Les Noces) was published in a special feature on the show in Photo Arts magazine.489 Brodovitch’s work hung alongside numerous contributors to

Harper’s Bazaar, as well as former students Sol Mednick and Ben Rose; one of Rose’s photos, also included in the Photo Arts feature, was shot for a feature in Bazaar.490

In 1965 — Ballet’s 20th anniversary — Irving Penn worked with Brodovitch to design and publish a “graphic impression” (terminology from Design Laboratory days) of the book in the journal Infinity. The Choreartium image appears very prominently yet again, occupying a full two-page spread. On the neighboring pages, Penn does something very different with the images, which strikes a careful balance between respecting the book-as-object, that is to say the “book-ness” of the published volume Ballet, and the

“photo-ness” of the content, the images therein.

487 Kraus, “Modern Photography,” 62, emphasis in original. 488 Errata Editions has published, to date, 21 such complete reproductions of seminal photobooks “too rare or prohibitively expensive for most to experience.” Brodovitch et al., Ballet, back cover. 489 “Abstract Photography: A Vital Question,” 8. 490 “Abstract Photography: A Vital Question,” 17.

163 In order to reinforce the photographic origins of the work, or perhaps to reference the cinematic sensation of shooting live-action, Penn illustrated the spreads with a series of film strips (fig. 74). To accomplish this, he re-photographed each page of a copy of

Ballet. This act generated new negatives, which were then printed as a “contact sheet,” and strips of the contact sheet were reprinted, essentially as photomontages, in Infinity.

One may also interpret Penn’s approach as an homage to Brodovitch’s own editorial layouts: faux film strips were a device used regularly in Brodovitch’s work for Harper’s

Bazaar; Brodovitch created an illustration of a strip of negatives even earlier, for his layout of Pierre Mac Orlan's 1929 article “Graphismes” for Arts et Metiers Graphiques.

Penn was careful in framing his photos: rather than cropping to the edges of each image so as to too closely mimic the original photos, each page of the book was centered within his frame but didn't occupy the whole frame. Margin was left around each edge, revealing a glimpse of the background, the book stand, shadows on the backdrop. This and other visual cues (the book’s gutter, the slight curvature of the pages) clearly communicated that it was the book-object he was picturing. Penn’s brief accompanying text celebrates the Ballet photos as “an exercise in anti-technique” and Brodovitch for his

“defiance of camera convention.”491

Ballet’s lasting influence on the broader world of photography can be summed up in terms very similar to the lessons Brodovitch hoped to impart to his students.

Photographer William Helburn notes a first lesson: “He taught us that what were once considered mistakes were sometimes beautiful errors and this opened up a whole new

491 Penn, “Ballet by Brodovitch,” 10.

164 world of picture-taking.”492; and a second from Parr and Badger: “The approach of

Brodovitch to teaching was simple: forget about fussy technique and polish, the tried or the tested; work with passion, trust your own experience, and always experiment; be yourself and dare to be different by breaking the rules.”493

A Re-Reading of Ballet

William H. Campbell attended PMSIA from 1933-37, studying painting under

Earl Horter and advertising design under Brodovitch. Campbell went on to a significant career in art and design, including more than 40 solo exhibitions494; high-profile examples of his design work include contributions to campaigns for the Container

Corporation of America, alongside Brodovitch and many other American design luminaries. In 2010, Campbell reached out to Innis Shoemaker, longtime curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with his wishes to donate certain items from his personal archive to the PMA. He recognized the value of his materials not only from a personal standpoint but through their connection to

Brodovitch.495 At least one donated work was entered into the museum’s permanent collection; the remaining materials were entered into the museum’s archives collection.

Campbell passed away in 2012 at the age of 97.

It was from within the Campbell archives that a new understanding of

Brodovitch’s use of photography in his classroom could begin to take shape. Among a

492 Reynolds, “Brodovitch: His Influence on Photography,” 86. 493 Parr and Badger, The Photobook, 1:235. 494 Downey, “W. H. Campbell, Artist Who Cofounded a Cabaret.” 495 Campbell, “Memo to Innis Shoemaker, July 30, 2010.”

165 variety of other artifacts of his days as a student of Brodovitch at PMSIA, including advertisement layout and billboard “comps” (mock-ups), press clippings, and other ephemera, Campbell had labeled and saved dozens of photographs taken for Brodovitch’s classes. The collection also included photograms and chemigrams, labeled clearly to leave no confusion as to the process Campbell used to create them:

“Photogram, William H. Campbell, 1936, Brodovitch class”

“Abstact [sic] experiment. Use photo chemicals. No camera and it is not a photogram. William H. Campbell 1936 Alexey Brodovitch class at Broad & Pine”

“Broad & Pine, Alexey Brodovitch class, No camera, use photo chemicals, 1936”

Among the archived photographs, Campbell indicated some that were produced in response to a prompt or “problem” posed to the class by Brodovitch; others that documented a class trip to Gloucester Harbor, Cape May, and Rockport, Massachusetts, coordinated by instructor Earl Horter; and a variety of other snapshots featuring classmates Irving Penn, Ollie [Oliver] James, Vic [Victor] Trasoff, Wade Jolly, and

Helen Horter.

Most curious were several small envelopes of tiny images, one to two inches in either dimension, which appeared to be cut out from contact sheets (fig. 75). These photos looked familiar: many looked to be taken during ballet performances, were shot from peculiar viewpoints and at varying angles and distances, and featured high contrasts, bright lights and dark recesses. This was clearly a student version of the experiments

Brodovitch carried out in Ballet.

The archive contains multiple variations of prints of individual images, suggesting

Campbell experimented with different combinations of timing, exposure levels, and other variables while printing them. A change in image quality along an edge of the frame (fig.

166 76) suggests certain prints were exposed with a substrate (possibly vellum, gauze, or cellophane) manipulating the light from the enlarger, a technique Brodovitch is known to have employed to change the contrasts and qualities of an image.496 The prints themselves — various sizes, unevenly cut, some with rough or torn edges, printed with uneven margins and some at odd angles to the paper (e.g. fig. 77) — indicate these were proofs made for personal reference, experimenting with different darkroom conditions or timing. Handwritten notes on the backs of some prints indicate his location: “stage academy of Music”; “fly gallery of Academy Music”; “On stage during performance.”

The collection also contains several matted 8x10" prints, photos that appear to be taken backstage at a performance venue. Several are dated March 1936, which corresponds with the ballet company’s third American tour, October 1935 through May

1936.497 During their Philadelphia engagement, the company performed at the

Philadelphia Academy of Music, working with Philadelphia Orchestra director and principal conductor Leopold Stokowski.498 Curiously, only some of the photos are of ballet performers. The others feature Campbell and classmates, and reveal another interesting aspect of this experience. The students are in full costume and elaborate make- up, including wigs and prosthetic facial hair (figs. 78–80). The poses are casual, some humorous, suggesting these images were meant to capture their experience for their own memories rather than as part of the classroom assignment. Notes written on the backs indicate these photos were taken by Ben Rose.

496 Purcell, “Ballet [Essay],” 7. 497 Walker, De Basil’s Ballets Russes, 58. 498 García-Marquez, The Ballets Russes, 136.

167 There is no indication from Campbell as to the nature of the costumes. It’s possible the ballet company’s crew was willing to provide the students with a first-hand, one might say immersive, insight into the experience of a performer getting ready for a show. It’s also possible that doing so made the students less of a distraction to the rehearsing dancers — one might wonder how an elaborate costume would make a spectator less distracting, but in this context it may have helped the students blend in.

Another possibility exists: as the company toured, they worked with musicians local to the venue.499 It’s possible that the company also hired locals to serve as non-dancing extras, and perhaps the art students, already familiar with the company and venue, made convenient recruits, though there’s no indication from Campbell if that were the case.

It seems clear, from Campbell’s artifacts and from what we’ve learned of

Brodovitch’s teaching methods and philosophies, that Brodovitch posed the challenges underlying Ballet — to capture motion, or perhaps the vitality of a live performance, in a still image — as a graphic “problem” for his students to explore alongside him. It is particularly exciting to find such evidence from 1936, knowing that it was only a year or less earlier that Brodovitch was feeling frustrated and dissatisfied with the direction his work had been going, and made the significant decision to “lean in” to the characteristics in his photos that some saw as errors, breaking new disciplinary ground in the process.

The types of assignments put forth in Brodovitch’s classroom — from the Ballet

“problem” to the explorations of photograms and chemigrams — placed his students among the earliest in the nation to be exploring and applying such techniques. As

499 García-Marquez, The Ballets Russes, 136.

168 Brodovitch pushed forward into new experimental approaches to photography, he pushed his students forward as well.

169 Illustrations

Except where otherwise noted, all images/objects are from the collection of the author.

Figure 1 Figure 2

Alexey Brodovitch, Bal Banal, 1924 Alexey Brodovitch, La Rotonde, c.1928 in Paris 1928

Figure 3 Figure 4

Alexey Brodovitch, Le Cercle business card, c.1928 Collection: University of the Arts, University Libraries and Archives; photo by author

Alexey Brodovitch, Le joueur de flûte, 1922 in Renieu, La carte postale illustrée, 1924

170 Figure 5

Alexey Brodovitch, untitled icon painting, 1922

171 Figure 6

Interior of Restaurant Prunier, Paris Photo: Restaurant Prunier (https://victorhugo.prunier.com/photos/)

Figure 7 Figure 8

Alexey Brodovitch, Prunier signage plaque, 1924 Alexey Brodovitch, Prunier menu cover, 1924 / Photo: Caviar House & Prunier U.K. 2019 Image: Restaurant Prunier

172 Figure 9

Alexey Brodovitch, Composition aux poissons, 1924

Figure 10 Figure 11

Pavilion Pomone, 1925 in Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXe siècle, Class 1, Plate IV

Becker Fils boutique, 1925 in Herbst, Devantures vitrines installations de magasins a l'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs, Paris, 1925

173 Figure 12 Figure 13

Alexey Brodovitch, La trapeziste, 1928 Alexey Brodovitch, catalogs for Donnet, c.1928

Figure 14 Figure 15

Alexey Brodovitch, engraved galalith print, 1928 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled design, c.1930 in Paris 1928 in Gebrauchsgraphik, January 1930

174 Figure 16 Figure 17

Advertisement for Strathmore Paper in Advertising Arts, September 1934

Alexey Brodovitch, untitled design, c.1929 in Commercial Art, August 1930

Figure 18 Figure 19

Alexey Brodovitch, illustration from Monsieur Alexey Brodovitch, illustration from Monsieur de Bougrelon, 1928 de Bougrelon, 1928

175 Figure 20 Figure 21

Façade of Aux Trois Quartiers, c.1929 Alexey Brodovitch, catalog cover for Aux Trois in Catalogue du centenaire, 1929 Quartiers, c.1929 in Arts et Metiers Graphiques, November 1929

Figure 22

Alexey Brodovitch, poster for Bieres Veuve J. Petit & Fils, c.1926–30

176 Figure 23 Figure 24

uncredited advertisement for White Star Line Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for Cunard in Bulletin, August 1930 Line, 1930 in Bulletin, August 1930

Figure 25

Alexey Brodovitch, wrapper for Le Ramayana, 1927

177 Figure 26 Figure 27

Alexey Brodovitch, illustration from A Brief History of Moscovia, 1928

Alexey Brodovitch, frontispiece from A Brief History of Moscovia, 1928

Figure 28 Figure 29

Vilmos Huszar, poster for Miss Blanche Cigarettes, 1926 Jacob Jongert, hand-lettered alphabet, 1929 Image: Stedelijk Museum, Graphics collection, in Vecht, Onze letterteekens en hun object no. KNA10196 samenstelling, 1937

178 Figure 30 Figure 31

Alexey Brodovitch, construction barrier for Printemps, c.1927 Source: Alexey Brodovitch Papers. Architecture and Design Study Center. The Museum of Modern Art, New York uncredited student, hand lettering specimens, c.1932–1933, in PMSIA Circular, 1933-34

Figure 32 Figure 33

Alexey Brodovitch, Aquatone Today, c.1933 Alexey Brodovitch, inside spread of Aquatone Collection: University of the Arts, University Today, c.1933 Libraries and Archives Collection: University of the Arts, University Libraries and Archives

Figure 34

Alexey Brodovitch, fold-out spread of Aquatone Today, c.1933 Collection: University of the Arts, University Libraries and Archives

179 Figure 35

Alexey Brodovitch, “Tail-piece for a work on the modern aesthetic,” c.1930 in Commercial Art, August 1930

Figure 36 Figure 37

Alexey Brodovitch, Plate 1, in Dessins, 1930 Alexey Brodovitch, Plate 2, in Dessins, 1930

Figure 38

Alexey Brodovitch, Graphisme, c.1930, in Arts et Metiers Graphiques, July 1930

180 Figure 39

Alexey Brodovitch, cover of exhibition invitation, 1930 Image: Bibliothèque nationale de France, reproduced with permission for academic publication

Figure 40

Google Ngram graphs for “graphisme,” French and English bodies of literature, 1800–2000

181 Figure 41 Figure 42

Alexey Brodovitch, untitled illustration, c.1930 Alexey Brodovitch, untitled illustration, c.1930 in Commercial Art, August 1930 in Arts et Metiers Graphiques, July 1930

Figure 43 Figure 44

page from Arts et Metiers Graphiques, July 1930 detail of page from Arts et Metiers Graphiques, July 1930

182 Figure 45

Alexey Brodovitch, gallery guide for Design for the Machine, 1932 Source: exhibition file, Office of the Registrar, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Figure 46 Figure 47

Alexey Brodovitch, detail of brochure for Design Engineers, c.1933–34 Source: Alexey Brodovitch Papers. Architecture and Design Study Center. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

page from Modern Publicity, January 1930 Image: IADDB

183 Figure 48

Alexey Brodovitch, Schaum beer poster concept, in Advertising Arts, May1933

Figure 49

Alexey Brodovitch, detail of advertisement for New Jersey Zinc Co., in Advertising Arts, May 1934

Figure 50 Figure 51

Alexey Brodovitch, cover of Advertising Arts, Alexey Brodovitch, Chapel September 1934 in Maloney, 3 Poems, 1935

184 Figure 52 Figure 53

Alexey Brodovitch, Mechanism Alexey Brodovitch, October in Maloney, 3 Poems, 1935 in Maloney, 3 Poems, 1935

Figure 54 Figure 55 Figure 56

Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for The Whispering Ghost, 1932 Dead Man’s Music, 1932 Fuller’s Earth, 1932

Figure 57 Figure 58 Figure 59

Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for Alexey Brodovitch, jacket for The Sound of Footsteps, 1931 The Perils and Fortune of the Dead Mrs. Stratton, 1933 Duke of Osuna, 1932

185 Figure 60 Figure 61

Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for Climax Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for Climax Molybdenum, in Fortune, June 1936 Molybdenum, in Fortune, November 1935

Figure 62 Figure 63

Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for Climax Alexey Brodovitch, advertisement for Climax Molybdenum, in Fortune, July 1936 Molybdenum, in Fortune, September 1936

186 Figure 64 Figure 65

Alexey Brodovitch, Steel, c.1933–37 page from Paasche Airbrush Co. catalog, July 1938

Figure 66

William Campbell, handwritten note on back of mounted photo, 1936 Source: William Campbell collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives

Figure 67

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 96–97, 1945

187 Figure 68

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 116–117, 1945

Figure 69

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 44–45, 1945

Figure 70

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 4–5, 1945

188 Figure 71

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 46–47, 1945

Figure 72

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 102–103, 1945

Figure 73

Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet pp. 120–121, 1945

189 Figure 74

page spread from Infinity, July 1965

Figure 75

William Campbell, thumbnail proof photos, 1936 Source: William Campbell collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives

Figure 76 Figure 77

William Campbell, untitled photo, 1936 William Campbell, untitled photo, 1936 William Campbell collection, Philadelphia William Campbell collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives Museum of Art Library and Archives

190 Figure 78

Ben Rose, photo of Al Gold and Sol Mednick, 1936 Source: William Campbell collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives

Figure 79 Figure 80

Ben Rose, photo of William Campbell sketching, 1936 Source: William Campbell collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Ben Rose, photo of William Campbell, 1936 Archives Source: William Campbell collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives

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205 Appendix: Concluding Statement

My hope is that this research will be useful to others studying the history of design education in the U.S., particularly the state of the field prior to the emigration of former Bauhaus masters whose influences are already widely studied. Interesting connections and contrasts can be made between Brodovitch’s approaches and those of other early pioneers such as Leon Friend, Walter G. Raffé, Kurt Volk and others. This study may also add to potential sources of information for those interested in early 20th- century Philadelphia history and art history.

I also find interesting connections and potential for new research between this study and the study of canon — that is to say, how certain figures or artifacts are elevated to positions of authority in histories of certain fields. Brodovitch’s rise to visibility particularly among intra-industry media, and subsequent obscurity, makes for an interesting case study on the subjective nature and pliability of canon. Personally, my interest in the study of canon formation extends back to my M.F.A. research, and the complex negotiations underlying how and why certain artifacts (and practitioners) of art and design retain or gain cultural value and institutional “enfranchisement” continues to fascinate.

Expanding outward from Brodovitch’s own history, the resources gathered for this study also inform research on numerous other topics for future resource, including: graphic design competitions of the 1939 World’s Fair; innovative design and specialty printing in 1930s industrial advertising for Fortune magazine, particularly those made for

Alcoa (the Aluminum Company of America); and the graphic design work of Alexandre

Alexeieff. Additionally, I look forward to expanding on aspects of the project that were

206 cut from the final version of the paper, including Brodovitch’s modern kitchen for 1932’s

Design for the Machine, and the possibility of pre-PMSIA connections to artist and educator Edward Warwick.

On a more personal level, I appreciate the opportunities this project gave me to expand and deepen my own praxis. Naturally the experience in new methodological practices will enhance my future research. But also, the experience sharpened my eye as a collector, and pushed me to develop new strategies in approaching the gathering of resources. Going into the project I was very much focused on a “comprehensive” accounting of Brodovitch’s work; this is, of course, impossible. Shifting strategy to one based on connections — strengthening existing connections and establishing new ones

— allowed me to concentrate energy and resources where it best served my immediate research goals. And perhaps most importantly, the project has influenced how I teach and understand history. Though Brodovitch’s story remains a fascinating case study, the typical textbook narrative of “lone genius” or “master” is less useful — and, frankly, less interesting — than examining him and his work within a rich network of concurrent artists, designers, movements, influences, and broader external (social, economic, political) conditions.

207