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Ballast Quarterly Review
Spring 2001
Ballast Quarterly Review, v16n3, Spring 2001
Roy R. Behrens University of Northern Iowa, [email protected]
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II BA LL A ST Q U A R
Ballast Quarterly Review Volume 16 Number 3 Spring 200 I. Copyright © 200 I by Roy R. Behrens, editor, publisher and art director. ISSN I093-5789 . E-mail
SC REN Ballast Is an acronym for Books Art Language KIERKEGAARD Logic Ambiguity Science and Teaching, as well {The Sickness as a distant allusion to Blast, the short-lived Unto Death) publication founded during World War I by The greatest Wyndham Lewis, the Vorticist artist and hazard of all, writer. Ballast is mainly a pastiche of astonish losing one's self, ing passages from books, magazines, diaries can occur very and other writings. Puc differently, it Is a jour quietly in the nal devoted to wit, the contents of which are world, as if it intended to be insightful, amusing or thought were nothing at provoking. all. No other loss can occur so qui The purposes of Ballast are educational, apo etly; any other litical and noncommercial. It does not carry loss- an arm, a advertisements, nor is it supposed to be pur leg, five dollars, chased or sold. It is published approximately a wife, etc.-is every three months, beginning in the fall sure to be {more or less) and ending in the summer. noticed. To subscribe to Ballast or to order a gift sub scription, simply send in a mailing address and T . S . ELIOT five first class U.S. postage stamps for each {The Use of single issue desired. In other words, to Poetry and the receive Ballast for one year {four issues), we Use of Criticism) ask that each reader contribute a total of The chief use of twenty genuine unused postage scamps. Do the "meaning" not send postage meter slips, nor do we of a poem, in accept orders by phone or e-mail. When sub the ordinary scribing, self-adhesive stamps are preferred. sense, may be to Short of that, send good-looking, antique or satisfy one habit unusual stamps. In general we do not accept of the reader, to requests from outside the U.S. keep his mind diverted and qui et, while the WALTER BENJAMIN poem does its A highly embroiled quarter, a net work upon him: work of streets that I had avoided for much as an years, was disentangled at a single imaginary bur stroke when one day a person dear to glar is always me moved there. It was as if a search provided with a light set up at this person's window bit of nice meat dissected the area with pencils of for the house light. dog. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE {Human, All Too Human) Art makes the sight of life bearable by laying over it the veil of unclear thinking. T R y R V w II
ON MERLE ARMITAGE: Th e Impresario of Book Desig n
Copyright © 200 I by Roy R. Behrens
b y Me r l e Arm it oq e LE FT Ti l le page of book so~·CALLED written and designed by Mer le Armitage, ABSTRACT ART 1939 E. V'-le yh e 1q 3 q Nel"j Yo rk
MERLE ARMITAGE Through the IN THE EARLY I 9•0s, shortly after the medium of the novelist Henry Miller had moved back to book, the musi the U.S. from Paris, he concluded that a cian, architect, noncommercial artist in America "has as painter, engi much chance for survival as a sewer rat." neer, industrial Refusing to borrow or to hire out for ist, scientist and "stultify ing work," he sent out a letter invit writer may ing support from the readers of The New beco me perma Republic, requesting, among other things, nently articulate. "old clothes, shirts, socks, etc. I am 5 feet Here they meet 8 inches tall, weigh 150 pounds, 15 1/2 on common neck, 38 chest, 32 waist, hat and shoes ground. both size 7 to 7 1/2. Love corduroys." The appeal worked and a number of curious mailings arrived, one of whi ch con tained a complete tuxedo. "What' II I ever WALTER do with this?" Miller asked a friend, then HAMADY used it to dress up a scarecrow that sat for The book is the a generation on the picket fence in front of Trojan horse of his Partington Ridge house in Big Sur, Cali art. forn ia. Among the other gifts was a cash contri bution from Merl e Armitage, an Iowa-born book design er, civil engineer, set designer, concert promoter, gourmet, art c-, ll ector, and author. Armitage was also living in Cal ifornia, and soon after, when he vi sited Miller's home for the first time, he described his profession as that of an "i mpresario." B A A Q U A R
"But I have heard that you were a writer!" replied Miller. "If the truth were known," Armitage explained, "I write books so that I will be able to design them." In fact, Armitage had designed nearly two dozen books by that time, many of which he had also written. But Miller was incredulous: "Does a CLIFTON book have to be designed/" he asked. "A FADIMAN book is a book, and I don't see how you The adjective can do much about it." is the banana peel of the parts BORN IN 1893 on a farm outside of of speech. Mason City, Iowa, Merle Armitage's inclina tion toward design, engineering and prob lem-solving can be traced back to his childhood. His paternal grandfather had been a friend of J.I. Case, an important pioneer in the development of steam driven farm ABO VE machinery: while a few miles east of the Tit le spread for Armitage home was Charles City, site of Ge orge Ge rs hwin (NV· the invention of the first gasoline powered Longmans, Green and Co mpany, 1938). farm tractor. desi gned by Merle One day as the young Armitage and his Armitage father were helping a neighboring farmer named Wright with the repair of a wind MARK mill , a messenger rode up on horseback TWAIN and handed the man a telegram. "He passed Agassiz does rec it around," Armitage remembered, "and my ommend authors father read it aloud. It said: 'We flew today to eat fish, at Kitty Hawk,' and it was signed Orville because the and Wilbur." Armitage was just as phosphorus in it impressed by the Immediacy of the makes brains. telegram as by its message: "The two were But I cannot help equally exciting to me: to fly through the you to a decis ion air, to send a message over the wire. Both about the left me absolutely enslaved to things amount you mechanical." need to eat. Per His father, according to Armitage, was a haps a couple of dreamer who should never have become a whales would be businessman. Nevertheless, "he had great enough. vision," and, at a time when steers ranged free to graze, he made a fortune (which he later lost in a market crash) on the innova tion of corn-fed beef: "Finding that corn grew luxuriantly in the new land," recalled Armitage, his father "conceived the idea that purchasing range cattle and feeding them all the corn they could eat for two months would produce new flavor." It was by his father's influence that he T E R L Y V I E W II became intensely interested in farm imple ments, steam locomotives and automobiles, and in engineering and inventing. At the same time, it was his mother (a school GEORG teacher) who encouraged his artistic abili CHRISTOPH ties by the choice of the pictures she hung LICHTEN in their home, by the brazen act of painting BERG the front door a bright Chinese red (thus A book is a mir creating "a neighborhood sensation"), and ror; if a monkey by reinforcing his early attempts at draw peers into it, ing. then it will not His mother's parents. the Jacobs, lived in be an apostle Mason City, which Armitage described as that looks out. "a sweet Iowa town of tree-shaded streets and friendly people," the town that was lat er immortalized as River City in The Music Man by Meredith Willson. (It was also for a RUDYARD while the home of Bil Baird, the pup KIPLING peteer.) Today, across the street from "I always tell my Willson's birthplace is the Charles H. Mac people there's a Nider Museum, a majestic English Tudor limit t o the size Revival home that bears the name of an of the lettering," Armitage family friend, who was also the he said . "Overdo owner of the First National Bank. that and the When Armitage was still a teenager, it ret' na doesn't was a rivalry between MacNider and anoth take it in . Adver er Mason City banker that resulted in the tisin' is the most hiring of a young Chicago-based architect delicate of all named Frank Lloyd Wright (no relation to the sciences ." the Wright brothers, apparently) to design a new bank, offices and an adjoining hotel for the City National Bank (which remains and may soon be completely restored). Within the next decade, Wright (until he was discredited by eloping with a client's wife}, W alter Burley Griffin, William Drummond, and other gifted young archi JAMES tects designed innovative Prairie Style DICKEY houses within a planned community, so If it were that Armitage's little hometown is now thought that widely known as the site of a marvelous anything I wrote cluster of gem-like early modern homes. was influenced The ancestors of both Wright and by Robert Frost, I Armitage had settled in Wisconsin, from would take that which the latter had then moved to north particular work ern Iowa. Wright was commissioned to of mine, shred it, design the City National Bank in 1908 and flush it through the efforts of J.E. Markeley, a down the toilet, friend and Mason City businessman whose hoping not to two daughters were students of Wright's clog the pipes. aunt at her Hillside School, in Spring Green. Wisconsin, which was housed in buildings that Wright had designed. By the time the Mason City hotel project began, Armitage was IS years old, and he and his family had already moved to a cattle ranch II B A A T Q U A R
near Lawrence, Kansas , and then to Texas. In one of his two autobiographies, Armitage refers to the architect's son, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. (known as Lloyd), as "an old friend." In 1923 , when the Ameri can press reported, incorrectly, that Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo had been MERLE devastated by an earthquake, Armitage (i n ARMITAGE his capacity as a publicist) was recruited by To attempt to the architect to help to set the record make art under straight. They remained what Armitage • standable and described as "casual friends" for many l appealing to the years, dini ng together fo r the last time in people is to take New York in 1953. Wright died in 1959. from it the very elements th~t make ART, DESIGN, ADVERTISING, and art. Bring a thing mechanica l engineering: In Armitage's down to the level young im agination, these allied yet differing of popular under interests combined in the form of a breath• standing, and you taking automobile, the Packard. bring it down It was his childhood fascination with this below the timber motor vehicle, he recalled in 1945, "[which line of esthetic satisfied] esthetic as well as utilitarian worth. demands," that led him to start a collection of Packard advertis ing material, publica ~o,.t,,.., Lloyd • Lou-, O:,ru • M1r1h • C,.t\6,,, • 1,op,"pl-i,- by tions that , like the Wint)irc,p S.19Nrit • l"- ,.._.,1~ ~ ~ • P•irilil'O' by machine they adver fdwatd e.t,.,in.n .net C...b n,,.., A ,ott,• it of Lou11 ~lout • tised, "reflected Alfinn•lio,u by ~ r•h• Ct•'°-~'" , • • , • .. , , , , ,. . .. ,? .. (. ,...,,,,011v• '1.11 \t,.,c •o, .. ., i,; ,:,, advanced design and a k ind of artistic integrity. Brochures of other makes of that time usually con- tained retouched AB O V E half-tone illustrations, hard and unlovely as Title spread for those in heavy-hardware catalogs. Packard George Gershwin (NY: used distinguished line drawings, excellent Longmans, Green and Company, 1938), typography, and hand lettering which designed by Merle would be acceptable today." Armitage He was a lso influenced by the "sleek and smart" styl ing of the passenger trains on the Santa Fe Railway (known the n as the ROBERT Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Ra ilroad ESCARPIT Company), which he noticed as early as ... a book is not a 1902, when he and father drove to thing like other Lawrence. "The literature and advertising thin gs . When we of the Santa Fe," he remembered, "even its hold it in our world-renowned symbol (of Aztec origin) hands, all we suggest discernment, and a sophistication hold is paper: seldom associated with a railroad." Having the book is else never attended college, it was the corpo• where. rate image and advertising publicatio ns of Packard and the Santa Fe Railway, said Armitage, "together w ith the scant trea sures of our library, [that] were in a v e ry T y V w II
personal sense my substitutes for college
and university ... my fir st contacts with AN ARMITAGE esthetic appreciation and the cosmopolitan CHRONOLOGY amenities of life ." Given Armltage's childhood Influences, It 1893 Is fitting that his first two jobs (beginning at Merle Armitage bo rn 13 February near age 17) were as a civil engineer In Texas, Mason Ci ty, Iowa. apparently connected with the Santa Fe Railway, and then as a graphic designer In 1910 the advertising department of the Packard Employed as an e ngi Motor Car Company in Detroit. He neer for the Santa Fe remained In these positions for less than a Rai lway, t he n as year, an d soon after decided that he should advertising designer become a theatre set designer, a move that for t he Pa ckard Motor eventually led to a lucrative 30-year career Car Company. as a concert impresario. 1913 Armitage Is mostly remembered today as After w orking briefly an extraordinary book designer, who was as a stage desi gner. also the art director of Look magazine becomes a theatre ( 1949-1954), an art collector (DUrer, Rem promoter o r im pre brandt, Goya, Gauguin, Cezanne, Van sa rio. Gogh, Pi casso, Marin, Klee, and Kandinsky), and a past president of the American Insti 192• tute of Graphic Arts ( 1950-1951). But dur Co-founde r a nd gen ing the first SO years of his life (as he eral man ag er of the explained to Henry Miller), he earned an Los Angeles Grand O pera Associatio n. ample income as the promoter and manag er of dancers, opera singers, and opera and 1929 ballet companies. Among his illustrious Designs his fi rst book, clients were Anna Pavlova, Yvette Guilbert, The Aristocracy of Art. Feodor Chaliapin, Amelita Galli-Curci, Mary Garden, Rosa Ponselle, and the 1933 Diaghilev Ballet. Appointed r egional He was also the cofounder and general directo r of the P ublic manager of the Los Angeles Grand Opera W o r ks Art Projects in Association, a board member of the Los Southern Califo rnia: hires Edward Westo n. Angeles Symphony Orchestra, and manager among others . of the Philharmonic Auditorium of Los Angeles. He knew and authored books 19 •9 about some of the finest artists of the cen Art director of Loo k tury, among them Igor Stravinsky. Martha mag,nine. Graham, George Gershwin, Pablo Picasso, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Westo n. 1950-51 Armltage·s success as an impresario, as President of t he noted by Jay Satterfield. was due in part to A merican Ins titute of his willingness to promote "highbrow" per Graphic Arts. formances by using "lowbrow" advertising 195 ploys, including false scandals and sexual • Ret ires t o Ma nzanita suggestion. At the time, announcements of Ranch in Yuc ca Va ll ey concerts were usually made quietly CA. through restrained, tasteful notices, in con trast to slapstick, flamboyant affairs like the 1975 circus. Armitage's innovation was to stake Dies on 15 March. out a middle ground: By promoting cultural events In much the same way that automo biles and railways were advertised, he II 8 A A S T Q U A R
believed that a much wider audience might "be led to realize that the arts, and their enjoyment, were reasonably normal activi JAY ties ... needing to be classified neither with SATTERFIELD afternoon tea nor epileptic fits." Viewed from one As time went on, he explained, "I perspective, became more and more convinced that Armitage was a posters, advertisements In newspapers and man of refined magazines, as well as thousands of taste who champi announcements and circulars used by a oned a modern concert manager, must reflect the quality • esthetic ... He of the performer not only in the text, but l devoted much of more Important, in the design. Soon I ' his life to what we found myself laying out every piece of think of as the high printing concerned with my concerts, arts, from the visu opera or ballet seasons." al to the theatrical. It was this same philosophy that prompt But at the same ed him to become a book designer, result time, Armitage was ing from his decision to use phenomenal always an advertis books to promote artists whom he ing man whose admired; not just concert performers, but favorite marketing visual artists, composers and writers as ploy was sex. He well. Determined "to work only with pub was highbrow and lishers who would give me a free hand in lowbrow while sell design," he not only often wrote or edited ing "culture" to a his own books, In many cases he was also middlebrow audi the publisher. ence. Of the more than two dozen volumes that Armitage both authored and designed are Rockwell Kent (Knopf, 1932), So-Called MERLE Modern Art (Weyhe, 1939), United States ARMITAGE Navy (Longmans, 1940), Notes on Modern Art is an aristocrat Printing (Rudge, 1945), Rendezvous with the ic goddess who can Book (McKibbln, 1949), Railroads of America be wooed and won (Little Brown 1952), George Gershwin: Man by anyone, so long and Legend (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958), as that anyone has and his autobiographies, Accent on America a certain open (Weyhe, 1939) and Accent on Life (Iowa mindedness, a cer State University Press, 1965). In addition, tain flair, a certain he designed more than 40 other books spirit somewhat which he either edited or wrote essays for, akin to rapturous and over 60 others by other authors. In impulsiveness, a the books of his own writings (his autobi certain capacity of ographies, for example, or those In which ecstasy, a certain he talks about the design of books), por contempt for the tions of the narrative are often recycled, if cheap and tawdry, somewhat revised and reshuffled, so that a certain under their enduring significance Is more as standing of sensual adventures In daring design than as freshly ity, a certain pagan written texts. love of beauty for itself alone. WHEN ARMITAGE WAS four years old, Frank Lloyd Wright had collaborated with one of his clients on an "artist's book" about esthetics, the soul and domestic architecture, titled The House Beautiful T y R V w El
(Auvergne Press, 1897). The text was derived from a popular talk by a nationally known Unitarian minister, William C. Gan nett. Wright designed the book, while his client, William H. Winslow, set the type I SSA C and hand printed an edition of 90 copies In D'ISRAELI the basement of his new home, only 20 of (Curiosities of Litera which now survive. ture) The Romans Thirty-five years later, Wright wrote and burnt the books of designed a second extraordinary volume, the Jews, of the titled An Autobiography. The first edition Christians and of was published In 1932 by Longmans, Green the Philosophers; and Company, based in London and New the Jews burnt the York; the second, which came out In I 943, books of the Chris by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in New York. tians and the Both editions are much sought after by Pagans; and the admirers of book design, largely because of Christians burnt the boldness with which Wright treats the the books of the section openings as continuous spreads, Pagans and the not Just single facing fields that happen to Jews. be Juxtaposed. Perhaps the most stirring example Is the magnificent t!tle spread for "Book Two- Work." Wright approached book designing with the same "organic form" philosophy that governed his archi tecture, with the result, as a critic declared at the time, that the design of his autobiography "compares In brilliance and originality with his buildings." As Richard Hendel pointed out In On Book Design, "Designers are to books what architects are to buildings." Merle Armitage designed his first book in 1929, ABOVE and In subsequent years, he designed at Photograph of least 9 books for Longmans, and 13 for Merle Armitage, Duell, Sloan and Pearce {Including several c. 1930. of his best known titles), the publishers Photographer who were responsible for Wright"s autobi unknown. Pr ivate collection. ography. In light of their contacts, one wonders to what degree Armitage, the enfant terrible of book design, was inspired WALTER by the work of Wright, the bad boy of RALEIGH architecture, and vice versa. While An anthology is Armitage admired Wright's architecture, like all the he also liked to make It known that "on the plums and prairies, and long before Frank Lloyd orange peel Wright became an Influence, the Santa Fe picked out of a [Railway] had constructed Its stations on a cake. horizontal motif." One wonders too to what extent Wright and Armitage were Influenced by W.A. Dwiggins' Layout in Advertising ( 1928) FRAN or that designer's celebrated Interpreta LEBOWITZ tions of Robert Louis Stevenson's Tile Never judge a cov Strange Case of Dr. Jecky/1 and Mr. Hyde er by Its book. (Knopf, 1929) and H.G . Wells' The Time m B A A S T Q U A R
Ma chine (Random House, 1931). Anyone who cared about book design In those FOOTNOTES: days, wrote Armitage, "was aware of the Among the sourc es Nonesuch and the Golden Cockerel Press for this essay were es and the work of Eric Gill, Francis the "Merle Armitage" Meynell, Stanley Morison, and others in article in The Nat io nal England." He himself collected the books of Cyclopedia of Am erican Bruce Rogers ("perhaps the greatest Biogrophy (NY : James designer of them all") and "had long T. White & Co., 1952); the Arm itage admired the distinguished work of such entry by Richard Hen Americans as W .A. Dwiggins, with Its Ori del in J.A. Garraty and ental influence." M.C. Carnes, eds., In Dwiggins' layout for The Power of American National Bio g Print- and Men (Mergenthaler, 1936), there raphy (NY: Oxford is a geometric sweep and some use of the University Press. tactics that Armitage called "my Inventions" 1999); Jay Satterfield, that "stirred violent criticism" and caused "Merle Armita ge: him, in certain circles, to be reviled as "the Accent on Ta ste" in Books at Iowa (Iowa destroyer of book tradition, the bad boy of City: University of typography, the usurper of the placid pools Io wa ). Apr il 1996; of bookmaking": "i.e., use of the endsheets, Robert M. Purcell, double-page title pages, large readable Merle Armitage Wa s type, generous margins, etc." Other Here ! A Retrospe a ive notable aspects of Armltage's books, as of a Twen tie th Century Hendel has said, are "his 'cinematic' treat Renaissance Man ment of the opening pages" and his "exu (Morongo Valley CA: berant typography." Sage brus h Press, Armitage was just as direct and outspo 1981); and various writings by Armitage, ken as Wright, and if he was despised or particularly Note s on avoided (George Macy called him "that Modern Printing (NY: bull-in-our-china-shop"), it surely was part Rudge , 1945). and his ly because of the tone with which he com autobiographies, municated. He was, as described by a close Accen t on America friend, Robert M. Purcell, "a mercurial man (NY : Weyhe , 1939) in the truest sense. He was like quicksilver, and Acce nt on Life and no thumb could hold him down. He (Ames: Iowa State was quick to joy, quick to anger, quick to University Press, create. He, like most of us, liked apprecia 1965). Thanks also to Ginger (Woods) tion of what he did, and was quick to take W hite, whose father umbrage if he was crossed, although he w orked w ith Armitage was a good resounding arguer and would in the 1930s; and to take his lumps If he lo~t a point, or bellow Richard Leet, Direc with laughter when he won." tor of the Charles H. In photographs, Armitage is a big man MacNider Museum in with a huge head and broad smile, who Mason City, Iowa. often wore a cowboy hat and string tie, a This essay will also be person who would not be popular now in published in June 2001 an age of political correctness and disingen in Steven Heller and Georgette Balance , uous double-talk. According to Purcell, "He eds ., Graph ic Design had a mammoth lust for food, and the build Histo ry (NY: All worth to prove it; he liked hearty food, no nin Press) . compoop lemon jello salad with shreds of lettuce for him. He lusted after art, art that dominated and spoke out, no pastels and chalk for him. A lust for good music, not a T y V w Ill tinkling piano and chamlnade, but Wagner. Brahms, Beethoven, Bach. an d among the nee-moderns, Satie, Ravel. and Stravinsky. A lust for good conversation, and in no HE NRY way detouring away from a hearty argu DA V ID ment with rolling thunderous opinions." THOREAU He must have been literally lustful as An old poet well. He used up four marriages, the last comes at last to one ending sadly in an annulment, after no watch his more than two months. A few years later. mood s as nar when Armitage was close to 80 years old rowly as a cat and living alone on his Manzanita Ranch does a mouse. near Yucca Valley, Calif.. his friend Purcell " happened to comment on having seen him with a very nice looking widow of about forty. four decades his junior. He said, 'Oh. yes. She comes out to the ranch and ser vices me.' I had never heard that term in that context. It came probably from his ABOVE Iowa farm youth where his father 'covered' Logo designed by cows in order to breed tremendous herds KAREN STRAUB and become one of the first major 'feeders' in Iowa, where feeding now Is a bigger WALTER business than breeding." HAMADY A dented deckle. A FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT was short and fold-over corner. slim. It must have been more than amusing The out-of-square to see the large figure of Armitage, looking sides. That fortu even larger by comparison, at the feet of itous red thread the elephantine ego that lived in the under underlining a ran sized corpus of Wright. the self-described dom word. that "world's greatest architect." At their last lace-wing insect luncheon together, W right complained to preserved forever Armitage that some people believed that in the corner of the his school at Taliesin West produced only title page, that "little Frank Lloyd Wrights." "But Just crater, the vat remember this, young man," he said to man's drops. the Armitage, "there are no little Frank Lloyd va tman ·s tea rs, a Wrights." circle between title Nor was there anything puny about Mer and text. The Irreg le Armitage. His was a boisterous ego that ularity signifies: lived In a spacious body, a bombastic tree here, humanity. of a figure that fell from a fatal stroke on here Is a sign that a March 15, 1975. Years earlier, the always human being did impish Wright poked fun at the expansive this! The eye and ness of Armitage, both physical and social. hand were here! whe n he gave him a signed photographic The aesthetic Kil portrait by Yosef Karsh: It is inscribed "To roy. if you will . Merle, the Armitage" and dated February 30- a day of course that doesn't exist.
HAMMOND IN NESS Books are just trees with squiggles on them. B A A T Q U A R
RIGHT Page from Ca mo u flaged Simplified by E RIC SLOA N E (1942).
R E COM ME N DED Er ic Slo ane, Com ounag e Simplified (R eprint of the 19•2 Devin-Adair edi GU ST AVE tion; available at
E U D OR A WE LT Y (The Writer's Chapbook) A lady had de cided sh e' d write a novel and got along fine till she came to the love scene. "So," she t old my friend, "I thought, there's William Fau lkn er, sitting right up there in Oxford. Why not send it to W illiam Faulkner a nd ask him?" So she sent it to him, and t ime w ent by, and sh e didn't hear from him, and so she called him up. Be caus e there he was. Sh e sa id, "Mr. Faulkner, did you ev er get that love scene I sent you?" He sa id y es, he had got it. And she said, "Well, what do you think of it?" And he said, "Well, honey, it's not the way I'd do it- but you g o right ahead." Now, wasn't that gentle of him? T R y R V w Ill
JAN STRUTHER Giving a party is very like having a baby: its conception is more fun than its completion, and once you have begun it it is almost impossible to stop.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Sabine Thiel-Siling. ed .. Icons of Architecture: The 10th EVELYN Century (NY: Prestel. 1998). ISBN 3-7913 -1 949-3. WAUGH Peter Stepan, ed .. /cons of Photography: The 10th (Brideshead Century (Prestel, I 999) . ISBN 3-7913 -2001 -7. Revisited) Vo lker Albus. et al .. eds .. Icons of Design: The 20th Conversation Century (Prestel. 2000). ISBN 3-7913 -2306-7. should be like These are three titles in an on-going series of volumes about pivotal. classic achievements in juggling; up go art. architecture and design within the past cen the balls and the tury. Consistent in size. length and illustrative plates, up and richness, each volume has been edited by one or over, in and out, more experts on the subject, with written contri good solid butions by a team of distinguished scholars . The objects that glit term that most aptly describes them may be "pic ter in the foot torial chronologies," in the sense that each con lights and fall sists of a time-ordered sequence of two-page with a bang if spreads. which feature reproductions of about you miss them. I 00 gro undbreaking objects (buildings. pho tographs. industrial products). along with brief critical essays and a timeline of the life and work of the originator of each. among them such famil AMBROSE iar names as Marianne Brandt. Raymond Loewy. BIERCE And re Kertesz. Berenice Abbott. Kenzo Tange. (The Devil's Dic and Adolf Loos. Illustrated by hundreds of pho tographs. drawings and portrait photographs. tionary) these are rich and accessible volumes that have D IE, N. The singu both the breadth and the detail of an encylopedic lar of " di ce ." We bird's -eye-view of Moderr,ism. seldom hear the word, be ca use PETER DE VRIES there is a pro You can't be happy with a woman hibitory proverb, who pronounces both d's in Wednes " Never say die." day.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED John Sloan. John Sloon on Drawing and Pointing: Gist of Art (Mineola NY : Dover Publications. 2000). ISBN 0-486- 40947-3. To understand this volume. a reprint of a famous book titled Gist of Art (first published in 1939). it is helpful to realize the prominence of John Sloan (1871 - 1951), an American painter, printmaker and teacher. Trained at the Pennsylvania A cademy of Fine Arts. he was a close associate of Robert Henri (who authored an earlier, popular book on The Art Spirit . 1923) and other members of a group o f painters called The Eight. Also known as the Ashcan School. these artists believed that an artist should show not just the affable aspects of life but the putrid and seamier portions as well. An influen tial teacher at the Art Students League in New York from 1916 to about 1938, among his well -known students were Aaron Bo hrod. Reginald Marsh. Eric Sloane (who changed his name to Sloane. with an e on the end. in honor of his teacher). Nexander Calder. Kirnon Nicolaides. Ad olf Gottlieb. John Graham, and Barnett N ewma n. This new edition of the notes and observa tions distilled from his long years of teaching is supplemented by a detailed chronology of his life. 46 illustrations. and an introduction by Helen Farr Sloan. a student whom Sloan later married. m B A A T 0 U A R
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Kate C. Duncan. 1001 Curious Things : Y• Old• Cu riosity Shop and Native Am•rican Art (Seattle: University of W ashington Press. 2000). ISBN 0 -295-980 I 0- 9. This Is a fascinating account of a celebrated tourists' haunt. called Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. on the waterfront in Seattle. Founded in 1899 by STENDHAL Ohio-born curio collector Joseph E. "Daddy" Glances are the Standley. it was a shop where one could buy gen heavy artillery of uine Native American handicrafts (carvings, bas the flirt: ev ery kets. blankets. moccasins. masks. totem poles). thing can be while also being entertained by various "cabinets conveyed in a o f curiosities" w hich fe atured bogus shrunken l look, yet that heads. phony mermaids, costumed fleas, armadil lo se wing baskets, and other dubitable exotica. look can always Robert L. Ripley, author o f Riploy's B•lieve It or be denied, for it Not! , was a frequent visitor. and often purchased ca nnot be quot items for his cartoons and lectures. O f the ed word for book's historic photographs, one of the most word. Interesting is a page spread from Standley's guest book (p. 2•), in which news clippings, postcards, and other collage materials are spontaneously combined with diary entries, anecdotes, and sig nat ures o f famous guests, among them Charlie E . M . Chaplin, Theodore Roosevelt, W ill Rogers, and Katherine Hepburn. For more than a century. Cl ORAN the shop (which still exists, at a ne w location on The unusual is Pier 5• in Seattle) has functioned as a retail not a criterion. store. a museum of exotica. and a crossroads for Pagan ini is more people w ith interests in unusual phenomena, surprising and including B.J. Palmer (founder of the Palmer Chi more unpre ropractic College, w ho designed a grotto In Dav dictable than enport, Io wa, called A Little Bit O' Heaven), and Bach. Father Paul Dobberstein (creator o f the Grotto of the Redemption in W est Bend, Iowa) , both of whom used shells and other objects supplied by Ye Olde Curiosity Shop in constructing unusual settings In which to meditate.
HIGHLY REC O M ME N DED Steven Heller and Mirko lllic. G•nlus Movu: I 00 Icons o( Graphic Design (Cincinnati OH: No rth Light Books, 200 I) . IS BN 0-89 13 •-93 7-5. For al mos a decade, N•w Yor k Tlmos art direc tor Ste ven Heller has contributed a column to PRI N T magazine called "Sepa rated at Birth," in which he features twin-like pairs of otherwise unrelated designs. In 1993, he and Julie Lasky wrote an entire book on "appropriation" in design. ti led Borro w•d Ouign: Us• and Abus• o( Hi11orical Form (Van Nos rand Re inhold) . This book is In par an extension of that. in the sense that it unearths and juxtaposes examples of graphic design that seem to be indebt ed to earlier effo r s in ar and design. It is sho wn convincingly. for example, that the abstrac t crosses in the w ork of the Russian Constructivists w ere probably inspired by he clerical garb of Russian Or hodox priests in he I 5th century ; or that the famous pointing hand in James Montgomery Flagg's "I W an You For he U.S. Army" poster ( 1917) was anticipated by a ubiqui tous advertising display for a drink called Moxie ( 191 I) and a W orld W ar I recruiting poster (191 •) in w hich Lord Kitchener (in a pose iden ical to that of Uncle Sam) "points a finger" at unenlis ed British males . For good or bad, his book has very lit le ext: Other than a brief paragraph that introduces each icon. its only commentary is a w ell-written opening essa y. But it offers an almost unparalleled weal h of more than 500 full -color illustrations of his toric examples of graphic design. T E R L Y R E V I w m
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