ON SEEING AND BEING SEEN

BY MEG MILLER

As one designer goes blind, another emerges from under his shadow

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BY MEG MILLER

As one designer goes blind, another emerges from under his shadow Pages 52 and 53

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 53 2/13/18 2:49 PM On Amazon, you can buy a new, because he no longer saw them. hardbound copy of Tennessee Instead, he would verbally dictate Williams’ for what he imagined in his mind’s $1,788.01. The play is one of Williams’ eye to Elaine and the assistants most famous, and allegedly his working at his design office. personal favorite. But the reason “He would tell us go down a behind the price tag is more likely pica and over three picas, and how the cover than its contents; a milky high the type should be, and what galaxy wraps around the spine, the color should be,” said Elaine. and the monosyllabic words of Sometimes his reference points the title stack up the center like a were past projects—“the beige that chimney. At a talk in 2013, Elaine we used on such and such”—or the Lustig Cohen, who was widowed by colors of furniture he’d picked out the book’s famous designer, Alvin for interior jobs. In one particularly Lustig, turned to Steven Heller, her poetic instance, he described the interviewer on stage. Pausing to shade of yellow he wanted to use locate the cover in her memory, she as “the dominant yellow of Van said, “The jacket that you’re talking Gogh’s sunflower.” about for , that was very late. And that was a jacket that Alvin actually never saw.” Elaine wasn’t referring to the final jacket, published the year that Alvin died at just 40 years old. What she meant was that Alvin never saw the jacket at all: not the initial sketch, not the paste-up, nor any of the proofs. By the time Alvin was designing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he was virtually blind. The diabetes that had plagued him since childhood had damaged the capillaries behind his eyes, and for about two years before his death a thick veil of fog gradually obscured his vision. By the year 1954, he no longer sketched his designs EYE ON DESIGN

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On Seeing and Being Seen Pages 54 and 55

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 55 2/13/18 2:49 PM Elaine became a visionary designer When Elaine met Alvin, she was in her own right, and the self- nearly 21 and volunteering at an appointed preservationist of Alvin’s art gallery in Beverly Hills. He was legacy decades after he died in 12 years her senior and already an 1955. Before her death, Heller established designer, famous for called Elaine “a living link between his designs for the New Classics design’s modernist past and its book series from publisher New continually changing present” Directions. In her first year of in an article honoring her for the marriage, Elaine taught art at a AIGA Medal. She died a renowned public school in L.A., but found designer and painter, and one of it a drag to leave the apartment- the very few mid-century women slash-office that she and Alvin designers who are celebrated at shared on Sunset Boulevard— the same caliber as their male full of high-profile clients and contemporaries. However, it wasn’t interesting conversation—to go to until after Alvin that she was seen a classroom of 14-year-olds. So as a designer, or even considered she quit. She helped run the office, herself one. where she later executed Alvin’s Elaine got her first taste of verbal instructions. art as a teenager, when one Around age 27, Elaine became day she stumbled upon Peggy the only person who knew how Guggenheim’s Art of This Century long her husband had to live. The gallery in . She doctor told her first, and she told had come into Manhattan from Alvin when keeping it to herself New Jersey for an orthodontist became unbearable. “The last year appointment. The exhibition was of was the most difficult, as you can Wassily Kandinsky’s work and the imagine,” she told Glueck. “He was music piping through the gallery impossible. I was impossible. He speakers was Johann Sebastian didn’t want to be helped, but he Bach, who also worked through had to be helped.” Still, Elaine was fading vision. “I still remember devoted, describing herself once walking in there,” she said in a 2009 as Alvin’s “blind disciple.” oral history with arts journalist As his eyesight worsened, Grace Glueck. “I didn’t know what it Elaine’s tasks went from purely was all about. I had no idea. It blew administrative to doing the physical me away.” labor of design at the time; she learned how to order type, make EYE ON DESIGN

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 56 2/13/18 2:49 PM a mechanical, make paste-ups, ‘Of course. Fine.’” The architect design a page in a book, and even gave him a specify it. Later on she would drive new project: the signage for the Alvin up to Yale to teach, and would in New York. pass the time by sitting in the back of ’ classes, listening in on his lectures. When Alvin’s rapidly degener- ating eyesight could no longer be kept a secret, the couple threw a cocktail party for their friends and clients to break the news. Nobody seemed to doubt that the confident, well-known designer could complete their commissions blind. “[We announced] that he was losing his sight and that he was going to continue to design,” Elaine described. “Everybody said,

On Seeing and Being Seen Pages 56 and 57

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 57 2/13/18 2:50 PM Alvin was a skilled illusionist from the New Classics series rejected the beginning. In high school he the popular commercial styles of became a magician, teaching the time for a system of abstract himself design by making the symbols in the vein of Paul Klee promotional posters for his shows. and Joan Miró. For Noonday and He was bored in class—far smarter Meridian Books, he took a quieter, than his peers—so his teachers let more Swiss approach to a series him skip class to tour other schools of academic paperbacks. The performing magic tricks. Then one publisher, Arthur Cohen, who would teacher, whom he later described later become Elaine’s second as “enlightened,” introduced him to husband, credited Alvin with , which had a profound opening his eyes to the importance impact on him. of design. “A young publisher such “This art hit a fresh eye, unen- as myself was characteristically cumbered by any ideas of what prejudiced and blind,” he said. Until art was or should be, and found an meeting with the designer, he felt immediate sympathetic response,” that the text was “all important,” Alvin wrote in a 1953 issue of and that the physical book was a the AIGA Journal. “This ability to much lesser issue. ‘see’ freshly, unencumbered by Although Alvin is most famous preconceived verbal, literary, or for his jackets, his approach toward moral ideas, is the first step in design was holistic, and his talents responding to most modern art.” were incredibly wide-ranging. In his As a professional designer, Alvin 20s, he studied under Frank Lloyd trained his eye on books: His work Wright at Taliesin East, before played a major role in elevating the becoming frustrated with the lack book jacket from something purely of freedom and running away in promotional to a vehicle for artistic the middle of the night. In L.A. he expression. His own style of jacket was friends with the Eameses and design was constantly evolving, , and often took on from photographic and pictorial architectural and industrial design imagery to eclectic typographic projects alongside his graphics compositions, to total abstraction, work. His office in New York worked and, later, to the simpler geometric on book covers, museum catalogs, forms that he produced while blind. magazine design, identity design, From 1945 to 1952, his designs for as well as architectural, furniture EYE ON DESIGN

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 58 2/13/18 2:50 PM and fabric design projects, too. In a Lightolier showroom, and an the late 1940s he even designed identity for the Girl Scouts, among a helicopter for the aerospace other things. At the end of his life, he company Rotoron. “I always think planned to travel to Israel, believing of Alvin as a visionary,” Elaine has that his skills could positively said. “He saw himself as using impact the country. He’s rumored design to do everything with; to to have felt Christ-like; he believed change everything in the world.” that he had a sense of power and responsibility as a designer. Elaine has described Alvin as As his abilities began to fade, clever and playful in private, but Elaine’s sharpened. She learned in the public eye he was reserved the technical aspects of design and distinguished, serious about out of necessity, becoming the his craft and aware of his talent. invisible hands carrying out Alvin had always ascribed to Alvin’s vision. But when it came the Bauhaus idea of design as a to the actual design process—the curative force, but once he knew creative direction, the conception that he was dying, his ambitions of images and forms—it was all verged on messianic. His ability Alvin, up until the end. As was to think in both two and three common at the time, Alvin was dimensions no doubt helped him the only person in the office who dream up compositions even designed. Of course, if your boss without the benefit of sight. His is blind, there are certain liberties; confidence in his ability to master Ivan Chermayeff, who briefly any design discipline, coupled worked as one of Alvin’s assistants, with his near-religious conviction once told the designer Art Chantry that visual communication could that Alvin wasn’t such a good solve the world’s problems, drove colorist, so he would secretly tweak him to continue working when the palette. “Who knows whether he easily could have stopped. we did what he wanted, I don’t know, In his final years, as his health but we did it,” Elaine admitted. “I eroded and vision dimmed, Alvin was learning more, but still I wasn’t designed the inaugural Industrial designing. Not really. I was one of Design magazines, numerous New the office slaves.” Directions and Meridian covers, the interiors of several apartments,

On Seeing and Being Seen Pages 58 and 59

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EYE ON DESIGN

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 60 2/13/18 2:50 PM Johnson’s Seagram Building and Dadaism. With Johnson’s help, signage was never completed by she picked up more clients, among Alvin. It was done by Elaine, who them the architects Eero Saarinen took up the office’s unfinished and Richard Meier, and soon commissions after Alvin died. “I closed Alvin’s office to become did not even think whether I was one of the only women designers capable [of designing]. It never to run her own freelance business crossed my mind. There were so in the late 1950s and early 1960s. many people telling me I could Like Alvin, she “worked on the do it that I guess I just struggled edges,” as she termed it, forgoing through the beginning,” she said. the more lucrative advertising The Seagram project was projects for book covers and mostly a matter of carrying out museum catalogs. One of her best Alvin’s wayfinding vision for the and longest clients was the Jewish famous New York building. But Museum, which was at the center when Cohen asked Elaine to of New York’s avant-garde design continue designing the forth scene at the time. coming titles for Meridian, it was Even while doing some of her a different situation: For the first biggest commissions—and much time, she had complete creative of the work she’s now famous for— control—a terrifying prospect, but Elaine still claimed to feel largely one she was more than prepared unseen, if not exactly bothered by for. “Of course, I was immediately it. “People say to me, ‘What was it prejudiced by everything I learned like being a woman designer?’ I’d that Alvin prefered. It took me say, first of all, there were so few a while to really make my own of us. The male designers couldn’t evaluation of what I liked.” have cared less about me. They Elaine emerged from her never talked to me. They never late husband’s shadow with a included me in anything, and I distinctive style. Her design work never thought about it. I just did my is often sharp and serious, heavily design.” concept-driven, but also bold, After several years, Elaine colorful, clever, and experimental. became bored of doing the same Her book jackets combined sort of design and shifted her modern geometric and organic focus to her art and Ex Libris, the elements, and were influenced by rare artbook collection, gallery, movements like and bookshop she ran with Cohen

On Seeing and Being Seen Pages 60 and 61

EyeOnDesign_#01_Mag-6.5x9in_160pgs_PRINT.indd 61 2/13/18 2:50 PM (whom she married nine months Elaine was 28 when Alvin passed after Alvin’s death). Her first away in 1955. When she gave husband never encouraged her to Gleuck the oral history in 2009, she paint—“He always said painting was had every bit of the bravado that dead. That was one of his slogans. Alvin had when announcing to his The other was calligraphy is dead”— clients that he would design blind. but Arthur did. Elaine’s paintings In the interview she looks back and collages have been hung at on her life with the confidence, reputable galleries, among them clarity of thought, and generosity the Julie Saul gallery, where she of someone whose artistic vision held a show called “The Geometry had evolved over a lifetime, and had of Seeing.” By the time she died strengthened with each new phase. in 2014, Elaine had produced a She spoke like a woman who knew lifetime of artistic production her worth. “I always say a really spanning several disciplines, terrible thing,” Elaine told Gleuck. “I despite her late start. And shortly always say that either I would have before her death, she was remained this shy, unproductive finally recognized by the design person, or I would have grown up community, though by that time and divorced [Alvin] if he hadn’t she was focused solely on art. In died. I don’t know, because the addition to her own prodigious person that I became would have output,she also preserved and never put up with what I was doing. sustained Alvin’s legacy. Forgetting But we’ll never know.” is also a kind of blindness, and Whatever the case, Elaine was Elaine was vigilant about the left with little choice but to start upkeep of the design world’s designing. After Alvin’s passing, collective memory. there was only $400 left in their bank account. “When he died, the two people that called me imme- diately were Philip Johnson, who said, ‘Okay Elaine, you do it.’ The other person who called, because he was in love with me, was Arthur Cohen, and he said, ‘Okay. You do it. Do all the jackets. Finish this.’ “And me, I’m very practical. I said ‘Okay.’ And I did it.” EYE ON DESIGN

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On Seeing and Being Seen Pages 62 and 63

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