The Masters Series: Steven Heller School of VISUAL ARTS
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The Masters Series: Steven Heller The Masters Series: Steven Heller School of VISUAL ARTS® WHO ARE STEVEN HELLER? The first book I ever owned was a gift from my of them. And they are still coming. Odds are that Uncle Al: Tom Swift and His Motor Boat, by Victor by the time you read this, he will have written another. Appleton. The second book I bought myself: Tom For those unwilling to wait that long, there is The Swift and His Motorcycle, by the same author. Daily Heller, a blog appearing with the promised Over time I added Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, regularity in Print online. soon followed by Tom Swift and His War Tank, Unlike Victor Appleton, Steven Heller is real and and then His Submarine, His Airship, His Giant Tele- there is only one of him. Still, the mystique persists. scope, and others—all allegedly written by the A few years ago I met Steve Heller for lunch, and, same man. Marveling at his prolificacy, I wondered as he usually did at such times, he handed me a book how one author could write so many books: Who by Steve Heller. It was an advance copy that had was Victor Appleton? I was an adult by the time just been hand-delivered by his publisher. I learned that Victor Appleton was not one man but “I’m honored,” I said, “to be the first to have a many, a name owned by a syndicate and assigned, copy of your latest.” along with the plot lines, to a legion of ghostwriters. “Actually, it isn’t,” he said, explaining that another If you are at all familiar with Steven Heller’s was coming out later in the day. oeuvre, you can see where I’m going with this; but Probably everyone who knows Steve Heller has don’t worry. I am going there, but I promise not to a similar story. And while they may all be true (mine is), stay long, because Steven Heller’s legendary pro- collectively they are misleading. Graphic design is ductivity is not a destination, but a point of departure. a vast field stretching literally as far as the eye can The present exhibition is the latest in the “Masters see. Understanding that vastness entails encompass- Series,” an annual award exhibition at SVA honoring ing both the big picture and a multitude of small ones. “a person who, over the course of his or her career, Heller’s unique contribution is that he does both has been recognized as one of the great visual on a continuing basis. Although, in a Guinness-World- communicators of our time.” If visual communication Records sense, his prodigious output of books on is the subject, then Steven Heller wrote the book the subject is his most conspicuous achievement, on it. At least. For, as the writer and radio host Kurt it is emblematic of an accomplishment far more per- Andersen once claimed jokingly, he wrote a million vasive and, what is more important, ongoing. A retrospective exhibition by definition records Graphic Arts consisting of a litany of reasons to what an artist has already done, invariably raising in sing that organization’s praises. The anthem ends: the viewer’s mind some variation of the old punch line, “Yeah, but what has he done for me lately?” Obviat- “Oh AIGA ing that response, much of the current exhibition is No matter what your faults I love you still focused on what Heller is up to now as designer, art For you understand what we do director, author, teacher, lecturer, conference orga- And our moms never will.” nizer, editor, raconteur and educational administrator. What he is up to consists pretty much of telling the Our moms stand as a universal symbol of the story of graphic design. public’s failure to understand what designers are for, That story is richer and more complex than even a failure especially troublesome when registered graphic designers might have imagined, loaded with not by mothers, but by clients. And while it is certainly enough colorful characters, plot twists and conflicts desirable to dispel such confusion, an even higher to fill a thousand novels. Telling this story, keeping the priority is to heighten the designer’s understanding of narrative going, is necessary in two respects: public her own professional discipline. With Heller’s cascade and professional. of books, articles, lectures, conferences, exhibitions, As a matter of public record, the various design courses, blogs, radio essays, podcasts, and rants disciplines include architecture, product design, interior and raves, he labors mightily to help find a foundation design, landscape design, and, common to them all, under the eclectic range of activities that designers graphics. Each of them is extended by such special- practice. This is not to say that he has defined graphic ties as exhibition, events design, illustration, software design exactly. Rather, he shows its myriad facets and typography. Throw art direction into the mix and clearly enough to make definitions credible. it is small wonder that practitioners constantly com- A logical approach to making design intelligible plain that they are not understood, for what they do is to abstract a pattern or theory showing what its is in many respects barely understandable. Michael disparate ventures have in common. This is not, for Bierut, one of graphic design’s wittiest spokesmen, the most part, Heller’s way; even so general a book wrote a mock anthem for the American Institute of as his Design Literacy does not take that tack. Each of his many books, articles and exhibitions freshly Heller’s writing frequently has a moralistic bent, examines a single aspect of graphic design. Together which does not, as it does with some designers, they may one day add up to a comprehensive picture cause him to keep his distance from the commercial of the subject, but that day has not yet come, and world: in fact, several of his books concentrate on Heller does not appear to be impatient for its arrival. the business side of design. Designers have at times Neither should we be, for what we are getting in argued that their role is to be “the conscience of the meantime is a mosaic of instruction and enter- industry.” Heller knows better. Conscience is not for tainment, each piece illuminating an aspect of the hire and cannot be outsourced or delegated. Clients designer’s world. have to take it on for themselves. But designers That world, as Heller offers it up to us in various can conscientiously avoid particular clients. media, is organized politically (The Swastika; Red One way for them to do that is to become their Scared!; Angry Graphics: Protest Posters of the own clients. Ten years ago, Heller initiated the Reagan-Bush Era; Art Against War; Cartoonists for Designer as Entrepreneur program at SVA, which he a Nuclear Freeze; Political Art); regionally (New York co-directs with Lita Talarico. It is aimed at encourag- Observed; Italian Art Deco; American Art Deco); and ing and enabling students to conceive, create and in fact according to whatever style, period, subject market their own products and services. Not every- and flavor catch his interest. one wants to do that, and not everyone who wants to Heller seems to have been aware from the has the requisite talent and temperament. But they start that the dignity of the graphic arts does not can all benefit hugely from the experience of initiating require a slavish concern with dignity. Thomas Nast, work based on their own ideas, as opposed to George Grosz, Pablo Picasso, Stan Lee and M.C. depending on so-called “content providers.” In years Escher all serve to remind him—and us—of the human of working with designers, I have found the distinc- need to fool around. Even the most serious graphic tion between the provider of content and the com- design tends to be edged with humor, playfulness, municator of content to be at best dangerous and at quirkiness and sheer fun. It is no strain for Heller to worst pernicious. I have known designers who were move from the geopolitical import of the swastika to not only comfortable with the distinction, but were the restraints of taste and prudery in condom ads. downright resistant to considering any other way to work. A program like Heller’s at SVA would benefit critics like Lorraine Wild, Joseph Giovannini, and them profoundly. the team of Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller. It was also It is commonly accepted that no profession can weighted with a series of interviews Heller conducted be taken seriously until it has a history, an archive of with leading American designers, including Saul critical analyses and an educational apparatus. For Bass, Milton Glaser, Ivan Chermayeff, April Greiman, the profession of graphic design, Heller is helping to Muriel Cooper, Leo Lionni, Bradbury Thompson and forge all three. In the process he has expanded and Paul Rand. A master interviewer, Heller often repris- deepened our familiarity with individual designers. In es that role in Print magazine and in the online AIGA 1989, for example, the Walker Art Center in Minne- Journal, consistently posing questions that yield apolis, with the cooperation of the AIGA, presented new information and insights. the exhibition “Graphic Design in America.” Created Heller is able to do this, someone remarked, “be- by the Walker’s curator of design Mildred Friedman, cause he knows where the bodies are buried.” This the show disappointed many designers who felt that turns out to have more than metaphorical implications, the selections were arbitrary and not accurately for some of his best writing about individual designers representative of the field.