In Honour of Glen Baxter

In a long career Glen Baxter (who died at the end of last month) created a fine body of work that resisted categorisation. Evolving a style of drawing that gently parodied the banalities of mass market illustration, his imagery had the clarity and simplicity of a textbook diagram combined with the sense of mystery that lay beneath the expressionless surfaces of Magritte’s paintings. In vintage picture books for children he discovered the joys of captions that stated the obvious in utilitarian language with a reckless disregard for the perils of the double-entendre or misinterpretation.  Many of his regular cast of characters came from the same source - the intrepid but hapless explorer, the denizens of Sherwood Forest, cowboys, boy scouts, ancient mariners and deep sea divers. The frisson generated when caption and image pull in separate directions amplified the incongruities that he delighted in exploring. Defining his work by genre or designation feels like a fool’s errand. For some, he was a cartoonist, others saw an illustrator, for me, he was simply an artist. Art world references abounded and it’s intriguing that he exhibited in such disparate galleries as Nigel Greenwood (home of Artists’ Books, Conceptualism and Gilbert and George) and Chris Beetles (citadel of figurative illustration).

In his 1980s prime, Baxter found himself approached by advertising agencies and his artwork began to appear in newspapers and magazines.  In 1987/88 Brooke Bond tea made use of his talents in a trio of full colour amusing drawings - the image of tea-making on the ocean floor was especially arresting.  A commission from Gilbey’s Gin was not without problems due to the client’s persistent efforts to include a ‘pack shot’, it eventually appeared in both newspapers and magazines.  Art postcards enjoyed a season of popularity in the 1980s and many Baxter drawings were reprinted in this format. A further ‘brand extension’ came in a range of Poole Pottery with Baxter designs. There are few more prestigious clients for editorial illustration than the New Yorker and the Glen Baxter Wall Art page displays 79 examples. And the books kept coming, in which every few pages an image guaranteed to astound and amuse would surface. As long ago as 1983, Miles Kington in a slightly ungracious review concluded that Glen Baxter needed to find a new act. Thanks perhaps to never scaling the heights of celebrity status he was able to refresh and renew his distinctive offer, while avoiding ubiquity and the deathly slide into unfashionability.

 

Advertising Art in Russia (2007)

There’s a generally accepted view that Russian Twentieth Century graphics can be exclusively defined by the post-revolutionary creative explosion of Constructivism-inspired book and poster designs that went on to influence designers around the world.  This fascinating book, Advertising Art in Russia (Moscow, 2007, ISBN: 9785 903406 012) includes some of the Avant-garde pioneers (mostly Rodchenko) but the principal focus is on illustration for Russian consumer advertising between 1880 and 1970. Included are 4 brief essays in both Russian and English and over 240 pages of full colour illustrations. While the state controlled almost all production in the Soviet era, consumer products were marketed and promoted to the public in visual formats that paralleled those of their western counterparts. It may have been illusory but it created the impression of a world of infinite consumer choice that looked familiar to the citizens of capitalist economies.  The influence of western practitioners such as Leonetto Cappiello, Marcello Dudovich, Ludwig Hohlwein, Joseph Binder etc. is easily detected, suggesting that Russian artists and designers had easy access to a wide range of international design periodicals and consumer magazines.  

Moscow’s design studios must have been lined with shelves holding volumes of Das Plakat, Gebrauchsgraphik, Graphis, Commercial Art, Art and Industry et al. Some of the largest state monopolies, such as Tabaktrest (based at the Petrograd tobacco factories) had their own studios and printing facilities for producing posters. In 1935 Stalin made a major speech in which he declared “Life’s become better, comrades, life’s become merrier!” A sentiment that would sound hollow to the victims of the great wave of purges and show trials that got underway in 1937. Despite this the production of consumer goods was accelerating and in 1936 a state advertising agency was established. Posters in every market sector projected an aura of sunny optimism and consumer satisfaction. A regiment of happy smiling faces stood in contradiction to the western stereotype of the downtrodden Soviet citizen forever trapped in a drab colourless world of material shortages and state surveillance.

 

Arrivals and Departures

A trio of evocative photos from the 1950s for those with long memories of British train stations. Commissioned as archive photographs by British Railways, they record information systems that have long since vanished from platforms and concourses. The first photo (dated July 31, 1957) was taken at Portsmouth and Southsea station. Most of the services in the right hand columns appear to have been suspended or withdrawn. As well as District Line trains, Richmond station (photo dated April 4, 1957) was the terminus for a service to the long defunct Broad Street station in the City that traveled along the North London Line. The third photo (dated June 23, 1959) is from Sheerness-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey. A caption on the reverse identifies it as a Benn and Cronin Indicator. This station (and Richmond) feature posters advertising day and evening excursions at bargain prices, a tradition that seemed to die out in the early 1980s. An unwelcome feature, often found in terminal stations is the recent practice of restricting access to trains until less than 5 minutes before departure time. Especially common in London - if it was devised to promote onboard chaos as hyper-stressed passengers jostle for space, it’s been a triumph. Finally we have a few more contemporary examples photographed at London King’s Cross, Ogilvie Transportation Centre Chicago, Hamburg Hbf, Lubeck and Paris, Gare d’Austerlitz. 

 

Visions of Japan 1992

This boxed collection of Japanese graphic ephemera served as a visual accompaniment to the V&A exhibition of the same name as part of a Festival of Japan in 1992. It was encased in a card sleeve along with a hard-backed volume of observations on life in Japan and a series of extended photo essays on aspects of modern and traditional Japan, bound and stitched in a traditional Japanese style. The ephemera box was presented as a scrapbook and contained 28 A4 printed sheets featuring a wide range of visual culture from consumer products to transport, cultural events to etiquette, packaging to logistics, medicines to comic books, selected to illustrate the Japanese twin poles of contemplative elegance and impulsive exuberance. A special touch is the inclusion of tipped-in items of genuine ephemera, some wrapped in plastic envelopes, others pasted in. It’s a lavish treatment with no expense spared.  The last image reproduces the list of captions that explains the content of each of the 28 loose leaf pages. One detail not on the list is that  Raymond Loewy designed the peace symbol featured on the Peace cigarette pack (item 21).