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.

 

Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972)

My admiration for the radical and pioneering poster work produced by Lucian Bernhard in the early years of the last century, knows no bounds.  His invention of the sachplakat where the advertiser’s message is reduced to a single, starkly simplified rendering of the product carefully positioned on a flat colour ground together with the product name was an amazing step forward in the evolution of the modern style. It marked a decisive break with prose heavy graphics laden with testimonials and descriptive copy.  Bernhard acknowledged his debt to the Beggarstaff Brothers (William Nicholson and James Pryde) for the elegant and spare distillation of complex forms in their fin-de-siècle theatrical poster designs. But the impact of his bold colour choices and taut compositions was all his own work.

It’s always been a puzzle that no monograph devoted to his work existed. After all, his great Munich-based rival, Ludwig Hohlwein (whose instincts were much more conservative) was the subject of a major survey by H K Frenzel (editor of Gebrauchsgraphik) in 1926 as well as several post-war exhibition catalogues. Steven Heller has long been the major online cheerleader for Bernhard with a series of well researched postings of which this is one from 2012. Anyway, the wait is over - in 2024 Christopher Long’s monograph was published by KANT in Prague (ISBN: 97880 743 74135). The long absence of a monograph is well explained by the author in his introduction where he describes all the fabrications and misinformation he had to sift through. Much of it was created by Bernhard himself - he changed his name (from Emil Kahn), created false chronologies and circulated endless falsehoods about his career. It’s hard to detect a purpose behind the mendacity - perhaps a desire to embellish his reputation or, more simply, an appetite for mischief-making. It seems that Bernhard was something of an unknowable character - despite his gregarious personality, he had few, if any, close friends and his womanising ways and long absences placed enormous strain on his wife and family.

The sachplakat era began in 1903 with the first reductive poster designs for the Priester match company that limited the elements to the company name and two stylised matches. The writer has untangled the evolution of the Priester variants and concludes that the most celebrated version, usually dated between 1904 to 1906, was actually created more than a decade later. Bernhard quickly acquired prestigious clients - Adler typewriters, Stiller shoes, Osram lightbulbs, Kaffee Hag, Manoli cigarettes and most lucrative of all, Bosch electricals, whose booming business was powered by Bernhard’s explosive spark-plug in all its variations.  This period of expansion came to an end with the outbreak of war in 1914 and Long has a detailed account of Bernhard’s brief service and his subsequent deployment on propaganda duties that utilised his many talents from cartooning to typography. After the war he continued to serve the new Socialist government designing banknotes and party political posters. Alongside this he expanded his advertising business to the point where some 24 staff were employed in his city centre office and studios. Throughout the 1920s Bosch continued to be his best client.

In 1923 Bernhard was invited to New York for a lecture tour arranged by a printer and Modernism enthusiast, Roy Latham whose intention was to galvanise the city’s admen to adopt a more adventurous European approach. Bernhard was captivated by the city, extended his stay and began a period of 4 years dividing his time between Berlin and New York. The Berlin office carried on in his absences under the management of his deputy, Fritz Rosen although the output began to lose its radical edge. In New York Bernhard found the innate conservatism of the locals made it difficult to find work.  Assiduous cultivation of personal contacts eventually paid off - notably with Amoco and REM  cough medicines. Faint echoes of the sachplakat could be detected in the REM and Amoco posters and a possible awareness of Dorothy and Otis Shepard’s designs for Wrigley. Amoco was still offering him work as late as the 1950s but his last 20 years were a sad postscript of semi-retirement. Bernhard laboured long and hard to adapt his European subtleties to the prevailing visual vulgarity but his heart was never really in it. All of this and much more in this generously illustrated and superbly researched survey - the author has tracked down every archival reference and available source to describe the twists and turns of a long career that began in Stuttgart, flourished in Berlin and languished in a long, slow decline in New York.

 

Berlin - Die Weltstadt Im Licht

A beautifully printed and presented volume of recently rediscovered photographs of Weimar Berlin - the illuminated city by night. Taken between 1925 and 1932 by Martin Höhlig (1882 - 1948). Höhlig was a versatile Berlin based commercial photographer who built a career as an accomplished portrait photographer in the 1920s. An interest in architecture led him into architectural and urban photography and a key event in his development was the Berlin Im Licht week in October 1928 - a citywide festival of architectural illumination dominated by powerful commercial messages sponsored by AEG, Osram, Siemens, Bewag and Telefunken designed to tell the world how German industry was being transformed by electrical energy. Höhlig was engaged to record the event and published a series of albums that were issued as promotional items by all the sponsors which are the source of this selection of photos. The tonal balance and the framing of the images is perfect. In the Third Reich, Höhlig’s career went into decline - as an affiliate photographer to the Association for the History of Berlin his membership was terminated in 1937 when Jewish members were expelled. Whether by resignation or expulsion is not known. After the war Höhlig found it impossible to rebuild his practice and he took his own life in 1948.  His reputation as an outstanding recorder of interwar Berlin is now secure alongside others such as Sasha Stone, Marco von Bucovich, Willy Römer and Max Missmann. 

For the traumatised war veterans desperate for work and the war weary public enduring rampant inflation and economic instability, the dazzle and glitter of decadent hedonism in Weimar Berlin was at best a remote and undignified spectacle and at worst a crude insult to public propriety. It would inspire the sense of popular resentment that opened the doors to the Nazis. When this blaze of luminescence was finally extinguished in 1939, the Nazified nation was propelled into 6 years of brutal conflict and genocide.  Which adds another layer to the experience of viewing these photos. There’s the aesthetic pleasure from the inventive exuberance of the visual dynamics on show but there’s also the foreshadowing of the dark days ahead and the part that this version of Berlin played in the process.

ISBN: 9783 942115 865

Published by Bussert & Stadeler, 2019 

 

Pioneers of German Graphic Design - Part Two

This is the long promised follow-up to the post of May 26. A further selection from the book, Pioneers of German Graphic Design, Callisto Publishers Berlin, 2017 (ISBN: 9783981753912) featuring Karl Schulpig to Jupp Wiertz plus an appendix of less well known designers.  The visual ingenuity and graphic impact of these images have lost none of their power over the years and will continue to serve as a vital source of inspiration for generations to come.  A superb book that I shall never tire of browsing.