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.

 

Deutsche Plakate (1888-1933)

The sheer strength and visual power of German graphics always command attention and admiration.  Their confidence in asserting their message with clarity and simplicity is exemplary. Nothing quite equals the forceful expression of the Sachplakat style - image, text, colour, impact - that was pioneered by Lucian Bernhard in or around 1910.  It was a technique that broke through the visually seductive, decorative and ultimately over-elaborated language of Art Nouveau/Jugendstil that had dominated the previous decade or more. Suddenly all the panels of attenuated floral forms were rendered stale and formulaic.  Distorted and distended letter forms that privileged decoration over legibility gave way to the unadorned brevity of Bernhard’s simple but muscular fonts.  Sachplakat images required no more than a glance from a moving train or vehicle to deliver their content - the accelerating pace of urban life left little time for a leisurely contemplation of the visual complexities of a Jugendstil-inspired poster on a Morris advertising column.  The strong colours and bold imagery of Sachplakat posters were designed to punch through all the visual noise of the urban environment and catch the eye of the consumer in an instant in which the brand name could drill into the unconscious mind.

Based on a Berlin exhibition in 1992, this book (Kunst, Kommerz, Visionen, 292 pages, ISBN 3894660384) is one of the best available surveys of German commercial graphics and many of the illustrated examples have rarely, if ever been seen in other surveys.  The review period is 1888 to 1933 and guides the reader through the early years in which the prime influences were Jugendstil and La Revue Blanche to the Sachplakat era and beyond as the austere Bauhaus geometry became progressively more embedded in the visual culture of Weimar Germany.  What also changed in this period was that advertisers extended their psychological reach into the minds of consumers. It was no longer enough to communicate product information.  Consumers needed to be convinced about the merits of the product in the clearest possible visual language which left no space for gentle persuasion.  Brand names - Persil, Osram, Bosch, Opel, Manoli - needed to be fixed in public consciousness for which Sachplakat was the perfect vehicle, these being the only words you would see on a typical example. The image would be stripped to essentials and expressed via simplified forms and clearly defined areas of flattened colour. Sachplakat was an innovation that prepared the ground in which the Bauhaus philosophy of design could take root and endure.

These page-spreads give a flavour of the book although I have chosen to omit examples from the section that deals with the influence of Expressionism.  This is nothing less than personal prejudice - I have limited appetite for the savagely brushed letterforms and the direct and intentionally crude drawing styles found in the work of Kokoschka, Corinth, Otto Dix and Max Pechstein.  Though I must concede this genre offers a convincing reflection of the ideological conflict and political violence that overshadowed the Weimar era and Otto Dix, in particular, was an enormously impressive painter. I suppose it strikes a discordant note where the main focus is on consumer culture - propaganda versus persuasion. And that might be the point of its inclusion. I have to admit there is value in seeing these distinct genres side by side. Just not here.

Other than to note that the British approach to advertising art was formed in a much more timid, conservative visual culture where innovation was a rich source of ridicule, it seems unfair to make a detailed comparison, given that German designers were able to draw on a much deeper artistic tradition where risk-taking and challenging boundaries was not so unwelcome. There were British designers who were aware of what could be learned from Germany - among them was the figure of Ashley Havinden about whom we posted last year.  In 1926 Havinden and his boss W S Crawford (ad agency founder) visited Berlin on a scouting expedition and met with Bernhard and other designers whose work they were familiar with from the pages of Gebrauchsgraphik then travelling to Munich where they met Ludwig Hohlwein. Following this Crawford established a Berlin office from which to service the Europe-wide Chrysler account which Havinden managed from 1927-28. One of Crawford’s Berlin designers was Terence Prentis (1904-46), whose Chrysler poster is shown below - his work was featured in Gebrauchsgraphik in September 1929. On his return to London Prentis was a co-founder of Colman, Prentis and Varley advertising agency in 1934, a major agency that remained in business until 1974.