American
Modernism: Graphic Design, 1920 to 1960
by R. Roger
Remington with Lisa Bodenstedt. New Haven
CT: Yale University Press, 2003. 192 pp.,
250 color illustrations. Softbound, $35.00.
ISBN 0-300-09816-2.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department
of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar
Falls, IA 50614-0362, U.S.A.
ballast@netins.net.
To the extent
that any country is a melting pot, its culture
is indebted to the traditions that were
brought in by its emigrants, whether European,
Asian, African or whatever. But with luck
those same traditions mix, through synergistic
alchemy, into new and original cultural
forms, of which the most famous example
is jazz. At times, related claims are made
about a cluster of graphic designers who
flourished in the U.S. in the years before
and after World War II, and whose styles
are sufficiently different from other influences
as to merit the special, distinguishing
tag of American Modernism. A surprising
number of these designers were born and
raised in the Midwest (e.g., Merle Armitage,
Lester Beall, Bradbury Thompson, Noel Martin
and Charles Eames), while others grew up
in the cities (Paul Rand, Saul Bass and
Alvin Lustig). Without exception, they were
wonderfully smart and resourceful; they
were also eager for experimentation, so
much so that they all embraced the European
avant garde (in particular De Stijl, Surrealism,
the Bauhaus, and Tschichold's New Typography),
acquired firsthand in some cases by working
side by side with recent emigrants, among
them Ladislav Sutnar, Alexey Brodovitch,
Herbert Bayer and Will Burtin. At the same
time, they did not complacently align with
that influence, but practiced what in retrospect
is a seamless amalgam of European Modernism
and American Regionalism, in the sense that
its softened geometry is not unlike the
art produced by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart
Benton, Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler,
and others who were active in the WPA-era.
The author of this beautiful book, design
historian R. Roger Remington, is as well-informed
about this subject as anyone, and is widely
known for his efforts as the founder of
the Graphic Design Archives, a large collection
of printed ephemera and other research materials
in the Wallace Library at the Rochester
Institute of Technology. This volume, which
is his fourth and largest study of various
aspects of this segment of design history,
begins in the 19th century and
retraces the emergence of the European avant
garde. It slows down as it looks more reflectively
at the major representatives of American
Modernism, then resumes speed as it surveys
the forty-year period near the end of the
20th century, in which Modernism
is replaced by the maze that we currently
find ourselves in. In addition to Remington's
wonderful text, it is exquisitely designed
(as it really has to be, to practice what
its text promotes) by Brad Yendle, and stunningly
illustrated by 250 color illustrations of
the finest, most unforgettable works from
an historic period in which not just graphic
design, but cinema, literature, dance, popular
music, and other forms of expression were
produced at a very high level.
(Reprinted by permission
from Ballast Quarterly Review.)
