5.0 out of 5 stars
Magazine man, May 21, 2010
This review is from: Brodovitch (Masters of American Design) (Hardcover)
I thought this was an excellent introduction to Harper's design man: Alexey Brodovitch. I'd only really heard of him in relation to the magazine, where he was the Art Director from 1934 until 1958 but as Andy Grundberg reveals he was involved in other areas of creativity: photography; movie-making; books and teaching.
For a book on a visual subject there are, I'm pleased to say, plenty of examples of Brodovitch's work. Magazines include sixty-seven spreads from Harper's, thirty-five from the three issue only Portfolio Magazine. Books include eighteen from the `Day of Paris', thirteen from Richard Avedon's `Observation', eleven from `Saloon Society' and six from `Ballet' where he also took all the photos.
Brodovitch's greatest achievement was obviously his work on Harper's and you can see, as the years rolled by changes in editorial layout. The thirties and early forties reflect a whimsical, sometimes surrealistic handling of photos, graphics and type. The war years, with clothes rationing and dull fashion produced a much simpler layout which evolved in the late forties and into the fifties to using photos, especially from Avedon, with almost white backgrounds which could have the headlines, copy and captions overprinted. Considering that a lot of fashion is for the minute just how does a designer do something new every few issues with shoes? On pages eighty and eighty-one Brodovitch solved the problem with the ten shoe spreads from 1945 to 1956, they all work, too.
Apart from all the Harper's spreads I was particularly interested in the thirty-five from Portfolio. The three issues are amazingly expensive second-hand and it seems an obvious publication for some enterprising publisher to reprint. Without the constraints of a commercial editorial format Brodovitch was able to create some wonderful spreads but an expensive to produce graphic arts magazine without commercial direction really couldn't succeed.
I recently reviewed
Alexey Brodovitch (Portfolio (Assouline)) which only covers his Harper's years with fifty-spreads and nine covers and is of interest because the magazine's pages are reproduced life-size (though with rather inadequate reproduction, in my view) but there is no copy, only short captions. Grundberg's book is much better because it covers a whole life story of this fascinating publication designer.
***LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
