Product Description
AD, “An Intimate Journal for Art Directors and Production Managers” 1941
AD, “An Intimate Journal for Art Directors and Production Managers” 1941
AD
“An Intimate Journal for Art Directors and Production Managers” 1941
Published by Steinweiss
Dimensions:
Book: H: 8 1/8” x W: 5 ¾”
Custom leather box: H: 9 1/16” x W: 6 9/16” x D: 1 7/16”
Custom silk slipcase: H: 12 9/16” x W: 9 3/16” x D: 2 ¾”
An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, production Managers, and their Associates
The Alex Steinweiss Issue
[Alex Steinweiss] Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: A-D [AN INTIMATE JOURNAL FOR ART DIRECTORS, PRODUCTION MANAGERS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATES]. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., June-July 1941 [Volume 7, No. 5]. Original edition. Spiral-bound paper-covered boards printed in 4-color letterpress. Screen-printed acetate frontis. Cover faintly creased. Interior contents unmarked and very clean. Letterpress cover designed by Alex Steinweiss. One of the hardest issues of PM/AD to find in collectible condition. A nearly fine copy.
This Steinweiss cover is widely recognized as a singular high point in American Graphic Design that has been reproduced in countless histories and anthologies.
5.5 x 8 digest with 68 [16] pages including numerous color and b/w reproductions. The artwork is reproduced in four-color letterpress, and magnificent b/w photo engraving. There is even a screen-printed acetate title page! Truly an increbible single issue of a trend-setting publication.
Contents for this issue:
• 16 page color profile of Alex Steinweiss, Art Director for Columbia Records (many examples of cutting edge streamline moderne graphics).
• Herbert Bayer’s Design Class: 13 b/w pages of student photomontages by William Taber, Gene Federico, E. G. Lukacs, Eleanor Mayer, Ernest Cabat, Jere Donovan, Fritz Brosius, Sol Benenson, David Weisman, Robert Pliskin, R. H. Blend, Eugene Zion, Edmund Marein.
• What is Taught and Why – A Footnote to the Recent Bayer Classwork Exhibit at the A-D Gallery.
• Designs in Glass by contemporary Artists from the Steuben Collection: 16 b/w pages including full-page reproductions of the art-glass work of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Raoul Dufy, Duncan Grant, Jean hugo, Peter Hurd, Fernand Leger, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Georgia oπKeefe and others.
• Peter Takal: 8 pages of b/w illustrations
• A-D Shorts mention Irving Pasternack , Herbert Roan, Bill Crawford, Leon Friend, Robert L. Leslie.
• Books Reviewed: Animal Drawing by John Skeaping; The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson
Nineteenth Annual of Advertising Art – 1940
• Trade advertising for Arrow Engraving Co., The Composing Room, Inc., Wilbar Photo Engraving Co. , Ludlow Typograph Co., Supreme Printing Service, Strathmore Paper Co., Reliance Reproduction Co., Flower Electrotypes, Pioneer Moss, Walker Rackliff, Fuchs and Lang Mfg. Co., Spiral, United Looseleaf Corp., Lumarith Protectoid.
In 1939, at the age of 23, Alex Steinweiss revolutionized the way records were packaged and marketed. As the first art director for the recently formed Columbia Records, Steinweiss saw a creative opportunity in the company’s packaging for its 78 rpm shellac records. The plain cardboard covers traditionally displayed only the title of the work and the artist. “They were so drab, so unattractive,” says Steinweiss, “I convinced the executives to let me design a few.” For what he saw as 12-inch by 12-inch canvasses inspired by French and German poster styles, he envisioned original works of art to project the beauty of the music inside. In 1947, for the first LP, Steinweiss invented a paperboard jacket, which has become the standard for the industry for nearly 50 years.
Alex Steinweiss was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. His father loved music and instilled the passion in him. In 1930, Steinweiss entered Abraham Lincoln High School. His first artistic endeavors resulted in beautifully articulated marionettes. These brought him to the attention of the art department chair, Leon Friend, co-author of Graphic Design (1936), the first comprehensive American book on the subject.
Steinweiss’s first day in Friend’s class was a magical experience. “To see these young men painting letters with flat-tipped brushes was one of the great inspirations of my life,” he says, “I had to get involved with that!” He learned the principles of design and how to apply them through daily contact with the endless array of beautiful examples of poster design, typography, drawing, and calligraphy. Friend exposed Steinweiss to the works of the great graphic designers of the time, including Lucian Bernhard, A.M. Cassandre, and Joseph Binder.
Upon graduation from high school, the School Art League awarded Steinweiss a one-year scholarship to Parsons School of Design in New York. He almost left after the first year, convinced, in spite of the depression, that he would be able to get a job. Before quitting school, however, he wrote to illustrator Boris Artzybasheff, who, instead of offering employment, advised Steinweiss to finish school.
Steinweiss followed his advice. Afterward he presented himself, unannounced, to the New York studio of Lucian Bernhard, the German master of poster and type design. Bernhard’s son, Carl, answered the door with a rankled, “Don’t you know you’re supposed to call for an appointment?” But Steinweiss confidently handed him his portfolio and requested that the master peruse it. Carl glanced at the work, was impressed, and brought it to his father. A half an hour later, Bernhard came out of his office and informed Steinweiss that he had already phoned Joseph Binder, the Viennese poster maker who was looking for an assistant. Steinweiss worked for Binder for almost three years until he quit to form his own studio. Six months later he got a call from Robert L. Leslie, who recommended him as an art director to Columbia Records.
At Columbia, Steinweiss evolved a unique cover art style mingling musical and cultural symbols. His first cover, for a collection of Rodgers and Hart music, featured a theater marquee with the album’s title appearing in lights. He designed images for jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, and numerous classical, folk and pop recordings. Newsweek reported that sales of Brt/no Walter’s recording of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony “increased 895%” with its new Steinweiss cover.” His signature, the “Steinweiss scrawl,” became ubiquitous on album covers in the 1940s.
A-D magazine was the leading voice of the U. S. Graphic Arts Industry from its inception in 1934 (originally titled PM) to its end in 1942. As a publication produced by and for professionals, it spotlighted cutting-edge production technology, such as acetate inserts, 4-color letterpress printing, custom binding and the highest possible quality reproduction techniques (from engraving to plates). PM and A-D also championed the Modern movement by showcasing work from the vanguard of the European Avant-Garde well before this type of work was known to a wide audience.
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128pp. First edition bound in brown flat-weave cloth over beveled boards; front cover with gilt lettering, dark brown-stamped ruled borders, symbolist design of vase, vine, swirl and stars, rear cover without decoration; spine with gilt lettering and dark brown-stamped ruled borders and ornaments; signed in gilt & dark brown-stamp on front cover. Collection of poems originally written in the Persian language, “Rubáiyát” (derived from the Arabic root word for 4) means “quatrains”: verses of four lines.
Translated by Edward Fitzgerald54 drawings by Elihu Vedder reproduced by Albertype process on facing pages (printed one side only)
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Custom silk slipcase: H: 19 1/8” x W: 15 ½” x D: 4”From the moment of its publication, Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám achieved unparalleled success. The first edition appeared in Boston on 8 November 1884; six days later, it was sold out. Critics rushed to acclaim it as a masterwork of American art, and Vedder (1836-1923) as the master American artist who set the standard for the artist-designed book in America and England.
Written ca. 1120 by Persian poet-philosopher Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), the Rubaiyat is a collection of quatrains, or poems of four lines, intended to prove the futility of mathematics, science, and religion in determining the meaning of life. First translated from Persian to English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald, editions of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat have since appeared in numerous forms and languages, thebest-loved, best-known, and most elaborate being the 1884 edition illustrated and designed by Elihu Vedder.
Vedder was one of the first artists of his generation to train in Paris where he developed his signature Academic style and focused on what would become his favored subject: the classically proportioned female nude. In the years 1883 and 1884, he created 54 compositions to accompany the 1884 edition of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (published by Houghton, Mifflin) – drawings that serve as a harmonious frame for the text. Living in Rome at the time, Vedder also designed the book’s cloth-bound cover, lining papers and eccentric hand-drawn letters. With his Academic and yet “visionary” style, Vedder was the ideal artist to interpret the Rubaiyat; he reconciled the critics who called for accurate depiction of observed reality with those who argued for feeling and emotion over objective form.
Additionally, Vedder arranged the verses to express the three stages of existence explored in the Rubaiyat — happiness and youth; death and darkness; and rebirth — as well as to fit his own romantic interpretation of the verses. Vedder’s drawings for the book combine traditional Christian symbols, classical figures, and mystical imagery of his own invention to evoke the mood of Khayyam’s poems. A prevalent device is his “cosmic swirl,” which, according to Vedder, represented the “gradual concentration of elements that combined to form life; the sudden pause through the reverse of the movement which marks the instant of life; and then the gradual, ever-widening dispersion again of those elements into space.”
Vedder’s edition of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat was an instant success, selling out only six days after its debut in Boston on November 8, 1884. With the Rubaiyat, Vedder set the standard for artist-designed books in America and England. Critics rushed to acclaim it as a masterwork, and Vedder as a major American artist.
The Brandywine River Museum presents decorative drawings and paintings created by a master nineteenth-century American artist in Elihu Vedder and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, on view from March 15 to May 18, 2008. The exhibition features more than 50 drawings with hand-lettered poems created by Vedder for his illustrated version of Khayyám’s literary work. Exclusively at the Brandywine River Museum, the exhibition also features major paintings by Vedder related to the illustrations for the i>Rubáiyát.
Elihu Vedder’s Rubáiyát was published in Boston in 1884 and its sensuous, decorative drawings so captivated the public that the first edition of the book sold out in six days. Critics rushed to acclaim it as a masterwork of American art, and Vedder as the master American artist. Vedder’s designs for the book-its cover, lining paper, drawings, and hand-drawn letters-are all done in chalk, pastel, pencil, and ink. The drawings set the standard for an artist-designed book in America and England in the 1880s. They are part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection and were last shown in 1996.
The Rubáiyát was written in 1120 by the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet Omar Khayyám (1048-1131). “Rubáiyát” is the plural form of quatrain, or a verse unit of four lines. Since the first English translation was published in 1859, hundreds of editions have been produced. The poem expounds on the transience of existence and the uselessness of science and religion to untangle the knotted meanings of life. Pre-Raphaelite and aesthetic-movement writers immediately embraced the poem as a touchstone of the spiritual and poetic in a time of strident materialism.
As an ardent admirer of the verses, Vedder’s interest in the book went beyond the aesthetic to the personal. The tragic deaths of his sons (in 1872 and 1875) and births of two more children (a daughter in 1873 and a son in 1875) were remarkably explained, it seemed to Vedder, by the poet’s message regarding death, undiscoverable fate, and the renewal of life. He included images of himself and his family in several of the drawings.
The exhibition also features paintings by Vedder, including some that pre-dated the Rubáiyát and provided the basis for illustrations in it. Following the success of the Rubáiyát , Vedder continued to explore its themes and imagery in a number of paintings that he exhibited and sold. Among these are The Cup of Death (1885/1911), The Pleiades (1885), The Fates Gathering in the Stars (1887), and The Cup of Love (1887). The paintings are on loan from museums and private collections.
Elihu Vedder has often been described as an artist of haunting and poetic imagination, who created works of strength, beauty, and fantasy. Born in New York City in 1836, Vedder began painting seriously after visiting Europe in 1856 to study in Paris and Florence. He briefly returned to New York and opened a studio, which failed due to the onset of the Civil War. It was during his years in New York that he produced some of his most imaginative works. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1865. Vedder returned to Europe in 1866 and settled in Rome, only occasionally returning to the United States to execute commissions for decorative works, murals, and mosaics. He died in Rome in 1923.
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