In another place

I keep trying to contemplate posters, but my brain isn’t complying and wants to think about archaeology instead.  So, for one day only, the stone circles of Wiltshire as represented in graphic design.  Only on Quad Royal.

Although our first offering isn’t all that.

mcKnight Kauffer Stonehenge vintage Shell poster 1932

Despite the fact that it’s in the collections of both the V&A and MoMA and therefore has to be a Modern Classic, I don’t really like it.  There’s too much artistic licence in the hilliness and the surrounding stones for my taste, although I will give it points for being a very interesting collision between high modernism and an almost 18thC romantic view of wild landscape at night

But I have another grievance against the poster which is that I don’t really like Stonehenge either; it’s a freak and an abberation rather than a proper stone circle.  That is a serious point, not just prejudice.  The shaped and stacked lintels of Stonehenge may have become our default idea of what a stone circle looks like (I would say ‘icon’ except that I’d hate myself afterwards; a shame because the word used to represent a useful concept before it became debased).  But no other stone circle in the country looks anything like this.  And you only have to go twenty five miles along the road  – still staying in Wiltshire – to find the real thing.

Shell Shilling Guide to Wiltshire Keith Grant

…it does as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge as a Cathedral doeth a parish church.

That’s what John Aubrey said about Avebury in the seventeenth century, and it’s still true today.  Which is why Keith Grant was wise to choose its stones for the cover of the Shell Shilling Guide to Wiltshire.

That’s not the only time Shell got it right, either.  The Ridgeway is the prehistoric track which leads across the high downs to Avebury (now walkable as a tidy National Footpath all the way from Tring), and David Gentleman included it in his ‘Roads’ series of posters.

David Gentleman Ridgeway shell poster llustration

This is not the poster but the original artwork.  David Revill posted a comment on the blog the other day to say that he had bought this very picture at the auction of Shell’s original artworks in 2002.  I am envious.

My favourite picture of all though (and yes, I have said this before) is John Piper’s Archeological Wiltshire.

John Piper Archaeological Wiltshire - genius

I would quite happily mortgage the cats for a copy of that, and probably throw in a few posters too, but it seems there is only one and it lives in a museum in Scotland.  But if anyone knows differently, please do say.

I think that’s actually better than the picture below, even though Nash’s re-imagining of Avebury is far more known.

Paul Nash equivalents for the megaliths

Nash’s colours are just a bit too weedy for me to really love this – and the hill fort in the background is about to topple forwards any minute now.  But seen from the present day, it is a remarkably prescient painting.  The hills all over the Wiltshire downs are now covered in geometric bales, cubes and cylinders, which turn his surrealist imaginings into reality every year.

With a bit of luck I have now got that out of my system and a normal service, in which we talk about posters, will resume tomorrow.

Modern selling

The auction season really is upon us; no sooner do I promise you the Christies highlights, than the Swann Galleries catalogue also pops into my email box.  And to my surprise, the American auction is, I think, the winner.  But let’s take a quick canter through both of them, and then you can make up your own mind, starting with Swann’s offering.

There are of course a lot of classics in there, which is all you’d expect from a catalogue calling itself Modernist Posters.

Abram Games vintage BOAC travel poster 1956 Swann Galleries
Abram Games, 1956, est. $800-1,200

Eckersley Lombers 1936 vintage London Transport posters Christmas
Eckersley Lombers, 1936, est. $1,200-1,800

In amongst those classics are a considerable quantity of Zeros, which is always nice.

Zero journalists Use Shell vintage poster 1938
Hans Schleger, 1938, est. $2,500-3,500

Hans Schleger Zero Vintage London Underground poster 1935 Swann
Hans Schleger, 1935, est. $4,000-6000

Even better, there are some that I haven’t seen before, like this quiet and understated design, also for London Transport.

Hans Schleger Vintage London transport poster service 1935
Hans Schleger, 1935, est. $1,500-2,000

There are some other interesting posters in there too, like this Willy de Majo for B.S.S.A.

William De Majo vintage BSSA travel poster South America 1948
William de Majo, 1948, est. $700-1,000

B.S.A.A. split from the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (B.O.A.C.) to operate in the South Atlantic. Founded in 1946, it merged back with B.O.A.C. in 1949, after a series of unlucky incidents, in which two of their planes disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

All of which rather leaves me wanting to know more, both about B.S.A.A. and William de Majo, who has featured on these pages before.  Other questions are also raised by this rather out of the ordinary London Transport poster.

Maurice Beck vintage London Transport fuel tax poster 1931
Maurice Beck, 1931, est. $500-750.

Fortunately, the catalogue is here to answer them.

An extraordinary montage of photographed letters and numbers designed by Maurice Beck. He was both a designer and a photographer, often incorporating photography into his work. In the 1920s he was the head photographer for British Vogue, and he is credited with designing 18 posters for the Underground, all photomontages. One in a series of four posters based on the unusual premise of informing the public how much “the Underground group (U.E.R.L.) pays in petrol tax. The information highlights the success of the company, still profitable in spite of so many taxes, and the fact that U.E.R.L. contributes significantly to the Treasury and therefore to the London’s economy” (http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk).

I have to say, I really do like this catalogue.  While I’m not normally a fan of online catalogues,with their pretend turning pages and interminable loading times, I am prepared to make an exception for this one, which is well worth the investment of time and bandwidth.  This isn’t just because of the layout, which makes almost every poster desirable.

 

Swann Galleries catalogue page spread 2

Including that McKnight Kauffer at the left, which I don’t remember having seen before now.

But even better is the text, which, as the examples above demonstrate, is consistently interesting and informative.  Take this BOAC poster by Henrion, for example.

Henrion BOAC vintage travel poster 1947 Swann
FHK Henrion, 1947, $800-1,200

In post-war Britain, competition between the different airlines was fierce, and as a result, the airline companies hired the best graphic designers in the field for their advertising, such as F.K. Henrion, Ashley, and Abram Games. At the time when Games was creating a series of posters for B.O.A.C., the trend among artists was not to illustrate the actual airplanes (as had been the style in the thirties), but instead, to advertise the advantages of flying, such as saved travel time. They did this by creating beautiful, symbolic and surrealistically inspired images that captured the abstract concepts poetically. Here, Henrion incorporates the company’s Speedbird logo into the design.

All poster catalogues should be like this, why aren’t they?

You may be feeling that you saw that Henrion poster quite recently, and you did; there is a lot of overlap between the various auctions.  Like the PosterConnection sale mentioned in my last post, Swann also have a fair number of airline posters of one kind and another.

AOA LEwitt Him vintage travel poster 1948
Lewitt-Him, 1948, est. $800-1,200

Imperial airways vintage travel poster theyre lee elliott 1935
Theyre Lee Elliott, 1935, est. $700-1,000

But there’s an even more interesting overlap between the Swann Galleries and Christies sale, which is this.

McKNight Kauffer vintage London Transport Power poster 1931

It’s by McKnight Kauffer and dates from 1931, but it’s worth $12-18,000 if you’re Christies, $15-20,000 if you’re Swann Galleries – and the Christies one is purportedly in slightly better condition, too.

It will be interesting to see how that pans out.  Will the existence of two depress prices? Or does the fact that they’re on opposite sides of the Atlantic mean that this doesn’t matter.  I shall watch with interest.

Sadly, that’s about as much excitement as I can muster up for the Christies catalogue.  While there are plenty more unseen gems at Swann, where I can even get enthusiastic about German posters that I’m not supposed to be interested in.

HYMMEN (DATES UNKNOWN) DEUTSCHE BAU AUSSTELLUNG. 1949 vintage poster`
Hymmen, 1949, $400-600

At Christies, everything feels a bit more familiar, with only a very few exceptions.  Best of all, I like this Herbert Bayer.

Herbert Bayer - Allies Need Eggs vintage propaganda Poster WW2 1940
Herbert Bayer, 1940, est £800-1,200

And I probably would like this Night Scotsman classic if only I could afford it.

Alexeieff Night Scotsman Kings Cross vintage railway posters 1931
Alexeieff, 1931, est. £15-20,000

Ditto this Paul Nash, which I suspect will go for a bit more than the estimate.  If only suburbia had ever looked like that.

Paul Nash vintage London transport poster come out to live 1936
Paul Nash, 1936, est.£800-1,200

But other than that the catalogue seems to be both rather thin, covering the same old ground, and without pithy texts to make me care about particular posters.  So there are railway posters, of course.

Frank Sherwin Somerset vintage railway poster GWR
Frank Sherwin, est. £700-900

With an honourable mention going to Frank Newbould for his impressive impersonation of McKnight Kauffer.

Frank Newbould Scarborough vintage railway poster 1924
Frank Newbould, 1924, est. £1,000-1,500

And London Transport too.  But a lot of these are similar to or even the same as items from the last sale, and so feel like they’re riding on the coat-tails of that last set of high prices.

Marty Wings of Joy vintage London Transport poster 1931
Marty, 1931, est. £1,000-1,500

Jean Dupas Richmond vintage London Transport poster, 1933
Jean Dupas, 1933, est. £3,000-5,0000

Of course no auction this year would be complete without airline posters, particularly those for BOAC.

Abram Games vintage BOAC poster 1949
Abram Games, 1949, £600-800

The only good news is that there don’t seem to be too many multiple lots this time, which is a relief. But I wonder if this is policy or accident? And where are all the nice, inexpensive London Transport posters going to be sold these days? Surely they can’t all be on eBay?

The Volkswagen Problem

For some time I’ve been meaning to post a link to the Empire Marketing Board Archive at Manchester Art Gallery.

It’s an exemplary online resource for a really interesting collection.  The Empire Marketing Board was what Stephen Tallents did before he came to the GPO, and in many ways is one of the first attempts at the kind of ‘soft’ advertising and propaganda that we now take for granted.

Empire Marketing Board poster Christmas produce bear
Austin Cooper, 1927

In his time at the Empire Marketing Board between 1926 and 1933, Tallents (working with Frank Pick and William Crawford of Crawfords advertising agency) commissioned some of the very best designers and artists working in Britain at the time.  These included those such as Austin Cooper, Frank Newbould and Fred Taylor who were best known for their work for the railway companies,

Good Shopper Empire Marketing Board Poster Frank Newbould
Frank Newbould

as well as fine artists like Paul Nash.

Paul Nash Empire Marketing Board poster

But I’ve been holding off writing about it for months.  Why?  Because these posters constitute an ideological problem of the first order, and it’s not one I have an easy answer to.

The issue at stake is, of course, Empire.  The Manchester Art Gallery website describes the collection as ‘challenging and fascinating’.

Created during the 1920s and ’30s to promote trade and understanding between empire countries, the posters present a view of the British Empire that, from today’s perspective, is often uncomfortable.  Although visually stunning, the posters contain images that would today be considered offensive. As a product of their time, they raise difficult questions about the legacy of empire.

I’m not proposing to get into a discussion about the legacy of Empire and the historic wrongs involved.  What I’m interested in is how much ideology can adhere to images, in particular to these posters.

There is no denying that there are some posters in the collection which can only be interpreted as racism of the highest degree.  This vision of the white man bringing civilisation is by Adrian Allinson.

Allinson Empire Marketing Board poster African Transport

It gets worse, too – the implicit comparison is with the companion poster.

Allinson Empire Marketing Board African transport

But these posters are by no means in the majority in the archive.  To start with, a good portion of the posters are images of either produce,

Bacon Factory Empire Marketing Board poster
Anonymous

or pictures of Britain that wouldn’t look out of place on a railway poster.

Home Agricultural Show Empire Marketing Board poser
Gregory Brown

Or quite possibly both.

Frank Newbould Empire Marketing Board poster
Frank Newbould

So my questi0n is, can a poster like this Fred Taylor of Market Day be interpreted as loaded, racist even?

Fred Taylor Market Day Empire Marketing Board Poster

I’ve had quite an interesting email conversation about this with Melanie Horton, the researcher who’s been working on the archive.  She would argue that it is, that all the posters have to be seen as whole and cannot be separated from the politics of how they came to be produced.

I’m not going to tackle her arguments now as she has a booklet about the collection coming out soon (Empire Marketing Board Posters: Manchester Art Gallery ) and it only seems fair to read them in detail first.  But I do have a few broader thoughts to raise before then.

Because what we are debating here isn’t in any way a new question.  T.S. Eliot was undoubtedly a small-minded anti-semite, but does that devalue The Four Quartets, in which there is nothing of the sort?  Or if you want a more modern version of the same problem, try yesterday’s Guardian, where Brett Easton Ellis is freely admitting to misogyny, sexism and generally being a rather unappealing bit of work.  But what does that do to our opinion of his novels?  As it happens, I love The Four Quartets but loathe American Psycho, so my answer is different in each case.

But this problem also came up when I studied Design History, in perhaps its most taxing presentation.  Here it was known as the Volkswagen problem.  And it is quite a problem.

The Volkswagen Beetle is a great piece of design which produced one of the most popular small cars of the twentieth century, and was also technologically very innovative.  However it was also, and there is no too ways about this, a product of Nazi ideology.  As if the name Volkswagen itself wasn’t enough of a clue, the Beetle was originally known as the KdFwagen – the Strength Through Joy car. Adolf Hitler commissioned it, approved it and set it into production.   And yet we are not only prepared to forgive the Beetle, but clasp it to our hearts as one of the best-loved cars there has ever been.

Channel Island Pea Harvest poster Empire Marketing Board
Keith Henderson

So where does that leave images like these?

Oat Harvest Empire Marketing Board Poster
George Houston

Can we separate them out from how and when they were produced, and only see the oats and the peas and the pears?

Empire Marketing Board Poster
Anonymous

Or is it only the Volkswagen that can ever achieve that kind of forgiveness?