Reviews

backed by a detailed account of economic and market
relations. The account ends in the first quarter of the
twentieth century and, even given its basis in the
National Trust property list, it is disappointing that
the story is not taken further. Nevertheless, it is a
useful addition to the literature on the country house,
to histories of design and the domestic interior, and
valuable to historians of technology.
Jane Pavitt
Univcnity of Brighton/Victoria and Albert Museum
diaspora on American graphic design since the
1930s, the impact of consumerism and counter
cultures after 1945, and terminates with graphic
design in Japan and the genesis of digitization.
While such a linear or chronological study is not
without its merits as a foundation course, it has long
been challenged—and even supplanted—in most
faculties of art and design in the UK by thematic
and discursive approaches to graphic design history,
which seek to draw together (though not necessarily
to harmonize) the disparate movements and designers
that he realizes were working simultaneously, for the

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Note purpose of a systematic comparative analysis. More-
1 First published as Liditblickf Zur Gadiidttc dcr kunsllidien hclligkatover, as Danziger's project is based on the apostolic
im 19. Jahihundert, Cari Hauer Veriag, Munich and Vienna, succession of the great and the good, there appears to
1983, and in English by the University of California Press, 1988
(trans. Angela Davies). be hardly any scope for including anonymous design
in his kind of course model (something that is usually
compounded by taking the highpoint of modernism
as the starting point of graphic design activity), and
Graphic Design History
not surprisingly the vast majority of the designers
S. Heller and G. Balance. Allworth Press, 2001. 341 included are white male practitioners (something that
pp., 40b&willus. £14.95paper. ISBN 1 58115 094 6. is not).
On many levels, these shortcomings are both ad-
Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and dressed and redressed in this interesting anthology of
Graphic Design essays, culled from three chief periodical sources—
M. Lavin. MIT, 2001. 201 pp., 81 b&w illus. £23.50 PRINT, Graphis, and EYE. Here, we do have some
doth ISBN 0 262 12231 5. £11.50 paper (2002). account of the contribution of female, as well as black,
ISBN 0 262 1703. graphic designers, illustrators and photographers.
Cipe Pineles, Helene Gordon-Lazareff and
Some time around 1972 or 1973, the American Katherine McCoy all feature, for example, while
graphic designer and historian Lou Danziger began Julie Lasky rehabilitates the career of black designer
teaching a course in the history of graphic design at Georg Olden. Olden, who started his career working
CalArts. In effect, Danziger had inherited a model for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington
outline from his predecessor Keith Godard, which he during the Second World War, had gravitated
set out to embellish over the next twenty-five years in towards television graphics by 1945, collaborating
his teaching at both CalArts and Harvard. The on a series of title sequences and news graphics for
archetypal course outline, along with his aims and CBS (at that time one of the more racially-tolerant
objectives, are reproduced by Ballance and Heller television companies, alleged to have employed 150
(the latter, editor/author himself of more than African-Americans). In 1960, Olden quit CBS to
seventy books on graphic design—a prodigious feat work in advertising, first of all with BBDO, and
that would surely have made even Dickens or afterwards with McCann-Erickson. After he was laid
Trollope blush with modesty), and it is instructive off in 1970, ostensibly because of the economic
to analyse its rationale and content. In essence, what recession, Olden issued a legal suit against McCann-
Danziger's course consists of is a somewhat orthodox Erickson, claiming that he had been sacked because
and linear examination of major movements and he was black. His case was dismissed by the Equal
designers in Britain, Europe and America. Thus he Employment Opportunity Commission, but none-
begins with the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau, and theless Lasky's essay gives us an illuminating insight
then proceeds through European avant-gardism into the potential for racial discrimination in the
between the wars, the impact of the modernist graphic design profession.

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In addition, Heller and Balance have organized the public consciousness of Vietnam, leading gradually
material in the book according to subject matter to a vociferous and effective anti-American lobby? All
rather than chronology, which makes for some these issues lead one to ask just exacdy what kind of
illuminating contrasts and comparisons. Indeed, sev- history does the anthology of essays offer? And how
eral of the best contributions to the volume have useful is it ultimately going to be to students in both
been grouped together in the sections dealing with graphic design and the history of design?
graphic design as mass communication and the avant- This sense of equivocation, and the patchy nature
garde. These include welcome reprints of essays by of the volume, is acutely evident in Chuck Byrne and
Christopher Mount on film posters by the Stenberg Martha Wine's essay concerning the impact of decon-
Brothers between 1923 and 1933, Georges Roque on struction on graphic design, which is the only entry to
the role of Magritte and impact on advertising, wrestle appreciably with the relationship of theory to
Rudolf Arnheim on the Bauhaus, and Alston Purvis practice. At the outset, die authors claim—and with

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on the work of Dutch graphic designers such as Piet some justification—that designers are notoriously
Zwart, Paul Schuitema and Hendrik Werkman resistant to theory, preferring to see themselves as
between the wan. Along with Lasky, and contribu- truly original creators. Even so, while admitting the
tions by Philip Meggs (on Piet Zwart and El Lis- inherent opacity of much writing on deconstruction,
sitsky), Victor Margolin (on USSR in Construction) they have a fair stab at condensing the gist of what
and Maud Lavin (on John Heartfield), these essays are Derrida implied by the neologism difference, namely
historically grounded and clearly the outcome of die way that the meaning that any text conveys is
archival research. As such, they stand in marked concerned with the double gesture of difference and
contrast to those collated in 'Designed Lives', the deferral. When it comes to applying Derridean theory
longest section of the book, which all too often add to graphic design practice, however, Byrne and Witte
up to nothing more than journalistic and anecdotal do not seem entirely to get the point and gravitate
panegyric, in some cases containing factual inconsist- more predictably to the multi-layered and fractured
encies and inaccuracies. Veronique Vienne, for typographic layouts of the likes of Neville Brody and
example, contributes a lively overview of Helene David Carson as exemplars of deconstruction. By
Gordon-LazarefFs career as editor-in-chief of contrast, Derrick's axiomatic statement, 'There is
French ELLE. At one point of her discussion, nothing beyond the text', crystallizes the idea that
however, we are informed that she launched the the contradictions of any text are already embedded in
magazine in 1945, and at another that the first edition words or images themselves, and we do not literally
was published in 1947. Vienne also writes that the have to have things taken apart or reconstituted for us
Swiss photographer Peter Knapp had been the art by graphic designers into what Tibor Kalman
director of ELLE between 1954 and 1966, whereas impugned as jive modernism'. In other words, a
the editorial credits for the magazine in 1958 stated page of linear, legible text like this one is the avatar
that Roger Giret had been art director (and that of differance; it is up to the reader to figure out the
Marguerite Duval had been editor). double gesture that it embodies for him/herself. The
intricacies of this kind of deconstructive gesture were
I do not mention these points simply as a matter of
thoughtfully amplified in Will Novosedlik's article,
nit-picking, rather because they underscore the
'Dumb', published in EYE in 1996, but sadly not
uneven nature of the volume as a totality, and the
included in the current anthology.
discrepancies between the more methodologically
researched essays and those diat tend towards anec- Maud Lavin also raises the issue of the impact of
dote, bland biography, and unmediated encomium deconstruction on graphic design in her engrossing
or, worse, rank historiography. Heller, for instance, and more methodologically cohesive volume of
betrays a somewhat tendentious approach to the latter essays, Clean New World. Lavin is probably best
when he affirms: 'Only those persons who wield known for her exploration of photomontages by
political (and military) power have the capacity to John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch as a critique of
alter events and history.' How, then, are we to Weimar culture, and her pioneering article on the
account for the way that photojournalism and oppo- former is included in full in Clean New World, and in
sitional graphics between 1968 and 1975 altered an abridged version in Heller and Ballance. Lavin's

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collection of essays also contains a welcome reprint of with a mix of media and disciplines. Lavin also
her piece on the feminist intervention into advertising demonstrates her own investment in multi-tasking
of ringl + pit (aliases for Ellen Auerbach and Grete in a fascinating chapter dealing with issues of identity
Stem respectively) between 1929 and 1933. This on the web. Working as part of a collective of seven
article first appeared in the Print Collector's Newletterwriters and a designer, in 1997 she produced a
in 1985 but, given the latent and overt sexism of much cyberdrama called The Couch, a semi-serious soap
contemporary advertising, it has lost none of its opera for the web in which the authors transform
import or relevance. As Lavin demonstrates, the themselves into fictional characters undergoing group
images of women produced by ringl + pit, although therapy. Once again, Lavin traces the continuities
they met with limited success at the time, provided an between her own self-exploration as a writer and her
incisive alternative to mainstream representations of involvement with electronic media such as Photo-
female beauty in promotions for make-up by Eliza- shop and the ambiguities of identity in Hannah

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beth Arden, for instance, or of maternal domesticity in Hoch's photomontages that she had dealt with as an
advertisements for Pixavon shampoo. With their art historian.
inventive and humorous use of masquerade in 1931 Essentially, then, Lavin manages to deploy a plur-
in images such as Petrole Hahn and Komol, ringl + pit ality of voices in dealing with a broad spectrum of
deconstructed the prototypical conflation of women material, while simultaneously harnessing her poly-
and commodities in advertising to imply that the vocalism to a common purpose. In other words, she
identities of real women exist elsewhere. In juxtapos- manages to explore questions of power and commu-
ing items of old clothing and inanimate mannequins nication in such a way that makes the history of
they allude to differences in generational attitudes graphic design vital and culturally resonant. Heller,
towards femininity as well, and the actual changes in Ballance and Danziger express a similar objective in
the social and sexual identities of women that had dieir anthology, concurring that what we need is a
occurred during the Weimar Republic. new kind of synoptic history of the subject area that
While the essays on modernist graphic design ideally will not only involve both historians and
included here will not come as a surprise to most designers, but will also engage and fire die imagin-
readers, at the same time there is another, more ation of graphic design students and historians alike.
unexpected turn to Lavin's writing represented in In an interview with Heller, conducted especially for
this volume. On this level, we see her dealing with the anthology, Danziger even goes so far as to claim
corporate design graphics, postmodernism and the that one of the problems for him as a teacher is that
Internet, and encounter a more informal style of the curriculum has been hampered by the 'dearth of
authorship. Lavin argues that this shift in tone and reputable material on design history'. But, as Lavin's
material is part of her own intellectual and personal project testifies, diis criticism barely warranted
development as she began to write for magazines such scrutiny in either America or Britain fifteen years
as Harper's Bazaar. More cogendy, however, she ago, let alone today, and in this regard we could
realizes the parallels between the work of modernists profitably point him in the direction of her research
such as Heartfield, Hoch and ringl + pit, and that of methods and writing.
contemporary website designers, all of whom she
contends sit at 'the intersection of cottage-industry Paul Jobhng
cultural production, corporate sponsorship, and mass- University of Brighton
distribution systems'.
Of particular interest to Lavin in this regard is the
impact of multi-tasking on production, which she Contemporary Art and the Home
elaborates in a portfolio of interviews with several Colin Painter (ed.). Berg, 2003. 265pp., 14 col. illus.,
female designers, including Barbara Kruger, Ellen 36 b&w illus. £55.00 doth. ISBN 1 85973 654 4.
Lupton and Katherine McCoy. As McCoy argues, £16.99 paper. ISBN 1 85973 661 0.
for female graphic designers multi-tasking involves
work on two fronts: as mothers and homemakers, and This collection of twelve chapters sets out to explore
as professionals who are expected to be conversant the relationship between 'the culture of contempor-

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