Graphic Journey Blog

Ben Shahn: Man of the people

The American artist Ben Shahn (1898–1969) is someone whose work I have always greatly admired. He also had a profound influence on many artists and illustrators surfacing during the 1950s/60s, from Peter Blake to David Hockney, Bob Gill, Michael Foreman  and a great many more as you will see below. His eccentric composition, non-conventional figure drawing and densely rich colour palette give his work a unique and powerful presence. 

1938

1934

He gravitated towards left-wing politics and produced a lot of work centred on social realism, depicting unemployment, migration, organised labour and injustice. One could say that he was the visual counterpart to the writer John Steinbeck. He was also responsible for producing posters for the US Office of War Information.

Through his work, Shahn wanted to connect directly with people, rather than employing the more abstract forms of art surfacing in the US during the 1950s.

But, for me, his pen-and-ink line illustrations were the most beautiful. His seemingly hesitant and jagged style was adopted by many. 

Now here are some examples of the work from many artists and illustrators that have clearly been inspired by the magic of Ben Shahn.

Ben Shahn

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Terence Greer 1963

 

Ben Shahn 1955

Michael Foreman 1961

Ken Sequin 1968

Jim Russell 1960's

Ben Shahn 1934

 

Bob Gill 1965

Bob Gill 1960's

Bob Gill 1960's

Ben Shahn 1939

Peter Blake 1955

Peter Blake 1965

Peter Blake 1960

Seymour Chwast 1961

Isadore Seltzer 1961

Ben Shahn 1939

Ben Shahn 1939

Bernard Perlin 1948

Robert Weaver 1963

Carol Annand 1964

Shahn also had a great love of hand-drawn lettering and calligraphy, and these additional gifts of his were often used in combination with his illustration and painting work.

 

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Things I like...

 

I've always had a soft spot for this Penguin paperback cover series from 1967, despite the overly large logos. I love the flamboyance of the art nouveau styling.

The designer is uncredited, but I have a sneaking suspicion that is was by the late John Gorham, it has all of his hallmarks. If you know otherwise please do let me know and I'll update.

Things I don't like...

Youth: 

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel contemplating life and death.

The basic ingredients for this film: take a retired conductor (Michael Caine) and an aging film director (Harvey Keitel), plant them in a luxury Swiss mountain spa, populate it with the oddest-looking people who can barely act, instruct your cinematographer to select as many eccentric compositions as possible and shoot it on the sharpest, clinical, high-definition digital so that every streak of pan stick makeup is emphasised, then top it off with a terrible script, delivered in the most emotionless, wooden way, especially by Caine, add to that an onslaught of relentless disco music fused with a syrupy sentimental score and you have Youth – an unbelievably pretentious elegy on the aging process juxtaposed with the longing gazes of Caine and Keitel at the nubile, youthful female flesh in the shape of Madalina Ghenea.

There is a lot of lingering on this piece of anatomy...

 

Madalina Ghenea who may be as fit as a fiddle, but her acting abilities leave a lot to be desired.

This pseudo-Antonioni-inspired film fails miserably and is an utter waste of the £12 million plus budget and the huge production crew involved. Three brilliant indie films could have been made with the money. 

 

 

It is a classic example of the emperor’s new clothes that thinks its audience will be satisfied with the visual bravado evident in Paolo Sorrentino’s last film The Great Beauty. Sadly, a load of overly art-directed images strung together does not make a film. Script, script, script.

 

Madalina Ghenea.

The designer’s mind

 

My cover designed in 2000 for the RSA Journal on inventiveness 

For the past ten years, I have been running around with a microphone interviewing other designers, and by that I mean designers from many disciplines, not just my own area of graphics. 

Ever since embracing the creative world back in the 1960s, I have been fascinated by what makes the designer tick, and the myriad of answers I have received has always fascinated and often surprised me. It gave me the idea of trying to capture some of these moments on tape, so, ten years on, I have clocked up 40 full-length interviews and continue with my quest.  

You can hear a 50-minute compilation featuring moments in the lives of Nick Park, Robin Levien, Margaret Howell, Alex McDowell, Roger Law, Terence Woodgate, Betty Jackson, Michael Wolff, Chris Wise, Dinah Casson, Michael Foreman, Thomas Heatherwick, Gerald Scarfe, Georgina von Etzdorf, Kenneth Grange, Kyle Cooper, Peter Brookes, Timothy O’Brien, Nick Butler, Paul Smith and Sara Fanelli. Click bar below to listen.

Small RDInsights compilation file

You can also hear the full-length interviews with all of the above along with many more designers on the Royal Society of Art website HERE.

The scandal of Handel

 

In March 2014, I told a cautionary tale about how the Handel House Museum tried to get me to produce creative work for free. That request followed a credentials presentation and a detailed quotation, after which I was shortlisted down to the final four designers for interview by the board of trustees. I was then told by the museum’s director that a member of the selection committee wanted to see some creative solutions before making a decision. To add insult to injury, I was informed that there would be no fee for this stage. I told them what to do in no uncertain terms and withdrew and decided to whistle blow because I was so outraged that one creative community was openly prepared to screw another. 

Eighteen months on and that project has now come to fruition as the Handel & Hendrix in London. At the time, along with me, another of the designers withdrew for the same reason, leaving just two. I was informed that all of the original four had been told to produce speculative work for the board to consider before making their choice. 

I have no idea if the final design group actually did produce some speculative work; it would be good to know that they didn’t. Perhaps someone out there knows?

The reason I am making such a song and dance about this is because I know that few would bring this sort of thing out in the open for fear of losing work or being sidelined as difficult. But the fact is, if we don’t stand up for the value of our work and stamp free pitching out, we will be continually walked over by the likes of Handel House Museum. Shame on them for not having the integrity to treat designers with respect, and shame on their chairman for denying on Design Week’s website that it ever happened. It did and I wisely kept all the correspondence to prove it.

A little film for all designers with a very big bite.

And in one of those serendipitous events, a wonderful video turned up this week on the very topic of free pitching that is a must for every designer to watch and learn from. Take a look here.

 

Keep out of the kitchen

More and more these days, I find that some films really do get to me. Burnt is one such film. Starring Bradley Cooper, it is apparently based on ‘celebrity’ chefs Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre White, both famous for throwing their toys out of the pram along with the occasional roasting pig and accompanying oven. 

Bradley Cooper as the macho chef

Cooper plays a two-star Michelin chef recovering from alcohol, drug and sex addiction plus trashing all the fooderies he had worked at in Paris, leaving behind drug debts and many enemies. Now clean, arriving in London and wanting to make amends for his shortcomings, but really because he wants to achieve the elusive third Michelin star, he manages to manoeuvre his way into a top London restaurant. 

The remainder of the film is a catalogue of cliché, sentimental music and plot points so obvious that it is like reading extra-large motorway signs. Cooper’s treatment of his staff comes straight out of the Ramsey school of diplomacy – abuse, humiliation and fear, with the result of reducing everyone to gibbering wrecks, thus gaining control, coupled with yet more saucepan-throwing episodes and childish tantrums. Intercut this with endless extra-HD orgasmic shots of immaculate dishes being prepared, resembling a minimal Miró on a plate, all of which you could polish off in five minutes, setting you back £70 a course. 

 

Ramsey in charm offensive mode

It is not surprising that Gordon Ramsey was involved with the film (he was credited as an executive producer and his company featured in the end credits), as it glorifies his approach to running a fear-driven kitchen and will no doubt increase his already massive ego and blond-highlighted, sticky-up hair. And to remind you just how unpleasant Ramsey can be, take a look at this clip from an undercover Channel 4 documentary from 2007, with much of his expletives edited out when shown on BBC America. As much as people were horrified by his behaviour, he went on to create an industry out of humiliation television, which sadly seems to have infected almost every area of TV programming today. While Ramsey shouts his way across America balling out restaurateurs, his old mentor, Marco Pierre White, the original enfant terrible of British cooking, is increasing his credibility by advertising Knorr stock cubes, expecting us to believe he actually uses them in his restaurant kitchen.

As for Burnt, it’s a definite “No, chef” from me.

And even more of Ramsey humiliating his staff here

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Publishing parting: 35 years on

This is the cover for AOI’s Illustrators magazine back in 1979.

The entire issue was devoted the paperback industry and I’d written a rather damning piece about the state of design in publishing after a very enjoyable ten-year period in the profession working at William Heinemann and later Fontana Paperbacks. 

Prior to leaving, I was asked by Allan Manham, then editor of Illustrators, to sum up my view of those ten years in the publishing world. And Allan asked me to design the cover to accompany my piece. As you can see, it was a rather scathing send-up of what was becoming the norm. This was a short paragraph that seemed to sum up my view at that time: 

“The fiction cover has now become so overburdened with gimmickry and lengthy front cover copy that it has developed into a sad parody of itself. It is a lamentable state of affairs and one I hope will not last. Many of the art directors have become extensions of the sales departments, marionettes whose movements and wishes are tightly controlled. The bland leading the bland.”

There were lots more along those lines, so much so that it prompted Penguin’s CEO Peter Mayer to publish a piece attacking me in a subsequent issue of Illustrators. But I still hold him responsible for destroying Penguin’s design heritage at that time. 

During that period, I witnessed the demise of many of the independent publishers that populated central London, hidden away in little chaotic offices in and around Bloomsbury. The Americans had arrived a few years before and were beginning to vacuum them up one by one. And with our American cousins came their ‘paint by numbers’ marketing departments. For me, that was the writing on the wall. During my last two years at Fontana Paperbacks, I witnessed the slow erosion of Penguin covers at close quarters, as most paperback houses exchanged their covers. It saddens me greatly, as Penguin was the creative benchmark for me. If Penguin was akin to Hertz (the No. 1 in car hire), then Fontana was the No. 2 Avis, trying that little bit harder.

A lot has happened over 35 years: things have got much better in some areas and much worse in others. And suddenly, once more, there are many more small independents, thanks to the internet. But the publishing heartland is still dominated by a small number of large conglomerates all vying for position.

Snapped at Waterstone's Piccadilly

There is little differentiation when it comes to the jacket designs, as this happy snap (above) grabbed Waterstone's. Bookshops are just a visual spectacle of noise, and you have to search for those quiet gems that occasionally shine. As Alistair Cooke once lamented in a 1980s Letter from America broadcast, “It’s no longer publishing; it’s the book business, where books are now called units.” 

The virtuous and vicious design circles: Loopy branding

     

Azuma Drive-in logo by Akisato Ueda 1975

                    

      Mahabis logo 2014

Olleco, a relatively new identity, with yet more loops

All the above have clear similarities and can be connected back to 2500 BCE when the Celts were beavering away with their distinctive graphic pattern making. The whole branding world has gone loopy.