Arnold Schwartzman A Masterclass on the Graphic Art and Work of the Left-handed Polymath
Foreword by Steven Heller
It is confounding to me that given all Arnold Schwartzman has accomplished during a long and successful career as a graphic and advertising designer, author, illustrator and filmmaker (his movie Genocide is one of the most important documentaries on the Holocaust) that he is not well known among young designers—at least the ones I teach. It is not that there is a dearth of books by or about him but there is a hole in the history of world graphic design (and indeed California design history, too) where he should occupy a prominent spot. I’m not saying he’s overlooked; the vast number of projects found in this volume is testament to his standing among clients and peers. What I am suggesting is that he should be one of the more recognized and studied models in graphic design history. It is therefore apt that this book is titled “A Masterclass on the Graphic Art and Work of the Left-Handed Polymath” as it serves as the basis for his inclusion in historical syllabi. As I page through this book I am struck by how “poly” he is. Every medium and various approaches are catalogued. Schwartzman’s promotion slides and title sequences for television make me long for the era when TV in its infancy actually produced graphic animations that were typographic movies. For Arthur Koestler’s classic anti-Communist Darkness at Noon Schwartzman harnessed the power of scale and transition in a narrative sequence that movingly interprets the original novel turned teleplay. The kinetic type and image progression for Don’t Say A Word is as contemporary today as it was when designed in 1963. Talk about design being timeless! And I never get tired of seeing the opening title card for Death By Choice (one of his most reproduced works) where the “t” in the black letter typesetting of “Death” looks like a knife underscored by a drop of blood. I could wax on about his TV work for the English pop music show Ready, Steady, Go!, including rare photos he took of the Beatles, but that would be one small iota of Schwartzman’s legacy (and you’ll see it soon enough).
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One of the most surprising sections for me is the one on illustration. I know his posters, book covers (his covers for spy-author Len Deighton’s books made me a Deighton addict) and magazine covers, but I had no idea that he was so accomplished with the pencil. The portraits of the famous are masterfully done and add another dimension to his “poly-ness.” I’ve long been an admirer (and fellow traveler) of his art deco, art nouveau and Arts & Crafts collecting, and the books he’s produced on signs, architecture, design ephemera and Zeppelins (Airshipwreck written with Deighton). Whenever I consider my own collection-based books I have to ask myself “did Arnold do this already.” Many of his books benefit from his keen eye and brilliant photography. It is hard to believe he’s not simply a photographer, his still-lifes and architectural portraits are that good. But so are his other pictures, which you will also see here. The most gripping aspect of this book is the section devoted to his Academy Award–winning documentary, Genocide. It is a shame this is not a digital book because Schwartzman’s title sequence in motion is as much a tour de force as the film itself. With a score by Elmer Bernstein, the film starts with a yellow “Jude” star aflame. Slowly the black-letter “Genoci” emerges and butts against the “de” in the star. Typed pages with the names and numbers of the victims are montaged and a passage of the Torah begins to burn. It is a sequence without equal. The problem with writing a foreword is that it precludes reviewing the book. If I were to do the latter, I would praise Schwartzman’s tenacity and ceaseless energy. I would argue that his design is not about style but attitude. I would call him eclectic yet abiding of the Modernist’s rules of form. I would say, this work must be appreciated in its critical mass as exemplary of what design can be and designers can do.
Right: Arnold, age two Photograph: Jerome
Above: Map detail showing St. Georgein-the-East Workhouse, Wapping, London, U.K. I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. Georgesin-the East, and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts, and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master. —Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller, 1867
Above: Cigarette card showing air-raid precautions Wills’s Cigarettes
Introduction
Far left: Birth certificate,1936 St. George-in-the-East, London, U.K. Left: Picture comparisons, Lilliput magazine Editor: Stefan Lorant, Hulton Press, U.K.
’Twas Twelfth Night in the workhouse ... I was born at 6am on January 6, 1936, in a former Dickensian workhouse in London’s dockland, a devilish combination, more fitting for a horror movie. Thanks to Heaven-sent parents, I endure to this day. At age four I survived a direct hit by an incendiary bomb on my family home on the first day of the Blitz. Following my evacuation to the countryside I was placed in the village school with much older children, where the teacher, not having much time to spend with me, plied me with cigarette cards and foreign postage stamps to keep me occupied. Not able to read, I entertained myself at home by looking at magazines such as Life and Saturday Evening Post, which my father received from American servicemen who frequented the Savoy Hotel where he worked as a waiter. Although Hitler’s bombs disrupted my formal education, I was compensated by the introduction to a visual world. This was in part David Schwartzman due to the small monthly magazine Lilliput, edited by Stefan Lorant, a refugee from Nazi Europe, who pioneered the concept of interspersing picture comparisons between short articles, for example a racing car opposite a hippopotamus.
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By age nine I was finally able to read. My earliest recollection of an interest in the printed word was spelling out my name on those ubiquitous cast-iron stamping machines found on British Railway platforms. My frustration was that for my pennyworth the metal strip could not accommodate the number of characters in my long name. At the end of WWII, my parents opened a small hotel, the Majestic, in Cliftonville on England’s southeast coast. For my tenth birthday, they gave me a 9.5mm Pathéscope Ace hand-cranked film projector, which initiated my passion for motion pictures. Two years later I was captivated to see a film being shot on the beach in front of the hotel. The film’s director, observing my interest in the production, invited me to be an extra. During my school holidays, a friend of my parents, the owner of a local cinema, asked me if I would like to work as an assistant projectionist, but after just one day on the job I decided I would rather be behind a camera than a projector!
Below: Tenth-birthday present, hand-cranked 9.5mm Pathéscope Ace projector
Below: Hotel Majestic ration book cover. Food rationing in Britain did not end until 1954.
Benny Hill, aged 24 He played Reg Varney’s straight-man in the revue Gaytime at the Cliftonville Lido, Margate, 1948
David Schwartzman caricature by Ralph Sallon, 1952
During the summer, armed with pencil and pad and a series of How To Draw books, I would go down to the local park on Sundays to watch the cricket while diligently copying examples from my books. Often sitting behind me on the grass were the two comedians who appeared at the Lido’s variety show— the as yet unknown Reg Varney and his straight-man Benny Hill. Glancing over my shoulder, Hill once quipped “Your noses are coming along very nicely!” There’s a great future in plastics! The following school break, another family acquaintance gave me a job in his plastics factory. The job entailed stencilling floral designs onto plastic cups. Apart from the toxic fumes, the task didn’t exactly tax my artistic aspirations. Two guests who stayed at the Majestic played an important role in shaping my future career. One was caricaturist Ralph Sallon, who was visiting the town to attend a political party conference that he was covering for his newspaper. Aware of my interest in drawing, he took me along, and sat me beside him in the wings of the Winter Gardens theater, as I watched him sketching Britain’s leading politicians. It was sheer magic to see the artist’s work printed in the next morning’s Daily Mirror. The other visitor who made a great impression on me was Abram Games, the eminent graphic designer who had just designed the symbol for the 1951 Festival of Britain. Games became a friend and mentor, whose design philosophy has remained a source of inspiration throughout my career.
Top and above: A letter from Abram Games; Arnold Schwartzman (left) with Abram Games at his home (c. 1980s)
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That same year I enrolled at the local art school. However, my future in design almost ended before it started. Being a keen weightlifter and bodybuilder, the school’s principal caught me one day as I was lifting two heavy bookbinding presses above my head, which resulted in a serious discussion forcing me to decide on which vocation to follow. Life is full of making decisions—in retrospect I made the right one. But, who knows, if I had opted for the alternative—I might have ended up as the Governor of California! After completing an intermediate course, I moved on to Canterbury College of Art, where I graduated with the Ministry of Education’s National Diploma in Design.
Left: Cover, “Font of type” Canterbury College of Art type catalog, 1954
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Introduction
Above: Invitation to a lecture by Hans Schmoller, Canter Hans Schmoller, Canterbury College of Art, 1955
Arnold as the young bodybuilder, 1950
He makes loovly pies you
Illustration “Myth” (inspired by the Camp Coffee label), produced to accompany the article “The Englishman: Decline of a National Invention” by VS Naipaul, 1963 Queen magazine Art director: Tom Wolsey
One of my illustrations for a special Christmas edition of Queen magazine was chosen as a giant backdrop for a live TV commercial advertising this issue. Following transmission, I received a telephone call from Jocelyn Stevens, the magazine’s publisher. He was greatly concerned as the Camp Coffee company was threatening legal action for alleged plagiarism of their well-known label. To my great relief, the dispute was later settled amicably.
Harri Peccinotti, the art director of Nova magazine, commissioned me to illustrate a full page on the subject of North Country cooking. As it was only a couple of days before the press deadline, it was agreed that I would take a photograph rather than produce a drawing. So the next morning I took a train to Manchester, with the idea of photographing the content of a butcher’s shop window with tripe, etc. It was teeming with rain when I arrived in Manchester around midday. As I exited the station I saw a bus bound for Rochdale. I immediately thought of Gracie Fields—how more North Country can that be. I hopped onto the bus and made my way to Rochdale. On arrival, it was still teeming with rain, so much so that I was reluctant to alight from the bus. For some reason that I can’t explain I was formally dressed in a suit and tie, with my 35mm camera around my neck. I dashed across the road to the public library, where I was greeted by a large portrait of “Our Gracie” hanging in the entrance hall. There I learnt that it was half-day closing in this part of the country and the butcher shop windows would be empty! Distraught at the thought of not being able to deliver my photograph, and soaked to the skin, I proceeded to walk up the deserted cobbled streets. By now I was hungry with not a café in sight. Just then I came across a small provisions shop nestled within a terrace of houses. I peered into its window. Other than a packet of Cornflakes there did not seem to be any other edibles, so I walked on. Just then, an elderly woman looking very much like Ena Sharples emerged from the house next door. She gazed at me and said, “He makes loovly pies you know!” When I asked who she was referring to, she pointed to the shop next door. Dripping all over the shopkeeper’s floor, I enquired about his pies. “I’m about to close, but I have a few pies left, savoury meat and a variety of fruit fillings. You’re not from these parts are you,” he enquired. I explained my mission, and my great concern of possibly returning to London without a photograph. “Would you like to see my oven? I am the third generation of my family to have inherited it.” He led me into his kitchen and there, in the back of the shop, was this incredible cast iron oven with the name “The Favorite Ardwick / Manchester” cast onto it.
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know! No sooner had I placed it in position and stepped back to take the photograph, a dog came running out of nowhere and snatched up the pie! A few hundred yards further down the road I came across a small railway bridge, which had a Victorian cast iron plaque dedicated to the local Lancashire railway line. This inspired me to place three of the pies in a row onto the lip of the plaque. As I took my photograph in an even greater downpour, a policeman rode by. On spotting this somewhat surreal scenario he almost fell off his bike! Cigarette card, Gracie Fields, 1938 Player’s Cigarettes
There could not have been a more perfect image to represent North Country cuisine! The oven was empty, so I placed all the pies I had purchased back into the oven and then took my photograph. In my excitement I forgot to turn off the tungsten light so the photograph was somewhat on the red bias. Having now secured my photograph as well as satisfying my appetite I happily went on my way. On leaving the shop, I saw the opportunity of another possible set-up: placing a pie on the street’s wet cobble stones.
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Illustration
Baking oven, Rochdale, Lancashire, U.K. Nova magazine, 1966 Art director: Harri Peccinotti
Publications
Bruce Bernard was my picture researcher on one of my series for The Sunday Times. He was very good, but he was frequently late delivering the images I needed. On the series, Eureka! A History of Inventions, I had asked him to find an early image of a nail, to illustrate the segment on the invention of the nail. The deadline for the first- and second-proof stages had passed, but still no Bruce. Meanwhile I had asked one of my sub-editors, Robert Lacey (now the well-known Royals biographer), to write a caption for the as-yet undelivered image. I then sent the page down for the final proof, it read: “During early times there were many useful uses for the nail.” Finally Bruce turned up slipping a 4 x 5-inch transparency out of his pocket. It was brilliant, a Renaissance painting of a close-up of the hand of Christ nailed to the cross. I immediately sent the transparency off to the processors, totally forgetting the text of the caption that would accompany it! However, at the very last moment I noted the inappropriate juxtaposition of caption to picture and managed to stop the presses just in time! On the issue’s publication, a further complication was that I was reprimanded for not seeking permission from the National Portrait Gallery to reproduce the painting of The Ambassadors, the gallery obviously not realizing that this cover image was a pastiche, as I had commissioned American illustrator Paul Davis to transpose the painting’s scientific instruments for modern-day appliances.
Cover design, “Eureka! A History of Inventions” (Part 1) magazine series, The Sunday Times Magazine, 1970 (Image based on the 1553 painting The Ambassadors, by Hans Holbein the Younger) Series editor: Mark Boxer Art director: Arnold Schwartzman Design assistant: Chris Bower Illustrator: Paul Davis
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Poster, “Shakepeare, Passion and the Body Politic,� 1999 Artistic director: Louis Fantasia
213 Graphic Design
Poster, “Complaints� The An Inalienable Right exhibition, 2014 Curator: Steven Heller The Wolfsonian, Miami Beach, Florida
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Left: Crossing sign, “Sign of the Times” campaign to redesign the “elderly people” road sign, 2017 U.K.Project: Michael Wolff
Left: Concept sketch, “Zebra crossing” “Sign of the Times” campaign to redesign the “elderly people” road sign, 2017 U.K.
215 Graphic Design
Arnold Schwartzman’s taste, talent, and dedication is legendary. Artist, director, designer,
producer, photographer: everything he does is superlative; from making an Oscar-winning film to his dazzling and witty posters and designs for the Los Angeles Olympic Games.
—len deighton , 2000
In this richly illustrated monograph, London-born Arnold Schwartzman recounts his 60-plus years as a renowned graphic designer and Oscar-winning documentary film director. He recalls his early days in the United Kingdom as an illustrator, as well as his time in broadcast television on the legendary program Ready, Set, Go!, also working closely with rock & roll groups, such as The Rolling Stones and The Who. Later, after becoming an advertising agency art director, he received great acclaim for innovative designs and commercials for many high-profile campaigns, notably Coca-Cola, before moving to Hollywood, California, in the late 1970s to work as Design Director for the prestigious design firm Saul Bass & Associates. It was the legendary Saul Bass who recommended Arnold to produce and direct the 1981 Oscar-winning feature documentary, Genocide. His affiliation with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences brought about his commission to design the Academy Awards annual commemorative posters, related print collateral, and theatrical film trailers. In 1982 he was appointed the Director of Design for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, his contribution to the Olympiad’s design much lauded as leading to the Games’ success. In 2001 Arnold was appointed an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) by HM Queen Elizabeth II, and in 2006 was conferred the distinction of Royal Designer (RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts. Arnold expanded his palette to embrace other aspects of design, which include his two murals for Cunard’s MS Queen Elizabeth, and his UN Peace Bell Memorial for South Korea. His extramural activities include serving as Governor and past Chairman of BAFTA Los Angeles, and as the founding Chair of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Documentary Branch in 2001. He is the author and photographer of numerous books, and as an educator he travels the world teaching at leading educational institutions.
$50.00 [USA] £39.95 [GB]