Friday, March 27, 2009

THE IMMENSELY INFLUENTIAL ALEXEY BRODOVITCH


Surely one of the most influential of all American artists was Russian emigre Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper's Bazaar magazine from 1934 to 1958. It's hard to exagerrate what he did during those years. He transformed an ordinary womens magazine into an avante-garde art magazine that managed to sell clothes at the same time it was transforming the country's way of seeing the world.



Actually Harper's is still out there on the stands, but as you can see (above) it's a pale shadow of what it once was. 



I'm amazed that Brodovitch managed to sell so many middle-class women on something as weird as surrealism. 



I'd be amazed if the art magazines of the day offered the same value for the artsy dollar as Harper's and its imitators (above). 



Some of the best photographers of the day worked for Brodovitsch: Brassai, Henri-Cartier Bresson, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, just to name a few. 



You could have framed the covers. 



In case you don't recognize the name Richard Avedon, that's his work above. The leaping girl holding the umbrella at the end off this piece was Avedon's too. Harper's was full of pictures like these and only cost 45 cents in 1947.



Can you believe this (above) was on the cover of a mainstream magazine? Women were reading this stuff when their husbands were reading "Field & Stream."



High fashion magazines were criticized for their use of cold, souless models. No doubt that harmed the women who were dumb enough to try to imitate that cold model lifestyle in real life, but what about all the other women? For them these magazines increased their awareness of art, of all things graphic, of style and sophistication.



A number of old covers like the one above and the Vogue cover higher up, contained... I don't know what else to call it...an element of evil.  The women on the covers look like they're staring out at the reader from a room in Hell. It's weird. I can't figure out what that means.



I wonder if Brodovitch and Harper's were unwitting catalysts of the feminist movement. Women who read these magazines over a period of years must have developed a more artsy attitude about life than their husbands, and that was bound to cause a disconnect somewhere down the line. Even today you see more women in art museums than men.  

Mens magazines like Playboy tried to catch up by wedding naked pictures to essays and sophisticated stories, but that effort, admirable and flamboyant as it was, wasn't exactly comparable to what Harper's achieved. Harper's was actually in the forefront of the art world. For about fifteen years Harper's readers actually got to participate in a real, high-quality, cutting-edge art movement. It must have been exciting! It may have changed a generation of women. 

Playboy was actually the true successor to Harper's, and it succeeded in its turn in influencing a whole generation of men. I don't know of any magazine that does that now.


16 comments:

  1. It would be so amazing if something like this would happen today. the eyes scared me a little though.

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  2. /Very thoughtful post. Thanks for the introduction to Brodovitch. I'll keep my eyes open for more about him.

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  3. Anonymous7:06 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I'd have subscription if the covers were a tenth as cool as they were back then.

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  5. Anonymous10:57 AM

    Esquire under Arnold Gingrich tried to do what you suggest, eschewing the nudity of Playboy and going for class fiction, but it ultimately devolved after Gingrich died into a weekend jock affirmation manifesto for mental midgets.

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  6. Anonymous1:53 PM

    Your recent posts on old fashion magazines have been great, Eddie.

    Here's an interesting essay by the art critic Robert Hughes on the relation between surrealism and design:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/
    mar/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview13

    And don't forget that this was a period when even Walt Disney thought it was a good idea to have Salvador Dali on the payroll!

    http://www.animationartconservation.com/
    destiny_of_dali_destino.html

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  7. Anonymous4:04 PM

    Dude, Eddie. Go to Ishotmyself.com (it's not what it sounds like). Lotta great pictures there.

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  8. I believe you and I have different definitions of the word sophisticated, Eddie.

    Just looking at the overdressed woman standing in front of the chained elephants makes me nearly nauseated.

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  9. >>A number of old covers like the one above and the Vogue cover higher up, contained... I don't know what else to call it...an element of evil. <<

    Really interesting observation.

    They're from the late 30's..."whole lotta fascism goin' on".

    nice post again.

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  10. I may be mistaken, but isn't the elephant one Richard Avedon?

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  11. Ryan: Holy Cow! You're right! I just checked and the elephant picture was by Avedon. Ditto the girl with the umbrella. Thanks for the correction!

    Brian: I almost did the whole post on the subject of the morality of expensive clothes. I'll try to do that in a future post.

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  12. I own one Richard Avedon photograph. It's an outtake from the sessions that produced what became the American album cover of Electric Light Orchestra's "On The Third Day". It's huge, it's like the world's largest instant Polaroid photograph. He would set the shot up, and have his assistant take the photo at his command. I'll have to take it out of storage and make a digital version to post up.

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  13. Stephen: Thanks for the interesting article, but I'll have to wait till tomorrow to finish it. The "Destino" images had more legal warnings attached to them than any pictures I've ever seen on the internet.

    Anon: Haw! Interesting site!

    Last: Avedon was terrific. A book on him came out recently and the reproduction was completely inadequate. People who read that still won't know what the guy was capable of. The recent Brassai book was sub-standard too.

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  14. I've seen an exhibit of his photographs - you really have to experience them up close and personal - I attended the In The American West exhibit - holy cow! - was it really twenty-five years ago? - It was better than the versions that appeared in Rolling Stone around that time.
    A friend gave me a contact for Laura Wilson, Avedon's assistant, to authenticate the photo I have and establish provenance. I was preselected ahead of time to appear on Antiques Road Show last year when it was in Dallas, but when the show came to town, I was down with a stomach virus. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

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  15. Anonymous11:00 AM

    Great post.

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  16. Hi Eddie,

    Don't know if you'd be interested but here's a link to some images from one of Harper's Bazaar's "sister" publications:

    HARPER'S WEEKLY

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