back

CONTAINER CORPORATION

OF AMERICA

 

ALPHABETICAL DISPLAY OF COMMISSIONED ARTISTS

 

ARTICLE, GRAPHIS 30, 1950 Egbert Jacobson
ARTICLE, GRAPHIS 30, 1950 Egbert Jacobson
ARTICLE, FORTUNE. Prepackaged War

 

 

The campaign to integrate design with marketing, with consumer needs and with the attributes of the civilised society are neatly encapsulated in the forty years of CCA advertising. The main themes are 1. the imagery of the various American States by a denizen, 2. Great Ideas of Mankind, and 3. a slow descent into the full face direct gaze of the Pert Young Thing, with or without infant. Commissioned artists included the International Modernists (Bayer, Carlu, Cassandre), the lesser known provincial artists, and the immigrants.

The philosophical thrust of the campaign had a certain nobility, deflecting the Creatures of Mammon from a concentration on the Bottom Line to the values of Humanism; extolling that liberal democracy so much under attack in these Trumpish times. There are some genuinely powerful images devoted to the unpromising theme of packaging and the Cardboard Box.You'll find surprising work by artists found elsewhere on the Visual Telling of Storeies, Stuart Davis, Richard Lindner and Feliks Topolski. There are also some lacklustre sloshing about in pigment.

The trajectory of the campaign is helpfiul in modelling the development of postwar Graphic Design. in negiations between home and abroad, the role of letterforms in the design, the marketing challenges of the product in Peace time and at War, the representation of cultures beyond the United States.

This may appear to you an overkill. I want this tabulation to be regarded as a tribute to Walter Papecke and the CCA. Thedre is a gallery structure allowing you to browse

at his desk (Youtube) and the commissioning of artists

 

gallery 01
gallery 02
gallery 03
gallery 04
gallery 05

JEAN CARLU
JOHN MASSEY

 

 

singles

Fernand Leger 1945

A.M.Cassandre, 1937

Mark Tobey

John Atherton

Walter Allner

Lemuel Line

Alvin Lustig

Richard Lindner

Henry Moore

Joseph Gerling

Czermansky 1945

James Lockhart 1948

 

 

 

back