Art Eyewitness Essay
Thames & Hudson's Museum without Walls
By Ed Voves
Original Photography & Display Presentation by Anne Lloyd
2024 is a big year for anniversaries in the art world. The National Gallery in London is celebrating two hundred years of showcasing classic works of art to the British public and throngs of foreign tourists. This year, there will be one hundred candles on each of the birthday cakes for the Morgan Library and Museum, the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
To these sanctuaries of culture and beauty, we at Art Eyewitness send well-deserved accolades and best wishes for the future. At present, though, we will be taking a look at another, slightly younger, venue for creative expression, now celebrating its diamond jubilee.
Happy 75th anniversary to Thames and Hudson, the "Museum without Walls."
As i mentioned in the tenth anniversary post of Art Eyewitness, we owe a special debt of gratitude to Thames and Hudson, through its New York office, for its incredible support of our endeavors.
Thames and Hudson, known as T&H to just about everybody who loves art, was founded seventy-five years ago. In 1949, Walter Neurath and Eva Feuchtang, joined forces to launch a publishing firm dedicated to integrating text and image in books aimed at scholars and culture-loving readers in the general public. Their plan was publish quality illustrated books and market them at affordable prices to a wide audience.
With a meager start-up fund of £7,000 (much of which was Neurath's life savings) founding T&H was a risky venture. Yet, the new partners, both refugees from Nazi persecution, had a limitless passion for culture. They aimed to publish books which would serve as a "museum without walls."
"Museum without Walls" sounds like a savvy advertising slogan. For Walter and Eva Neurath (they married shortly after T&H's first volumes came off the presses) the high-sounding words were deeply felt, becoming part of the mission statement of T&H.
Attention to practical matters, starting with the name of the firm, was a priority for the T&H founders. "Thames and Hudson" was selected because the new company's orientation was geared to an Anglo-American audience. "Thames" was chosen for the river which flows through London, with "Hudson" representing New York City.
For a company dedicated to coordinating word and image, an eye-catching logo is a must. The Neuraths' selection was a brilliant one, based on the traditions of early publishing, yet appealing to the modern eye.
Two dolphins, "symbolizing friendship and intelligence" swimming in opposite directions, west and east, suggested a "transatlantic connection."
When the T&H dolphins first swam into view, Great Britain was still coping with post-war "austerity" measures. The first T&H book lists in the early 1950's stressed British-culture. With much of Britain, especially London, still in ruins from bomb damage, books like English Cathedrals (1951) were a good choice - and a major success. English Cathedrals remained in print for two decades.
The Neuraths had global ambitions, however. They aimed to reveal the world of art in all its glory and publishing books in series format was their chosen technique.
An early and long-lasting T&H series dealt with ancient history and the latest findings from excavations the world over. A number of the volumes in "Ancient Peoples and Places" were written by the archaeologists who had led the "digs." Carl Blegen (1887-1971, the great American archaeologist whose discoveries at Homeric sites in Greece and Turkey have yet to be surpassed, authored the T&H book on Troy.
With the success of "Ancient Peoples and Places", Thames and Hudson never looked back. Today the number and variety of T&H book series is astonishing. All emphasize the seamless integration of word and image.
It would be fruitless to try and encompass the extent and achievement of the many book series of Thames and Hudson. Instead, I will focus on one to do justice to the many: "World of Art."
As with "Ancient Peoples and Places", scholars with authoritative knowledge of their subject, like John Boardman, were commissioned by T&H. Several of these writers, as I was to discover, were major figures in the dramatic events of modern art. But the volumes they wrote were anything but "I remember when" memoirs.
One of the first "World of Art" books which I can remember buying was a second-hand copy of Miro by Roland Penrose. Thanks to visits to MOMA, I had finally overcome my resistance to modern art but was still mystified by Miro. I had no idea of who Roland Penrose was nor of his stature in the British art establishment. After reading Miro, the same was true. "World of Art" books deal with art, not the cult of personality.
Camilla Gray was born in 1936. Her father, a curator at the British Museum, did not believe in college education for young women, so she studied ballet. During the 1950's, Gray had an opportunity to visit the Soviet Union to study dance. She became fascinated with Russian art during the era of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Not only was there a shortage of books in the West examining the achievements of Natalia Goncharova, Kasimir Malevich and other leading artists of that pivotal moment in modernism - there were NO books on the subject. So Camilla Gray decided to write one herself.
Without a university education or many contacts in the academic world, Camilla Gray set to work. She mastered the Russian language and searched libraries and museums for examples of Russian art and documents from the years bracketing 1917. Short of funds, Gray worked temp jobs, including a term as a library assistant at the New York Public Library while she researched the archives at MOMA. In 1960, she was able to return to Russia for a short time, interviewing some of the surviving members of the Revolutionary-era avant garde.
Gradually, Gray's narrative account of Russia's "great experiment" took shape. With important help from Alfred H. Barr, Kenneth Clark and others, Gray completed her manuscript in 1962, which T&H published as a large-format hardback.
Thames and Hudson was taking a chance on Gray's book, not only because she was an unknown writer. The Cold War was at its absolute nadir in 1962 with the Berlin Wall stand-off and the Cuban Missile Crisis threatening nuclear war. Few people in the West, especially in the U.S., could be expected to buy a book on Bolshevik-era artists.
The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 1863-1922, as the book was initially called, was an immediate success. It was (and remains) compelling to read and authoritative in its assessment of the bold Russian artistic initiatives before Stalin's clampdown on culture in the 1920's. Gray's book was translated into a number of languages. Russian was not one of them. Soviet authorities were enraged at the book's honesty and candor.
Tragically, Camilla Gray did not live long to savor her triumph. Soviet authorities thwarted her attempts to marry the Russian poet and artist, Oleg Prokofiev, son of the famous composer. When, finally, Gray was able to travel to Russia and marry Prokofiev, she contracted hepatitis and died in December 1971.
Thames and Hudson, to its great credit, endeavored to keep Camilla Gray "alive" by maintaining her book in print. The Russian Experiment in Art was reissued as a "World of Art" title and in 1986 was expanded with notes and an introduction by a prominent scholar, Marian Burleigh-Motley. Other histories of early 20th century Russian art, benefiting from access to archival material denied to Gray, have since been published. But Gray's classic work endures, secure in its long-term place in the ranks of "World of Art" titles.
By the time that the expanded version of The Russian Experiment in Art appeared, T&H's "World of Art" was undergoing a major transformation. The entire series was now appearing in glossy-covered paperbacks with more color illustrations and new introductory chapters to keep the text abreast of scholarship and recent discoveries in archaeology. The cover art of these 1980's-90's "World of Art" editions often had a bold, cinematic tone which I thought was consistently superb. Never was this more true than with History of Film, published in 1995.
On should not judge a book by its cover. But I am going to go "out on a limb" and state that the cover of T&H's History of Film is the most visually engaging of any book cover design that I have ever seen. And David Parkinson's masterfully succinct text, surveying the evolution of film, is a perfect match to this image.
A bit of an exaggeration?
Consider that creating motion pictures, In terms of an artistic genre and as an entertainment industry, is a two-fold endeavor. Shadows flash on a wall at 24 frames per second, somehow, mysteriously, telling us a story.
That is what we see on this T&H cover and why I find it so compelling.
One generation's defining style in painting or sculpture quickly becomes "old hat" or "Victorian" to the next. So with graphic design.
Around the turn of the millennium, T&H shifted to a new format for "World of Art." Sharply-cropped images, displayed in a rectangular setting, appeared on the covers of new titles like Five Centuries of British Painting by Andrew Wilton, the curator of the J.M.W. Turner collection at the Tate Gallery in London.
For a person who grew-up watching wide-screen sagas by such directors as David Lean and Stanley Kubrick, the 1980's-90's book covers imparted an epic tone to "World of Art" titles. For younger art lovers, attuned to the small screen of television and the smaller computer screen, the "Y2K" covers were a perfect fit.
The wheel of time is ever-turning.
With the approach of the company's seventy-fifth anniversary, Thames and Hudson commissioned the Dutch design firm, Kummer & Herman, to help them create a new visual identity for "World of Art". The cover designs were to reflect the legacy of the Neurath's guiding principles back in 1949. Strikingly modern in appearance, "World of Art" covers would reflect the series' openness to a changing world, as well as the deep roots of human creativity.
The Kummer & Herman designers achieved this complex goal by basing the new cover lay-outs on a grid, "inspired by the the Golden Ratio; the system of mathematical proportion believed for millennia to be the secret of aesthetic harmony in nature, art, and design."
The Golden Ratio grid format would enable "World of Art" designers to "create endless variations, while at the same time unifying all individual books within the continuing series."
Since, 1958, three hundred "World of Art" titles have been published. Despite Thames and Hudson's loyalty and commitment to the authors of its books, many of these vintage "World of Art" titles have gone out of print. One of the most recent to do so is a long-term classic in the series, A Concise History of Modern Painting, written by Sir Herbert Read.
Originally published in 1959, A Concise History of Modern Painting was a brilliant book which helped to establish the reputation of the entire series. Revised, enlarged and updated over the years, Read's book was a favorite with readers and the T&H editorial board. Finally, the decision had to be made, retiring this classic "World of Art" title and commissioning a new account which would evaluate the global spread of modern art since Read died in 1968.
The latest addition to "World of Art" is an exceptional a book, as worthy in its way as Read's time-honored volume. Simon Morley dates the birth of Modernism to the 1820's, decades before Cezanne. He widens the coverage of recent years to include artists like Julie Mehretu and Albert Oehlen, whose work addresses the dissonances of modern life, of which there are certainly many!
I had thought to finish this tribute to Thames and Hudson with a comparative look at these two appraisals of modern art, Read's and Morley's. On further reflection, to do justice to both, I have chosen to leave that task to a future post.
To comprehend the achievements of Thames and Hudson is more than a matter of analyzing and critiquing this or that book. Of course, T&H is in the business of selling books. But this company, still owned and managed by the Neurath family, really is dedicated to the concept of creating a "museum without walls."
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Text and original photos: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved
Original photography, Copyright of Anne Lloyd
Images courtesy of Thames and Hudson: Thames and Hudson book covers and photo of the dolphin floor mosaic from Thames and Hudson headquarters.
The concluding image of Thames and Hudson logos, one from the 1950's, the other from recent years, comes from zuma.creative.com/thameshudson.html
The photo of Camilla Gray and Oleg Prokofiev comes from the archives of the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
