Harper’s Bazaar

Cover design by Herbert Bayer, 1940.

“total design”

“[Herbert] Bayer perhaps best exemplified the principles promoted by the Bauhaus, especially its core concept that good design by itself could improve the human condition. Bayer fervently believed and enthusiastically promoted this idea despite all evidence to the contrary in Nazi Germany at that time. Also, throughout his long career, Bayer espoused the key Bauhaus goal of unifying all the arts into a single expression that he called “total design.” Though best known as a graphic designer who created everything from signage to letterheads, Bayer also produced paintings, photographs, sculptures, earthworks, site plans and buildings.”

—Michael Paglia, from Herbert Bayer: Beyond the Bauhaus, an article in Modernism magazine, Summer 2005.

lower case letters

“In 1925, shortly after [Walter] Gropius asked him to head up the graphics and typography workshop at the Dessau Bauhaus, [Herbert] Bayer designed his universal type, a simplified sans-serif design limited to lower case letters. Bayer convinced Gropius to use only lower case letters for all Bauhaus communications, from magazines to signage to invitations. In fact, Bayer would use only lower case letters for the rest of his life, including for the titles of all his future art works.”

—Michael Paglia, from Herbert Bayer: Beyond the Bauhaus, an article in Modernism magazine, Summer 2005.

mound with ring of water

Sketch for a proposed mound with ring of water, Herbert Bayer, 1956.

Out of SPACE—out of TIME

“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon named NIGHT
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—out of TIME.”

—Edgar Allen Poe, from Dreamland. As quoted in The Power of Blackness by Narry Levin, 1958.

the full, and the black, and the wild eyes

“these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes—of my lost love. . . .”

—Edgar Allen Poe, from Ligeia. As quoted in The Power of Blackness by Narry Levin, 1958.

devilish dark

“DAGOO: What of that? [a streak of lightning] Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! I’m quarried out of it!

SPANISH SAILOR: (Aside) He want to bully, ah!—the old grudge makes me touchy. (Advancing.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.

DAGOO: (grimly) None.”

—Hermann Melville, from Moby Dick. As quoted in The Power of Blackness by Narry Levin, 1958.

The symbolism of terror

“The symbolism of terror is universal. Otherwise, Death would not ride a pale horse in Scripture, and the Ancient Mariner would never have been bedeviled by an albatross. The glitter of Antartic snow and ice . . . was the single mystery that Poe had left unresolved. . . . One effect of taking mescaline, Henri Michaux has recently testified, is an impression of “absolute white, white beyond all whiteness.” Truly, Melville seems justified in characterizing such an impression as ‘a dumb blankness, full of meaning, . . . a colorless all-color of atheism from which we shrink.’”

—Narry Levin, from The Power of Blackness, 1958.

Though black frost nip, though white frost chill

“Though black frost nip, though white frost chill,
Nor white frost nor the black may kill
The patient root, the vernal sense
Surviving hard experience.”

—Hermann Melville, from Clarel. As quoted in The Power of Blackness by Narry Levin, 1958.

the floor of Heaven

“Look how the floor of Heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;”

—Lorenzo, William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.