Here’s a challenge: Let’s say you had $1.1 million to give away on a program to inspire people working in Jewish organizations as well as the people who find themselves in their public spaces.
What would you do? Hand out baseball cards with the pictures of famous rabbis and leaders? Produce mix tapes of Israeli rap music?
Philanthropist Harold Grinspoon had a different idea, and the result can be seen in an exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center of 18 posters commissioned to marry the work of great Jewish graphic designers and artists with inspirational Jewish quotes. Called “Voices & Visions,” the display is on view through March 17.
The featured quotes range from Martin Buber (“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware”) to the Baal Shem Tov (“From every human being there rises a light”). There are rabbis galore: Hillel, Tarfon, Akiva, Heschel as well as authors such as Blu Greenberg and Susan Sontag.
My personal favorite is designed by Paula Scher. All it shows is a person purposefully walking, wearing a suit, depicted in profile from the waist down, with a quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.”
There is also a series of accompanying texts — viewable online at skirball.org — that are produced by writers as diverse as Erica Brown, Rabbi Daniel Gordis, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin and Rabbi Irving Greenberg.
Grinspoon’s eponymous foundation, located in western Massachusetts, recently distributed 6,000 complete sets of the posters to Jewish institutions, PJ Library partners and cultural organizations. They are available for free through the program (voices-visions.org), at least for the first set, and there is a limited, signed edition that either will be given, offered for sale or offered at auction.
The concept behind the project is the famous ad campaign by the Container Corp. of America, called “Great Ideas of Western Man,” which ran between 1950 and 1975. Its posters by accomplished artists and designers such as Fernand Léger, Milton Glaser and Saul Bass, featured quotes from such inspirational thinkers as John Stuart Mill, Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln.
Grinspoon wondered if the same could be done pairing great Jewish quotes with Jewish graphic designers and artists. He discussed the idea with his friend Nancy Berman, a former curator of the Jewish Museum in New York and the founding director emerita of the Skirball. Berman knew Louis Danziger, who had worked on the original Container Corp. campaign. He, in turn, suggested Arnold Schwartzman as artistic director, at which point the project began to take shape.
Schwartzman was born in London, and, as a child during World War II, his home was destroyed on the first day of the Blitz — his family had to be dug out of the rubble. Later, his family ran a kosher hotel in the seaside resort of Margate. He attended art school and then went into military service and was posted to the Korean DMZ, where his chaplain was Chaim Potok, the author and rabbi. Upon his return, he began a career as a graphic designer, first in television and then in advertising.
Schwartzman, who moved to Los Angeles in 1978, has brought his talent to everything from the London Times to Coca-Cola commercials to the 1984 Olympic Games, where he was design director. He won an Oscar for best documentary feature for 1981’s “Genocide,” has consulted on design to the Academy Awards since 1996 and has produced some 10 books, numerous films and too many ads to tally. In 2002, Queen Elizabeth appointed him Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Schwartzman has been a longtime member of the prestigious Alliance Graphique Internationale, an organization of the world’s greatest graphic designers, and the friendships he developed there informed the all-star list of graphic designers and artists he assembled for “Voices & Visions”: Glaser and George Tscherny (both of whom worked on the original Container Corp. campaign), Art Paul (Playboy’s founding art director, who came up with the bunny logo), Hungarian-born Israeli design icon Dan Reisinger, R. O. Blechman (known widely for his New Yorker cartoons), Israeli master designer Yarom Vardimon and many others, including Schwartzman himself.
All are Jewish, for which Schwartzman has no explanation other than the pattern of Jews entering professions for which there was no bar to entry; those raised in religious homes who rebelled by finding a vocation making graven images; and a realization that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of peddlers, once ensconced in advertising and “brand identity,” remained good salesmen. The styles are eclectic, from typography-dominated to visual symbols, from the fine art to the abstractly commercial, some in which Jewish references exist subtly and others more obviously.
“Voices & Visions” was supposed to take four months to put together; instead, it took 18 months. Madeline Calabrese, the program director, explained that a “quote team” was created that not only researched and found potential quotes to be used, but also cleared them, when necessary, for copyright purposes. This took some time.
The purpose of the posters, Calabrese said, is to beautify space in Jewish public institutions as well as render old quotes anew, to “let the artist develop a first take” and trust that conversations will ensue.
The notion that a poster can change a mind, brighten a day or start a conversation seems at first far-fetched. But as people read less, the way they connect to thoughts and information is increasingly graphic and design-driven. (There’s a reason Apple Inc. is worth as much as it is.)
At the Skirball, there is a companion exhibit, “Decades of Dissent,” which features posters that effectively politicized the world. Meanwhile, at the Hammer Museum, there is an exhibit, “Graphic Design: Now in Production,” on logo and brand identity design as well as book design and infographics.
(In a separate contest, the “Voices & Visions” program, in conjunction with PJ Library, invited children ages 7-12 to create their own posters expressing their ideas about tikkkun olam. One of the 12 winners was Stella Feldman-Abe, 7, of Westchester.)
All of which reminds us that although a picture may be worth a thousand words, great design helps us see those words in new ways and find new meaning in sayings that have themselves stood the test of time.
SIDEBAR: ARNOLD SCHWARTZMAN master designer
Arnold Schwartzman, the artistic director of the “Voices & Visions” program and one of the most accomplished designers and documentary directors of our times, is a story unto himself. Recently, I spent a few very companionable hours at Schwartzman’s L.A. home as he shared some of the details of his personal journey and professional career.
As Schwartzman related, he was born in modest circumstances in London’s East End. His mother was born in England, and his father had arrived as a young child from Lodz, Poland. His father worked as head waiter at London’s Savoy Hotel. However, during World War II on the first day of the Blitz, their home was bombed. “We actually had to be dug out of the rubble,” Schwartzman recalled. His parents survived, but he was evacuated to the countryside for the duration of the war.
After the war, his parents moved to Margate, a seaside resort that had been evacuated during the war. Seizing the opportunity, they started a rooming house, which in turn they traded up to purchase and run a small kosher hotel. (Coincidentally, it had been used at one point during the war to house the children of the Kindertransport.) Schwartzman is currently at work on a documentary about Margate.
Recalling his war-interrupted childhood, Schwartzman said, “I had an almost nonexistent formal education. I taught myself to read and write. What I liked was to draw. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. They wanted me to go into the hotel business. I wanted to draw. So I went to art school.”
Military service followed. Schwartzman was posted to the DMZ in Korea, where his chaplain was Rabbi (and later author) Chaim Potok. Many years later, Schwartzman asked Potok to write the introduction to his book, “Graven Images.”
After military service, Schwartzman found work as a graphic designer, first in television, then in advertising as a creative director. “My major account was Coca-Cola,” Schwartzman said, recalling that, “I got the Who to perform for our commercials.” From advertising he became design director for Terence Conran’s company, but managing people didn’t appeal to him so he went off on his own.
A friendship with famed Hollywood graphic designer Saul Bass, who was in London at the time working on his own feature film, “Phase IV,” led to Bass calling him to say: “How about you come to L.A. to be my design director.” Schwartzman demurred but Bass was so enthusiastic and insistent that Schwartzman finally agreed. Within three months, he and Isolde, his second wife (who is also his production partner and manages all the logistics of his projects), had moved to Los Angeles – this was 1978 — and they’ve been here ever since.
Schwartzman liked Los Angeles, but working for Bass? Not so much. “Once again, it was a mistake. I was running a studio, managing lots of people but not doing as much design.” After six months he resigned. Bass took him out for a drink, and asked: “What are you going to do now?” Bass told him that just that morning he’d got a call from this new organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, to do a 15-minute film for them. Bass had imagined they might do it together but as Schwartzman had quit, he’d turned them down. A few minutes later, Bass said, “You’re not doing anything now, why don’t you do it?” That was the start of “Genocide.”
What began as a short 15-minute film for the nascent museum took more than two years and involved research in archives in West Germany, France and at Yad Vashem in Israel. While in Jerusalem, Schwartzman was able to contact British historian Martin Gilbert, who also happened to be there. “Within months he wrote a fantastic script.” The Wiesenthal Center was able to get Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles to narrate. Schwartzman was able to get Elmer Bernstein to do the score.
They originally conceived of having multi-projectors telling the story – eventually 21 in all, coordinated by computers. When they finally screened the film, the response was so favorable that one of the viewers, Barry Manilow, suggested that if they put it together as being disseminated from one projector, then it could be submitted for the Oscars, which they did just in time – and won the best documentary feature Oscar for 1982.
Schwartzman also regaled me with an anecdote about Simon Wiesenthal, whom he got to know during the making of “Genocide.” Once when visiting Wiesenthal’s overstuffed office in Vienna, Schwartzman spied a card file bursting out of cabinet, marked “M.” Is that for Mengele? Schwartzman asked. “No,” Wiesenthal explained, “It’s for ‘Meshugges.’ You wouldn’t believe some of the letters I get!”
Schwartzman consulted on several more films for the Wiesenthal Center over the years, including “Echoes That Remain” (1991) and “Liberation”(1994).
Another incipient organization, the Skirball, asked Schwartzman to consult on the graphic design of their initial installation, which included Jewish timeline panels as well as a kaleidoscope room of Jewish images.”That was fun putting that together.” Since then, Schwartzman has also consulted on other exhibits for the Museum of Tolerance.
Since 1996, he has designed many key elements of the Academy Awards, including posters, trailers and programs both for the award ceremony as well as the Governor’s Ball. In 2010, the Cunard Line commissioned Schwartzman to paint two murals for their new “Queen Elizabeth” ocean liner.
Which brings us back to “Voices & Visions” exhibit. What was supposed to take four months, took 18. A lucky number in Jewish lore. Lucky, I would say, for “Voices & Visions” — for Schwartzman proved to be not just a master designer for the poster initiative but also a master among designers.
