FORTUNE'S
AMERICA, THE VISUAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF FORTUNE MAGAZINE
The research
tasks were divided up between us, Phil Beard and Chris Mullen. Our
questionnaires rolled out and as the warm responses from participants
rolled in - from Jane Mull, Heneniah Harari, Barney Line and Hank
Brennan, I asked Phil what was the best thing that could happen. "That
Petruccelli is alive and keen to answer questions."
Hank had been the Art Director during Tony Petruccelli's heyday and
I had forgotten to ask him about our hero. "Sure," he wrote, "Tony
lives in New Jersey. A place called Mount Tabor. Give him a ring."
With
my copies of his covers assembled on the table I called the number
and he answered straight away. I explained what we were doing at
some length and said how much we admired his art. How can we find
out more? There was a pause. A hand went over the receiver. "Hey
Toby" he called out, "Fame at last."
Toby,
I found out quickly was his wife, sitting behind him in the room.
That was how it started. For the Norwich show, Tony did the colour
separations for the poster, printed by Mel Clark at the Norwich School
of Art. He answered questionnaires, and was generous in his information
on the execution of the covers, which for us were the glory of the
magazine before 1945. The show in Norwich was a success in the terms
Phil and I had decided on at the beginning. The Librarian Willi Guttsman,
an amusing but irritable man, agreed to the Library's exhibition
space being used for this exploration of capitalist imagery. He refused
to have the catalogue on open sale. The rotter, I thought. I got
no money back until the show opened in Rochester. Despite our having
a great poster designed by Penny Hudd with colour separations by
Tony, Willi refused to acknowledge the show to the rest of the University.
Roy Church, Professor of Economics said he would have arranged classes
for his students had he known it was there. I did give an impromptu
talk to a visiting American academic, and that was about it. Still,
several old FORTUNE hands from the UK turned up. Paul Hogarth came
up for the Private View, and was delighted how much of his reportage
work we had included.
I flew
out with the tear sheets of the FORTUNE exhibition in a carrier bag
to be delivered to R. Roger Remingtron who was to stage the thing
at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He was to give the material
the spread and presence we believed it needed.
Tony
and Bob Reed met me at JFK, believing that I looked like the commercial
artist depicted on Cigarette Pack Art. After
a moment of confusion Tony took me to his huge big-finned car in the
car park. Missing every turning available to take us home we swept
out into the night, arriving hours
later in Mount Tabor. Tony was a tiny sparkling man who could barely
peer over the steering wheel without a
pile of cusions. Bob Reed whom I had known of as a magazine collector
beamed at the adventure of it all. The meat loaf cooked by Toby
was reduced to a blackened lump about the size of a bar of soap.
We talked
well into the night. I was taken to a bedroom leading off the Lounge
and unloaded by tape recorder, camera and film. What hospitality,
what a thrill it all was... The house you'll see in my photographs,
small neat and surrounded by larger houses on all sides except
the vista to the golf course and the distant horizon. I was unprepared
for the summer's heat and its effects on me. We sat outside a lot
during the days that were to follow in the Petruccelli's picnic area.
The hospitality was warm and generous. "English Muffins, just
for you.
" I kept to myself that I had never eaten them in my life. Toby
was the sweetest of supportive wives, averting her gaze at the more
eccentric of his claims. I turned down the orange juice at breakfast
which had been fermenting unobserved over the weeks in the 'fridge.
There was too much to do in America for me to succumb this early
to a stomach bug.
I soon
realised that my research methodology was too conventional for conversations
with Tony. I returned the pile of miniature tapes to my suitcase
and just chatted. He had been a modestly successful commercial artist
whose peak of celebrity had been years ago. I am always alert to
the tendency of the interviewed subject to cautiously skirt critical
successes and disappointents (Tom Eckersley, Nigel Henderson,
Humphrey Spender and others). Rare it was for my interviewee
to ponder the world from a critical eminence. Perhaps David Watkin
was the only great man who was at ease with his own work and achievements.
The
questions given to Tony just couldn't get too incisive. Who was I to
adopt a lofty perspective of what had happened? The rise of the European
Art Director (Leo Lionni, Walter Burtin for example) had ensured
that American talents working for FORTUNE (and elsewhere) either
conformed to the Modernist patois, or else withered on the
vine. After 1946, and with decades ahead of him, his work was restricted
to lesser publications, and in the end, to the occasional commission.
He clearly missed swimming in the shoal. Hans Barschel made a telling
observation we found useful to apply to Tony, that American Graphic
Design before the arrival of the Bauhaus men and women (and that
included Barschel) was almost medieval in its colours and compositions.
Tony's
conversation was just too mercurial and unstructured to help me create
any dogged narrative line. Much more fascinating was his delight
at being in employment with its visual challenges, sudden trips up
to FORTUNE's offices at a moment's notice to fill the occasional
space with vignette or diagram.
What
came through regularly in his conversation and calculations was the
insecurity of freelance illustration, with a family to support. "Too
many martinis," he said sorrowfully when contemplating his career.
Those he loved and respected brought light and passion into his
life, such as Eleanor Treacy and subsequently Hank Brennan. Such
was the peripatetic nature of his life as a jobbing illustrator he
didn't seem to have regular and informative encounters with others
of his trade. He remembered passing Ernest Hamlin Baker and Boris
Artzybasheff in the corridor with wisecracks and jossing.
His greatest
awe was reserved for Richard Edes Harrison, the cartographer whose
generous maps and projections gave FORTUNE's such panache and authority.
"We're all going to a party at the Buerks, and he'll be there."
That
was only a part of it. Tony and Bob ran me with the carrier bag of
FORTUNE tear sheets to Rochester, stopping at his son's house on
the way. Where shall we take you? What do you want to do? Such care
and consideration. I got to Diners and Malls. Just talking was enough
for me. I got to see Bob's magazine collection. Bob ran me the Fairleigh
Dickinson Library to meet Jim Fraser. Bob and Jean were volunteers
there. Jim had been under the surgeon's knife and discharged himself
from hospital the previous day in order to meet me. Imagine that.
Jim drove me to a certain book shop he knew of in Brownsville where
there was a half-price sale. All my purchases and some carefully
chosen duplicates from the Library and the American Outdoor Advertising
Archive were sent back to Brighton in huge canvas sacks.
I learnt
so much. It was clear that my employers at the Norwich School of
Art was pathetic and provincial, not from deployment of resources
but from a cautious perception of what could happen in education.
Jim was terrific at attracting sponsorship and bequests from generations
of European avant garde artists and designers who escaped a murderous
fate in 'Thirties Europe. Renee Weber was in charge of the Advertising
Archive, a position that also funded her editorship of the Journal
of American Printing History. She still hated the song, 'Walk Away
Renee' that had plagued her early years at school. At Rochester Roger
had given up the Chairmanship of the Department to concentrate on
developing the storage of digital images and data on optical disks,
a development I was desperate for my employers in Norwich to contribute
to.
Fat chance.
Wherever
I was during my stay , whatever I did, there was Tony Petruccelli
beaming in a paternal way.
Back
in his studio he went through his FORTUNE cover art work, his proofs
and work for other magazines. He was eager to show me more, and to
have it all photographed. One day he had a treat planned for me -
a demonstration to be committed to film of his airbrush techniques.
He was clearly a designer who had bright sparkling ideas that often
involved multiple repeated elements of pattern making. These would
be carried out with a meticulous craftsmanship often involving different
depictions of lighting, with chalky shafts of light, sudden gleams
and halation, jagged edges of lightning. Great, I said. Air brushing
it is.
Next
morning we went through to the first floor studio at the apex of
the house. His generator and air brush were laid out and various
cut silhouettes ready for use. I wanted to witness how he balanced
the manipulated paint with airbrushed elements. How were they laid
down? How did the shapes meet? how was one overlaid?
The camera
was loaded. The tape recorder was alive. Sadly for posterity, Tony
discovered that his apparatus was rusted into uselessness. A pain
and frustration was generated that I hadn't seen before. I once saw
a documentary on the photographer O.Winston Link who demonstrated
his complex battery of lights required to make portraits of locomotives
in transit, only to discover after ignition of the battery of bulbs
that he hadn't loaded a film.
"Never
mind Tony, keep pointing and I'll keep taking the pictures."
Just
before I left, after three weeks in Mount Tabor, Bob Reed took me
aside. He wanted to say how much Tony had enjoyed my visit.
I couldn't have known that in order to offer me shelter he had actually
built another room on to his house.
From
the perspective of the morning I now write in Brighton (December
2009) , I still can't quite grasp the actuality of this generosity.
Tony got to the Rochester Show and contributed to a discussion Roger
Remington organised for the students (Petruccelli, Barschel, Allner).
I still have a tape of the event which I showed one afternoon to
the cinematographer David Watkin. "I
know who I'd keep the camera on... " David said. "You mate
is alive and kicking. Can't disguise what he is thinking on his face."
Hans
Barschel was modest and gentlemanly. Walter Allner was driven by
the need to set his seal on the afternoon's proceedings. Never an
opportunity lost. Then there was Tony, keeping his end up, a spirit
of sheer wickedness colouring his own contributions to the discussions
and his responses to the others on the panel.
I spread
my collections of Petruccelli FORTUNE covers out again today on the
table. They still thrill, delight and amaze me. I feel that this
part of my website is in part a recognition of what I owed to Tony
and Toby. He believed me when I said that I wanted to proselytize
his work. Now, at last, I believe I have done it a small amount of
justice.
Tony and Toby, the complete Collection, photographed on my visit to Mount Tabor.
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