E. McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954), Part II: Shell Oil and Return to America
Note: This is Part II of a two-part exhibition. Please click here to view Part I: The London Years, which includes Kauffer’s work in England from the 1910s until his departure for the U.S. in 1940—with the exception of his extensive work for Shell, which is covered here.
If Kauffer’s work for the London Underground helped to launch his career in the 1910s and 1920s, his advertisements for Shell in the 1930s solidified it, and resulted in some of his most innovative and dynamic designs. Many of these posters are animated by a mechanical, robot-like man that Kauffer designed for Shell, and many are “lorry bills”—large posters that were shown on the side of Shell trucks, which required Kauffer to produce a horizontal design that would be viewed in motion, in contrast to the vertical, stationary posters commissioned by most other clients. By the late 1930s, due in no small part to this work, Kauffer was at the height of his fame. In 1937, New York’s Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition of his posters, only the second monographic show the Museum had given to a poster artist, following Cassandre the previous year. Yet with the onset of World War II, Kauffer’s commissions decreased and, in 1940, he left abruptly for the U.S. In the ensuing years, he produced posters for national and governmental institutions, as well as for the New York City Subway Advertising Company and American Airlines; but he struggled to find clients who supported and inspired him as those in England had. He died in New York in 1954.
Following his death, Kauffer’s work received scant attention compared to contemporaneous graphic designers. Berman has noted that when he began collecting graphic design in the mid-1970s, Kauffer was recognized as a “giant” in the field, but was somewhat neglected relative to French designers. Berman continued to collect the artist’s work steadily over the years, and today his Kauffer holdings are among the deepest by a single artist in the collection.
A number of works from the Merrill C. Berman Collection are included in the major exhibition Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, which is scheduled to open in Spring 2021. They also appear in the substantial companion publication E. McKnight Kauffer: The Artist in Advertising (Rizzoli, 2020), edited by exhibition curators Caitlin Condell and Emily M. Orr and published in October 2020.
Note: The research and writing for both parts of this online exhibition were prepared by Madeline Collins. The cataloguing and biographical information presented in both parts of this exhibition rely heavily on the following publications: Mark Haworth-Booth, E. McKnight Kauffer: A Designer and His Public (London: V&A Publications, 2005); Brian Webb and Peyton Skipwith, Design: E. McKnight Kauffer (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Easthampton, Massachusetts: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2007); Alexandra Harris, The Poster King: E. McKnight Kauffer (Estorick Foundation, 2011); and Teri J. Edelstein, Art for All: British Posters for Transport (Yale University Press, 2010); as well as on the online resources related to the rich holdings of the Cooper Hewitt; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Shell
Kauffer's major client in the 1930s was Shell-Mex BP Ltd. (formed by the merger of Shell and British Petroleum in 1932, and referred to throughout this exhibition simply as Shell), where the head of publicity was Jack Beddington (1893–1959). An art collector who also acquired Kauffer's paintings and rugs, Beddington revolutionized advertising at Shell, hiring leading artists and writers of the day such as Kauffer, John Betjeman, and Paul Nash to create a dynamic, distinctly modern, eye-catching brand identity for the company. The works shown below attest to the many stages of Kauffer's working process in his commissions for innovative campaigns such as “You Can Be Sure of Shell” and “These Men Prefer Shell.”
BP Ethyl Anti-Knock Controls Horse-Power (1933)
In his collecting, Berman has long been interested in bringing together works that represent related stages of the printing process. The nine works shown here illustrate stages in the development of one of Kauffer's most striking posters for Shell, BP Ethyl Anti-Knock Controls Horse-Power, which was issued both as a lorry bill and as a 10 x 20 foot poster. Kauffer incorporated into the photomontage a photograph that, as he wrote on the final poster, he himself shot of the two sculptures of the Marly Horses at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Included here are preparatory photographs by Kauffer of the sculptures.
Selected Posters (1930s–1940s)
As World War II approached, Kauffer found it difficult to obtain work in England, and those commissions he did receive were increasingly related to political events rather than commercial advertising. This was especially the case once he returned to the United States in 1940, where he struggled at first to form relationships with American businesses; as a result, many of his clients in the early 1940s were political and governmental organizations and institutions.
Museums
Kauffer's retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1937 not only helped to ease his transition back to New York in 1940, but also led to commissions from the Museum. Kauffer designed several catalogue covers and other material for the Museum’s exhibitions in the early 1940s, including the cover for his own catalogue. The full catalogue for the exhibition Posters by E. McKnight Kauffer, with notes by Kauffer and a foreword by Aldous Huxley, can be viewed on the Museum’s historical exhibitions page, and installation photos can be viewed at this link. Kauffer was also commissioned to create a poster for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Diamond Jubilee in 1946.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
One of the few commercial clients to commission posters from Kauffer during the war was Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, for whom Kauffer produced the two posters below in 1942 and 1943.
New York Subway Advertising Company
Kauffer's work for the New York Subway Advertising Company hearkens back to his posters for the London Underground, but while his posters for his earlier client advertised destinations, his designs in New York advertised the poster space itself. Kauffer was among a number of notable artists to produce posters for the New York Subway Advertising Company’s 1947 campaign, including Herbert Bayer, Lester Beall, and Paul Rand.
Airlines
In 1943, Kauffer met the advertising agent Bernard Waldman, who became the last great friend and patron of his career. Waldman helped Kauffer secure a major commission with American Airlines, for which Kauffer produced over thirty posters advertising destinations in the United States and abroad; he also produced eight posters for Pan Am.
Legacy
Portfolio magazine (1950)
Four years before Kauffer’s death, he was featured in the first issue of the short-lived graphic design magazine Portfolio (1950-1951; complete in three issues, nos. 1-3). The journal’s art director, Alexey Brodovitch, also art director of Harper's Bazaar, chose to highlight Kauffer's work with an essay by editor Frank Zachary, a portrait of Kauffer by photographer Arnold Newman, and generous reproductions showing different stages of Kauffer's design process.
E. McKnight Kauffer Memorial Exhibition catalogue (1955)
A year after Kauffer's death, a memorial exhibition of his work was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, presented by the Society of Industrial Artists with the support of the Royal Society of Arts. The private viewing was opened with remarks by Kauffer's close friend, the poet T. S. Eliot.