On a page well in to this generously proportioned and beautifully designed book, Saul Bass, a Life in Film and Design, is a photograph of Bass, taken in 1980, the protean designer sitting on an elegant Thonet bentwood chair, the visual fruits of his creative life mounted on a wall behind him: logos, pack designs, film posters, including one done for Kubrick’s film, The Shining, with its ghoulish face reversed out of a capital letter T. In his left hand Bass clasps a model jet airliner, coated in the livery he designed for United Airlines. At his feet lie two piles of silver film reels, a reference to another of his film works, notably Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm. There are more than a score of other designs present, including corporate work for Quaker, Rockwell and Warner Brothers.
Though Bass had more than a dozen years of his career still ahead of him when this portrait was taken, in one sense it is a taking stock of achievements so far. At this time he was one of the most celebrated designers in the world, and more than that, he had helped to shape post-war visual culture. Bass was born on 8 May, 1920, in the East Bronx, New York City, the second child of hard-working Jewish immigrants, who later encouraged his flair for art. Even as a schoolboy he showed the magpie instincts of the true designer, with his passionate interest in the visual world coupled with an ability to ‘collect’ visual gems that had caught his eye, and to adapt and transform them to his creative needs.
As a boy he spent a lot of time looking at the special exhibitions in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The works he liked most were artefacts from Egypt and other ancient civilisations. Bass credits MoMA for ‘some of the most delicious, indelible memories’ of his childhood. A design for Ohio Blue Tip Matches, on page 302 of the book, shows a mirror-image motif of a highly stylised face, loosely based on Aztec iconography.
After leaving the Art Students’ League, where he was a scholarship student, in 1938 Bass went to work for Warner Brothers as a ‘lettering and paste-up man’ for $20 a week. Jonas Rosenfeld, the ad executive who employed Bass recalled his ‘willingness to experiment’. Bass was an innovator, a life-long quality that worked as a catalyst in the formation of his design habits. Shortly after, when he had gone to work for the Fox Corporation, he was to bring about an historically important design innovation when he introduced to film advertising his first love, the high-design standards set by the glossy magazines.
But the most important shaping influence on Bass as a designer was still to come. Word reached the eager Bass that George Kepes, a Hungarian émigré, and Bauhaus protégé, was now teaching at Brooklyn College. Bass enrolled immediately. Kepes proved to be the guru Bass was looking for. Kepes’s book, Language and Vision (1944) was one of those rare texts that accommodated both high-falutin’ modernist design theories and examples of brash contemporary American advertising. The penthouse and the pavement, so to speak, between the same covers. ‘He really just set me on fire,’ recalled Bass of his mentor, decades later.
László Moholy-Nagy, the fabled Bauhaus teacher, and previously colleague of Kepes at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, had written a book, The New Vision: From Material to Architecture, that was to have a lasting influence on Bass. These two elder designers opened up a new world for the younger man. The beautiful title sequence for the film Casino, starring Robert de Niro, with its highly kinetic visuals, can be read as a homage to Maholy-Nagy’s 1930 film, the shimmering and visionary, Light-Space Modulator. (Only Bass’ wife Elaine, muse and lifelong co-worker at Saul Bass and Associates, was to have a greater influence on him.)
Jennifer Bass, Saul’s daughter and design historian, Pat Kirkham, expertly and passionately chart the trajectory of Bass’s career and life in this lively book, making for a fascinating story. This book comprises nothing less than a 400-or so page treasure chest of visual delights. Martin Scorsese, the film director with whom Bass was to have so many fruitful collaborations, pays him an apposite tribute in the foreword. ‘This book,’ he says, ‘so carefully designed and lovingly assembled, is a fitting tribute to a great artist. A giant. And now, welcome to the world of Saul Bass.’
