Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, July 12, 2022: McKnight Kauffer, an American graphic designer (#1619)

Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890 – 1954) was an American artist and graphic designer who lived for much of his life in the United Kingdom. He worked mainly in poster art, but was also active as a painter, book illustrator and theatre designer.

Hailed in his lifetime as “the poster king,” McKnight Kauffer believed that the street was an art gallery for the people. While living in England between 1914 and 1940, Kauffer produced radical posters for advertising that introduced modernism to the public. He experimented in provocative ways with line, form, space, and color to promote services and products. He did not limit himself to posters, and designed a remarkable range of book covers, rugs, theatrical productions, and more, continuing his work in New York from 1940 until his death.

At the height of his career in the 1920s and 1930s, Kauffer, an American, was among the most influential artists in England. In 1940, he moved to New York, joining the influx of European designers who brought dynamism to American advertising. His remarkable output includes eye-catching posters for the London Underground, illustrations for celebrated works of literature, and iconic graphics for major corporations such as Shell-Mex and American Airlines.

Through collaborations with his peers in art, literature, performance, and film, Kauffer widened the scope and impact of his practice. A champion of new media, Kauffer’s work included commissions as varied as film titles for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger, illustrations for T. S. Eliot’s Ariel poems, costumes for theatrical and ballet productions, and covers for novels by H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and Ralph Ellison. He shared a dark room with Man Ray and worked with groundbreaking textile designer Marion V. Dorn, who would later become his wife.

Kauffer resisted deﬁning himself with one place to call home, one community of friends, or one artistic style. He was constantly in motion, fulﬁlling a lifelong impulse for travel and a hunger to experience something new. Kauffer and his friends embraced modernism in their creative work, lifestyle, and attitudes toward sexuality, gender roles, and politics. Though Kauffer considered himself a progressive and an egalitarian, his commissioned work tells a more complicated story about his ideals, his privilege, and his perspective on race.

His dedication to design as a social responsibility guided his distinguished career and defines his legacy. “The artist in advertising is a new kind of being,” Kauffer wrote in 1938. “His responsibilities are to my mind very considerable. It is his business constantly to correct values, to establish new ones, to stimulate advertising and help to make it something worthy of the civilization that needs it.”

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