Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)

Ferenc Csaplár: Kassák the Book and Advertisement Artist

Ma, 1921, collage on paper Apart from technical considerations, the red and black colours on the cover of Ma may well be thought to signify political commitment. The simultaneous use of square and circle, larger and smaller elements, horizontal and vertical structures, printed and empty surfaces, and red and black within one single composition brought about a whole series of conflicting images. The asymmetric structures of the compositions also expressed an attempt to create tension. The final aim of the composed disquiet radiating from these works was again meant to intensify the effect. The mutual presence of harmony and tension can be observed in Kassák's designs for advertisement kiosks.

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8 In the case of his first-known kiosk, which can be dated to 1924, there were contrasts between the tall hoarding-like walls, the cubical newsstand and the letter-box, between the colouring and placement of the advertisement walls, and between the captions on the advertisement walls as a result of the horizontal and vertical direction of the type-setting. Harmony and tension, quiet and commotion are simultaneously present on the advertisement kiosk designs printed in Tisztaság könyve, too. The characteristics of Kassák's graphic art in advertising after 1921 are related to, and in fact contribute to, a process of international renewal. It is tied in several ways to the art created in the workshops of Weimar Bauhaus circles and the avant-garde groups in Berlin, Hanover and The Hague, as well as Russian Contructivists. When Jan Tschichold characterised the hopes of the Constructivist movements in the graphic arts in advertising in his "Elementare Typographie" ("Elementary Typography")

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9 published in 1925, his analysis fit Kassák's works point by point. Kassák's work in advertising is indeed closest to his "pictorial architectures". They are in fact "functionalised pieces of pictorial architecture", that is, abstract geometric works that have become examples of graphic art in advertising as a result of the informative texts built into them.

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0 Kassák usually carried out tasks of applied graphics as an artist: he made his advertisement graphics by starting out from forms and schemes he had invented as a painter of panel paintings and as a graphic artist, sometimes using them with no or minor modifications. He designed, for instance, the cover page of the July 1922 issue of Secession by reproducing a piece published in the pictorial architecture folder brought out in late 1921. The eye-catching element on the cover of the volume 1924 was the pictorial architecture that had been printed in the 15 November 1923 issue of Ma. The cover designed for Tibor Déry's volume of poetry Énekelnek és meghalnak ( They Sing and Die) can be traced back to two earlier works of art: to a collage made up of a circle and slightly diagonal rules and to a painting with the very same structure.

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1 The advertisement graphic has the same base structures as pictorial architecture: one is characterised by the horizontal and vertical arrangement of elements and the other by the use of the slightly tilted, not wholly diagonal, central axis.

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2 Some of the line, rule and beam structures designed to carry out specific graphic tasks in advertising may be regarded as works of abstract geometry, particular varieties of pictorial architecture. This is exemplified not only by the several versions of the title of the Ma magazine, but also the first word in the title of Új művészek könyve (The Book of New Artists) designed on principles of cliché lettering,

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3 by the letter A representing a monumental edifice on the poster design entitled Steyer Auto,

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4 and by the letter T placed as the axis of the composition on the cover of the leaflet Tó mozi (Tó Cinema).

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5 The endeavour to achieve artistic effect can also be observed on the pages of publications designed by Kassák. An excellent example of this is the compilation "Bildarchitektur" in the 15 October 1922 issue of Ma. A full column of text with its heading, set vertically on the upper left-hand side of the column and printed red so as to give the impression of a red rule, and the pictorial architecture printed in black and red within each of the three columns of the facing page all together combine into a new composition. Other issues of Ma provide plenty of examples for the arrangement of columns and illustration material on facing pages that gives the impression of geometric structures and of schemes of pictorial architecture. The frequent use of rules, beams and the geometric figures which fill out the surface also demonstrates the endeavour to create structures. The way Kassák printed his long poem „A ló meghal és a madarak kiröpülnek" ("The Horse Dies and the Birds Fly Away") in the first and only issue of the magazine 2X2 was rather special.

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6 The typographical-graphic composition made up of the text of the title associates the ideas of a horse and a bird, of dying and flying away. The text of the poem itself associates the idea of ceaseless wandering, since "it appears not in verse lines but in the full width of the makeup of the printed page; it creates dense pages, where lines are separated only at various intervals by black asterisks placed at the end of lines, and the clear beading of slim antiques is severed by dark gems at irregular space intervals."

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7 The facing pages of György Hercz's [Hernádi's] vol72