Visual agility

It is difficult to place oneself in the position of the pioneers of graphic art shown at the Estorick Collection: their extraordinary leaps of the imagination have become the standard vocabulary; the shift from old to new they represent now distant history.

Born in the 19th century when 90 per cent of human understanding came through the naked eye, as adults they were confronted with a reality which was becoming the invisible reverse. Means of communication and commerce had been transformed beyond the scope of normal looking and common intelligence.

Nothing was more spectacular in its effect than electricity, as some of these designs proclaim. This new engine of industry and mass communication turned night into day and transformed and consolidated urbanisation. Gaslight may have calmed neighbourhood nerves, but electric light brought the whole city to throbbing life.

Yet how was this new dynamism, this mind-blowing complexity, to be visually conveyed? That was the artistic challenge and graphic art was the answer — a logical extension of avant-garde activity into mass communication. As the renowned designer of the catalogue, Richard Hollis, titles his essay: ‘Art + Technology = Design’.

The inclusion of some pre-1920 magazines by the Italian futurists shows the first stirrings of using typography as a dynamic design element, emphasising the exhibition’s sympathetic connection with the Estorick’s permanent collection of futurist art. But graphic art as a visual language based on the modernist precepts of pure geometry and proportion arose, principally, through the field of creative tension which existed between artists in Holland, Germany and Russia. The Russian El Lissitzky was the chief emissary, a reminder that this art in itself was the product of a new ease in international communication.

The show is curated by Lutz Becker for the Hayward Gallery touring programme and the works have been selected from the fabulous private collection of the Boston-born Merrill C.