JOHN BERGER WAYS OF SEEING REVIEW TV

When art critic, novelist, and essayist John Berger passed away at age 90 in January 2017, there followed the kind of outpouring of digital love usually reserved for national treasures of the late afternoon TV variety. HollisвЂ™s development of the language of critical reflection on design is on the same high level as the design work collected in the exhibition.вЂњWomen constantly meet glances which act like mirrors reminding them of how they look or how they should look. This event also marked the launch of About Graphic Design (Occasional Papers), a book of collected writings by Hollis, including many texts from Eye. HollisвЂ™s work for the Whitechapel was the springboard for a wider discussion of identity in the form of a conversation with Nicholas Serota (the galleryвЂ™s director during the late 1970s and early 80s), held at the gallery on 26 April 2012. Although it is HollisвЂ™s achievements as a designer that are celebrated here, it is worth remembering that he is also well known as both an educator and, through his books Graphic Design: A Concise History and Swiss Graphic Design, a critical advocate of other designersвЂ™ work. It is a testament to the enterprise of King and gallerist Libby Sellers that what is in essence a museum show is here presented in a commercial gallery space. This device both articulates the work and, along with a simple framing device for the posters, perfectly embodies HollisвЂ™s central message of the beauty of material economy. Simon JonesвЂ™s exhibition design is also remarkable, presenting books and graphics without constantly restating their untouchability, using canted freestanding structures on which shallow, Perspex-lidded greyboard boxes of various sizes are configured according to their contents. The exhibition, superbly curated by Emily King, gives a rich overview while hinting at the wealth of other material by Hollis that could not be included (even so, there are 279 works in the exhibition). Rather, the work is continually liberating: from every question posed, many more flow.

Hollis is clear on the designerвЂ™s role in serving the messages of a client but he is not a problem-solver in the sense of supplying dry answers. They are driven by function and yet they are never merely functional. They seem endlessly inventive, dispatching codes and preconceptions to all corners with wit and modesty. Seen together, HollisвЂ™s works are marked by a constant intensity вЂ“ engaged, direct, economical and at the same time genre-busting, undogmatic and unflashy. It is there again in the slim and slimmer formats of Modern Poetry in Translation (1964-2003), designed with both economy and portability in mind. It is there in the posters for the Whitechapel Gallery in the late 1970s and early 80s, designed to be seen first as folded mailouts, then reconfigured as posters. This design insisted that a book is experienced in time and not just in space вЂ“ a theme that pops up frequently in HollisвЂ™s work. Ways of Seeing nodded to the documentary filmmaker Chris Marker in its confluence of text and image, re-presenting BergerвЂ™s television programmes so that voice and vision are intertwined in a continuous linear narrative.

This makes it compulsive viewing for designers and students of design and curating alike.Д«efore his seminal design for John BergerвЂ™s Ways of Seeing (1972), Hollis had mixed with some of the key designer-artists of the European avant-garde вЂ“ Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse, Karl Gerstner, Josef MГјller-Brockmann вЂ“ whose work generally reflected a synthesis of the plastic arts. At the same time it is mystifying that this is the first serious survey of his work. From the breadth and vitality of the recent densely compiled retrospective exhibition of Richard HollisвЂ™s design work, it is clear why he is regarded as among the most influential British designers of the past 50 years.

John berger ways of seeing review