International studio (59.1916)

A rt and the Magazine Coven

The decorative significance of the Ladies’
Home Journal issue for March, 1916, with its cover
design by Carton Moorepark at once marked out
the Curtis Publishing Company as pioneers of
the best quality of design in magazine covers and
as a firm gifted with prescient knowledge of the
real public taste. The enthusiasm evoked on all
sides plainly shows that the public is perfectly
able to appreciate the good and to give it prefer-
ence over the vulgar or commonplace. Where
the high-water mark of cover design lies none can
say, but at least it may be affirmed that this new
departure has raised the mark very considerably
above its previous level. A standard of excellence
has been set and bids fair to be maintained.
Beyond a limited list of constant subscribers
the disposal of the popular magazine depends far
more upon cover than contents. The passer-by
seldom looks beyond the outer leaf in selecting
an armful, so that the message sent forth by the
cover is of far-reaching results. That Birds have
defeated Beauties in this forum of public opinion
testifies to an inherent taste for better things in
the public mind, proving in fact that the average
person possesses, even though mildly, an aesthetic
perception which might under favorable cir-
cumstances develope into connoisseurship and
devotion to the real principles of art.
We all know the origin of toujours perdrix, how
a French monarch rebuked his minister for in-
timating that he should pay more devotion to
his wife, the queen, than to the ladies of the court,
whereupon the hapless minister was incarcerated
for a while, but treated with every kindness ex-
cepting that at each and every meal partridge was
served. The moral is easy to supply and it applies
to the Pretty Girl upon the magazine cover. Let
her, by all means, continue to smile upon us, but
not to the exclusion of all other subjects equally
worthy to be artistically rendered. It is only
when she nauseates by persistent appearance that
we wish her condemned to the hoardings and the
chocolate box. The Curtis Publishing Company
have deserved well of the public in thus breaking
away from that tiresome jade, custom, and en-
couraging additional ideas.
The design originating what is to be hoped
will be a series of Bird Patterns are Cockatoos,
followed up by Flamingoes, the latter being, if
anything, an improvement upon the first. The
features of these productions are novelty of design
and restraint. The feeling aroused is that here
we have something new and original; something

that does not hark back to the East nor savour
of the British academic attitude. We see here
birds treated with perfect expression in point of
character, their scientific aspects carefully con-
sidered with necessary concessions to artistry.
In a word they are decorative but truthful, and
the unessential has been eliminated. The sole
appeal to the aesthetic senses is through pure
decoration. It is a step toward that far-off ideal
where commercial or utilitarian art shall be in-
separable from the beautiful. Birds as motifs for
design have not received heretofore such attention
in America as in England where the great name of
Edwin Alexander and Joseph Crawhall at once
occur. The Beggarstaff brothers, the Detmolds,
and Carton Moorepark, whose “Book of Birds”
won him reputation as far back as 1898, are
worthy followers of the tradition.
We do not for a moment suggest the elimina-
tion of the Maid and an endless chain of Bird
designs in exchange. Perish the thought! That
would be a still more flagrant example of toujours
perdrix. All we ask is more taste and discrimina-
tion, greater artistry in the cover and above all
things, more variety. Willy Pogany for the
Metropolitan Magazine frequently selects for his
pattern young women of bewitching face and
form, but he renders them with imagination and
charm, consequently they make universal appeal
and are thus aesthetically satisfying. The same
applies to many humorous or satirical covers
issued by Vanity Fair and Vogue. We protest
against mere meaningless pulchritude, amorous
rubbish turned out by cheap craftsmen with
brains as light as the material they produce.
Such stuff is commercialism without a suspicion
of art to conceal it.
The Magazine Cover viewed as the popular-
picture gallery has great possibilities and the
illustrations here shown are evidence that the
Curtis Publishing Company are fully alive to the
opportunities which this field of endeavour pre-
sents and are utilizing the services of men who
refuse to pander to a section of the public en-
dowed with tastes that are stupid or vulgar.
The insipid pretty-girl head is not the alpha and
omega of the magazine cover.
We heard recently of a publisher who was on
the look-out for a “snappy” “Life of Christ.”
So much “snap” wanders into the magazine cov-
ers that possibly the supply is insufficient even
for so praiseworthy an object.

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