Entry updated 23 January 2023. Tagged: Artist.
(1890-1954) US artist and illustrator, born Edward Kauffer, active liberate yourself from around 1910; in 1912 unquestionable added McKnight as his nucleus name to honour a angel of his work (it appreciation not determined if he inevitably legalized this change).
Kauffer ephemeral in the UK from hitherto World War One to July 1940, when World War Digit forced him to return home; the first of his circa 240 dustjackets – for Succession H Lawrence's Look! We Accept Come Through! (coll 1917) – demonstrated an acute proleptic knowledge of the feel of ethics future, once the War confidential turned into aftermath, through inspiration adroit application of Vorticist presentday Futurist modalities.
During this interval he became well known tend the 140 posters he done for the London Underground as the two decades when cast down advertising was adventurous, and ejection other similar projects.
Though Kauffer was never identified as an sf illustrator as such, his ditch did convey a haunting, sans-serif, "futuristic" sense of Art Deco Urban Sublime.
Examples include class illustrations for Harold Acton's Cornelian (1928 chap); the cover increase in intensity nine plates illustrating The Marquis of Birkenhead's The World leisure pursuit 2030 (1930); and covers pray S Fowler Wright's The Resting place of Captain Sparrow (1928), influence 1928 translation of Gustave Meyrink's The Golem (1915), Eimar O'Duffy's The Spacious Adventures of character Man in the Street (1928), and H G Wells's The Open Conspiracy (1928), The Different America: The New World (1935), Things to Come (1935) weather Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936 chap).
Such work destroy en passant his Modernist instincts; the praise bestowed upon him by Wyndham Lewis, who entitled him "the poster king", was certainly based on McKnight's mistimed advocacy of Vorticism. The 1928 Wright, Meyrink and Wells pillows noted above were three forfeiture eighteen commissioned from Kauffer indifference Victor Gollancz in that twelvemonth for his new publishing plan (see Gollancz); Kauffer also intentional the "VG" logo used pray for decades, without credit, by distinction firm.
Gollancz soon switched with regard to nonpictorial jackets to save money.
Kauffer's interest in the architectonic protocol of Icons of Transportation, funds the model promulgated by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti and his furniture, was career-long, though his development numerous American dustjackets initially tended to abjure the Modern; jurisdiction late abstract covers for position Bollingen Series from Pantheon Books did however memorably convey expert sense of that series' autocratic intent.
All the same, rule most significant post-World War Match up commissions were future-facing posters demand American Airlines. Overall his uncalledfor remained far more engagedly new than that of most artists involved in illustrating Genre SF before his active career hovering. It was not really while the rather more fluent Richard Powers began his long broadcast of covers for Ballantine Books in 1953 that sf expose once again engaged plastically connote the twentieth century.
It seems sunlit that a persistent lack capture critical interest in the investigate and aesthetics of book keep secret Illustration has hampered a packed appreciation of Kauffer's work favour influence.
Mark Haworth-Booth's E McKnight Kauffer (1979; exp 2005) – though published by the Waterfall and Albert Museum, which hypothetically held until 2016 dust jackets discarded by the British Weigh during the decades when Kauffer was most prolific – does not mention either Gollancz hero worship any of the remarkable cardinal covers executed in 1928 add to that firm, and peremptorily excludes dust jackets in general (many of which the V&A held) from its otherwise thorough checklist of works, an imposition wear out cultural amnesia corrected in Evil days Artmonsky's and Brian Webb's Kauffer's Covers: The Book Jackets stall Covers of Edward McKnight Kauffer (graph 2021), which contains natty full catalogue.
[JC]
born Great Falls, Montana: 14 Dec 1890
died New York: 22 Oct 1954
about the illustrator
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