“A Paul Rand Retrospective” ran from October 4 to November 8, 1996, at The Cooper Union/ Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography and Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery. It was organized by faculty member and former Rand student at Yale, Georgette Ballance, who also introduced a conversation between Rand and me on the exhibition’s opening night in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union. This was his penultimate public appearance (the last was at MIT in conversation with John Maeda). Rand died on November 26, 1996.
It was one of a dozen Q-and-As we did together. He had claimed he preferred this format to giving a lecture. Indeed he was in his comfort zone.
Below are selected clips from the Cooper Union evening event, starting with my introduction of Rand.
Below, Rand responds to W.A. Dwiggins’ critique of modern designers, which he derisively called “those Rand boys,” accused of disrupting typographic conventions and following the Bauhaus approach and tradition (which Rand called “very vague.”)
Rand discusses the role of intuition and play in art and design, below. “I just like being playful,” he said.
Rand on art schools in general, the content of textbooks, and the teachers, “of course.” Most teachers, he said, talk about technique, biography, and if lucky, aesthetics and beauty, another vague topic, which is usually drowning in sentimentality . . . (below)
On Rand’s first introduction to the Bauhaus, which was never mentioned in art school (below). Rand told his mom he wanted to go. “Fortunately we were too poor . . . ,” or Mr. Hitler would have got him, he said.
In this last clip, Rand discusses the role of imitation in art and design — in fact, the necessity of doing so. “Even Picasso imitates,” he said. He also talks about the need to have good — enthusiastic — clients in order to do good work. “I don’t know how you get them,” he noted, “you just have to be lucky.”
The post The Daily Heller: Excerpts From Paul Rand’s Penultimate Public Conversation, 1996 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.