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graphic language: HERBERT BAYER'S ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
PEDER ANKER
ABSTRACT
Environmental debates are greatly indebted to artistic communication. This article discusses the work of the former faculty member of the German Bauhaus school, Herbert Bayer, who introduced modernist imagery in relation to globalization, conservation values, and maps dealing with environmental concerns in the United States. His Romantic defense of environmental design demonstrates that the humanist legacy of modernism has made more constructive contributions to the history of environmental debate than its critics have been willing to admit. Bayer's global humanism and environmental designs created a visual language of colors, images, symbols, and dynamic illustrations that aimed at harmonizing human relationships with the natural world.
| THE WORK OF VISUAL artists, graphic designers, and cartographers has an enormous impact on popular perception of the environment, yet that work is rarely a topic for historians of the environment or environmentalism. The tendency has been to downgrade art, graphic design, and maps in favor of textual evidence. When admitted, such images usually play a fairly narrow role: Artwork often spices up an otherwise dry discussion, graphic design may provide the reader with an illustration, while maps typically answer factual questions with respect to topography. Though there are examples to the contrary, such as the "Gallery" section in Environmental History, the scholarly trend has nevertheless been to downplay the impact of design as too vague for serious historical investigation. |
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Fortunately, environmental historians recently have begun to explore the importance of photography and film for understandings of nature.1 Thanks to historians of cartography, the rich layers of social power that maps embody have also been exposed.2 Graphic design, however, has been largely ignored. This article will serve as a remedy by discussing the work of Herbert Bayer. As a former faculty member of the German Bauhaus school, he introduced modernist imagery in relation to globalization, conservation values, and maps dealing with environmental concerns in the United States. Measured in terms of dissemination, his work as a graphic designer became so widespread in environmental debates that few today question where and how this style emerged. The widely used recycle symbol may serve as an introductory example to which this article will return. |
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The call to cross social, natural, or disciplinary boundaries has been one of the hallmarks of environmental history.3 Yet it is also a field known for maintaining its own demarcations such as "preservation" versus "conservation," "Arcadian" versus "managerial," and "anthropocentric" versus "biocentric." These categories help to organize efficient narratives for readers and students, while at the same time leaving untold stories that do not fit into pre-established categories.4 Bayer may serve as an example. His graphic work represented a neo-Romantic "Arcadian" attempt to reconcile managerial capitalism with humanistic values and protection of the environment as a whole. He sought to harmonize the humanist legacy of his European background with industrialization of the natural world in the United States. This modernist humanism—derogatorily labeled as "anthropocentrism" by some—has offered more to the history of environmental debate than the chauvinism toward nature that critics point out.5 |
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