Abram Games at
The Jewish Museum
Albert Street, Camden Town
...to 18 January
Last week my wife and I visited the Abram Games exhibition at The Jewish Museum in Camden Town. Abram Games (born Abraham Gamse) was a graphic artist who nowadays is perhaps most famous for designing the 1951 Festival of Britain logo...
Games' career had taken off in the 1930s as he produced bold, deceptively simple commissions for commercial and public advertisers. Many of these fit into the period covered in The Teeth of Beasts.
I think it is easy to imagine Sam Velludo standing on a Tube platform, smiling approvingly at a Games poster. Sam would certainly have admired the incorporation of brand names into the advertisements, the mingling of words into illustrations. "Maximum meaning, minimum means", was Games' maxim.
During the 1939-1945 war, Games complained to the government of the sterility of advice posters for the troops. He was consequently appointed the only official 'Government Poster Artist', producing many posters very much 'for the troops. Images of dead children and soldiers made their point to the audience in HM Forces, but would have been deemed unsuitable for public consumption.
The harsh 'Your Britain: Fight for It Now' series by Games, which focused on the future beyond the wartorn present, were on public display to some limited extent (though Churchill himself was offended by them). In their realism and optimism, Games' series differed significantly from the nostalgic, ruritanian versions created by fellow illustrator Frank Newbould.
One of Games' posters above, from 1942, pictured a wrecked tenement and a vision of modern flats to be built in the peace. This represents what happened after the war far better Newbould's vision of a return to the past. Where now, for instance, is the home of Rotti Michaels in Ernest Street, London E1? Long gone!
The exhibition is really instructive, artistically and commercially interesting, and many of the posters are really fun. The Jewish activist elements - Games produced work for shuls, AJEX, Jewish refugees (WJR), various Israeli and non-Jewish causes - are often still recognisable from current branding. And as Jonny Blazer would like to have done, Games ended up in Golders Green...
The exhibition is really instructive, artistically and commercially interesting, and many of the posters are really fun. The Jewish activist elements - Games produced work for shuls, AJEX, Jewish refugees (WJR), various Israeli and non-Jewish causes - are often still recognisable from current branding. And as Jonny Blazer would like to have done, Games ended up in Golders Green...