The Art of Display

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display, New York, 1930, pp. 66–67. 2. Keith Walden, »Speaking Modern: Language, Culture, and Hegemony in Grocery Window Displays 1887–1920«, Canadian Historical Review, LXX, No. 3, 1989, p. 301; Susan Lomax, »The View from the Shop: Window Display, the Shopper and the Formulation of Theory«, in J. Benson and L. Ugolini (eds.), Cultures of Selling: Perspectives on Consumption and Society since 1700, Aldershot, 2006. 3. Charlotte Klonk, »Patterns of Attention: From Shop Windows to Gallery Rooms in Early Twentieth-Century Berlin«, Art History, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2005. 4. Whether there are more exceptions than Sweden, besides Germany, in the period is outside the scope of this study. 5. In Sweden, for example, there was a school for window display established in Stockholm in 1932 and the professional journal Skyltfönstret was launched in 1932. This development came earlier in the United States and Canada, where trade unions were formed and professional journals published as early as the 1880s. See Walden, 1989. For the development in Germany and Britain see Yasuko Suga, »Modernism, Commercialism and Display Design in Britain: The Reinmann School and Studios of Industrial and Commercial Art«, Journal of Design History, Vol. 2, No. 19, 2006. 6. Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions. The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism, Cambridge, MA, 2005, pp. 143–197; Maud Lavin, Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design, Cambridge, MA, 2001, pp. 26-49. 7. Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge, MA, 1998, pp. 143–189. 8. Gregor Paulsson, Vackrare Vardagsvara, 1919, pp. 22ff. 9. Marie–Louise Bowallius, »Tradition och förnyelse i svensk grafisk form 1910–1950«, in Utopi & Verklighet. Svensk Modernism 1900–1960, Stockholm, 2000, pp. 217–218; Huvudkatalog Stockholmsutställningen, Stockholm, 1930; Eva Rudberg, Stockholmsutställningen 1930: Modernitetens genombrott i svensk arkitektur, Stockholm, 1999. 10. Hemmet: Konstindustrien Stockholmsutställningen 1930, Stockholm, 1930, pp. 20–21. 11. Bowallius, 2000, pp. 217–218. 12. Bosse Bergman, Handelsplats, shopping, stadsliv: En historik om butiksformer, säljritualer och det moderna stadslivets trivialisering, Stehag, 2003, pp. 41–42; Jan Garnert, Anden i lampan: Etnologiska perspektiv på ljus och mörker, Stockholm, 1993, pp. 176–177. 13. For the development in the United States see Walden, 1989, p. 289. In 1898 the National Association of Window Trimmers was organized and its journal Show Window was launched. For Germany see Uwe Spiekerman, »Display Windows and Window Displays in German Cities of the Nineteenth Century: Towards a History of a Commercial Breakthrough«, in C.Wischermann and E. Shore (eds.), Advertising and the European City: Historical Perspectives, Aldershot, 2000, pp. 157–158 and 169. 14. Suga, 2006; Kenth Hermansson, I persuadörernas verkstad: Marknadsföring i Sverige 1920–1965. En studie av ord och handling hos marknadens aktörer, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in Economic History 36, Stockholm, 2002, p. 95. 15. Walden, 1989, p. 309. 16. Lomax, 2006, p. 283. 17. Walden, 1989, p. 301. Naturally this also holds for the mass arrangement of identical goods that appeared in the 1930s. 18. Walden points out this relationship, but does not elaborate on the implications of these formal similarities. See Walden, 1989, p. 300. 19. Lomax, 2006, p. 278. 20. Herbert N. Casson, Twelve Tips on Window Display, London, 1924, p. 30. A Swedish translation of the book was published in 1938: Tolv tips för fönsterskyltning, Stockholm. In the following presentation all citations are taken from the original English version of the book from 1924. As Cassons's book appeared in Swedish it probably had some impact on window decoration practices in Sweden. In this context it is worth noting that Frederick Kiesler's book Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display (1930), mentioned above, were, on the contrary, not translated into Swedish or discussed in the professional press in the period. Maybe it was even not circulated in the country, as no copies of the book exist in any Swedish library today. 21. Tom Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, vol. 1, Stockholm, 1967, p. 419; Handelsdekoratören, July 1928, p. 35. 22. Skyltfönstret, No. 3, 1932, p. 1. 23. 3 Anders Ekström, Representation och materialitet: Introduktioner till kulturhistorien, Nora, 2009, pp. 151–155; Klonk, 2005, pp. 478–480. 24. See for example the advice in Elis Pettersson, »Ett par arrangement för skyltfönster utan bakgrund«, Butikskultur, No. 5, 1934, p. 6; Skyltning, 4:e brevet, brevkurs i Sveriges Köpmannaförbunds regi, 1934, pp. 44–46. 25. Oscar Lundkvist, »Skyltfönsterteknikens principer", Butikskultur, No. 1, 1932, p. 10. 26. Harald Rosenberg, »Våra skyltfönster av idag«, Svensk Reklam, Stockholm, 1930, pp. 111–120; Elis Petterson, Hur ska jag skylta i mitt fönster. Råd och anvisningar utarbetade för svensk specerihandels tidning, Stockholm: Hebos förlag, 1934, pp. 8 and 78; Skyltfönstret, No. 10, 1933, p. 9; Skyltfönstret, No. 1, 1933, p. 17. 27. Anna Dahlgren, »Commercial Realism: Concepts on Photography in Advertising in the 1930s«, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, Vol. 76, No. 3, 2007, pp. 135–146. 28. Harald Rosenberg, »Våra skyltfönster av idag«, in Svensk Reklam, Stockholm, 1930, pp. 116–117. 29. Kiesler, 1930, p. 27. 30. »En konstnär om butiksskyltningen«, Butikskultur, No. 1, 1936, p. 14; see also Harald Rosenberg, »Våra skyltfönster av idag«, in Svensk Reklam, Stockholm, 1930, p. 116. 31. Casson, 1924, p. 11. 32. Gerhard Törnqvist, »Reklamprofessor suggereras av 'Lampan som gör glad'«", Kooperativa Skyltfönstret, No. 2, 1936, p. 4. Törnqvist writes: »vi lever i brådskans tid, vilken kräver koncentration«. 33. Pettersson, 1934, p. 6. 34. Kiesler, 1930, p. 102. 35. Påsar, burkar, paket: Förpackningarnas historia i vardagens konsumtionskultur, Ulrika Torell, Roger Qvarsell and Jenny Lee (eds.), Stockholm, 2010. 36. »Några sammanförande synpunkter på modern skyltning«, Butikskultur, No. 2, 1932, p. 16. 37. Machine Art, March 6–April 30 1934, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Sixtieth-Anniversary Edition, 1994. Staniszewski, 1998; Suga, 2006. After Machine Art (1934) there were several exhibitions on industrial products as design. See for example Useful Objects (1938) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) in Paris. 38. Harry Ungewitter, »Fotografiet i reklamens tjänst«, in Svensk reklam, Stockholm, 1930, p. 79. 39. Larsson, 1930, pp. 3–4. 40. »Några sammanförande synpunkter på modern skyltning«, Butikskultur, No. 2, 1932, p. 18. In Swedish: »Det kräves något helt annat för att fånga de förbipasserandes blickar i våra dagar än för bara ett eller ett par årtionden sedan. Allt har nu ett annat tempo än förr. Vi leva inte i det stillsamma berättandets tid utan i en tid, då allt meddelas i filmtempo, snabbt, för att glömmas och följas av andra intryck.« 41. Martin Jay, »Scopic Regimes of Modernity«, in H. Foster (ed.), Vision and Visuality, Seattle, 1988. 42. Jay, 1988, pp. 6–7. 43. Skyltning, 4:e brevet, brevkurs i Sveriges Köpmannaförbunds regi, 1934, p. 43; I.L-n., »Specerihandelns skyltning«, Butikskultur, No. 3, 1938, p. 10. 44. See Björklund, 1967, Hermansson, 2002 and Louise Nilsson, Färger, former, ljus: Svensk reklam och reklampsykologi 1900–1930, Uppsala, 2010. 45. »Med vilka varor skola vi skylta? «, Butikskultur, No. 5, 1937, p. 8. 46. Sam Widenfelt, »Förpackningen som reklam«, Svensk reklam, 1929, p. 71. Widenfelt writes in Swedish: »En förpackning är närmast att jämföra med en affisch, där effekten ligger i den suggestiva teckningen och en kort reklamtext, slogan eller dylikt.« 47. Walden, 1989, p. 308. 48. Harald Rosenberg, »Våra skyltfönster av idag«, in Svensk Reklam, Stockholm, 1930, p. 108. 49. Casson, 1938. 50. Casson, 1924, pp. 14–15 and 111–112. 51. Magdalena Holdar, Scenography in Action: Space, Time, and Movement in Theatre Productions by Ingmar Bergman, Stockholm, 2005, p. 16. 52. Kiaer, 2005, pp. 143–197. Whether the constructivist artists of the 1920s and 1930s were executing window displays is yet to be discovered. 53. Lavin, 2001, pp. 45–56. 54. Jackson Lears, »Uneasy Courtship: Modern Art and Modern Advertising«, American Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 39, 1987, p. 146.

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