TRIBAL people The “Shock of the Old” and the Passion of George Lois 134 FIG. 1 (left): George Lois and Rosemary Lewandowski-Lois with their remarkable New Ireland uli figure, presently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photo: front cover of Art & Antiques, March 1993. FIG. 2 (above): George Lois with Muhammad Ali. Photo: David Turnley for Vanity Fair, 2003. FIG. 3 (right): Cover for Tribal Art magazine designed by George Lois. Tribal Art Magazine: As an art director, designer, author, and advertising “guru,” you have been active since the 1950s, which was a revolutionary time in the development of communications and of world awareness in U.S. culture. It was also a time where African art reached new heights of popularity for U.S. collectors. How do you remember your early interest and how it started? GEORGE LOIS: In 1945, when I was a fourteenyear old student at the High School of Music & Art (founded by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1936 and the greatest institution of learning since Alexander sat at the feet of Aristotle), we had a daily History of Art class for a full week on “primitive” art and its bold influence on the modernists, based on the avant-garde “Armory Show” of 1913. The class exhibited a juxtaposition of African art with works by Picasso, Brancusi, and Picabia, along with a slide show of the iconic 1915 photos by Alfred Stieglitz taken at Gallery 291. My knowledgeable instructors at M&A positioned African art as an active and ongoing influence in the modernist era. The Fangs, Bakotas, Lubas, and Dogons knocked me out and influenced my drawing almost as much as the drawings of Elie Nadelman did. I became an instant apostle of the power, form, and ethos of tribal art. In 1958, when I was twenty-seven, I had a total epiphany when I spotted the newly published The Sculpture of Africa, designed by Bernard Quint, an art director at LIFE magazine, with text by William Fagg and 408 powerfully photographed black-and-white photos by Eliot Elisofon in a beautifully printed Praeger publication. In a New York nanosecond, I knew African art would become an important part of my life. Which reminds me of an anecdote. In 1969, my copy of this inspiring book was loaned to the then director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving, for him to study before he met with Nelson Rockefeller about acquiring his spectacular primitive art collection, which was housed at the time at Rockefeller’s Museum of Primitive Art, across the street from MOMA. TA: How did you select objects for your collection? Were you guided or influenced by other collectors or dealers? GL: After buying a Lega mask, a Baule goli mask, a Mossi antelope mask, and then an Asmat shield at Carlebach (the gallery that was a major source of inspiration in the 1930s and ‘40s for the Surrealists), I found my way to a wondrous gallery next door to Parke Bernet on Madison Avenue, commanded by J. J. Klejman, a Polish émigré to America. Known today as a legendary art dealer, Klejman, with his knowledgeable wife, was the most important and influential dealer of George Lois is a world-renowned advertising “guru” and communications innovator whose long and outstanding career has been the subject of numerous accolades, not in the least a 2008 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that focused on thirty-two magazine covers designed by him for Esquire in the 1960s and ‘70s. Now in his eighties, George remains active today and has been a subscriber to Tribal Art magazine since issue #1 twenty years ago. We speak to him about his passion for art. By Alex Arthur
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