Selected Contents from Portfolio No. 2 (Summer 1950)
The second issue of Portfolio confirmed the scope of Brodovitch’s experiment.
Conceived and designed by Alexey Brodovitch, Portfolio was not a magazine in the conventional sense but an editorial experiment—treating photography, typography, illustration, and sequencing as a single expressive system.
If the first issue announced a rupture, the second demonstrated that this was not an isolated provocation but a sustained editorial vision, bringing together unpublished works and contemporary experiments into a single, fluid sequence.
Rather than consolidating a style, Portfolio No. 2 pushed further into unexplored territory. Page design became a medium of invention in itself, while fine art, graphic experimentation, poetry, and vernacular culture were treated with equal seriousness. The magazine refused hierarchies, allowing visual intelligence to emerge from radically different sources.
Alongside the images, Ikonographia preserves excerpts from the original texts, printed here in italics not as secondary commentary, but as primary material. These texts—often reproduced in full—are exceptional in their own right, defining an era and articulating Brodovitch’s vision with a precision and ambition that would be impossible to improve upon.
Most importantly, the newly unbound, full-spread reproductions restore the magazine’s true spatial architecture—alignments, axes, and transitions long obscured by binding—making visible design decisions that disappear in standard, cut-in-two reproductions.
Portfolio Magazine N. 2 Embossed Cover
Summer 1950.
Design for a kite by Charles Eames, reproduced from his original paste-up made with swatches of colored tissue paper.
Featured image above:
Designs by Dr. Herman Baravalle
Page 22-23. The beauty of geometrical forms is seen in these designs by Dr. Herman Baravalle, a mathematics professor at Adelphi College, Long Island. Left: The saddle-shaped form of a hyperbolic paraboloid.
Above: An electron contour map of a molecule of phthalocyanine produces an interesting amoeba-like pattern.
Page Design as a medium of invention.
Rarely is the printed page considered a medium of plastic invention. Its design has become standardized, a machine-like element devoid of feeling and esthetic significance. This is cause for regret, for the variety of forms possible when typography and calligraphy are creatively used approaches that of abstract painting.
On the following six pages, Portfolio reproduces in facsimile a number of unusual pages which possess real visual charm and excitement.
For designers chafing under the conventional discipline of the printed page and seeking new directions, these pages should bring both pleasure and inspiration.
The modern French poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s sensitive arrangement of his poem Il Pleut (It Rains), trickling down through the clean white air of the page opposite like a gentle spring shower. Pages 4-5.
Two curious pages from an early Christian panegyric, printed in 16th Century Germany and stenciled with mysterious religious symbols—a superb example of that now extinct form of literary expression known as carmen figurato” (figured poem). Pages 6-7.
A contemporary spread from Pierre Reverdy’ s poem Le Chant des Morts (Song of the Dead Ones), with the text in the poet’s script and illustrated with lithographs by Pablo Picasso, who derived the abstract form of his designs from the skull, the bone and the straight line. pages 8-9.
A poem by Wu Chang-Shih, one of the greatest of modern Chinese calligraphers, written in the calligraphic style known as T s ‘ao- Situ, or “grass” style, because of the impromptu nature of the strokes with which, the characters are formed. pages 10-11.
Miro on the walls. Wallpapers by Joan Miro and Ilonka Karasz.
The word “wallpaper” is no longer a synonym for the musty floral patterns that writhed endlessly on the gas-lit walls of Victorian front parlors. Within the past ten years, a renascence has taken place in the field of interior decoration that is restoring to the design of wallpaper some of the contemporary charm and significance that it possessed as a graphic art in the 18th Century.
Modern masters, such as Matisse, Miro and Calder, have designed wallpapers and printed wall-panels which reflect the spirit of the 20th Century in their imaginative handling of line, color and form. Their work has brought new dignity to wallpaper and given it creative stature among the decorative arts. Simultaneously, new and improved printing methods, such as silk-screen, offset lithography and photo-chemical processes, are permitting the reproduction of various techniques of drawing and painting which could not be approximated a few years ago.
The wallpapers shown here are from Katzenbach and Warren Inc., a contemporary-minded firm which has consistently pioneered modern design in the wallpaper industry.
The original sketch for a mural design was executed for Katzenbach and Warren Inc. of New York by Joan Miro, famed modern painter, and represents a new concept in wallpaper art.
It was reproduced in the silk-screen process, on a panel measuring four feet high and six feet wide, in a limited edition of 250 copies (price:$350 each).
The artist, who lives in Spain, was sent a catalogue of American pigments to work from; below the original painting he has keyed the six colors he used to their corresponding catalogue numbers. Pages 56-57.
Wisconsin, an outstanding modern wallpaper designed by Ilonka Karasz and machine-printed by offset lithography for Katzenbach and Warren Inc.
It typifies the fine design and improved reproduction that together are reviving the significance of wallpaper as a decorative art in the United States.
About Alexey Brodovitch. A short bio.
Brodovitch at work in his studio.
Alexey Brodovitch (1898–1971)
Alexey Brodovitch was a Russian-born American designer, photographer, editor, and teacher whose work fundamentally reshaped twentieth-century visual culture. Best known as the art director of Harper’s Bazaar (1934–1958) and the creator of Portfolio magazine, Brodovitch redefined the role of design as an active, expressive force rather than a neutral frame.
After leaving Russia, Brodovitch settled in Paris in 1920, where his formation was shaped by a uniquely dense artistic environment. He encountered avant-garde experiments emerging from Moscow, absorbed Bauhaus principles circulating from Germany, engaged with Italian Futurism, and studied the evolving languages of Cubism, Fauvism, Purism, and Surrealism. This plural exposure forged a visual sensibility grounded in movement, contrast, and disciplined freedom.
In the United States, Brodovitch became both a radical innovator and an influential educator. Through teaching and editorial work, he mentored generations of photographers and designers—including Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, and Garry Winogrand—establishing a legacy that continues to define modern editorial design.
Artwork by Joan Miro. For Art’s Sake, from the News Section, playing graphically with primary CMYK colors.
FOR ART’S SAKE: About 1100 art shows are held in New York annually, each of them spawning its own catalogue or brochure of the work exhibited. These publications have long since graduated from simple printed listings to productions of increasing originality. Shown here are a sampling of some of the season’s more striking cover designs from 57th Street, ranging all the way from the huge serpentine signature of the Spanish painter Joan Miró (above) to bold typographic layouts and dramatic illustrations.
Joseph Low. Design with Linoleum Blocks
Joseph Low, a soft-spoken, pale-faced, 39-year-old artist whose medium is linoleum prints, is well-known to many art directors and magazine editors, although few of them have ever encountered him in the flesh.
Low, who lives a rather hermit-like existence with his wife and two young daughters in a small house deep in rural New Jersey, has impressed the force of his work and personality upon advertising and editorial people almost entirely through the mail. Every two months or so, he mails to a selected list of people a self-promotional little broadside on which is imprinted an example of his work, together with a little message, usually based on an old English nursery rhyme, gently announcing his availability.
Low, who, incidentally, is a superb typographer, sets the type for the message himself and runs off the sheets on his own hand-powered printing press. He initiated the project less than two years ago, after he had resigned from an art instructorship at the University of Indiana and came east to earn his living as a freelance advertising artist.
He quickly found that he was unable to take the emotional punishment that waiting around in advertising agency ante-rooms entailed and he withdrew to the seclusion of his home where he evolved his method of self-promotion by mail.
Left: Artist Joseph Low pulling an impression on his hand press. Below: Low inside his rural New Jersey studio-print shop with its old-fashioned stove (bottom), a linoleum block locked up in a printing form, and the finished print. Right page: An enlarged detail from the same linoleum print displays the vigor and fantasy of Low’s engraving style. Photographs by Ed Feingersh. Pages 64-65
Left page: Two sketches of dogs, a direct-mail circular, and a page from a brochure on horses, written, engraved, composed and printed by Joseph Low.
Right page: One of Joseph Low’s quaint self-promotional mailing pieces, based on an old English nursery rhyme, which he recently circularized among his clients.
Joseph Low’s greeting cards are a delightful blend of whimsy and craftsmanship. Left page: two sketches and a Valentine’s Day card. Right page: Low’s New Year’s Day greeting card.
William Steig Illustration
In a relaxed moment over his sketching board one evening, Cartoonist William Steig casually drew this picture of a haughty woman with her head floating off into space (above). It gave him the playful idea of trying other arrangements of disembodied heads that would be expressive of an idea, and in a few hours, he had produced the happy satire seen on these pages.
Steig, whose own head is firmly attached to his shoulders, has been one of The New Yorker magazine’s cartooning stars for the past twenty years. His work has been described as “social criticism couched in psychological terms,” and at least one erudite reviewer has noted the strong element of unconscious expression that motivates his drawings.
The 43-year-old Steig is best known for his “Small Fry” series, revealing glimpses of the juvenile mind in action, but it is evident from these friendly beheadings that he is also hep to the secrets of the adult psyche.
William Steig. Arrangements of disembodied heads. Haughty woman with her head floating off into space and a man that can’t remember where he put his head. Page 84-85
William Steig. Arrangements of disembodied heads. Acrobat, Daydreamer and Carouser. Portfolio 2, Summer 1950, Page 86-87.
William Steig. Arrangements of disembodied heads. Sleepwalker, Tough Guy, Huh, Argument, Courtesy, Hatred Portfolio 2, Summer 1950, Page 88-89.
Cattlebrands
Cattlebrands are a fascinating form of graphic Americana which have rarely, if ever, been considered from the standpoint of design. They represent a colorful pictorial language in which the American cowboy has expressed himself with characteristic Western pungency and humor.
The practice of branding cattle goes back to ancient Egyptian times, but the first cattlebrand in America belonged to Hernando Cortez, the Spanish Conquistador, who brought a few head of steer and a branding iron to the New World in 1540. His brand was a design of three crosses, representing the Holy Trinity. Many of the cattlebrands reproduced in the following insert have been in use on the Western range for more than one hundred years, and with practice, the greenest tenderfoot can learn to “read” these brands even though he may never get closer to a round-up than a Hopalong Cassidy telecast.
A brand usually consists of a letter, numeral, character or symbol, or a combination of one or any of these elements. Brands are read from left to right. If the characters are placed on top of one another, they are read downward. A letter that is slightly tilted is “tumbling.” A letter that is lying down on its side or back is “lazy.” A letter that is stretched out and has a curving flare on top is “running.” A letter with wings—a dash at the left and a dash at the right on top—is “flying.” A letter placed so that the bottom of it touches the inside of a curve is “rocking.” Originally, many brands grew out of personal naives. Rancher T. E. Money’s brand was the $ sign, Peter Coffin’s brand was a P in a pine-box. The famous 6666 brand (Four-Six) in Texas was coined when its owner won his grubstake in a poker game. His winning handheld four sixes. Still other brands were designed from the shapes of everyday objects observed on the range—stirrups, saddles, dippers, guns, the sun and moon, etc., many of them showing a striking use of imagery and symbolism.
Twelve Cattlebrands. Pages 90-91.
DRAG F, O CROSS 0, ROCKING H, SITTING HEART LAY R, PINE TREE, HAT A, ARROW CRESCENT, FLYING WH SWINGING DIAMONDS, HUH CONNECTED, OWL, S SPUR.
Fifty-one vintage Texas cattle brands.
1, Half Circle Three Circle, 2. T Foot, 3. Spade, 4. 7 Circle L, 5. Fleur De Lis Half Circle, 6. DHP Connected, 7. A Coffin, 8. Bar Button Hook, 9. HTS Connected, 10. Cross A, 11. Double R , 12. H Over: T, 13. Chain 7, 14. Rising Sun, 15. Key No, 16. Mule Head, 17. Curry Comb, 18. Plus Four, 19. Diamond E, 20. Longhorn Plus, 21. Sleeping 6, 22. Pig’s Eye, 23. Buzzard on a Rail, 24. Slash Pine 25. Flying JY, 26. Flying B, 27: Snake in Moon, 28. W Bar Cross, 29. Walking Tadpole, 30. Broken Circle Cross, 31. HH Connected, 32. Boot B, 33. Triangle F, 34. Ed Connected, 35. Lazy D J Connected, 36. Double Circle, 37. Two Sixes, 38. Tea Spoon, 39. My Heart, 40. U Fly, 41. H 3, 42. Vertical Double E, 43. Half Circle Q, 44. Running Sac, 45. Drunken T, 46. OK, 47. Cow Head, 48. Diamond H Diamond, 49. Windflower, 50. Crossed U, 51. 03.
