Massin to Appear in San Francisco

Through September 26, the San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB) hosts Massin in Continuo: A Dictionary, a touring exhibition devoted to French graphic design artist Robert Massin. SFCB has announced that a symposium will be held Saturday, September 20, in conjunction with the exhibition, and will focus on Massin's career as one of the world's great book designers.

Massin, often called the father of expressive typography, will journey from his home in Paris to appear at the symposium. Other presenters will include Seattle-based type and design authority John Berry, and exhibition curator Laetitia Wolff (editor-in-chief of Graphis magazine and founder of New York-based marketing/design firm futureflair).

The Massin Symposium will take place Saturday, September 20, from 2-4 p.m., at the California College of the Arts (CCA), Timken Lecture Hall, 1111 8th Street, San Francisco. A reception immediately follows at SFCB, 300 De Haro Street. Both events are free and open to the public.

Massin's graphic interpretations of dramatic works remain some of the most unique and influential examples of the potential for dynamic interaction between word and image. His in-depth survey of letterforms in Western cultures, Letter & Image, is a major contribution to the understanding of graphic arts. His manipulations of typography in the 1950s anticipated the elastic spatial possibilities of computer graphics. Massin's collaborations with writer Jean Cocteau and playwright Eugene Ionesco yielded a new "visualized literature." His masterwork for Gallimard's 1964 edition of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano combines the pictorial economy of a comic book with the letter play of Surrealist poetry.

The exhibition originated at the Cooper Union School of Art's Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography in New York, and has since traveled to Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore, and Montreal. The exhibition is produced by futureflair, with assistance from the Cultural Services Department of the French Embassy in New York. The symposium and reception are presented by SFCB, with support from Mills College Center for the Book, CCA, the Book Club of California, and The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA).

For more on Massin, see John Berry's feature on Creative Pro. For further details on the symposium and exhibition, call 415-565-0545, email info@sfcb.org, or visit the SFCB website.