Ivan Chermayeff, Thomas Geismar Pan Am Portugal 1972

  • Not on view

The graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar has designed a wide range of public images: trademarks, advertisements, signs, sculptures, and even world's fair exhibitions. Its work revolves around the viewer, whose understanding and acceptance of an image's visual vocabulary are what make it a success. In these posters for Pan Am World Airways, cultural fantasies and ideals are projected through monumental imagery, presenting people and environments as distant objects of beauty. Rather than engaging with each country's everyday realities, the viewers of these images, potential travelers, remain aesthetic observers.

Gallery label from Here Is Every. Four Decades of Contemporary Art, September 10, 2008–March 23, 2009.
Medium
Offset lithograph
Dimensions
42 x 28" (106.7 x 71.1 cm)
Credit
Gift of Pan American World Airways
Object number
64.1972
Department
Architecture and Design

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