NEW YORK.-From 1962 to 1972, George Lois changed the face of magazine design with his covers for Esquire magazine. MoMA presents prints of 32 of the 92 covers Lois created for the magazine in George Lois: The Esquire Covers from April 25, 2008, to March 31, 2009, in the Museum’s Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries on the third floor. A wall in the gallery also pairs the original artwork by Lois for seven of his most iconic covers, including Muhammad Ali as St. Sebastian (1968) and Andy Warhol drowning in tomato soup (1969). George Lois: The Esquire Covers is organized by Christian Larsen, Curatorial Assistant, Research and Collections, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art. This installation continues the tradition of showcasing works in MoMA’s graphic design collection, which includes noteworthy examples of typography, posters, and other combinations of text and image.

Before Lois (American, b. 1931), a renowned advertising executive, art director, and designer, even the most celebrated magazine covers like James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam for Collier’s or Norman Rockwell’s poignant illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post depended on drawing or painting to illustrate the content or symbolize the spirit of the publication. Many covers suffered from a banal, formulaic style, and often text competed with the image. Lois stripped the cover down to a graphically concise yet conceptually potent image that ventured beyond mere illustration of the feature article. He exploited the communicative power of the mass-circulated front page to stimulate and provoke the public into debate, pressing Americans to confront controversial issues like racism, feminism, and the Vietnam War. These images hit the public with their messages artfully communicated with force and immediacy. Viewed as a collection, the covers serve as a visual timeline and a window onto the turbulent events of the 1960s. Initially received as jarring and prescient statements of their time, the Esquire covers have since become essential to the iconography of American culture.

When Harold Hayes became Esquire’s editor in 1961, the monthly men’s magazine founded in 1933 had passed its peak in the 1940s and was on the verge of bankruptcy. He needed to renew its image, and he recognized the cover as the most visible and important page for public recognition. He met with Lois, who suggested that a single designer produce the cover instead of the “design by consensus” approach Hayes had taken with his staff. Hayes asked Lois to design one cover for him. Lois daringly called an upcoming boxing match in favor of underdog Sonny Liston by showing the heavily favored Floyd Patterson knocked out and alone in the arena. This October 1962 cover generated the largest newsstand sales in Esquire’s history.

Because Hayes gave Lois unparalleled freedom in creating the covers, Lois did not have to sell his ideas with a sketch or a “comp,” as is customary in the graphic design and advertising business. After discussing his ideas with Hayes, Lois set to work straight away to produce the final design. He arranged photo shoots with Carl Fischer and other photographers and created montages of clip art, stock photography, and drawn elements, a process that served as a mechanical precursor of the digital assemblage and retouching widely used today. For instance, to illustrate an article on the decline of the American avant-garde in the May 1969 issue, Lois took separate photographs of Andy Warhol and a Campbell’s soup and combined them to create a witty spoof on Pop Art by drowning Andy Warhol in the can of soup.

On the scandalous December 1963 cover, boxer Sonny Liston appeared as America’s first black Santa Claus, a painfully ironic image that exposed the nation’s growing racial divide. While this cover lost Esquire an estimated $750,000 in ad revenue, the magazine’s growing popular acclaim offset the financial setback. Over the next four years, Esquire made over $3 million in profit as annual circulation rose from 500,000 to 2.5 million.

The April 1968 cover featured Muhammad Ali. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Ali changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam. For religious reasons, Ali refused military service in the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector. He was sentenced to five years of jail for draft evasion, and boxing commissions suspended him and stripped him of his title. In 1968, while Ali was awaiting his appeal to the Supreme Court, Lois posed him as the Christian martyr St. Sebastian, who miraculously survived being shot with multiple arrows. During the photo shoot, Ali named each of the arrows after his tormentors: General Westmoreland, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and President Johnson, among others. The image was so popular that it was later reproduced as a protest poster.

The August 1970 issue of Esquire featured several articles that focused on the spread of youth culture. Given the broad range of opinions in the issue, Lois took the liberty of asserting his point of view on the subject. As Lois saw it, the film Easy Rider, released the previous year, was celebrated as a new religion among youth. He shot a marquee for the film, and superimposed it on the façade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.