1976 AIGA MEDAL
When I first met Henry Wolf in the fifties, he seemed to be the
most sophisticated person I had ever known. He owned a Jaguar, was
always in the company of beautiful women and was already clearly
the best editorial designer in the world. Not to mention his
charming Viennese accent.
Although he matched many of my internal clichés for success and
power there were some dissonances. For one thing his jackets never
fit right (years after I learned that this characteristic is
generic to a class of successful designers. The difficulty is
usually concentrated around the shoulders.) For another, he seemed
to be without pretension. Nevertheless he conveys the effect of
extraordinary elegance.
What one actually experiences from Henry is his lack of capacity
to accept the second rate. It is a behavioral characteristic that
is largely unspoken but totally understood by anyone who has known
him for any length of time. I express the quality negatively
because the demand for beauty extracts a price. One of Henry's
favorite stories concerns meeting a girl who was carrying a
transparent plastic handbag. The meaning of the bag made it
impossible for him to be with the girl. “I think it's a terrible
thing to be bothered by and I hate myself when I do it because
maybe she was the nicest person I ever met, but because of
this...she was sort of finished.”
The search for belief, cohesiveness and standards as a defense
against life's disinterested disorder may be one of the roots of
form making activities. In Henry's case the world he creates either
as designer, art director or photographer, is characterized by
clarity of form and literary content. We are convinced of its
“rightness.” Every element is the right size, the right shape and
in the right place. The illusion is complete and hermetic. When I
free associate about other artists whose perceptions of the world
seem to share some quality with Henry, Vermeer and Mozart come to
mind. Lucidity and the conspicuous lack of excess characterize all
three.
In the sixties, Henry chaired a conference he called “Art, Love,
Time and Money,” a title which is about the most reductive
expression for the totality of human experience I can think of.
These four themes emerge as obsessive elements in most of Henry's
work. Finally, what separates Henry from his peers is his special
capacity to evoke the best from those who work with him. It is a
rare and special gift.
Resources
New
York Times obituary, February 16, 2005.
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