Saul Bass The Hollywood Connection

During his distinguished career, graphic designer Saul Bass (1920–1996) became a legend for conceiving the now-iconic logos of such companies as AT&T and United Airlines. Bass is also recognized for transforming motion-picture title sequences from static typography into an art form. This exhibition focuses on Bass's work for the American film industry. On view are posters, soundtrack-album covers, Bass's storyboard of the famous shower scene in Psycho (1960), and continuous screenings of a montage of selected film titles edited by Bass and his wife, Elaine. The documentary Why Man Creates (1968), for which Bass won an Academy Award, will also be screened in the exhibition.

It was award-winning filmmaker Otto Preminger who offered Bass his first opportunity to design a title sequence—for the film Carmen Jones (1954). From this groundbreaking early experience, Bass would come to work with such illustrious filmmakers as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorcese, all of whom valued Bass's creative use of animation, live action, and dynamic typography. Bass—who, beginning with Spartacus (1960), collaborated with his wife, Elaine—produced more than fifty title sequences for such celebrated films as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Vertigo (1958), Exodus (1960), Grand Prix (1966), and Cape Fear (1991).