Revue Faire - N°54 "The Director, the Graphic Designer, and the Printer: Pontus Hultén and the Making of the Catalog, 1960-1973"

Centered on the emblematic figure of Pontus Hultén, this issue of Revue Faire explores the director's publishing work during his time at the head of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, from 1960 to 1973.

Director and founder of a number of institutions, including the Moderna Museet and the Centre Pompidou, Pontus Hultén published books throughout his career. Beginning in the 1960s when he was appointed director of Sweden's first museum of modern art, he fully embraced the challenge of the exhibition catalog, even becoming involved in its design.

Malou Messien is a freelance graphic designer based in Paris. Her design practice and passion for printed and design objects have led her to create collections that she shares in the form of texts, lectures and online sales platforms.

Faire is a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to graphic design, published from October to June, distributed issue by issue or in the form of anthologies of three or four issues.

Created by Empire, Syndicat studio's publishing house, Faire is aimed for undergraduate students as well as researchers and professionals, documenting contemporary and international practices of graphic design, along with the history and grammar of styles. Each issue focuses on a single subject, addressed by a renowned author.

"Critical publications dedicated to the analysis of Graphic design are sadly few and far between today, particularly in France, but also in Europe as a whole. Adopting an analytical and critical posture with regard to the forms and activities of Graphic design, Sacha Léopold and François Havegeer intend to establish a printed publication that deals with these practices. The publication will work with seven authors in its first year (Lise Brosseau, Manon Bruet, Thierry Chancogne, Céline Chazalviel, Jérôme Dupeyrat, Catherine Guiral and Étienne Hervy). This initially limited choice, linked to a desire to propose an experience with a group that has previously participated together in projects, will then allow for the inclusion of foreign authors in the second year of publication."
An art historian and exhibition curator, Pontus Hultén (1924-2006) helped to establish several major museums including the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which he headed from 1958 to 1973, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Pompidou Centre, whose first director he was between 1973 and 1981. He left his mark on the history of these museums and consolidated their global renown with exhibitions designed both as critiques of society and as all-embracing experiences blurring the frontiers between art and life. Some exhibitions presented at the Moderna Museet in the 1960s were groundbreaking, for example the iconic monumental sculpture titled "Hon" by Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt, whose giant vagina visitors thronged to enter. The exhibition "Modellen – för ett bättre samhälle" invited children to explore and reshape the museum space as a metaphor of social change. Similarly, visitors could take part in the creation of part of the exhibition "Poesin måste göras av alla. Förändra världen!" and call a number to express their opinions about the programme. To make art accessible to all and allow it to integrate with daily life, Pontus Hultén was among the first to extend museum opening hours. His pricing policy also formed part of a desire for openness and democratisation: the catalogue for the exhibition "Andy Warhol" (1968, Moderna Museet) was, for instance, on sale for a dollar.

Hultén shaped the visual worlds of the museums he headed by bringing together artists, curators, graphic designers, publishers, authors and printers and setting them to work on bold projects that ran counter to established conventions. These collaborations exploded traditional hierarchies: different roles intermingled, were reinvented, or simply disappeared. Although he rarely designed or printed material himself, Hultén's influence could be felt at each stage of the creative process. Among the people he regularly worked with were the Swedish graphic designers Hubert Johansson, John Melin & Anders Österlin (M&Ö) and Gösta Svensson, and, later on, international figures such as Jean Widmer and Roman Cieślewicz.

According to Hultén, each piece of printed material was entitled to its own individual character. Form must reflect not only content but also the personality of its designer, and it must make the invisible, visible. The "aura" of each document arose from a close relationship between content and form, where the format was adapted to the subject, the materials used were carefully chosen to convey a message, and printing used the most advanced techniques of the time. The idea was to constantly push back the boundaries of what was possible.

The common thread that runs through Hultén's legacy is a joyful, ironic, free-spirited anarchism that is profoundly inventive and utopian. Drawing inspiration from Dadaism, he saw art as a critique of reality. His productions wove a subtle network of signs and created a constellation of questions that defied conventions.

Text by Malou Messien
Photographs by Aurélien Mole
 
Published in November 2025
Bilingual edition (English / French)
21,5 x 29,7 cm
Softcover
64 pages (67 ill.)
ISBN: 979-10-95991-80-9

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