George Lois: The Esquire Covers

In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art acquired a wide range of George Loiss groundbreaking Esquire magazine covers and put them on display for a full year. The Esquire Covers at MoMA collects the entirety of that exhibit, many more covers, and unseen images from Loiss private collection, including personal photographs of the designer at work and outtakes of a shoot with Andy Warhol. George Lois, who led advertisings creative revolution in the 1960s, was hand-picked by the legendary editor Harold Hayes to convey visually that Esquire—a leading proponent of another creative revolution of the time, New Journalism—was on the cutting edge of profound changes in American culture. With images of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr. watching over Arlington National Cemetery; of Richard Nixon under the makeup-artists powder-puff; and of Muhammad Ali as the martyred Saint Sebastian, he did just that.

George Lois is an adman-genius, an innovative thinker, a creator of cultural stigmas of advertising that lasts forever. Lois is the author of several books including Iconic America and $ellebrity, and his Esquire covers are in the permanent collection at The Museum of Modern Art. He has also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.