Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

Top hats 1929
gelatin silver photograph
image 35.2 (h) x 27.3 (w) cm
Gift of American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc., New York, NY, USA, made possible with the generous support of Anton Bruehl Jr, 2006.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 2006.52

After two years, on 22 December 1928, the adventures of the dapper Fabric Group trio in the pages of The New Yorker came to an end. Until October 1929, Weber and Heilbroner switched to using Bruehl’s surreal montage or Modernist images instead, such as this abstract Art Deco style chorus line of top hats. Such images suited the last days of the Jazz Age well. Bruehl, together with Silas Spitzer, who provided the captions, won an Art Directors Club gold medal award in 1928 for the Weber and Heilbroner campaign, and another in 1929 for this advertisement – for which Bruehl also received a Harvard Business School Advertising Award.