The clock is Bulletin’s official logo and has appeared on every cover of the journal until it ceased print publication in 2008. It was two years after the clock’s debut, when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon, that Bulletin first moved the clock’s hands-pushing it four minutes closer to midnight and inaugurating it as a barometer for humanity’s proximity to oblivion. As Charlotte Hecht argues in Art & Object, the design of the clock was steeped in the “crosscurrents of modernism, industry, and science that ran through the city at mid-century.” The flat geometric shapes and simplicity of line and color that Martyl employed are hallmarks of the midcentury-modern style, popularized during the 1930s and ’40s in the United States by an influx of European émigré designers-Bauhauslers such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, founder of the “New Bauhaus” in Chicago in 1937. The Langsdorfs lived in Chicago at the time, and she was part of the city’s art scene, counting curators, artists, and critics among her social circle. Bulletin’s goal was to educate the public about the imminent threat of nuclear technology, but Martyl admitted she chose the timing-seven minutes to midnight-“simply because it looked good.” The Doomsday Clock graphic was the only magazine cover designed by Martyl, who primarily painted abstract landscapes and murals.
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