The Illustrated Exodus

I’ve tracked down a version of the very traditional Haggadah I remember from my youth, first published by Shulsinger Brothers in 1950. The illustrations by Austrian-born artist Siegmund Forst, depict in realistic detail, scenes of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt and various other characters and stories from the Haggadah. When I was a kid, I would pore over these illustrations during the lengthy recitation of the text. I considered them very instructive and I was not bothered in the least by how sentimental they were. I was fascinated that they showed me how it really looked when Egyptian soldiers were swallowed by the Red Sea, and exactly what the Angel of Death looked like (a skeleton with wings and a scythe). It also served as a handy guide to stereotyping men by their appearance.


The Haggadah actually acknowledges that not all children are exactly the same. “The Four Sons” represent four types of children and outlines how to discuss the exodus from Egypt with each type.

Upper right, the wise son (looks a lot like Moses!); upper left, the wicked son; bottom right, the simple son: bottom left, the son who doesn’t even know how to ask a question.


Scenes of the Jews in Egypt: Above, building pyramids. Below, Pharaoh's daughter discovers Moses in his basket in the reeds.

This illustration goes with a “cumulative” type of folk song that’s been around for a few hundred years called Chad Gadya. It’s ostensibly a lively song for children about the fate of a boy’s goat, which his father bought for him. The song describes successive acts of violence that go all the way up the food chain from animals, to man, to the Angel of Death, to God.

Chad Gadya, however, is not merely a simple child’s song. There have been many interpretations of it. Here is what Elie Wiesel has to say about it.

And here we are, concluding the seder with Chad Gadya, a beautiful song, which is not just about a father who buys a goat for his child. It's a song about God's creatures destroying each other. It may be a puzzling way to end the joyous meal but one that is fraught with meaning.

The song of Chad Gadya reminds us that in Jewish history, all creatures, all animals, all events are connected. The goat and the cat, the fire and the water, the slaughterer and the redeemer, they are all part of the story.

And surely it has to be symbolic, for how can a cat eat a goat in the first place?

Soviet Book Jackets

Krasnoznam, Balt Flot (Red Banner Baltic Fleet).

There are 656 “Russian bookjackets, 1917-1942” digitized on the site the New York Public Library. So though it may look like I got carried away, it was really with great difficulty that I limited myself to the selection here.

While going through these, I was struck by how the cover designers did not confine themselves to the vertical rectangle we see when a book is closed in front of us. Instead, the entire horizontal expanse of the fully unfolded jacket was utilized as designable space. I’m not sure why this was, but perhaps it had to do with the absence of the capitalist mentality that considers every available square inch of printable surface as an opportunity to “sell.”

The entire collection is presented in a “wide screen” format, as opposed to the American and European dust jackets, which are displayed with a squarer aspect ratio of cover-plus-flap or a vertical format of the front cover alone. That is a collection of over 2,000. Something to look forward to …

Bezymenskii, Stikhi (Poems), 1934.


Sel'vinskii, Pushtorg (Fur-Trade), 1931.


Kuznetsov, Tsirk (Circus), 1931.


Chukovskii, Skazki (Fairy-Tales), 1935.


Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let (Soviet Art over 15 Years), 1933.


Boitsy pervogo prizyva (Soldiers of the First Call).


Skazki Severnogo kraia (Fairy-Tales of the Northern Region), 1934.


Sobolev, Kapital'nyi remont (Major Repairs), 1933.


Dos Passos, Tri soldata (Three Soldiers), 1934.


Voenlety, Rasskazy o voenno-vozdushnom flote (Military Pilots, Stories about Air Force.), 1933.


Blagoi, Tri veka (Three Centuries), 1933.


Boitsy pervogo prizyva (Soldiers of the First Call).


Sto let Aleksandrinskomu teatru (A Hundred Years of the Aleksandrinskii Theater), 1932.


Lidin, Idut korabli (Ships are Sailing), 1928.


Gornaia promyshlennost' (Mining Industry), 1932.


Koster (A Campfire), 1934.


Chetyre pokoleniia, Kniga o Narvskoi Zastave (Four generations, A Book about the Narva Gate) 1933.


Slavin, Interventsiia (The Intervention), 1933.


Belyayev, Pryzhok v nichto (Jump Into Nowhere), 1932.


Lapin, Podvig (A Heroic Exploit), 1934.


Permitin, Kogti (Claws), 1932.


Chekhov, Vishnevyi sad (Cherry Orchard), 1933-35.


Shternberg, Giliaki (Giliaks), 1933.


Maiakovskii, Groznyi smekh (A Menacing Laugh) 1932.


Panferov, Bruski, t.2 (Bruski, Vol.2) 1933.


Bibineshvili, Kamiu (Kamiu), 1934.

Desktop Diaries, Digital Collages

BUTTERFLY & RAIN
Antique endpapers, 'Existentialism and Human Emotions', 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law', vintage butterfly-wing pendant, vintage camera, blue sign reflected in the rain.


In the summer of 2009, I started posting digital collages on a blog that I kept just for myself as a journal, called Desktop Diaries. They basically consisted of images that piled up on my computer’s desktop.

Description on the site:
As a graphic designer, artist, and collagist, my screen, at any given moment is a mélange of personal photos, assorted reference, spreadsheets, infographics, news sites and whatever essential item I might be watching on eBay. All sense of scale is lost as details can be huge, and sweeping vistas can be reduced to thumbnails. The collagist in me does not see the individual images, but rather the patchwork as a whole. And then I just have to grab that image. After all, these particular juxtapositions may never occur again. It’s not about Photoshop effects for me. I see the elements as I would pieces of found paper or ephemera--the edge of a window is just the digital equivalent of a torn edge of paper. The blurriness of an enlarged image is “found” texture. My desktop background with its floating folders often becomes an element as well. That is the origin

There haven’t been any new ones in a while--All My Eyes takes enough time. Here’s a selection of the over 50 posted.

IS MY TURBAN DISTURBIN’?
Ethnic woven textile, vintage quilt, K.O. Munson “sketch pad” pin-up calendar page, chemistry set, graffitied priority mail sticker


PYRITE EYES
Eye studies by Carrache, pyrite, vintage drawer liner in an antique dresser.


MOTH ON WHITE SHOULDERS
Vintage box of White Shoulders, moth on the screen at night, fresh-picked wild roses, vintage vase.


PIECE FULL & AMETHYST
Antique color chart, marbled endpaper of an old book, mod fabric, vintage textile swatch book, black and red scarf, combs, "Piece Full," book about japanese Boro textiles, mushroom textile, detail of a mod print slip, antique swatch book, print of an amethyst crystal.


MAX HUBER & BOOTS
Book cover, Max Huber Progetti Grafici 1936-1981; riding boots; Lichtenberg figure.


DARLING & BABIES
Pages from a German art calendar; package of plastic toy babies; title sequence from Darling, the 1965 John Schlesinger film with Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey; incredible ring with a flower of gemstones including turquoise, pearl, amethyst, and onyx.


HAMMERED & HAIRNET
Vestry seal of the Parish of St. Pancras, hairnet envelope, hammered silver modernist ashtray.


TAKE FIVE
Fragments of antique book bindings, TITA candy wrapper from Argentina, match book from Cafe Loup, card from Jenny Holtzer retrospective at the Whitney "GOOD DEEDS EVENTUALLY ARE REWARDED", diploma seal, ethnic textile, found handwritten type, Japanese cookbook, postcard of Gaudi staircase, vintage fabric, 3-d puzzle pieces illustration, wrought iron gate, Agam silk screen.


VENUS & DANSK
As soon as I scanned a page from an old collage journal (lower left quadrant: red foil, Venus de Milo), I just had to start combining it with other images--like the graphic candelabra by Dansk, and the rust cover of an old Russian book with a lovely little silhouette. The vertical stripes on the upper left is a photo of old painted paper.

Bauhaus: The Book

“Excuse me,” says the young designer to the clerk in my imaginary, vaguely Monty Pythonesque skit. “I’m looking for a book called Bauhaus.” The clerk replies "walk this way," and proceeds to show her an entire section where every book is titled “Bauhaus.”

The legendary design school is synonymous with creativity and innovativeness, and over the years there have been many lavish and scholarly books published about its history and influence. But where was the creativity when it came to titling these many tomes? True, there is the occasional under-line, over-line, or date range in tiny print. But basically, an enormous number of books fall into perfect lockstep and boldly feature the single–word title of “Bauhaus.”

On the other hand, there is something to be said for clarity in messaging. After all, shouldn’t form follow function?

Really, it's just an excuse to post a bunch of them. The selection here is by no means comprehensive, and many of these are alternate or later printings of earlier editions.

50 Jahre Bauhaus, 1968 catalog (Herbert Bayer cover)
for the exhibition in Stuttgart. The gray cover at the top
of this post, is a 1975 abridged version of the catalog.



Bauhaus, by Fiedler and Feierabend was originally
published in 1999 with the red cover. The cover
of the 2008 edition is white.


Bauhaus by Xavier Girard, Assouline, 2003.



The original edition, top, and the second printing of the
book compiled for MoMA's 1938 Bauhaus exhibition. It was
edited by Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and Ise Gropius.



Two books by Magdalena Droste from Taschen.(top, bottom)



Siebenbrodt & Schobe, Parkstone, 2009.


Gerd Fleischmann’s 1995 book incorporates Herbert Bayer’s
design for a 1928 cover of the Bauhaus Journal.


Hans Wingler’s Bauhaus “bible,” by MIT Press, 1969.
Hard cover edition with slipcase, top, and the
soft cover version.


Even the catalog for the recent MoMA show included
“Workshops for Modernity” in the tiniest type possible.

A really great resource for Bauhaus books is the site Modernism 101. There is a blog associated with the site called Bauhaus Cowboy. It seems to have ended in the summer of 2009, but there are still many interesting posts there to peruse.