El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons

Author(s): Yve-Alain Bois and Christian Hubert

Source: October , Winter, 1979, Vol. 11, Essays in Honor of Jay Leyda (Winter, 1979),
pp. 113-128
Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/778238

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons

YVE-ALAIN BOIS

translated by CHRISTIAN HUBERT

Not everything in print is to be read in a traditional way; there are new

modes of reading which correspond to new modes of writing.
-Emile Benveniste

Then a voice which seemed to come from the sky rather than from t
cock's throat cried, "Student, be seated. Pluck a quill from the cock
tail and with it write the book of books, containing all the patres e
matres lectionis, the book that even the greatest genius must have
studied before the age of five. In one word, the most perfect book of all,
with the longest title: A bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (although we m
abbreviate: A bc...). Write this book, Fibel! Everyone will read it!"
With that, he awoke and sat up in bed-which is of course what
any unseasoned author would have done.
-Jean-Paul, The Life of Fibel
Until the advent of modernism, writers paid little attention to typography. Af
whimsical pictograms of medieval manuscripts and the mannered calligrams of
Hebrew, Gallic, and Arabic poetry, typography became the restricted province
specialists. Economics dictated "justification," the most efficient use of the pag
way, the book became a grisaille. Although typographers designed new faces, wri
interested only in the arrangement of type by the linear foot, punctuated by an
ornamental capital. Except for Rabelais and Laurence Sterne (and a few other e
cases), writers were either bored by typography or threatened by what they s
impediment to the presumed transparency of the signifier.
But then Lewis Carroll, Mallarme, Apollinaire, Marinetti, and finally the p
emerged to prove that "the past and the future of the letter (where it comes from
remains open to it) are independent of the phoneme." IA brief history thus begins
swarm of seminal names: Bayer, Berlewi, Bill, van Doesburg, Feininger, Ha
Heartfield, H6ch, Zdanevitch, Itten, Lager, Lewis, Moholy-Nagy, Peeters, M
Schwitters, Strzeminski, Werkman, Zwart, and especially El Lissitzky and Alex
Rodchenko, who exemplify the two tendencies of modern typography-the pure u
and photomontage.

1. Roland Barthes, "L'esprit de la lettre," La Quinzaine Litteraire, June 1, 1970.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 114 OCTOBER

In Russia, the
the lithographe
letter acknowle
out with a rule
are no longer le
written by a par
by another." 3
Words in Libert
was to write:

Prior to October our artists demonstrated little interest in typesetting. That task
was left to the printers. But after October a number of our best artists from
various fields, in their desire to express the new through the specifics of each
medium, set about producing the new book in terms of the material of the book
itself-that is, type. Their work took two directions: the first, which might be
called "the architecture of the book," proceeds from a plan of the whole and of
each page based on the proportion and relations of the parts, the relation of
composition to the page, the size and contrast of the letters, and above all the
exclusive use of standard typographic elements and the specific characteristics
of the typographic process, such as overprinting and the like.
The second direction, which might be called "figurative montage,"
arranges compositional materials in a mosaic for the design of covers, isolated
pages, and posters.
Both are directly linked to production.4

Lissitzky was the herald of the first "direction"-the total conception of the book, it
construction (on the title page of Dlia Golosa he referred to himself as konstructor knigi)
At the same time, he never completely subscribed to claims of specificity which, in a
restrictive formalist aesthetic, underpin the very idea of modernism. He seems instead t
have been committed to mixing genres in order to destroy any division of the arts on
essentialist grounds. He claimed that he created Dlia Golosa exclusively with standard
typographic elements.6 He used, however, not only letters (in the UNOVIS almanac he
wrote: "Gutenberg's Bible was printed with letters only; but the Bible of our time cannot

2. On these concepts, see the works of Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology (Baltimore, John
Hopkins, 1976), Writing and Difference (Chicago, Univerisity of Chicago, 1978), La disseminatio
(Paris, Seuil, 1972), and Positions (Paris, Minuit, 1972).
3. Victor Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenikh, "La lettre en tant que telle," Manifestes futuriste
russes, ed. L. Robel, Paris, Editeurs Frangais Reunis, 1971, p. 23.
4. El Lissitzky, "The Artist in Production," Catalogue of the Graphic Arts Section, Polygraph
Exposition of the Union of Republics, Moscow, 1927.
5. Written by Mayakovsky and designed by Lissitzky, this book was published in Berlin in 1923. It
was recently reissued in a facsimile edition by Verlag Gebr. K6nig, Cologne/New York, 1973. The tit
may be translated as For the Voice.
6. Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers, El Lissitzky, Life, Letters, Texts, trans. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary
Whittall, Greenwich, New York Graphic Society, 1968, caption to illustrations 95-108. All further
references to this volume will appear in the form of page numbers directly following the citations.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons 115

just presented in letters alone."--p. 358), but

ries: thick, fine, and dotted lines; grids; div
transformed into figures. In addition, on m
introduced; some of the illustrations approac
Lissitzky's typographic career, which bega
career in painting, is well known. His first wo
illustrated in the style of Chagall (with whom
we may be told, these hardly contain anythin
little books were put away and later scarcely
revolution he made posters, including the fa
was, however, in Berlin that he produced most
printed his Of Two Squares (written in 1920).
the Gutenberg Society; in the 1927 Gutenberg
The invention of easel pictures produced grea
ness has been lost. The cinema and the i
triumphed. We rejoice at the new media w
disposal. We know that being in close co
keeping pace with the progress of social de
sharpening of our optic nerve, with the m
construction of the plane and its space, wit
ness at boiling-point, with all these new as
give a new effectiveness to the book as a w

In the same year he published "The Artist

October opened the route towards the ma
studio, of easel painting, had to be transposed
is more, paintings had become luxury it
between the energy required to produce t
influence. And as the printed page began t
died.

In April 1924 he wrote Kiippers from his s

that I will return to painting again, even if I

7. If Lissitzky was the herald of the first direct

second, "figurative montage." Malevich, however,
all architectural, and its true meaning was not under
aesthetics and intuitive moods, and created from the
a barrier in the path of the developing form of new
Andersen, New York, Wittenborn, 1971, vol. I., p.
temperate, yet he also perceived its limitations: "M
photographs and the inscriptions belonging to them
photographically reproduced for printing. In this w
ness, which appears to be very easy to operate and fo
but which in powerful hands turns out to be the m
(Kiippers, p. 359) However, he appears to have cons
He also admired, outside of Russia, the work of Joh

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 116 OCTOBER

And he was rig

In 1923 in Ber
exhibition desig
Cologne, also i
exhibitions-rev
organization o
Aufhebung of e
from Mondrian
But what role

But let us dig

the UNOVIS in
insistent pre
encircled as w
The reasons f
distance lie be
at the height
paper shortage
futurists' man
old bills, spilli
the discomfit
improved this
had to be made.
There were also technical reasons. Manual lithography (which Lissitzky
himself used for Malevich's book Suprematism-34 Drawings, printed in Vi-
tebsk 8 ) was incapable of producing the desired precision and evenness of inking
New techniques would be necessary if the perfect, nonhierarchical unity of
"figure" and "letter" (although it is uncertain whether the two may so easily b
opposed) which Lissitzky envisioned were to be achieved. With traditional
typography (in the narrowest sense) the figure would have suffered; whereas with
lithography, given the poor quality of the available equipment, the letter would
have been blurred, indistinct. These conditions, however, did not prevent
Lissitzky from speculating on future technical possibilities, as well as on those
currently at hand.
Finally, there may also have been resistance to the publication of this story-
a question of cultural politics, although this is unlikely, at least prior to the NEP.9
We must insist, therefore, upon the technical difficulties; even in industrial Berlin
it was difficult to execute Lissitzky's other great typographic work, Dlia Golosa:
"Editions of our books were usually produced by large printing-works, but the

8. Reissued in facsimile by J.-C. Marcade, Paris, Chine, 1974.

9. "During the twenties, a relatively liberal publishing policy was pursued by the state." (Peter
Wollen, "Art in Revolution: Russian Art in the Twenties," Studio International, vol. 18, no. 932 [April
1971], 152). Total repression came later, with resolutions passed in the early thirties.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons 117

production manager at the Berlin office, Ska

he said, 'As this is a risky thing, it is better to
pay more attention to you there."'" (p. 25)

The New Book

The story Of Two Squares is a textbook; it should instruct. Although

meaning might be uprooted and the denotative illusion destroyed, the primary
problem-on its own modest scale (of production, distribution)-was essentially
similar to that of Eisenstein or Vertov: in a revolutionary period, it is impossible
to eliminate the signified. In Of Two Squares, however, the political signified is
extremely weak; text and illustrations are barely informed by it. There is simply
the requisite amount of narrative. Only the colors, whose symbolism is highly
conventional, offer a clue...
Children, however, have little need of extensive historical knowledge. A
plastic scenario, a pictorial strategy is sufficient to indicate to them the forces
which are face to face. Adults, on the other hand, know the entire story, which
renders their readings both more epic and more perverse (epic in Brecht's or even
Schiller's sense: "The goal of the epic poet is already present at every stage in his
trajectory; this is why we do not press on toward some final destination, but dally
like lovers with each step.").
The epic: Lissitzky spoke of it ("We, however, are satisfied if in our book the
lyric and epic evolution of our times is given shape."-p. 359) as if responding to
Marx:

... is Achilles possible side by side with powder and lead? Or is the
Iliad at all compatible with the printing press and steam press? Does
not singing, and reciting, and the Muses necessarily go out of existence
with the appearance of the printer's bar, and do not, therefore, disap-
pear the prerequisites of epic poetry?'0

Not if the typographer is also the poet, Lissitzky seems to answer, not if a new
history serves as the pretext for the book. (And is October not the actual,
prodigious history which gives rise to a mythology-as Marx wrote, "there mus
be one mythology" which provides the material of the epic-a mythology which
is, in miniature, the subject of this book?)
But is Of Two Squares really a picture book?
Instead of investigating the fundamental question, which has been posed by
men such as Freud, Wittgenstein, and Eisenstein (Does visual thought exist? Is a
picture capable of stating a proposition? Can a preconceptual logic which existed

10. Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1857 ed.),
trans. N. I. Stone, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1904, p. 311.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 118 OCTOBER

prior to artic
character in
World War I
"The plastic e
part to the i
This is obvio
carries little information. This "narrative" has no denouement; it concludes with
the phrase to be continued, so that it is up to the reader to complete the book, the
revolution. Despite appearances, this is not simply a pictorial translation of a
narfative. Still, the example from Mondrian demonstrates the timeliness of the
question (A narrative composed of abstract images?).
The book must function as a work; it must be effective. It must, by forcing
the reader to work, elicit another kind of reading, serve as a model for the
transformation not only of production but also of consumption, reactivate
reading. Taking a stand against those who "consider the difficult work of art as a
weekend pastime," 12 it must transform the reader.
Art as an "instrument of social change"'-such was the program, but without
any instrumentalist intention (the sad consequences of which are familiar from
the case of social realism). The book must change the reader in a completely
material way. By transforming itself formally, it also transforms the conditions of
its apprehension. (Especially since form is the preferred hiding place of ideology,
largely because in the West we have the bad habit of ignoring form. "Form is
always ideological," Eisenstein wrote in response to charges of "formalism"
leveled against him.'3 This is well known, but bears repeating.)
Does the political nature of this book not then lie in its attempt to transform
the power of the book over the reader's body (as opposed to what would later be
called the easy reading of the NEP), rather than in the fact that it offers children a
little mythology of October? Indeed, "by reading, our children are already
acquiring a new plastic language; they are growing up with a different relation-
ship to the world and to space, to shape and to colour; they will surely also create
another book." (p. 359)
All of this is undoubtedly political.

The Broken Line

In 1927 Lissitzky complained: "Yes, in this present day and age we still have
no new shape for the book as a body; it continues to be a cover with a jacket, and a
spine, and pages 1, 2, 3.... We still have the same thing in the theatre also."
(p. 359)

11. Piet Mondrian, "Natural Reality and Abstract Reality," in Michel Seuphor, Piet Mondrian,
New York, Abrams, n.d., p. 321.
12. "Qui le Lef prend i la gorge," Manifestes futuristes russes, p. 73.
13. S. M. Eisenstein, "In the Interest of Form," Kino, November 12, 1932.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons 119

Nevertheless, this little book (12 sheets,

paper, 22 by 28 centimeters), made five yea
1. has no real cover (Were the first and
heavier paper? How was the book bound
2. has no jacket or sleeve (Something
volume, such as the "alphabetical" index
3. is unpaginated. (So that the order
prescribed, at least not explicitly. This ap
analyzed.)
However:

Our first encounter with a book rarely consists in laying it flat on a

table, opening it to the first page, and commencing to read with the first
word. Especially when it is a picture book. We often leaf through it,
thumbing the pages while the eye darts quickly in and out in a series of
glances which rhyme with the rhythm of our leafing through the
spatialized "body" of the book.'4

Of Two Squares is perhaps the last work which allows us to read from th
first word to the last without lifting our heads. (But what if, as Roland Bart
once suggested, it is only when one lifts one's head that one truly reads?) It th
reveals in its entirety (in several ways, on several levels) the contradiction betw
continuity and discontinuity which constitutes the book.
Although its format may pose some difficulties, the book invites us to thum
its pages-like the doodles sketched during a boring lecture in students' no
books, which, when rapidly leafed through, are transformed into an animate
cartoon. In this way the book is presented as a metaphor for the filmic ("the
continuous page-sequence-the bioscopic book"-p. 355). But it also denounc
the optical illusion of cinematic continuity. We know today, from "experiment
cinema, that a film is constituted of a number of small units placed end to e
pictograms and black intervals. In (commercial) cinematic narrative, however, t
illusion of presentness (in which each image appears to efface its predecessor a
is itself destined to be forgotten in turn, neutralized by the succeeding imag
conceals the real material discontinuity of film.
The fact that every "plate" in Lissitzky's book reacts (in the chemical sens
with every other one overdetermines the cinematic metaphor: the "montage
attractions." This book is thus the trace, the residue of an animated film from
which the best moments have been excerpted. As his friend Eggeling wrote,
"Lissitzky hoped to resolve the problem of the representation of movement in the
visual arts with the assistance of a camera. But Of Two Squares never became a

14. Martine Deborne, "Volumes-feuillets-planches," Communications, 19 (1972).

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 120 OCTOBER

film." (p. 380)

of an absent te
Of Two Squa
representing
cation alone,
itself require
either the rea
book, the con
wooden box,
book was torn
intensity, and brought into the street as a poster." (p. 358) These posters-as
opposed to the gigantic billboards of modern (American) advertising, which are
meant to be read from moving vehicles-are "for people who would stand quite
close and read it over and make sense out of it" (ibid.)-like the dazibaos of the
Chinese cultural revolution.
Yet since "as long as the book is of necessity a hand-held object, that is to s
not yet supplanted by sound recordings or talking pictures, we must wait from day
to day for new fundamental inventions" (p. 357) which will destroy the traditio
form of the book. Meanwhile, another maneuver-a Trojan horse-suggests itse
the poster might become part of the book.
Perhaps this is the case with Of Two Squares.
(Elsewhere, Lissitzky expressed interest in the comic strip. In 1925 he wro
on the subject of a periodical--undoubtedly Asnova, on architecture: "I am no
introducing in our newspaper a kind of cartoon serial, captioned by a fe
explanatory sentences, thus conveying an idea through this visual method
p. 68.)
But another rubric--rhythm -summons another metaphor which is offere

15. I will rehearse in this context neither the theory of the "filmic," which is based in the pictogram
nor the polemic which found Eisenstein and Malevich in opposed camps. Both, however, are releva
For the former, see Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning," Image/Musicl Text, trans. Stephen Hea
New York, Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 52-68. For the Eisenstein/Malevich polemic see Malevich, Ess
on Art, vol. I, pp. 226-38, and Eisenstein, Film Form, trans. and ed. Jay Leyda, New York, Harco
Brace Jovanovich, 1949, pp. 72-83. See also Annette Michelson, "Reading Eisenstein Reading Capit
Part 2," October, 3 (Spring 1977), 82-9.
16. "There are other 'arts' which combine still (or at least drawing) and story, diegesis-namely th
photo-novel and the comic-strip. I am convinced that these 'arts', born in the lower depths of h
culture, possess theoretical qualifications and present a new signifier. ... There may thus be a futu
or a very ancient past-truth in these derisory, vulgar, foolish, dialogical forms of consume
subculture. And there is an autonomous 'art' (a 'text'), that of the pictogram ('anecdotaliz
images.. .); this art taking across historically and cuturally heteroclite productions: ethnograp
pictograms, stained glass windows, Carpaccio's Legend of Saint Ursula, images d'Epinal, phot
novels, comic-strips. The innovation represented by the still (in comparison with these othe
pictograms) would be that the filmic (which it constitutes) is doubled by another text, the film.
(Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning," p. 66).
17. Martine Deborne, "D&crire," Ca, I, 1 (1973).

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons 121

as a pretext for and constitutes one of th

story Of Two Squares as an emblem of the
score, perhaps less than Dlia Golosa, which
voice, "to be read aloud." According to Li
same relation to the accompanying poem
two types of layout in Dlia Golosa. Dou
address book or subway map, are complex
separated by other pages which, while m
scanned according to a red/black oppositio
rhythmically, it becomes orchestral.
Rhythm, we know, predates the invent
We have found rhythmic inscriptions
thirty thousand years before the birth
before the first writing. These inscript
they were, in fact, preinscriptions. All of
what we generally call abstractions. Ab
before the appearance of figuration or
unique area of corporeal practice, pai
originated in the same nonfigurative an
was simply rhythmic.19

And, in his remarkable analysis of "The

Expression," Emile Benveniste demonstra
diction between the continuous and the d
is operative even at the level of the letter.20
Thus the letter becomes, at the minima
up in the flow, it may nevertheless, like

Theory
As early as 1919, Lissitzky wrote to Malevich:
I think it is necessary that we should pour the thoughts, which are to be
drunk from the book with the eyes, over everything which is perceived
by the eyes. The letters and the punctuation marks, which impose order
on the thoughts, must be included in our calculations; the way the lines
are set out can lead to particular concentrations of thought, they must
be concentrated for the benefit of the eye, too. (p. 380)

18. El Lissitzky, "Typographische Tatsachen," Gutenberg-Festschrift, Mainz, 1925.

19. Roland Barthes, "La sociologie de l'art et sa vocation interdisciplinaire," Coloquio/artes
(Lisbon), 18-19 (April-June 1974).
20. In Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek, Coral Gables, University of
Miami, 1971, ch. xxvii.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
IC4

I:7Sij;j
t/

El Lissitzky. The Red We

(Poster). 1919. (Above).

Cover for Of Two Squar

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 .2?
4?(

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 124 OCTOBER

But let us retu

wrote, "The bo
Lissitzky did
many were ava
borrowed from
layout of the p
was in order to
articulated:

Inordertocommunicateyourthoughtsinwritingyouhaveonlytoform
certaincombinationsfromthesesymbolsandstringthem togetherinan
unbrokenchain.
but-NO.
YOU see here that the pattern of thought cannot be represe
mechanically by making combinations of the twenty-six letters o
alphabet. Language is more than just an acoustic wave motion, an
mere means of thought transference. In the same way typograp
more than just an optical wave motion for the same purpose. From
passive, non-articulated lettering pattern one goes over to the a
articulated pattern. (p. 355)

Like Albers, Lissitzky understood that the most economical grap

hence the least articulated, were also the least legible. The letter is the
of phonk and graphein; an absence (spacing) marks their sep
underscore this fact is to break with the traditional grisaille of the b
On this basis, Lissitzky elaborated a veritable typographic argum
may be connected with certain recent preoccupations about language
-the letter is an element which is itself composed of elements (-
the curve-far fewer than the Chinese ideogram). The immense text of
born from these few nonhierarchical marks, as equal as the text is in
have observed that in an organic pattern all the facets exhibit the sam
unity."_-p. 356)
-continuity does not exist; it always bears the imprint of differ
"the linear norm was never able to impose itself absolutely for the
that intrinsically circumscribed graphic phoneticism. We now know
limits came into being at the same time as the possibility of what t
they opened what they finished and we have already named them: d
differance, spacing."21
From the very beginning of the book, however, something has at
conceal the fact that "phonetic writing does not exist." 22 Something
spacing and sought, in a great mimetic deception, to imitate the flum

21. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 86.

22. Ibid., p. 39.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons 125

Thus the cursive, syncopated letter was r

discontinuity produced by the machine.
printing, the manuscript had attained such a
model for books executed in this totally d
technical change (but technology, Lissitz
independent) appears to indicate that the
represents a profound epistemological mut
"the end of linear writing is indeed the en
-phonetic writing, like pure alphabetic
one grapheme for each phoneme). The gr
without residue, but has its own density.
printed sheet are learnt by sight, not by
than the ear, writing is silent. It bears th
wheel is its emblem. Thus typography sum
attentive to the book's materiality, its cor
with a machine: Lissitzky, who himself t
wrote: "The new book demands the new
dead." (ibid.)
-Lissitzky nevertheless envisioned a mo
as precedents Marinetti and Sonia Delaun
poem, where changes in color underscore
Mallarme and, among his contemporaries
others. "The designing of the book spa
according to the laws of typographical me
and stresses of the content." (p. 355) Thu
the graphic sign must "follow," as well a
Modern thought requires modern typo
innovation-the graphic sign itself must i
loud-not simply imitate the voice and ge
the intensity, inscribe the silences, and th
writing. (When discussing the book, Liss
claimed, had yet to explode traditional sc
and the book is also characteristic of Mal
-since the book must become pictogram
and text must be subverted. First, the su
reversed (which is why Lissitzky praised
to shift the emphasis and make the word
the other way around"-'p. 357). In the
(which explains the attraction of new ph
production style for word and illustration

23. El Lissitzky, "The Artist in Production."

24. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 86.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 126 OCTOBER

[ibid.] The let

the first phas
But we must

The Title

We are struck immediately by the naked violence of the "cover," the "first
page, which is actually a page like all the others. (But to comprehend fully its
effect, it is important to bear in mind the ornamental grisailles that were comm
then, or even the conventional paradigms of contemporary French publishing.
What accounts for the paper? Did economic reasons alone dictate the choic
of this unpleasant, grainy texture and sallow color? Or did convention play a rol
Did Lissitzky shrink from producing a deluxe edition? (He spoke enthusiastical
about the books of the painter-poets, which "were not numbered, de luxe copies
they were cheap, unbound, paperbacked books.. ."-p. 358. Nevertheless, at t
end of his book we are informed that fifty signed and numbered copies were
produced-a paradox?)
The paper is surprising: The white will never be white.
Practically nothing distinguishes this page from the others. It is
"articulated" -beyond the dedication, a second title page, and the "directions for
use"-to the "first" page of the story (7, if the cover is 1). All odd-numbered pages
are printed, except for 21 (opposite the colophon) and 23 (opposite an entirely
black page), which are "white." All the even pages are blank, except for 6
(which I call "directions for use"), 20 (the colophon), 22 (black), and 24 (the last
page, the back "cover" inscribed with two lines, one grey, the other black).
All of the pages devoted to the narrative (there are six: 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17,
although this choice is arbitrary-is the cover not also part of the story?) bear large
squares of identical size which frame the images; the "text" (which is also an
image) is always outside this frame. On the "cover," however, this framing square,
which delimits a field of pure vision, is distinctly larger than those which follow,
and it contains a text. This text is quite special; it is a rebus, although it may at
first not appear as such-a red square, an invocation of the father (Malevich, 1915).
This square is weighty.
It is printed with the same red ink that is used elsewhere in the book, but here
color is intensified because of size (as Matisse remarked, "The quantity of color
was its quality."925). Similarly, the square's frontality distinguishes it from all
subsequent red figures, which are oblique, and links it with the other elements of
the rebus. According to Lissitzky:

25. Henri Matisse, "Statements to T&riade," Matisse on Art, ed. Jack D. Flam, London, Phaidon,
1973, p. 59.

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons 127

Combinations occur in the horizonta

These two lines produce the right (u
placed in alignment with the edges of
effect (rest). It can be place diagonally
(agitation). These are the axioms of typ
The rebus is a title.
This title is not, however, aloof, separated from the text like a blurb, an
incitement to purchase this book. As a pictogram it is already implicated in t
matrix of the book. What we have here, despite its deceptively simple appearan
is in fact a syntagm in three different expressive orders-which immediately ra
the problem of articulation. Each semantic unit must be read within a differ
frame of reference ( IIPO 2 O ), thus challenging the possibility of any transcr
tion or translation-although Western logocentrism, erasing the differenc
considers this translation to be "natural": Of Two Squares.
The order in which the rebus is to be read seems obvious (we know, howeve
from Klee and Eisenstein, that when the text is an image, the order in which
reader approaches it always transforms the image's meaning):
-there is an arithmetic progression in the size of the semantic units whi
comprise the syntagm: TTPO 2 0 should be read in the order 1, 2, 3.
-in the West, we read from left to right and from top to bottom (undoub
edly a Christian custom). The ITPO is at the left and inclines upwards; the 2 is
its right, beginning slightly above and ending slightly below it; and the red squ
is even further to the right, its upper edge slightly higher than the lower part
the 2.
But this order might just as well be reversed. It is the red square which strikes
us first (The Red Wedge Defeats the Whites). This order is also challenged by an
inscription found outside the frame: the printed signature of Lissitzky, the book's
"architect." This signature is interrupted by a fold (the first name, or its
diminutive--Lazar, El-occupies a descending slope which forms an angle with
the surname, in upper and lower case letters of the same typeface, which occupies
an ascending slope. This signature-a right angle, hence "nonambiguous"-
placed obliquely-hence "dynamic," according to Lissitzky's axiomatic system-
is to be related to the bolder but shorter inscription, TIPO , printed in a different
typeface-the only other diagonal on the page.
These two oblique axes are not parallel, but intersect at a point (a vanishing
point? anamorphosis?) which is off the page, about 30 centimeters from the upper
right-hand corner of the frame. Since Lissitzky had abandoned single-point
perspective, we must ask whether this "initial" page represents the persistence of
the visual pyramid, which Lissitzky claimed had been superseded by axonomet-
rics. Has another received cultural system been substituted for the customary
vertical/horizontal format of the book? There is no doubt that here reading

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 128 OCTOBER

remains on th
not diminish
Yet the sign
inscription out
(which is not
and only wor
title and sign
tionally coded
the title, in b
although it m
name on a co
There is one final disruption of sense hidden in the rebus, one which
redoubles the ruse of the signature which takes the place of a caption without
fulfilling its function. Nowhere is it indicated that one of the two squares will not
be red (not even on the title page, page 5, where this rebus is exhaustively
decoded--although something is always lost in translation.)
The unprepared eye does not even perceive this elision: the ideological
overdetermination of red through a symbolism of color, which is neither psycho-
logical as in Kandinsky nor totally arbitrary, is accepted as "evidence," when it is
in fact a rape, a dishonest forcing, of meaning...

This content downloaded from

142.204.35.194 on Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:40:42 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms