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Top: Ilia Zdanevish,
Le Dantyu as a Beacon, 1923
Middle: El Lissitzky, Pro dva kvadrata, 1922
Bottom: El Lissitzky,Title page for The Isms of Art, 1924
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Three
Dada artists that also influenced the future of book arts are Ilia
Zdanevish, Lazar El Lissitzky and Marcel Duchamp. Zdanevish (1894-1975)
wrote his text in an invented language called Zaum, in an attempt
to transcend the limits of conventional languages so that meaning,
emotion and sensation could be expressed through phonetic means.31
His best know work, Ledentu, in which he created large scale
letters out of typographic ornaments and used contrasting type styles
to push letterpress communication to its extremes.
Lissitzky (1890-1941) known
for his bright red and black arrangements began to use geometric
devices to develop images that related to the text. As a book artist,
or graphic designer, he did not decorate the book, but rather "constructed
the book by visually programming the total project." 32
The Isms of Art,an influential work of the 1920s, was edited
by Lissitzky and Dadaist Hans Arp in Germany. In this work Lissitzky
created a three-column horizontal grid structure to organize the
information, which was at that time a new concept. His use bold
rules, sans serif type, numbers as compositional elements and generous
amounts of white space positioned this work as an early expression
of the modern aesthetic.33 His design aesthetic was assimilated
into the Bauhaus doctrines by Jan Tschichold and quickly spread
through out the German design and printing world which was still
using medieval typography and symmetrical layouts.
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968),
another French artist whose work blurs the lines between many movements,
took the idea of unconventional structures much further. The foam-rubber
breast on the exhibition publication for Le Surréalisme en
1947, exposition internationale du surréalisme was one of
the first examples of a non-traditional cover. This idea of a non-traditional
structure soon transferred to magazines and other popular books.34
Duchamp's Green Box (1934)
is filled with torn scraps with jotted notes that have been precisely
reproduced and placed in a green suede box. These notes are from
his creative process when developing a large sculpture of the same
name that he created between 1913 and 1923.
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