———————————————————
My day job is "book jacket designer"
Enough with all of my yakety-yak— Am I right people?
This 'uns printed on newsprint, innit?
———————————————————
The Tongue Taking a Trip
I posed this question on Twitter, and nobody proffered a solution—So I pose it to you now here:
What important textual secret is embedded in the phonetic spelling of Lolita's name? Anyone?
I only saw it once I designed it. I'd never noticed it before. There's a clue in the design itself...
———————————————————
What important textual secret is embedded in the phonetic spelling of Lolita's name? Anyone?
I only saw it once I designed it. I'd never noticed it before. There's a clue in the design itself...
———————————————————
Dithyrambs
---------------
Did you know that Sartre played the piano? No, me neither. (Evidently there is a video of him muddling through some Chopin and Debussy in 1967—though I can't find it online.)
Barthes was an amateur pianist also.
Did you know that Nietzsche improvised for two hours daily on the piano in the psychiatric sanatorium in Jena to which he had been committed in 1889?
Jesus wept. What I wouldn't give to go back in time and listen in. Can you even imagine??
From Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy:
"Even under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which songs of all primitive men and peoples speak, or with the potent coming of spring that penetrates all nature with joy, these Dionysian emotions awake, and as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness...There are some who, from obtuseness or lack of experience, turn away from such phenomena ... with contempt or pity born of consciousness of their own "healthy-mindedness." But of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called "healthy-mindedness" looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian...roars past them."
(I imagine it would've sounded something like Charles Ives + Kaikhoshru Sorabji + Cecil Taylor + Gotterdammerung + Gwar.)
---------------
"Sartre wrote about Xenakis and Stockhausen, but loved Chopin, just as Nietzsche wrote about Wagnerian modernity but wept while playing Mazurkas. Barthe's beloved composer was Schumann."
Is Romanticism the skeleton in the closet of Modernism?
I'm not sure but I'll let you know when I finish reading:
"The Philosopher's Touch: Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes at the Piano" by Francois Noudelmann, philosophy professor at Paris VIII. From Columbia University Press.
To say this book is in my wheelhouse would be understating things immensely.
Simone de Beauvoir
(Three new covers)
To
begin with—what one doesn't see, in this photo, is proper scale.
To put
aside metaphoric scale for the time being, Sartre was reputedly only four
feet eleven inches tall. A real shrimp. Simone de Beauvoir, the philosopher,
feminist theorist and activist, ("Femmes, vous lui devez tout!"
"Women, you owe her everything!" proclaimed Le Nouvel Observateur
upon her death in 1986), writer of fiction, and perhaps co-author of some of
Sartre's works—was taller than Sartre was. And a good deal more attractive.
She seems the smaller of the two people in the photo, but it is de Beauvoir here who seizes our attention…
Aside
from being central in the frame, her gaze contains the photograph's
"punctum." (Roland Barthes:
"The punctum is the accident which pricks me—but also bruises me, is
poignant to me."[1]) She is both the literal center, and the emotional center of the picture.
Her eyes bore into Sartre—or do they? For the
longest time I thought she was focused on the photographer/the viewer. (Did d. B.
have a stray eye as Sartre did? Her right eye seems aimed at us, her left at
him) But now I think she is fully focused on Sartre. And assessing him. And the
assessment seems to me none too flattering. The left side of her mouth curls up
with tension. She grasps one of her hands with the other; as if inhibiting
herself from gesturing as he does. The pose looks casual—but isn't.
What is bothering her? is it
the fact that she has assumed a role, literally, in the background? That she is caught mute, and he
conversationally, in media res? Is her reaction, her intensity, due to the fact that, pointedly, Sartre's focus
rests squarely on a third party? It is impossible to view this
photograph without seeing, or at very least sensing, a triangle...
Knowing what we know about dB and JPS, it's easy to make assumptions about the photo's psychic content. Facts that seem to bear on the proceedings: 1. De Beauvoir’s greatest
work, the monumental Second Sex, is nothing if not the ultimate
discourse on the sidelining, the objectification and back-grounding of women. 2. This couple, notoriously maintained menages (plural) a trois. In light of these facts—DB's silence here seems deafening.
In any
case, the photo's attraction derives from us watching the watcher.[2]
-------------
Photos are like memoirs. They are chronicles which not only document, but which deceive, and which sometimes reveal truths unintentionally...
-------------
When I
look at any photograph of these two lifelong lovers, Sartre and de Beauvoir, I
think what I've thought often when I'm in Paris and a statuesque beauty walks
by with a lumpen toad of a man (think Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin), i.e.
"why this loser?" These couplings simply don't make sense.
To make matters worse, Sartre could be un petit con. A jerk. Ask anyone. Of course, he was "Sartre." In the
sense of: the intellectual giant. So that had to add to his sexual appeal. Right?
But still.
So to
begin to understand what seems to be a real romantic mismatch, one could do
worse than read de Beauvoir's memoir of Sartre's last ten years, Adieux,
(La Cérémonie Des Adieux): which is a history of dB's and Sartre's time
together and a transcript of Beauvoir's conversations with Sartre
(conversations which turn extremely pointed at moments).
Importantly,
this is the only book dB. wrote that Sartre did not read, edit and (one
assumes) approve, first.
-------------
Simone
de Beauvoir and Sartre were, of course, philosophical
and spiritual soul mates. Their actual
sexual/romantic co-existence was complex and fraught to say the least. It was
predicated on:
1. Not
formally marrying
2.
Having affairs[3]
3. The
necessary disclosure of these affairs and the details thereof to one
another.
It's
this last bit that always strikes me as both unnecessarily cruel, but
also in some sense necessary and unsurprising given that the
participants in this "open" relationship were intellectuals who
prided themselves on their un-averted gaze—their ability to see and acknowledge
all that is difficult in life. They were both, after all, avowed
existentialists.
What
emerges from this text:
Much of
what kept dB. and Sartre together as a couple, finally, is a deep disrespect
for bourgeois notions of what a relationship should be. We take for granted
that this repudiation of marital mores is what makes the French
"french," but this was not in fact always the case. To some extent,
Sartre and de Beauvoir helped make the "menage" a quintessentially
french behavior—at least they made of it something which was, if not morally
acceptable, then intellectually desirable.[4]
In
the end "the arrangement" betwixt the two seemed to cause, as these
things always do, a tremendous amount of pain and lasting harm not only to the
participants, but to an ever-widening circle. Call me old fashioned, but, what
one wants to see, upon finishing this book, is a certain regret— a pang
expressed by these two lovers at having missed out on some of the salutary
aspects of monogamy. In the end, frankly, their whole deal sounds exhausting. (Again,
the photo: one want to shout "Look at her: you idiot!") And
its the sheer fatigue of having to maintain this complex openness that I think
ultimately inhibited their intimacy.
Alexandre
Dumas once wrote that "marriage is a heavy chain—it must be borne by two,
or three." On the evidence of these pages, even five or six people
couldn't do the job. This was one heavy chain.
`
-------------
If one
comes away from Adieux feeling vexed by the inscrutability of dB.s
attitude towards her romantic affairs, perhaps The Woman Destroyed
offers some insight. This work of fiction is divided into three sections—two
stories and a novella. Each an expose of a woman coming to terms with
disappointment.
"The
Age of Discretion," takes on aging and parenthood—a mother's conflicted
feelings about her grown son; "Monologue" is a tragic tirade: a
bitter and lonely middle-aged woman spills forth during a New Year's Eve
celebration: and the titular story "The Woman Destroyed," the best of
the three, is the diary of a woman betrayed by her husband. None of the three
segments are what you'd call "feel-good" reads. Put another way:
nobody, after reading this book, will want to age into a "femme rompue."
It is decidedly NOT a good thing to be. (One assumes that there is something of
dB in each of these these women. Though none of them seems to possess de
Beauvoir's stamina and fortitude. Maybe they are the women she wishes she could
be? Expressing, as they do, their anger and regret? Perhaps this is going too
far.)
Nevertheless
there is much to learn here. These (more or less) tragic characters stick in
the mind, provide a way in to dB's philosophical work, and show little glimpses
of the woman behind the public persona .[5]
-------------
"You do not die from being born, nor from having lived, nor from old
age. You die from something . . . Cancer, thrombosis, pneumonia: it is
as violent and unforeseen as an engine stopping in the middle of the sky . .
."
From de Beauvoir's beautiful, insightful, incandescently painful memoir of
her mother's sickness and passing: A Very Easy Death, published in 1964.
This book should be required reading for, well, for everyone; but most
certainly required reading for anyone who has ever lost a parent (A demographic
which will include, eventually, everyone). This book should also be a
curriculum staple in every medical school. Doctors should read every word of
it, twice. A Very Easy Death should be on the MCAT.
As D. Beauvoir recounts the illness, treatment and death of her mother, all
facets of the experience are covered: the personal (bereavment, filial duty);
the broadly metaphysical (ontology, ethics); but most importantly the clinical
(palliative care, disclosure, euthanasia...) and the impact these clinical
decisions have on the lives of the families of the ill—the care takers.
How much care is too much care?
Where does the patient end, and the illness begin?
How much information should be disclosed to the dying?
To say that the book covers material that is still extremely relevant
is to gloss over the more uncomfortable fact that, confoundedly, these topics
are still not discussed rationally in the public arena.[6]
Those who earn their keep writing about the vicissitudes of health, and
health care owe de Beauvoir a debt of gratitude. Specifically those who write
the literary, non-fictional, clinical, patient-centered health care narratives
which are so popular these days (written, more often than not, from the M.D.'s
perspective). Which is to say that not only was the Susan Sontag of Illness
as Metaphor made possible by this little book, but also Atul Gawande was
made possible by this little book; Abraham Verghese was made possible by this
little book; Joan Didion's last two books were made possible by this little
book...[7]
I wish I had known of A Very Easy Death when my own father was
succumbing, with excruciating slowness, to cancer over twenty years ago. I was
a teen, and it wasn't given to me to understand that the obstacles me and my
family were facing were universal obstacles. This book would have given me, if
not necessarily solace, then...what exactly? Perhaps the feeling of being less alone.
-------------
-------------
A brief word on the cover designs. They are not exactly based on, but
inspired by the affiches
and wall stencils from the 1968 riots in Paris.
I was intending to use this style for my repackaging of the Julio Cortazar
backlist (to be revealed at a later date) but in the end it seemed somehow more
fitting for these late works of dB's. If you are interested in seeing more of
these posters you can purchase a gorgeous book called "la
beaute est dans la rue."
I wanted a style that had a certain directness—and I liked the idea of
co-opting the visual language of revolution for a writer who was nothing if not
(philosophically, politically) revolutionary. Also the style is more or less temporally
and geographically correct. The simplicity of the style made it possible for
me, with my limited skills, to make them myself.
I also wanted covers that weren't overtly sexed. (Not covers that
were un-"sexual," but rather covers that were unfixed on the
male/female axis). I certainly did not want to use any of the tropes
normally given to "woman writers." (Another post on this topic for
another time)
A propos of ugliness and beauty, the cover for The Woman Destroyed is
as close as I've ever come to a "jolie-laide" cover. And I kind of
love it because of that. I've certainly made ugly covers before; and I hope
that I've made pretty ones. But it's the coexistence of both attributes that
makes me happy here.
[1] In Camera Lucida, Barthes postulates that a
photo contains "the co-presence of two discontinuous elements."
[2] Interestingly, from the perspective of philosophical
semiosis: the shadow of a lamp completes the composition.
[3] De Beauvoir: "To ask two spouses bound by practical,
social and moral ties to satisfy each other sexually for their whole lives is
pure absurdity."
[4] Not that the French haven't always been disposed to
take lovers, but rather: the very philosophical systematization of this complex
pas de trois I think of as uniquely Beauvoir-Sartrian.
[5] All good fiction writers are "philosophers."
Occasionally, a good writer will be, in fact, a philosopher. Which is to
say, first and foremost a philosopher. Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir all fall
into this camp. Whether the philosophy makes the fiction more or less
compelling is a question for another time. What's nice about this book is that
one gets the sense of dB's philosophy without having to wade through all that
pesky Hegelian dialectic.
[6] In America at least
[7] As an aside: Roland Barthes' Mourning Diary
makes an interesting counterpoint to de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death…
———————————————————
Plurality and Complexity
“I will tell you why I became a philosopher. I became a philosopher because I wanted to be able to talk about many, many things, ideally with knowledge, but sometimes not quite the amount of knowledge that I would need if I were to be a specialist in them.”
—Alexander Nehamas
———————————————————
—Alexander Nehamas
———————————————————
On Late Style
On Late Style
--------------------
“O but they say the tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony”
—Richard II
—Richard II
--------------------
Is there such a thing as “Late style” in Design?
--------------------
"Late style" (as you’d imagine) refers to the work done by artists towards the end of their lives or careers.
"Late style" can occur almost as a symptom of
advanced age. "Late style" emerges with the artist's awareness that
death is, if not necessarily approaching, then inevitable. This intimation of
mortality, coupled with a career's worth of technical mastery leads to
"late style." Examples of “late style” would include Shakespeare's The
Winter's Tale, or Tempest; Melville's Billy Budd; Tolstoy's Hadji
Murad; Matisse's cut paper; Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations; Beethoven’s opus 132…
(Late Beethoven,
the Beethoven of the last quartets, for Adorno, Said, and others, is the very
paragon of "Late Style.")
"Late style" is generally thought to describe,
not only an artist’s autumnal works, but also his/her best works.
Therefore “late style” is always assigned to works ex post
facto.
"Late style" is not necessarily the result of a lengthy career:
Haydn, for example, throughout his long working life, never
developed a "late style." Keats's "Late style," arrived
during the six years before his death at 25. Keats achieved in poetry what he
never achieved in life: a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."
"Late style" is made up of strange, almost
warring bedfellows:
Wisdom and rebellion; Nostalgic longing and philosophical
detachment; Existential sobriety and religious reckoning; Stubborn, hard-won
intransigence and nothing-to-lose flexibility...
"Late style" generally includes liberation from
the strictures of established form.
-----------------
"Late style" presumably occurs in all media.
-----------------
Where is the "late style" in graphic design?
Amongst designers, whose "late style" do we
ponder and admire?
-----------------
There
are many older designers in the
public eye. There are many experienced
designers garnering their fair share
of attention from the design community. But it seems that, as designers age,
they tend to evolve into statesmen
rather than as master designers; much like ball players who become coaches and
play-by-play announcers. (Of course, with athletes,
physical limitations mark a necessary end to their careers. Which is to say: why do designers go to pasture so
early? eye-strain??) There is a common assumption that older designers give talks, teach, and write books whilst
younger designers create the groundbreaking design work. We have "Young Guns" awards, and, at the other end
of the spectrum, medals for lifetime achievement.
Of the elder statesmen and women who are still active designers—the
highest accolade one gives is to remark on the enduring freshness of
their approach. This kind of praise indicates to me that Design prizes vigor
and novelty over substance and gravitas.
Of a design hero of mine, my senior (and better), a mentor of sorts, I
always say: "she designs like a twenty year old." This is meant as,
and is, a high compliment indeed. (In case young designers are unaware:
maintaining a fresh, ever-renewing eye, over time, is very, very difficult. Few
actually accomplish this feat.)
I notice that we occasionally admire the very fact of an older,
still-functioning designer, but expend very little thought on the nature and
quality of the work produced. When the work is
praised as representing a summation of a life’s work, I’ve observed that this
work tends to be categorized in the “fine art” bin, rather than in the “great
design” bin; as the “serious” work tends to be, say, the paintings or collages
that the designer had always maintained as a sideline. Have you noticed this?)
In other words: is it that the medium of design isn’t robust enough to
support "late style?"
Is the only work that rises to the level of "greatness,”
necessarily, work without clients?
i.e. Fine Art?
-----------------
Of a recent article about an elder design statesman, I noticed how the
article's writer edged away from discussing this designer's work, and that the
gist of the piece concerned the subject's writing, his philosophy, his mutating
relationship with clients. This article had all the trappings of a "late
style" paean, but it stopped short of describing what, from a graphical
perspective, would have been the interesting bit, the meat and potatoes: the
design work.
Can you imagine an article on Monet in his later years that wasn’t
deeply preoccupied with his water lilies?
A quote from this particular article's subject: "There are three
responses to a piece of design - yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim
for." If these are the only three responses to a piece of design- is it
any wonder Design has no "late style?"
“Late style” might provoke, if not “wow:” “Hmmn…” or” Really?” or “Aaaaah.”
Maybe even “What the hell…?!”
If Design itself is predicated on youth (certainly the preponderance
of things sold, are sold to the
young—or so it would seem, if our mass media is to be believed) then
“late style” isn’t feasible.
If Design is not predicated
on youth; perhaps it demands timeliness.
Familiarity with the zeitgeist is integral to Design.
Conversely, Repudiation of the zeitgeist is integral to
"late style."
Is the very paucity of older, working, in-house designers itself the
necessary result of Design's deal with the devil—its dependency on the
marketplace with all of its attendant fashions?
Designers, if they are good at their jobs (sometimes even when they
aren't) eventually become art directors or creative directors- jobs that rely
less on one's skill as a designer. I myself am one of these art directors (though God knows I try to keep designing as much as possible) so I
tell you from experience that nothing
atrophies one’s taste and skills so much as art
direction—with its necessary reliance on other
hands.
A general lack of older designers in in-house design departments could
thusly be blamed on upward mobility— Fewer older, working designers leads to
less “late style” around to notice, and praise.
Though I believe there is more
to it.
I fear that Design is for the
young.
-----------------
Of a well-known established designer: as he ages he becomes more and
more tone-deaf to typography. And who could blame him? He’s
probably set tens of thousand pieces of copy in his career. His emphasis now is
on The big idea, not the paltry minutiae. But: (speaking of deafness:
Beethoven was famously irascible about the prissy details of his métier. Of
course the sheer glory of his genius subsumed his idiosyncrasies; his bad taste. Beethoven’s genius made of his spastic ugliness: “late
style.”) Design
cannot support such a disregard for detail. In the case of design: the
typography, the detail, IS the design. Without, say, pretty type, you have ugly, ineffectual
design.
Worse, of course, than an ugly
newness, is a cookie-cutter sameness.
“Boilerplate” is a symptom of aging.
-----------------
Is design for the young? Is it?
-----------------
What will become of me as I age?
I am no spring chicken myself—having come to the whole mishegoss
rather late.
I am “midway through my life’s journey.” (did Dante enjoy a “late
style?” In the Divine Comedy, his (literally) middle aged avatar is guided by the
wiser Virgil. In the field of graphic design, wouldn’t
we prefer young Beatrice as a guide? To remind us of those trivialities and
trends we care not one whit about anymore? The diagonal slashes? The reflex
blues? The crossed-out type and multiple format books that grace the Tmblrs of
a million design aspirants? Beatrice would know what the cool kids were up to.
Beatrice would be on Pinterest.)
-----------------
I repeat my question: What will become of
me as I age?
I don’t know— and maybe this is why I'm so intent
on solving the mystery of:
Whither all the mature design?
Mathew Arnold believed growing old meant:
“Los(ing) the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye.”
I can't help thinking that if we apply this verse to the commonly held
design virtues of "form" and "eye," then I'm in for a sad
professional dotage.
In
which case I might as well consider returning to the piano.
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