About Two Squares by El Lissitzky
Speaking of squares, check out the grid at the top of this page. You can use your mouse to interact with it and find all the connections we have made thus far in this chapter, or navigate to other chapters of this book.
Now are you ready to embark on a tantalizing tale of two squares?
Click here and continue your journey. [Please note the English translation comes before the Russian original]
As always, remember to tweet! Once you are finished, return to this page and learn more about El Lissitsky and how he ensnared you in his trap to make choices in his work.
In the previous section, we explored Mallarme's "Throw of the Dice", where although Mallarme provides you a structure, you still have to decide where to go within that structure. The fact that you, as the reader, were allowed to make your own decisions in the work enhances Mallarme's message of chance. Mallarme's poem has provided you with a page as a conceptual playground in which he allows you to play with the swing set or the monkey bars, however Mallarme still exerts a considerable amount of control on your choices as no matter if you choose the slide or the swing set, you still get the same type of imagery that Mallarme has deliberately constructed. El Lissitsky's About Two Squares was created in 1922, a time in which the codex form was thriving. These books did not need an instruction set on how to read them. Although El Lissitzky sticks with the codex form, he delves deeply into typography, bolding words and placing them in various locations of the illustrations. El Lissitsky takes on Mallarme's play with typography a little further by adding geometry. His illustrations interact and intertwine with the text. How did the order or typography of the words change what captured your attention or what you read first? The bolded words must surely mean something other than the smaller words. There are many lines that lead to one another, similar to a path with arrows, as if El Lissitsky is trying to orient you to read a certain way. Towards the very first pages of the story, he includes bolded word with connected lines that begins with "Don't Read" and he presumes to instruct you to do the following things in his saga of two squares. However, which way did you read? Did you follow the path he constructed for you? Or did you individually pick out each path? Here is where El Lissitsky fits into the theme of choices. You had to choose which way to read, what to read first, and then you decided what all of it meant. For example, the page in which El Lissitsky says: "On the black settled red clearly/clearly red" which is it? Is the phrase "red clearly" or "clearly red"? It is up to you, as the reader, to make this decision. El Lissitzky only facilitates this process by drawing lines that connect the words and depicting an illustration. He still invites you to make your own decision that has you actively engaging with his art. El Lissitzky gives a whole story as a conceptual playground, and uses less words than Mallarme but plenty of illustrations. The illustrations and few words give way to more ambiguity, which arguably gives the reader more autonomy to make their own choices and interpret. But the question is, why did he allow the reader to make their own choices in which way to read the text?
First, it is important to note that this is a children's book. The beginning of this story says that it is "for all children". It may be that El Lissitzky wanted to establish a different relationship between illustration and words for children, promoting children to examine the flexibility of words and that they should be allowed to make their own choices even in how to read a story or how to interpret it. El Lissitzky's lines and illustrations have constructed the story, but they do not necessarily instruct how to read the story. El Lissitzky's work is often described as part of the Suprematist movement, which is defined as a world without objects, but with sentiments and emotions. Suprematism seeks to create a world with no objects and no objectives, which would explain why El Lissitzky has constructed his About Two Squares in a way that gives so much ambiguity that it is unsure what direction he is pulling the reader in his manipulation of the type. It is still up to the reader to determine the journey they take in the tale of two squares.
So did you like making the decision of how to read this story about these two squares or would you have preferred instructions on how to go about something like this? Tweet your answers using the hashtag or leave a comment below!
Media citation: Russian original from (El Lissitzky, 1922, Suprematicheskii Skaz)
English translation Facsimile from (Christiana Van Manen, 1922, About Two Squares)
Credits for access of this media goes to: Reed's Digital Collection of Artists' Books
