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拍品專文
El Lissitzky first illustrated the Jewish Passover song Had Gadya in 1917, a time of upheaval in Russia. Lissitzky was deeply involved in the development and promotion of a Jewish national identity at this time, catalysed by the granting of citizenship to Jews following the Communist Revolution. Hew was also a strong supporter of the Communist cause, as evidenced in his design for the Soviet flag which was paraded across Red Square on 1 May 1918 by members of the Government.
The present work is the cover to Lissitzky's series of gouaches illustrating Had Gadya, 'One Goat', a children's song sung at the end of Passover. It is constructed in ten verses, each of which incorporates the previous lines and ends in the repetition of 'Had Gadya' twice. The story is as follows:
A father bought a kid for two zuzim;
a cat came and ate the kid;
a dog then bit the cat;
the dog was beaten by a stick;
the stick was burned by fire;
water quenched the fire;
an ox drank the water;
a shohet [ritual slaughterer] slaughtered the ox;
the shohet was killed by the Angel of Death,
who in punishment was killed by God.
The gouaches Lissitzky executed for Had Gadya provide insights into his religious, political and artistic principles. First, he chose to illustrate a story which is integral to the culture and traditions of Judaism. Second, the story has parallels with the Communist Revolution: the goat represents the oppressed Jewish people, to whom God ultimately metes justice, just as the Communist Revolution resulted in the liberation of the Jews, who were denied rights, citizenship and Yiddish and Hebrew literature under the Czarist regime.
The light Had Gadya sheds on Lissitzky's artistic principles is far-reaching, foreshadowing the fame he was to achieve in the area of typography. Lissitzky believed that books must ingrate form and decoration with function in order to achieved the desired impact on the reader. His formula was 'For whom + why + what = how', and he concluded that 'It is in the area of children's books that we have accomplished most. Here we have found the form that corresponds to the content. The book is made active.' (Quoted in Harvard University Art Museums and Busch-Reisingher Museum, El Lissitzky 1890-1941 Catalogue for the Exhibition of Selected Works from North American Collections, the Sprengel Museum Hanover and the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle, Hanover 1987, p.61.) In the present work Lissitzky integrates illustration with text, as well as using two different languages, Yiddish and Aramaic, and incorporating decorative motifs into the lettering.
Gouaches of Had Gadya are extremely rare. Lissitzky executed the present work, together with accompanying illustrations to the story, as a gouache in 1917, and then published an amended set of colour lithographs in 1919. The cover to the 1919 version (fig. 1) is more abstract, with the narrative content of the illustration reduced, and the text more fully integrated into the illustration. Only a suggestion of the original rainbow remains, the background homes and landscapes have been eliminated, and one youthful figure replaces the man and boy in the original cover. Instead of feeding the goat, the man is speaking into his ear. The text accompanying the image is incorporated into the ground on which figure is standing, and onto the pages he is holding open.
The present work is particularly unusual in that it is an early rendering of the cover, which Lissitzky subsequently re-worked into a more loosely grouped configuration of the boy feeding the goat, which is standing next to the man. The present work has an outstanding provenance: it comes from the collection of one of the most avid gatherers of Futurist and Cubo-Futurist works, the late Eric Estorick. Had Gadya precedes El Lissitzky's Constructavist phase, and remains not only a charming rendition of a story central to Jewish traditions, but also a fascinating insight into the artist himself, and a reflection of the dynamic era in which he was working.
The present work is the cover to Lissitzky's series of gouaches illustrating Had Gadya, 'One Goat', a children's song sung at the end of Passover. It is constructed in ten verses, each of which incorporates the previous lines and ends in the repetition of 'Had Gadya' twice. The story is as follows:
A father bought a kid for two zuzim;
a cat came and ate the kid;
a dog then bit the cat;
the dog was beaten by a stick;
the stick was burned by fire;
water quenched the fire;
an ox drank the water;
a shohet [ritual slaughterer] slaughtered the ox;
the shohet was killed by the Angel of Death,
who in punishment was killed by God.
The gouaches Lissitzky executed for Had Gadya provide insights into his religious, political and artistic principles. First, he chose to illustrate a story which is integral to the culture and traditions of Judaism. Second, the story has parallels with the Communist Revolution: the goat represents the oppressed Jewish people, to whom God ultimately metes justice, just as the Communist Revolution resulted in the liberation of the Jews, who were denied rights, citizenship and Yiddish and Hebrew literature under the Czarist regime.
The light Had Gadya sheds on Lissitzky's artistic principles is far-reaching, foreshadowing the fame he was to achieve in the area of typography. Lissitzky believed that books must ingrate form and decoration with function in order to achieved the desired impact on the reader. His formula was 'For whom + why + what = how', and he concluded that 'It is in the area of children's books that we have accomplished most. Here we have found the form that corresponds to the content. The book is made active.' (Quoted in Harvard University Art Museums and Busch-Reisingher Museum, El Lissitzky 1890-1941 Catalogue for the Exhibition of Selected Works from North American Collections, the Sprengel Museum Hanover and the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle, Hanover 1987, p.61.) In the present work Lissitzky integrates illustration with text, as well as using two different languages, Yiddish and Aramaic, and incorporating decorative motifs into the lettering.
Gouaches of Had Gadya are extremely rare. Lissitzky executed the present work, together with accompanying illustrations to the story, as a gouache in 1917, and then published an amended set of colour lithographs in 1919. The cover to the 1919 version (fig. 1) is more abstract, with the narrative content of the illustration reduced, and the text more fully integrated into the illustration. Only a suggestion of the original rainbow remains, the background homes and landscapes have been eliminated, and one youthful figure replaces the man and boy in the original cover. Instead of feeding the goat, the man is speaking into his ear. The text accompanying the image is incorporated into the ground on which figure is standing, and onto the pages he is holding open.
The present work is particularly unusual in that it is an early rendering of the cover, which Lissitzky subsequently re-worked into a more loosely grouped configuration of the boy feeding the goat, which is standing next to the man. The present work has an outstanding provenance: it comes from the collection of one of the most avid gatherers of Futurist and Cubo-Futurist works, the late Eric Estorick. Had Gadya precedes El Lissitzky's Constructavist phase, and remains not only a charming rendition of a story central to Jewish traditions, but also a fascinating insight into the artist himself, and a reflection of the dynamic era in which he was working.