If you like books, but don't like to read, here's a solution to all your problems: Leanne Shapton's wooden block books. At last, all the literary cache without those pesky pages filled with words to bog you down.

Shapton, the author of the minimalist/illustrated novel Was She Pretty? and the new art director of the Times Op-Ed Page, has found a way to make owning the classics a visual treat (and a sound investment).

The books, I mean blocks, I mean book blocks, are available at my favorite repository for decoupage, the John Derian Company.

Power To The People does not reprise the mantra of the Sixties, at least not in this post. It is the title of a remarkable book of early Soviet propaganda posters from The Israel Museum in Jerusalem and edited by Alex Ward of the Merrill C. Berman Collection. Specifically, these are the stenciled ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency) window posters that hung in the telegraph storefronts from 1919 to 1921, just after the Russian Revolution of 1917. They owe a debt to American comics, but rather than strictly entertainment, the posters told stories that both cautioned and roused the populace about everyday concerns: "agitprop." One of the principal authors of ROSTA posters was the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

For those interested in political graphics, the Russian Revolution, or just the origins of stencil art (not related to hip-hop or skateboarding), this splendidly produced book collects more of these limited and fragile ROSTAs in one place than anywhere else.

Yesterday, I received a surprise e-mail from the painter Philip Pearlstein about his time as Ladislav Sutnar's assistant. Here is an exerpt:

Dear Steven,
          
I have had the book on Ladislav Sutnar for a while. It is a fine document and very handsomely   designed and produced. I just went through it again, and decided to write you now, to add to the documented record.

The most significant omitted name was Audrey Flack (yes, the artist). When I had to spend a couple of terms full-time at NYU Institute of Fine Arts (and it was Mr. Sutnar who encouraged me to study art history as I had time left on the GI Bill, as a veteran of WW 2), I recommended Audrey to Sutnar and he hired her--she had previous experience doing mechanicals. I heard ... that she drove Sutnar nuts.

Of the works reproduced [in the book], I remember drafting the original logo of "addo-x" ... But the most interesting of the projects I worked on within the first couple months of when I started working there was the booklet on Transportation for the Next Fifty Years. Sutnar assigned me to work with Buckminster Fuller. (He had just come up from Black Mountain College and was broke. The booklet was Sutnar’s way of helping him out.) Mr. Fuller brought in his original drawings on vellum and proceeded to explain to me the physical science involved in his plans of everything to be included in the booklet, though my only real job was to make the stylized drawings of each airplane, car, etc. We spent about a week together huddled over his drawings, and occasionally he would tell me the subsequent history of the design in the real corporate world. I did a lot of the final drafting of the page designs of Sutnar, as well as of Fuller’s designs. For me, the climax was that Sutnar asked me to re-cast Buckminster’s essay into lower-level readable English. I showed my version to Mr. Holmes, of Sweets, who approved it, but had it edited properly by their in-house editor. When I showed my version (which I had typed up) to Buckminster, he said, “Why didn’t they ask me to do that?”

Sincerely yours, 
 
Philip Pearlstein

Fifty years ago, when Congress investigated rock ’n' roll as a scourge on the young, who would have thought there would eventually be a Rock ’n' Roll Hall of Fame Museum? There's a Woodstock museum, too. And now, Harley-Davidson, another symbol of rebellion, gets its own museum. If you're headin' down the highway, lookin' for adventure, rumble on in to downtown Milwaukee (the city made famous by Pabst Blue Ribbon) and check out the Harley-Davidson Museum, brilliantly designed by James Biber with interactive exhibitions (below) designed by J. Abbott Miller of Pentagram/New York.