Saul Steinberg, Autogeography, 1966 (via)

From “Descent from Paradise: Saul Steinberg’s Italian Years”:

For most of his adult life, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) drew maps—maps of real or imaginary locations, maps of words and of concepts. Often the maps are of actual places refracted through the artist’s mental constructs, as in View of the World from 9th Avenue, his famous March 29, 1976 New Yorker cover, which, reprinted as a poster, copied, and appropriated for many other cities of the world, became his personal nightmare; even today, it remains the icon that most easily identifies him. There is, however, another splendid map, completed ten years earlier; although intended for The New Yorker, it was never fully published in Steinberg’s lifetime. Entitled Autogeography, it is a bird’s-eye view of a green territory dotted with the names of many locales, large and small, from every corner of the world. A very blue, winding river flows through the territory, and on the bottom right it skirts a small lake with an island. On the island is the word “Milano,” while on the shore northeast of the island we find a locality named “Tortoreto (Teramo).”

Jay-Z, Decoded

Some of the best writing about music and art I’ve read in a while. (Read Mark Larson’s review— he gets it right: “I started off a little skeptical, just skimming for pictures and quotes and anecdotes, but then I just had to start over and read it straight through.”) I like what Jay-Z himself has to say about it:

When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.

I tweeted some quotes, but my favorite is probably this one, which I quoted in Steal Like An Artist:

We were kids without fathers…so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves…Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.

Also, this section on Basquiat really impressed me.

Aw hell, the whole book is good. Read it!

Holy freaking crap, Isotype boner:

Otto Neurath wrote From hieroglyphics to Isotype during the last two years of his life: this is the first publication of the full text, carefully edited from the original manuscripts. He called it a ‘visual autobiography’, documenting the importance of visual material to him: from his earliest years to his professional activity with the picture language of Isotype. Neurath draws clear links between the stimulus he received as a boy from illustrated books, toys, exhibitions, to the considered work in visual education that occupied him for the last twenty years of his life. This engaging and informal account gives a rich picture of Central-European culture around the turn of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of Neurath’s insatiable intelligence, as well as a detailed exposition of the technique of Isotype. The edition includes the numerous illustrations intended by Neurath to accompany his text, and is completed by an extensive appendix showing examples from the rich variety of graphic material that he collected.

Thanks, Mark!