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The Circus Is Brighter in Poland, and Other News

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On the Shelf

Cyrk_Poster_Majewski_2

“Cyrk” poster, designed by Lech Majewski, Poland, 1973.

  • D. H. Lawrence’s hometown has opened a new pub called the Lady Chatterley.
  • An enterprising fourteen-year-old has an urgent message for the government: change your official typeface to Garamond and you’ll save millions.
  • Shakespeare plays illustrated in three easy panels. (“Three witches tell Macbeth he will be king. Macbeth kills lots of people in order to be king. Macbeth is killed.”)
  • Taking stock of Monocle, which is now seven years old: “a magazine that is in general focused on a particular brand of well-heeled global urbanism … Monocle doesn’t have bureaus, it has bureaux what Monocle and its advertisers clearly understand, even if the point is seldom made explicit, is that living in a first-tier city is a luxury good, like a Prada bag or a pair of Hermès boots.”
  • Don’t merely go to the circus. Go to the circus in Communist-era Poland. “The visual style of the Polish School of Posters, funded and sponsored by state commissions, was characterized by vibrant colors, playful humor, hand-lettering, and a bold surrealism that rivaled anything similar artists in the West were doing at the time.”