They are more than "oversize" in the li­brarian's sense. Across the gallery space in Moscow, Paris, Tel Aviv, or London, these swelling folio volumes appear a little nearer to you than they really are. Or, more to the point, you to them.1 Though nothing like photorealist close-ups, they make an exorbi­tant claim on the eye, oddly intimate. Rather than receding—as they would in an illusion­ist bookshelf—they loom large. And by their titles alone, even without releasing a given artist's reproduced image, they speak vol­umes. Naftali Rakuzin remembers the first book cover he designed as a child, for Gulliver's Travels.

Alexander Rodchenko is not one of my favourite artists. He was a wonderful photographer, and many of his photographs delight me, but on the whole, his art does not touch me, just as the revolutionary art of that epoch generally. But the cover of his catalogue, which was made, by the way, in Moscow, touched me deeply. There is in it the tragedy of that time: in the composition, in the colouring — black-red-grey, in the framing, when Rodchenko's face is not visible, but a close-up is given of a hand with a camera. This was very interesting for me to paint: Rodchenko as an actor and victim of the Revolution.