specific typeface that represented a personal voice, and the type was
combined with photos of the actors that were taken using high-contrast
film. Through this process they were literally transformed into black-and-
white symbols that replaced their typewritten names in the original script.
The layout of the book is akin to a large storyboard used to block out a film,
but rather than typing the dialogue neatly underneath the images—as was
the custom—the text was integrated throughout. In this sense there is also a
faint resemblance to a comic strip without speech balloons. Stage directions
were replaced by the actual gestures and movements of the actor/icons as the
type spewed from their respective personages across the pages in varying
sizes and configurations. The dueling dialogue became increasingly chaotic
as more actors appeared on the stage/page.
Massin’s graphic interpretation was conceptually in sync with
Ionesco’s existential satire of language and logic, but technically speaking it
was a big mess. Every element was not only arduously composed and
pasted up (remember the days of glue and photo-mechanicals?), but it was
also produced in three different versions for the French, English, and
American editions. Even more extraordinary was the way in which Massin
distorted the type to distinguish soft and loud conversation. He stretched
the text (which today is a simple keyboard operation) by transferring the
type onto soft rubber—using three dozen condoms, to be exact—which he
pulled and tugged to bend and warp, then photographed the result as line
art. It was hard enough doing this for the original French edition, but he
also had to do iterations for two separate English translations. The end
result, however, was a tour de force of interpretative typography.
At the time it was published and for almost a decade thereafter,
The Bald Sopranowas a veritable textbook that influenced many designers,
especially those working with minimal budgets. In fact, I am well aware
of one such influence on mid- to late- 1960 s American “underground”
newspapers. Under the constraints of working with primitive materials,
high-contrast (or Kodalith) film eliminated the need for costly halftones
because veloxes (or paper prints) could be directly pasted upon the
mechanical, reducing the expense of negative stripping. As evidence of
Massin’s impact, my very own tattered copy of The Bald Soprano,which
remains on my bookshelf, was “borrowed” from the chief art director of one
of these papers. Stylistically speaking, Massin’s method further introduced
both a noir aesthetic to eclectic underground design and a kinetic dynamism
found in the purposeful, if messy, clash of type and image on a single page.
In addition to this influence,The Bald Sopranoalso directly
inspired a small group of book artists working with pictorial narratives—
most notably the work of American typographer and performance artist
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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