woodcuts that restagedscenes of everydaylife under capitalisminagraphic
style reminiscent ofFrans Masereel.In1929, he movedto Vienna to work for
the Gesellschafts- undWirtschaftsmuseum, headed by Otto Neurath (1882–
1945),apolitical economist,philosopher of science, and member of theVienna
Circle.²⁴The empirical materialism of theVienna Circle brought proponents of an
antimetaphysical worldviewtogether with socialist activists involved in workers’
education. Interested in the methods ofrationalizationpromoted in the name of
Fordism and its socialist variants,Neurath attempted nothing less thantoshow
that science and socialism weremutuallycompatible epistemologies and, fur-
thermore,to establish the scientific worldview as the foundation ofaradical so-
cialist politics.This ambitious project,all agreed, was dependent on effectively
communicated information, including visual propaganda. Through the use of
pictorial statistics, Neurath and Arntz set out to increase publicawareness of
the problems in capitalist economies (e.g.,inthe form of travelingexhibitions
with charts and posters) and promoted new social policies through representa-
tional formats that recognized the primacy of vision and visuality in modern
mass culture.
At firstglance, Isotypes seem little more thanapictorialresponseto the sign
character of modern life and the ascendancy of advertising and graphic design.
Typical Isotypes depict social and economicrelations through pictograms and
relyonahighlydeveloped system of simple figures that builds on the kind of
typizationexplored first by the Cologne Progressives. This is how art historian
BenjaminBenus describes the practice:“Human anatomyisreduced to simple
shapes.Facial characteristics,wherethey do occur,are limited to one or two cir-
culate forms and lack anyindividualizing characteristics.Figures are set in fron-
tal or profile views; and forms aregenerallycomposed alongvertical and hori-
zontalaxes.”²⁵Acomparison between Arntz’s1931linotypeFabrikbesetzung
(Occupation ofaFactory) and the Isotypes producedinhis collaboration with
Neurath fora1930statistic on unemployment confirms the origins of pictorial
statistics in theradical politics of the Cologne Progressivesand demonstrates
their shared focus on the standardized human form in therepresentation of
See Gerd Arntz,Zeit untermMesser.Holz- &Linolschnitte 1920– 1970 (Cologne:C. W. Leske,
1988) andHolzschnitte(Cologne: MuseumLudwig,2008). Another example of the continuities in
Arntz’sworkisFabrikbesetzung(1931, Occupation ofaFactory), which depicts concurrent scenes
of action: threatening the factory owner,discussingstrategyinthe factory hall, drawingaham-
mer and sickle onawall, and so forth.
Benjamin Benus,“Fi gurative Constructivism and Sociological Graphics,”inIsotype: Design
and Contexts,219.For the largerargument,see his“Fi gurative Constructivism, Pictorial Statis-
tics, and the GroupofProgressive Artists,c.1920-1939 (PhD.diss.Univ ersity of Maryland,2010).
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert’sCriticalEmpathy 219