Levinthal, David

David Levinthal. Hitler Moves East; Artist's Cut

New York, JMC & GHB Editions, 2008. 4to.; illustrated throughout in color; beige endpapers; black cloth; stamped in red; held with two original b&w images; held in custom black morocco slipcase; Iron Cross design stamped in blind.

$3000.00

Deluxe edition, one of 15. Like the Director’s Cut of a film, Hitler Moves East: Artist’s Cut reworks and enhances prevalent themes from the original. The artifice of the dioramas contrasts with the verité of the sepia-toned photographs to create a series of powerful images that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, real and constructed history. The publication features reproductions of photographs produced for the original project, as well as illustrations from research source materials used, and two ink jet prints from the original artwork.

Hitler Moves East is one of the seminal art projects of the seventies. An early collaboration between artist David Levinthal and the writer and cartoonist Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame when they were students at Yale, the photographic project was one of the first serious attempts of the decade to explore the porous boundaries between manipulated artifice and straightforward documentation. Published in 1977, the book confounded critics and booksellers alike. Levinthal and Trudeau incorporated toy soldiers, constructed dioramas, and HO models of railroads, bridges and buildings to recreate Hitler’s Sixth Army’s push into the USSR, during 1941-42. The soft-focus photographs that appeared in the original publication Hitler Moves East; A Graphic Chronicle, 1941-43 owe a debt to Robert Capa, and both the original publication and Artist’s Cut expertly interweave factual texts with photographic flights of fancy. Originally produced during the final
stage of the Vietnam War, Levinthal and Trudeau’s publication sounded a singular critical note of cultural alarm. It is a note that is equally pertinent to contemporary media’s round-the-clock war coverage, and is carried forward in the newly envisioned Artist’s Cut.