Collection Poster-Louis Brandeis -R.O. Blechman

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impossible

Most of the things worth doing in the world were declared impossible before they were done.

Louis Brandeis

1856–1941

Lived in Washington, DC, and Massachusetts

U.S. Supreme Court justice

Thinker Tabs

Commentary

by Erica Brown

• • •

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) was an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court for more than 20 years—the first Jew to be appointed to that position. Committed to social justice, he was called the People’s Lawyer because he was a passionate advocate of workers’ rights and fought hard against corporate monopolies and corruption. Justice Brandeis also did ground-breaking work on privacy and helped create the Federal Reserve System.

An influential liberal arts college, Brandeis University, was named after him. Founded in 1948 in Waltham, Massachusetts, nine years after his death, Brandeis is a nonsectarian institution that, in its infancy, provided higher education to many Jews who, due to quotas on Jews, were locked out of Ivy League institutions.

Justice Brandeis questioned many conventional beliefs and practices in his work. When he wrote, “Most of the things worth doing in the world were declared impossible,” he was speaking from a place of intimate knowledge. Obstacles did not frighten him. He knew that only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible.

This may explain his remarkable commitment to Zionism later in his life, despite not being particularly religious. He never lived to see the formation of the State of Israel in 1948, but Justice Brandeis was deeply committed to a Jewish homeland to alleviate the scourge of anti-Semitism, which raged through Europe during his lifetime.

About

Louis Brandeis’s story is a Jewish mother’s dream come true. He grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and was accepted to Harvard Law School without a college degree, becoming one of the school’s most outstanding students. He became a successful private-practice lawyer while doing pro bono work to fight monopolies and protect the underdog. He then served as legal counsel to President Woodrow Wilson, who nominated him for the Supreme Court—the first Jew ever nominated. After being approved despite anti-Jewish sentiment, he served 22 years on the Court as a staunch defender of civil liberties. He married a Jewish woman, actively supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and had a university named after him.

Brandeis lived at a juncture in US history when wealth generated by 19^th-century industrial growth became a tool of excessive social and political power. In 1914 he wrote a treatise called Other People’s Money, and How the Bankers Use It. “We can have democracy in this country,” he said, “or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

His most outstanding legal works include a counsel’s brief he wrote that defended minimum-wage, maximum-hour legislation for women laborers in Oregon; a Supreme Court opinion advocating the right of privacy in the face of the “dirty business” of wiretapping (Olmstead v. United States); and a Supreme Court opinion defending free speech against an overly broad application of “clear and present danger” (Whitney v. California).

Guide

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The commentary provides background about Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who fought for social justice and civil liberties. Justice Brandeis’s quotation is linked to both his legal work and his support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

What examples of “declared impossible” come to mind when you read this quotation?

What different types of “impossible” are there?

Have you been in a situation where your ideas or plans faced opposition? Did you prevail, and if so, how?

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Each image calls out to us to examine it, to note our thoughts and feelings, and relate these impressions to the quotation. Often clues in the artwork suggest meaning and invite interpretation.

In artist R.O. Blechman’s signature style, he depicts characters in an evocative narrative to interpret Brandeis’s words.

How does the image present the quotation? Was this how you interpreted the quotation without the image?

What is happening between the characters? How are they dressed, and what might their attire represent?

What meaning can you attribute to the wheel? To the bubbles?

What emotions does this image arouse in you?

Please use this guide creatively in your programs. We’d also love to see what you’re doing and share it with others, so please post on our website using the Resource Share button.

Links

A short biography of Brandeis

Another short biography of Brandeis

An excerpt from a legal opinion on the right of speech and assembly (Whitney v. California)

R.O. Blechman

New York

Illustrator

Animator

Artist Tabs

About

Brooklyn-born R. O. Blechman’s career was launched when he was 23, with the publication of The Juggler of Our Lady. It was a graphic novel before the term existed. He went on to become a freelance illustrator for such publications as Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire and Glamour.

As an author/illustrator, he has penned nearly a dozen books, several of which were selected for the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ Fifty Books of the Year.

Blechman’s art has graced 14 covers for the New Yorker, 39 for Story magazine and six for The New York Times Magazine and The New York Times Book Review.

In 1975 he founded an animation studio, The Ink Tank, which operated for 27 years. The studio produced an hour-long Christmas program for the Public Broadcasting System, Simple Gifts, and an Emmy-winning film version of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. The Stravinsky film was performed to a live orchestra at The Museum of Modern Art in 2003, and subsequently by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lyons Opera and the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra.

Blechman has had one-man shows at Galerie Delpire in Paris, the Graham Gallery in New York and the Galerie Bartsch & Chariau in Munich. In 2003, The Museum of Modern Art had a retrospective of his studio films.

He was elected to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1999 and given The Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Cartoonists Society in 2011.

Links

More design by R.O. Blechman