Paul Rand’s arresting Red Dancer originated as a 1939 magazine cover for Direction, a small arts and culture journal published between 1937-1945. The design was adapted as a poster only for a limited-edition run, which Rand created for an exhibition of his work at the Tokyo Art Directors Club in 1958. Featuring a photograph of a male dancer in motion at the top, the figure is then deconstructed into floating parts within seemingly abstract white shapes – note the playfulness of the heart-like shape surrounding the torso, a lightbulb shape for the head, and drumsticks for the limbs. Overall, the photomontage demonstrates Rand’s early fascination with Surrealism and other avant-garde art of the 1920s and 1930s. Rand wrote, “When I designed a cover of Direction, I was really trying to compete with the Bauhaus. Not with Norman Rockwell. I was working in the spirit of Van Doesburg, Leger, and Picasso. It was not old fashioned. To be old fashioned was, in a way, a sin.”