The Jug Goes to the Water until It Breaks

Maja is our new Croatian contributor - I won't tell more, I just love how she writes! Please welcome her and enjoy :)

The Jug Goes to the Water until It Breaks is a proverb known to many nations from Central Europe to Latin America. Basically it means “If you push your luck too far you get hurt.”

This poster was created by Croatian designer Boris Ljubičić for the International Museum Day that has been organized worldwide around May 18 since 1977. It is a photo of a broken ceramic jug that fell on asphalt pavement, water got spilled, and the scattered fragments of the broken vessel got arranged like a puzzle looking like the map of the world.

It was the year 1991, the final year of the Cold War, the year of dissolution of the Soviet Union, the year when socialist regimes collapsed and the Warsaw Pact officially dissolved, the time of the Singing Revolution in the Baltic States, the beginning of the Operation Desert Storm, and the eve of the war in ex-Yugoslavia.

Believing that a designer has to be responsible in time and space Boris Ljubičić in pre-SMS time wanted to send a message that “from the fragments of one world the new one emerges.” His visual message was so simple and so powerful that it was recognized by UNESCO. The poster won the Media Save Art award for 1991 because “it tells a story about the history of the world that fell apart into fragments together with our memory.”

Since that year Boris has been designing posters for The International Museum Day for 25 years, always being responsible in time and space. And the world 25 years later is again like the pitcher from the proverb—pushing our luck too far.

- Maja Kocijan