GUSTAV KLUTSIS & SOVIET PROPAGANDA from Constructivist
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Constructivist Book Design: Shaping the Proletarian Conscience
Constructivist Book Design: Shaping the Proletarian Conscience We . are satisfied if in our book the lyric and epic Futurist books were unconventionally small, and whether Margit Rowell evolution of our times is given shape. —El Lissitzky1 or not they were made by hand, they deliberately empha- sized a handmade quality. The pages are unevenly cut One of the revelations of this exhibition and its catalogue and assembled. The typed, rubber- or potato-stamped is that the art of the avant-garde book in Russia, in the printing or else the hectographic, or carbon-copied, early decades of this century, was unlike that found any- manuscript letters and ciphers are crude and topsy-turvy where else in the world. Another observation, no less sur- on the page. The figurative illustrations, usually litho- prising, is that the book as it was conceived and pro- graphed in black and white, sometimes hand-colored, duced in the period 1910–19 (in essentially what is show the folk primitivism (in both image and technique) known as the Futurist period) is radically different from of the early lubok, or popular woodblock print, as well as its conception and production in the 1920s, during the other archaic sources,3 and are integrated into and inte- decade of Soviet Constructivism. These books represent gral to, as opposed to separate from, the pages of poetic two political and cultural moments as distinct from one verse. The cheap paper (sometimes wallpaper), collaged another as any in the history of modern Europe. The covers, and stapled spines reinforce the sense of a hand- turning point is of course the years immediately follow- crafted book. -
Soviet Books 2015
www.bookvica.co.com 2015 EARLY SOVIET BOOKS 1917-1940 4. [STENBERG BROTHERS DESIGN] 4. [STENBERG BROTHERS DESIGN] O'NEILL, E.G. Lyubov' pod vyazami. Pyesa v tryokh deistviyakh / Perevod P. O'NEILL, E.G. Lyubov' pod vyazami. Pyesa v tryokh deistviyakh / Perevod P. Zenkevicha i N. Krymovoi [Desire under the Elms: Three act play / Translat- Zenkevicha i N. Krymovoi [Desire under the Elms: Three act play / Translat- ed by P.Zenkevich and N. Krymova]. Moscow; Leningrad: MODP i K, 1927. 48 ed by P.Zenkevich and N. Krymova]. Moscow; Leningrad: MODP i K, 1927. 48 pp.: ill. 24x16 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Covers rubbed, some pp.: ill. 24x16 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Covers rubbed, some foxing, light crease and previos owner's pencil signature on the first page. foxing, light crease and previos owner's pencil signature on the first page. Otherwise very good. Otherwise very good. First edition of the play. The poster to the play Desire under the Elms made by Stenberg First edition of the play. The poster to the play Desire under the Elms made by Stenberg brothers was used for the front cover of this edition. The play was first staged in Russian brothers was used for the front cover of this edition. The play was first staged in Russian in the Kamerny Theatre by A. Tairov in 1926. Stenberg brothers were invited as artists to in the Kamerny Theatre by A. Tairov in 1926. Stenberg brothers were invited as artists to this production. The text is accompanied by a few photographs taken during the play. -
Images of the Worker in John Heartfield's Pro-Soviet Photomontages a Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School A
Images of the Worker in John Heartfield’s Pro-Soviet Photomontages A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by DANA SZCZECINA Dr. James van Dyke, Thesis Supervisor DECEMBER 2020 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled IMAGES OF THE WORKER IN JOHN HEARTFIELD’S PRO=SOVIET PHOTOMONTAGES Presented by Dana Szczecina, a candidate for the degree of master of the arts , and hereby certify that in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor James van Dyke Professor Seth Howes Professor Anne Stanton ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful for the guidance and support of my thesis adviser Dr. van Dyke, without whom I could not have completed this project. I am also indebted to Dr, Seth Howes and Dr. Anne Stanton, the other two members of my thesis committee who provided me with much needed and valuable feedback. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………………………….iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………..vii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One……………………………………………………………………………………………...11 Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………………………25 Chapter Three……………………………………………………………………………………………45 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...68 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………….71 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Film und Foto, Installation shot, Room 3, 1929. Photograph by Arthur Ohler. (Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Archiv Bildende Kunst.)…………………………….1 2. John Heartfield, Five Fingers Has the Hand, 1928 (Art Institute Chicago)…………………………………………………………………..1 3. John Heartfield, Little German Christmas Tree, 1934 (Akademie der Künste)…………………………………………………………………3 4. Gustav Klutsis, All Men and Women Workers: To the Election of the Soviets, 1930 (Art Institute Chicago)……………………………………………………………6 5. -
The Artist Reinvented Combining Delicately
Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Combining delicately hued watercolor with Artist Reinvented cut-and-pasted print reproductions, Grosz depicts his friend and fellow Dada artist John Heartfield as bald and grim-faced, with clenched fists and a machine for a heart. Grosz reimagines him not as an artist but as a “monteur,” one who fits machine parts— or, in Heartfield’s case, mechanically produced imagery. Like broadsheets plastered on a public wall, cut-and-pasted papers—overlapping and colliding—infuse this artwork with the visual cacophony of the streets. Everything demands attention, from the images of Baader staring outward to the abundance of text, including headlines, journal articles, letters, and postcards. The accumulated elements form a rapid-fire portrait of contemporary politics in Germany. They also document Baader’s own attempts to plant distrust in the authority of the press—including his distribution of flyers announcing “Dadaists against Weimar” at a 1919 meeting of the German National Assembly. The work “advertises” Baader as a disruptor and cultural critic who radically defies all expectations of the artist’s role, domain, or means. Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Hailed as “the avant-garde of the creative Red Artist Reinvented Army,” the artists’ collective UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art)—based in Vitebsk (now in Belarus), west of Moscow—sought to transform geometric abstraction into a political weapon. In late spring of 1920, just as the Russian civil war took a decisive turn, Strzemiński and his partner, Katarzyna Kobro, established a UNOVIS branch in Smolensk and produced posters for the Russian telegraph agency (ROSTA). As individual authorship was subsumed in the aims of the collective, these posters were not signed. -
Stalin's Russia: Visions of Happiness, Omens of Terror Mark Konecny Institute of Modern Russian Culture, [email protected]
Chapman University Chapman University Digital Commons Art Faculty Creative Works – Exhibitions Art Faculty Creative Works 2014 Stalin's Russia: Visions of Happiness, Omens of Terror Mark Konecny Institute of Modern Russian Culture, [email protected] Wendy Salmond Chapman University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_exhibitions Part of the Cultural History Commons, European History Commons, Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, Political History Commons, Slavic Languages and Societies Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Konecny, Mark and Salmond, Wendy, "Stalin's Russia: Visions of Happiness, Omens of Terror" (2014). Art Faculty Creative Works – Exhibitions. Book 18. http://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_exhibitions/18 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Art Faculty Creative Works at Chapman University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art Faculty Creative Works – Exhibitions by an authorized administrator of Chapman University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY PRESS PRESS CHAPMAN PRESSAn exhibition exploringUNIVERSITY the power PRESS of visual propaganda. From the Ferris Russian Collection, PRESSthe Institute of Modern Russian CultureCHAPMAN at USC, UNIVERSITY and the Wende Museum, Culver City. PRESS CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY PRESS CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY PRESS CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY PRESS MMXIV 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS e wish to express our deep gratitude to the lenders and institutions whose Wgenerosity has made this exhibition possible: to Mrs. Jeri Ferris and her late husband Tom, who assembled an unparalleled collection of Staliniana; to the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at USC and its director, John E. -
BAUHAUS Vkhutemas INTERSECTING PARALLELS
INTERSECTING PARALLELS BAUHAUS VKhUTEMAS Exhibition Checklist September 25–November 9, 2018 Organized by Meghan Forbes and 1 Evangelos Kotsioris El Lissitzky Perhaps the most recognizable publication of the VKhUTEMAS school, Arkhitektura VKhUTEMAS Architecture of VKhUTEMAS provides arguably the most comprehensive (Architecture of VKhUTEMAS) documentation of student work from the school’s architecture faculty Moskva: Izdanie VKhUTEMASa, produced between 1920 and 1927. The book’s famous cover was designed 1927 by El Lissitzky, who was at the time teaching at the architecture faculty. His photomontage of a hand with protractor, set against graph paper, is an iconic image that expresses the Constructivist aspirations of the school. Aleksandr Rodchenko VKhUTEMAS had its own print shop, which produced a small number of Katalog posmertnoi vystavki striking publications. The cover of this catalog for a posthumous exhibition khudozhnika konstruktora of Lyubov Popova’s work was designed by Aleksandr Rodchenko, a close L. S. Popovoi (Catalog of friend and fellow faculty member at the school. Popova taught preliminary Posthumous Exhibition of Artist courses on color, agitating for a more Constructivist pedagogical plan Constructor L. S. Popova) that was ultimately not implemented. In 1991, MoMA held the first Popova Moskva: Tip. VKhUTEMAS, 1924 retrospective in the United States. El Lissitzky El Lissitzky designed and edited (with VKhUTEMAS architecture instructor Izvestiia ASNOVA (ASNOVA News) Nikolai Ladovsky) the single issue of Izvestiia ASNOVA. While primarily Moskva: Tipografiia VKhUTEMAS, serving as the bulletin of the New Association of Architects, the publication 1926 also aspired to disseminate the architectural pedagogy of the VKhUTEMAS abroad. The front page lists the title of the bulletin in Russian, German, and French and advertises a range of international contributors, including Adolf Behne, a German critic who exerted great influence on the Bauhaus. -
![The Most Recognised Latvian [?] Artist in the World](https://docslib.b-cdn.net/cover/1315/the-most-recognised-latvian-artist-in-the-world-3401315.webp)
The Most Recognised Latvian [?] Artist in the World
IVeta DERKUSOVA 30 The Most Recognised Latvian [?] Artist in the World. The Case of Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938) Iveta Derkusova The political history of the twentieth century created several distorted gaps in the art history of the Baltic countries and in the collective memories of our nations. We are used to thinking in such categories as ‘before’ and ‘after’, i.e. in relation to the fifty-year- long Soviet occupation, and ‘here’ and ‘there’, i.e. art development in local art centres and in the rest of Europe. One of the topics in recent European modernism studies has been the reintegration of Eastern European national art schools into overall twentieth century European art history.1 However, the inclusion of individual artists in a ‘national art’ context may bring up specific questions. The case of the Latvian-born artist Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938), whose worldwide recognition has been achieved in the framework of Russian avant-garde art, is among the most complex to be discussed within the context of Latvian art history, since his national and professional identities are hardly parallel. The internationally accepted2 interpretation of Gustavs Klucis’s legacy places his crea- tive work in the context of Russian avant-garde art. This is common for the majority of the relevant scholarly publications, both exploring Klucis’s work in particular3 and in connection with his contemporaries in the framework of constructivism or photo- 1 E.g. S. A. Mansbach, Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890–1939. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. -
Already Committed to Kazimir Malevich's
ABSTRACTION FOR RADICAL ENDS Already committed to Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism — an approach he first presented in 1915 that rejected the deliberate illusions of representational painting — Liubov Popova, El Lissitzky, Władysław Strzeminski, and many of their peers responded to the imperatives of the 1917 Russian Revolution by deploying abstraction for radical ends. Basic shapes were utilized, as Gustav Klutsis put it, to construct “a new reality not yet in existence,” to call, in effect, for world revolution. In the early years of Soviet Russia, the red square exem- plified this utopian stance, as seen in this gallery in Popova’s costume design, the hero battling the old guard in Lissitzky’s children’s book, and the ground on which Vladimir Lenin strides in Klutsis’s photomontage. In the following years, the red square would proliferate across Europe. While at times less explicitly agitational, it con- tinued to represent the revolutionary impulses of this period in Russia and to embody aspirations for the new — an ongoing reminder of abstraction’s experimental leap. ARTIST CONSTRUCTOR “The artist is a constructor,” wrote Osip Brik in praise of Liubov Popova after her untimely death in 1924. “She was the most radical, the most principled of us all.” To be a “constructor” in 1920s Russia was to create by embracing modern industry, technology, and utility in the service of postrevolutionary society. Popova had studied art of the past, from the Italian Renaissance to French Post-Impressionism, and trained as an easel painter. Inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism, she turned away from representation in favor of abstraction as a visual language with which to reenvision the world. -
COMMUNIST MODERNITY: Politics and Culture of Soviet Utopia SLA 420 / ANT 420 / COM 424 / RES 420 (EM) (EM) Communism Is Long
Professor: Serguei A. Oushakine Seminar S01: 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W COMMUNIST MODERNITY: Politics and Culture of Soviet Utopia SLA 420 / ANT 420 / COM 424 / RES 420 (EM) (EM) Communism is long gone but its legacy continues to reverberate. And not only because of Cuba, China or North Korea. Inspired by utopian ideas of equality and universal brotherhood, communism was originally conceived as an ideological, socio-political, economic and cultural alternative to capitalism’s crises. The attempt to build a new utopian world was costly and brutal: equality was quickly transformed into uniformity; brotherhood evolved into the Big Brother. The course provides an in-depth review of these contradictions between utopian motivations and oppressive practices in the Soviet Union. By reading major political texts of the period we will trace the emergence and dissipation of revolutionary ideas. Key cultural documents of the time will introduce us to crucial elements of communist modernist aesthetics that have not lost their relevance even today. Through historical documents, fiction and film, the course will present central players of Soviet Utopia: from Vladimir Lenin to Kazimir Malevich; from Joseph Stalin to Sergei Eisenstein. Requirements: 1. Class participation, one class presentation, and eight weekly position papers – 35% 2. Midterm paper “Representing Soviet Utopia” (~2000 words) – 35% 3. Final Wikipedia project on Communist Modernity – 30% Film screenings are a part of general assignment; films will be digitized and made available through Blackboard (some are available on youtube). Please, have copies of assigned texts with you. To encourage active exchanges in class, I ask you not to use your laptops; they tend to distract and alienate. -
El Lissitzky Graphic Work in the Merrill C
EL LISSITZKY GRAPHIC WORK IN THE MERRILL C. BERMAN COLLECTION Published by the Merrill C. Berman Collection Concept and notes by Adrian Sudhalter Design and production by Joelle Jensen and Jolie Simpson Photography by Joelle Jensen and Jolie Simpson Printed and bound by www.blurb.com Images © 2018 the Merrill C. Berman Collection Images courtesy of the Merrill C. Berman Collection © 2018 The Merrill C. Berman Collection, Rye, New York Cover image: Detail from El Lissitzky Announcements and order forms in German (Foto-Auge), French (Oeil et Photo), and English (Photo-Eye) for the book: Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold, Foto-Auge: 76 Fotos der Zeit. Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co., 1929 5 3/8 x 4” (13.6 x 10.1 cm) (see pp. 72-73) Works in this volume are cross-referenced to “Summary Catalogue of Typographi- cal Work by El Lissitzky” and the “Annotated Transcript of El Lissitzky’s Proun Inven- tory” in Peter Nisbet, ed., El Lissitzky, 1890-1941: Catalogue for an Exhibition of Selected Works from North American Collections, the Sprengel-Museum Hanover and the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1987), by the abbreviation: [Nisbet ]. TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 VITEBSK 1919-1920 13 BERLIN 1922-1923 47 HANNOVER and LOCARNO 1923-1925 69 MOSCOW, COLOGNE, DRESDEN, and LEIPZIG 1926-1939 121 APPENDIX VITEBSK 1919-1920 7 Cover for sheet music of the Société de la musique hébraïque (Society of Jewish Music), no. 47: Ijaillit une Larme / Noteif Notfoh by Alexandre Creïn Moscow: Obshchestvo evreiskoi muzyki, 1919 Sheet music, two folded sheets (four pages) 12 1/8 x 9 5/8” (32 x 25 cm) [Nisbet 1919/10] Note: Lissitzky’s uniform design for sheet music of the Société de la musique hébraïque was used for a series of musical composi- tions, including those by Alexandre Creïn (1883-1951) and by the Jewish music revivalist Joel Engel (1868-1927). -
The Rise of the Stalin Personality Cult
2 The rise of the Stalin personality cult The task of the construction of images of Lenin and Stalin, the geniuses who created Socialism, and their closest comrades, is one of the most responsible creative and ideological tasks that art has ever faced. Aleksandr Gerasimov1 ‘Tell me,’ Sklyansky asked, ‘what is Stalin?’ ‘Stalin,’ I said, ‘is the outstanding mediocrity in the party.’ Lev Davidovich Trotskii2 The personality cult of Stalin draws from a long tradition in which leaders in precarious positions of power sought to strengthen legitimacy and unite their citizens into an entity that identified as a collective whole. This chapter is devoted to examining how a persona was created for Stalin via the mechanism of the cult. The question will be approached from two angles: first, by an overview of artistic production under Stalin; and, second, by outlining some of the devices that were used to construct the symbolic persona encompassed by the name ‘Stalin’. The cult of Stalin was built on the foundations of the Lenin cult, allowing Stalin to gain legitimacy as Lenin’s most appropriate successor, and Stalin was subsequently positioned as 1 Quoted in Igor Golomshtok, Totalitarian art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, fascist Italy and the People’s Republic of China, New York, Icon Editions, 1990, p. 226. 2 Leon Trotskii, ‘Lenin’s death and the shift of power’, My life, www.marxists.org/archive/ trotsky/1930/mylife/ch41.htm (accessed 25 May 2012). 87 THE PERSONALITY CUlt OF StaliN IN SOVIET POSTERS, 1929–1953 a great Marxist theoretician and revolutionary thinker, alongside Marx, Engels and Lenin. -
Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from Between the World Wars September 24, 2017–February 11, 2018
Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from between the World Wars September 24, 2017–February 11, 2018 Bowdoin College Museum of Art OSHER GALLERY Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from between the World Wars Constructing Revolution explores the remarkable and wide-ranging body of propaganda posters as an artistic consequence of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Marking its centennial, this exhibition delves into a relatively short-lived era of unprecedented experimentation and utopian idealism, which produced some of the most iconic images in the history of graphic design. The eruption of the First World War, the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and the subsequent civil war broke down established political and social structures and brought an end to the Tsarist Empire. Russia was split into antagonistic worlds: the Bolsheviks and the enemy, the proletariat and the exploiters, the collective and the private, the future and the past. The deft manipulation of public opinion was integral to the violent class struggle. Having seized power in 1917, the Bolsheviks immediately recognized posters as a critical means to tout the Revolution’s triumph and ensure its spread. Posters supplied the new iconography, converting Communist aspirations into readily accessible, urgent, public art. This exhibition surveys genres and methods of early Soviet poster design and introduces the most prominent artists of the movement. Reflecting the turbulent and ultimately tragic history of Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, it charts the formative decades of the USSR and demonstrates the tight bond between Soviet art and ideology. All works in this exhibition are generously lent by Svetlana and Eric Silverman ’85, P’19.