“Building the Revolution: Soviet Art
and Architecture, 1915–1935”
Jessica Jenkins

“Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture, 1915–1935”
(October 29, 2011–January 22, 2012) was organized by the Royal
Academy of Arts, in collaboration with the State Museum for
Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Costakis Col ection. Curators
included MaryAnne Stevens (Royal Academy) and Maria
Tsantsanoglou (Costakis Collection) with the collaboration of
Photographer Richard Pare. The exhibition sets out to examine
the Avant-Garde period in Russian/Soviet (henceforth, “Russian”
for simplicity) architecture through the correlation of artists’
research into three-dimensional construction within the picture
plane, and the actual architectural constructions that emerged in
the period. These relationships are proposed using three concur-
rent narratives: Richard Pare’s large-format color photographs of
stil -remaining works of architecture in Russia and other parts of
the former USSR; records from the period, including small black-
and-white photographs, displayed horizontal y and paired with
each of Pare’s photographs; and a selection of Constructivist
drawings, paintings, and architectural designs taken from the
Costakis collection.

The drawings and paintings selected from the Costakis
collection show a development from early geometric compositions,
where we are invited to make connections between, for example,
Rodchenko’s circular Linearism, 1920, and Shukhov’s telescoping
Radio Tower, to more speculative experiments in construction, such
as Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (a model of which
was recreated in for the duration of the exhibition in the Royal
Academy courtyard), Lissitzky’s proposal, Monument to Rosa Lux-
emburg, and Klucis’s Designs for Propaganda Kiosks, which integrate
typography into architectural design. Popova’s Painterly Architec-
tonics series leads exhibition visitors to her photomontage theatre
sets and an explosion of colorful geometric forms from the picture
plane in Kudriashev’s Decorations for the First Soviet Theatre in
Orenburg.

Pare’s photographs, taken across the Soviet Union over the
past decade and a half, give us an unprecedented view of the
works of architecture, most of which are in disastrous condition.
© 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
86
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012

Radical ideas for new spatial and social forms are found within
each of the categories into which the exhibition is divided: state
communications, industry, housing, education, health, recreation,
and the Lenin mausoleum (by Shchusev). This last, almost incon-
gruously but symbolical y, testifies to Stalin’s termination of the
climate of experiment in which Constructivism flourished. Also
exhibited are some iconic and some less familiar works, including
those of Ginzburg (Narkomfin Communal House designed together
with Milinis); Melnikov (Gosplan Garage, Melnikov House, and Rusa-
kov Workers’ Club); and Lofan (VTslK Residential Complex), as wel
as contributions from visiting architects Le Corbusier (Tsentro-
soyuz Building) and Mendelsohn (Red Banner Textile Factory). The
stripping away of the inessential, both in art and architecture, was
inseparable from the symbolic economy of the new social order
brought about by the 1917 Revolution. The Russian avant garde of
early 20th century, which flourished after the 1917 Revolution,
overturned the mimetic function of art, although it was later re-
imposed in a fashion with Stalin’s insistence on Socialist Realism
in the early 1930s. For the avant garde, art was to become life and
thus ultimately to become superfluous, transformed into a utilitar-
ian activity.

I was intrigued by the way in which revolution—in the sense
not simply of a seizure of power, but of a complete inversion of
an existing order—in art, industry, economics, and society—was
set as the backdrop to this story, rather than as its very raison
d’être. Despite the exhibition title, we seemed to be looking at a
discourse between a handful of artists and architects responding
to seemingly anonymized ideological requirements, in which
banded fenestration and pilotis were key features of the solution.
Rather than discussing the exhibits, which has been done elo-
quently elsewhere, I look here at the historiography of the presen-
1 Tony Wood, “At the Royal Academy,”
tation of this work and the period to Western audiences, and
London Review of Books 33, no. 22
(2011): 29; Owen Hatherley, “The
in this way seek to understand the contemporary positioning of
Constructivists and the Russian
this show.1
Revolution in Art and Architecture,”
The Guardian (November 4, 2011),
The Historical Development of the Reception of the Russian
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/
2011/nov/04/russian-avant-garde-
Avant-Garde in the West
constructivists (accessed January 20,
The multifaceted period of experimentation in the early life of the
2012); James Dunnett, “Pared
Soviet Union, known cumulatively as “the Avant-Garde,” was not
Back Soviet Modernism,” The
isolated from paral el impulses in Western Europe, where Neues
Architectural Review, 23 (November
2011), www.architectural-review.com/
Bauen and the Bauhaus in Germany, the Esprit Nouveau in France,
reviews/pared-back-soviet-modernism/
and de Stijl in Holland shared, at the very least, a progressive
8622913.article (accessed January 20,
agenda with a radical aesthetic, in which beauty was to be rede-
2012).
2 Jean-Louis Cohen in his exhibition cata-
fined in terms of rationality rather than nature or symmetry.
log essay, “Uneasy Crossings: The
Hence, in the 1920s and 1930s, European architects showed consid-
Architecture of the Russian Avant-Garde
erable interest in the developments in the Soviet Union, an
Between East and West,”Building the
exchange which John-Louis Cohen terms “intertextuality.”2 None-
Revolution (London: Royal Academy of
Arts, 2011), 15.
theless, the very different circumstances in which figures such as
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012
87

Le Corbusier, Erich Mendelsohn, and Hannes Meyer were operat-
ing necessarily curtailed the possibilities for any kind of unified
conception for the future of modern architecture, as confirmed by
the split at Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM)
in 1932.

With the imposition of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union
in the early 1930s, the Avant-Garde became taboo in the Soviet
Union and fell into obscurity in the West. Any kind of research in
the Eastern Bloc became extremely difficult for interested Western
scholars, and émigré accounts of the period (e.g., from architect
Lubetkin in Britain, or from artists Gabo, Kandinsky, and Chagal )
became isolated sources of information.

Post-war interest in this period became inextricably linked
with the political ebb and flow of attitudes toward the Soviet
3 Georges Costakis, Russian-born to
Union as the “real existing” manifestation of state socialism. This
Greek parents, developed an interest in
interest predates the Western acclaim for Constructivist art, which
Constructivist art and began as early as
fol owed the exposure of the Costakis col ection after it left the
1946 to build up a collection in the Soviet
Soviet Union in 1977.3 As early as 1962, British art historian
Union that was to amount to more than a
thousand works. Costakis left the USSR
Camil a Gray, piecing together information from archival sources,
in 1977, donating a significant proportion
journals, and personal testimonials, both in the West and in
of the collection to the State Tretyakov
Russia, produced the first major inquiry, The Great Experiment:
Gallery in Moscow. The remainder, which
Costakis took to the West, received
Russian Art, 1863-1922,4 which accompanied a 1962 show at the
Western exposure the first time in 1977
Grosvenor Gal ery in London.5 Her book heralded the start of a
at the Düsseldorf Kunstmuseum, and
period of heightened interest in this era of Russian art. Éva
then at the Guggenheim in New York,
Forgács has argued that in the 1960s Western communists and
“Art of the Avant Garde in Russia: the
George Costakis Collection,” curated by
leftists made a claim to the experimental period in Russian art as
Margit Rowell, in 1981, and then at the
a reaffirmation of the revolutionary socialist promise.6 Until then,
Royal Academy, London, in 1983. Most
Western reception of Russian Avant-Garde art, she argues,
of the exported collection is now in
focused on the aesthetic rather than the ideological. Soviet Con-
the custody of the State Museum for
Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece,
structivism was even posited as a forerunner to American
from which the artworks in the exhibition
Abstract Expressionism. The West Berlin exhibition and catalogue,
under review are borrowed.
AvantGarde Osteuropa 1910–1930, presented in the context of the fif-
4 Camilla Grey, The Great Experiment:
Russian Art, 1863-1922, (London:
tieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution, for example,
Thames & Hudson, 1962).
fol owed the curatorial line described by Forgács, presenting the
5 Camilla Gray, “Two Decades of
Avant-Garde as having contemporary topicality. In the catalog,
Experiment in Russian Art, 1902–
Eberhard Roters rails against bureaucrats’ insensitivity to the
1922,” (London: Grosvenor Gallery,
March 15–April 14, 1962).
transformational potential of art, “not just in the USSR,”7—making
6 Éva Forgács, “How the New Left Invented
a connection between the experience of Russian radical artists
East-European Art,” Centropa 3, no. 2
with what he viewed as the difficulty of making clear the political
(2003): 93–104.
potential of art in the West.
7 AvantGarde Osteuropa, 1910–1930,
exhibition catalog (Berlin: West Berlin

By the late 1960s, the Modernist principles of architecture as
Kunstverein, 1967): 6.
they had emerged in practice in the West were subject to criticism
8 Anatole Kopp, Town and Revolution
for having lost their connection to egalitarian motivations—
(Michigan: Braiziller, 1970), 2–5;
including those of the early Soviet Union, which did not simply
originally published as Ville et
Revolution
(Paris: Anthropos, 1967).
represent the unsul ied Communist ideal, but offered a reaffirma-
9 Kopp,
Town and Revolution,12
tion of the socially transformative potential of architecture. In
(quoting Sovremennaia Arkhitektura
Town and Revolution,8 Paris-based critic Anatole Kopp dismissed as
[Contemporary Architecture], no. 1
(1928): 2).
an aberration the two decades of Socialist Realism (from the early
88
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012

1930s to Khruschev’s 1954 reinstatement of a functionalist
10 “Russische Architektuur en Stedebouw,
approach to architecture), and asserted a continuation in the late
1917–1933” [Russian Architecture and
Urbanism], Department of Decorative
1960s Soviet Union of the 1920s Constructivist principles, in which
Arts, Delft University, assisted by Camilla
architecture was the means by which society was being restruc-
Gray; exhibition catalog (Delft: Techn.
tured.9 Kopp saw Western Modernism as trapped in a vicious
Hogeschool, 1969); Jean-Louis Cohen,
circle because the architecture, constrained by political circum-
Marco De Michelis, and Manfredo Tafuri,
“La Ville, L’Architecture,” at the Centre
stances, could never actual y achieve its potential as a social con-
de Création Industrielle (CNAC) Georges
denser and was reduced to a stylistic idiom.
Pompidou, 1978. The exhibition catalog

Kopp’s revivalist interest was also resonant in exhibitions
cover, in French and Italian, bears an
during this period, for example in the 1969 “Russian Architecture
illustration by Roman Cieslewicz (Paris:
Officina Edizioni, 1978).
and Urbanism,” at Delft University and later in “La Ville,
11 “Art in Revolution: Soviet Art and Design
L’Architecture,” at the Pompidou Centre in 1978.10 The latter
since 1917” (London: Hayward Gallery,
exhibition attempted, somewhat less polemical y than Kopp, to
1971). The show aroused controversy
re-evaluate the way in which Russian Avant-Garde architecture
over the compromise of curatorial inde-
pendence caused by interventions of the
approached new modes of living, and to place it within its politi-
Soviet Ministry of Culture. Emigré artists
cal and economic context. These forays into the architecture of the
were excluded. See also Pat Simpson,
period no doubt had a less cultural impact than the major survey
“Art, Revolution and Production,” Oxford
Art Journal
9, no. 1 (1986): 56-67, for a
exhibitions later in the 1970s and early 1980s. Although none of
discussion of both Soviet and Western
these exhibitions specifical y addressed architecture, they signifi-
agendas in discussions of Russian
cantly raised awareness of the Constructivist movement among
Revolutionary art and design production
the interested public. “Art in Revolution” at London’s Hayward
during this period of intensified interest.
12 J. Speranskaja, “Agitation and Art of the
Gal ery (1971), curated by Camil a Gray in col aboration with the
Masses from the First Years of Soviet
Russian Ministry of Culture, was the most notable endeavour;
Power,” exhibition in Moscow, 1967,
reproducing contemporaneous Soviet accounts, it shifted the
drawn from the collections of the
critical agenda away from established Western perspectives.11
Tretjakow Gallery, the State Russian
Museum, and several other State

Concurrent with the political y interested 1960s revival in
museums, 6.
the West, the Soviet post-revolutionary period was coming in
13 For example, V. E. Chazanova, Sovetskaja
from the cold in the Soviet Union itself. A Moscow exhibition, also
Architektura Pervych Let Oktjabrja,
1917–1925 [Soviet Architecture of the

in the context of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolu-
Early Years, 1917–1925] (Moscow:
tion, selected artists of the Avant-Garde to represent “Agitation
Nauka, 1963) and Iz Istorii Sovetskoj
and Art of the Masses.” The commentary for the exhibition care-
Architektury, 1926–1932 [The Story of
ful y positions the selected works between utopian and visionary,
Soviet Architecture, 1926–1932]
(Moscow: Nauka, 1970). In the Soviet
“This work is romantic in its fundamental mood, but its romanti-
journal Decorative Art in the USSR, an
cism has a revolutionary character: It points to the future, and
article on an exhibition of the work of
affirms the revolutionary transformation of the world.”12 Soviet
Gustav Klutsis in Riga in 1970, “The
publications for a more specialist audience went much further,
Artist as Agitator,” by L. Oginskaya, is
described as “a response to the public
and by the early 1970s, a number of revivals of the Avant-Garde in
interest which has lately arisen in regard
art and architecture were published in the Soviet Union and East-
to the pioneering artists of the 1920s,”
ern Europe.13
no. 162 (May 1971): 34–37. The journal

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the major cultural institu-
also published articles on Rodchenko
and Stepanova from the early 1960s.
tions in the United States, France, and Germany began to make a
14 “Paris-Moscow, 1900–1930” was an
claim on the Russian Avant-Garde, which had established itself
exhibition organized by the Centre
in the West through the efforts of both commercial gal eries and
Pompidou in Paris 1981, and then
hosted by the Pushkin Museum of Fine
the Western Left. The major institutions were keen to insert the
Arts in Moscow two years later as
Russian contribution into the Modernist canon.14 The Guggenheim

“Moscow-Paris, 1900–1930.” This
in New York had been first to secure much of the Costakis col ec-
exhibition, in the context of the Helsinki
tion, which it presented in 1981; the Los Angeles County Museum
accords, was made in cooperation
with the Soviet Ministry of Culture.
of Art compiled its 1980 survey exhibition, “The Avant-Garde in
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012
89

Russia, 1910-30,” without relying on any loans from the Soviet

The poster and catalog cover, which
Union itself, out of fear that they would be forced to subscribe
typographically converges Paris and
Moscow into a single block, was
to “an unacceptable interpretation of the period.”15 The possibility
designed by Roman Cieslewicz.
of placing contemporaneous American abstraction alongside the
15 “Art of the Avant Garde in Russia:
Russian Avant-Garde had even been mooted, which, given that
the George Costakis collection,”
American-Soviet relations had entered a period of heightened
(Guggenheim, New York, 1981) curated
by Margit Rowell; “The Avant-Garde In
belligerence, would have been audacious to say the least.16 The
Russia, 1910-1930: New Perspectives,”
significance accorded to the October Revolution was as a facilita-
(Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
tor, empowering artists to experiment and offering a brief and
July 8–September 28, 1980), curated
unprecedented state endorsement of abstract art.
by Stephanie Barron and Maurice
Tuchman; Stephanie Barron, “The

As events unfolded in the mid-1980s, exposure of the
Russian Avant Garde: A View from
Russian Avant-Garde in the West was on the threshold of a new
the West,” The Avant-Garde In Russia
era, in which the label “utopian” in respect of the artists’ ambi-
exhibition catalog (Los Angeles:
tions was to become more prescient: Gorbachev’s glasnost (open-
Museum Associates of LACMA, 1980),
13. (The monochrome photomontage
ness) and perestroika (restructuring) not only facilitated greater
catalog cover was designed by
access to work in Soviet custody, but also signal ed the acknowl-
Louis Danziger.)
edgement of the failure of the communist ambition in the Soviet
16 Maurice Tuchman, “The Russian
Avant-Garde and the Contemporary
Union and Eastern Europe. This shift in the political climate saw a
Artist,” in The Avant-Garde in Russia
repositioning at the extensive Guggenheim exhibition of the
exhibition catalog, 118.
Avant-Garde in 1990 as “The Great Utopia,” no doubt in reference
17 Kandinsky projected a synthesis of the
to Kandinsky’s 1920 use of the term.17 Paul Wood has argued that
arts as “an edifice which is the result
of thinking in all kinds of art, adapted for
“utopian” has been instrumentalized in Western scholarship that
all kinds of art, those that exist already
characterizes Avant-Garde artists’ aspirations either as blissful y
and those that we still only dream of.”
innocent or naively tempting fate, “purblind to the politics [it]
W. Kandinsky, “Velikaia Utopiia” [The
entertained.”18 In his compel ing review of the scholarly trends
Great Utopia], Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn
[Artistic Life]
3 (1920).
and schools of thought around the Russian avant-garde, he states,
18 Paul Wood, “The Politics of the Avant-
“The revolutionary avant-garde is not interesting for its normativ-
Garde” in The Great Utopia: The Russian
ity.” John Bowlt, in an introduction to textile designs of the revolu-
and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932
exhibition catalog (New York:
tionary period, had proposed that we “disregard the original
Guggenheim Museum, 1992), 1–21.
purpose […] and perceive them as ‘works of art.’”19 He went on in
19 John Bowlt, “Introduction,” to Soviet
1984 to state that “perhaps the most dangerous rumour concern-
Textile Design of the Revolutionary
ing the Russian Avant-Garde has been to do with its al eged sup-
Period, I. Yasinskaya, (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1983).
port of radical politics, and radical political philosophy in
20 Wood, “The Politics of the Avant Garde,”
general.”20
2, quoting John Bowlt, “The Old New

The Moscow co-organizers Vladimir Gusev and lurii
Wave,” New York Times Review of Books
Korolev of the “The Great Utopia” went further in disconnecting
(February 16, 1984), 28.
21 Vladimir Gusev (State Russian Museum,
the art from its revolutionary context, claiming, “These artists [. .]
St. Petersburg) and Iurii Korolev (State
were absorbed as never before by questions of pure aesthetics.”
Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow) in preface to
They went on: “Since the 1980s, the idea of romantic underpin-
The Great Utopia, xiii.
nings of the Revolution has lost popularity. Yet the artistic might
22 “Amazons of the Avant Garde,” Solomon
R. (New York: Guggenheim Museum, July
of this era [. .] has continued to hold its ground against more short-
1999 and other venues), co-curated by
lived political ideologies and economies.”21
John E. Bowlt, Matthew Drutt, and

As the col apse of the Soviet empire has emancipated the
Zelfira Tregulova; “Light and Colour of
the Avant-Garde: The George Costakis
curatorial enterprise from Cold War subtexts, and the novelty of
Collection,” Martin Gropius Bau, curated
the col ections has waned, there has been a move toward selective
by Miltiades Papanikolaou, Thessaloniki
shows, such as “Amazons of the Avant-Garde,” “Light and Colour
with Maria Tsantsanoglou, (Berlin, 2004);
of the Avant-Garde,” and the Tate Modern’s “Rodchenko and
and “Rodchenko and Popova, “Defining
Constructivism,” (Tate Modern, February
Popova, Defining Constructivism.”22
90
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012

”Building the Revolution” in the Contemporary Cultural
and Political Context
Where does “Building the Revolution” sit within the contempo-
rary landscape of post Cold War thinking? While the catalog
offers three very informative contextual essays, biographies, and a
detailed glossary of terms, the show itself effectively sidesteps
the revolutionary context. The narrative of this exhibition neglects
the transformational potential of architecture in communalizing
domestic labor; the care of children and social life; the conceptual
differences between the Rationalists in Aassotsiatsi a Novykh
Arkhitektorov (Association of New Architects) and the Constructivists
in Obedinenie Sovremennykh Arkhitektorov (Union of Contemporary
Architects), or the role played by the Institut Khudozhe Stvennoi Kul-
tury (The Institute of Artistic Culture), by Moscow’s Vysshi Gosu-
darstvennie Khudozhestvenno-Tekhnicheski Masterskie (Higher Artistic
Technical Workshops); the fantastical paper architectural projects of
“hanging, floating, flying, and jutting structures;”23 Melnikov’s
extendable buildings; Chernikohov’s Architectural Fantasies; Kru-
tikov’s “Flying City;” disputes between “urbanists” and “disur-
banists” in the visions for socialist planning; the pioneering
urgency of building in the rush to industrialization, such as in the
steel city Magnitogorsk; and the broader interchanges with West-
ern intellectual circles, including and through the activities of
CIAM, the advance of the ideas of Neues Bauen from Germany,
and the arrival of Ernst May’s brigade of planners from Frankfurt
in 1930 and Hannes Meyer’s “Bauhaus Brigade.”

The curation is driven by Pare’s subject matter, “which goes
beyond the canon of radicalism;”24 the parallel narratives fall
within this frame and defy any convenient formal or theoretical
categorization. The modest vintage images offer glimpses into the
social picture and urban setting of the buildings and frame them
as functional pieces of architecture once more. Most of the images
were taken by unknown photographers, but they testify to innova-
tion in the composition of their subject matter. This compositional
innovation is particularly clear in the photographs by Ilyin.
Where the relative sizes between the vintage images and Pare’s
images are reversed in the catalog, this al ows a comparison of
conventions in architectural photography. Pare’s images are gener-
al y more closely framed, cropping out social detail and even occa-
sionally sacrificing the overall form of the building to the
attention to surface. This approach has rather the opposite effect
to that of the period images: In Pare’s images, the sensitively

12–May 17, 2009), curated by Dr
exposed disintegration of building surface and substance, and
Margarita Tupitsyn, Vicente Todolí, Ben
Borthwick, and Christina Kiaer.
their apparent superfluity and vulnerability in the new, specula-
23 Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams:
tive landscape to which so many buildings have already fal en
Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in
victim, clearly invite the viewer to reflect not so much on the past
the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford
or failed utopias, but on the present and the troubling questions of
University Press, 1991), 197.
24 Jean-Louis Cohen, Uneasy Crossings, 13.
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012
91

heritage and preservation. In the 2008 configuration of this show,
the vintage images were titled, “Lost;” and the Pare photographs,
“Found.”25 The subject matter propels the viewer from readings
informed by attitudes to Soviet Communism and into the current
day oligarchy and the architecture of capitalist realism that has
taken its place. There is a clear subtext referring to the handling of
the Modernist heritage in current day Russia.

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of the late David
Sarkisyan, who until his death in 2010 championed the cause of
protecting Moscow’s architectural heritage; although his efforts
often were to no avail, he nonetheless drew international attention
to the cause. The fact is that the length of time since the fall of
Communism—about a generation—is just about what it takes for
the combined effects of neglect, obsolescence, and speculation to
result in the irrevocable loss of works of architecture. The span
also is about as long as it takes for a new, unencumbered genera-
tion of observers to emerge and reconceive as “heritage” what the
earlier generation dismissed as “failure.” Such changes in percep-
25 The Royal Academy exhibition reconfig-
tion are evident in the current wave of interest in the manifesta-
ures the original concept of “Lost
tions of Modernism, both in East and in West. This interest is
Vanguard Found: A Synthesis of
more than just a rediscovery, however. The emotional effect of
Architecture and Art in Russia (1915-
1935),” shown in 2008 at the State
Pare’s images has to do with the scale, the preoccupation with
Museum of Contemporary Art in
detail, and most importantly their color: This completely fresh
Thessaloniki. Pare’s photographs have
view of Avant-Garde architecture is at once contemporary. Just as
also been shown alone in the “Ruins”
Frederic Chaubin’s and Roman Bezjak’s images have brought
annex of the Shchusev State Museum of
Architecture (MUAR) in Moscow, and at
instant fame to the late period of socialist Modern architecture,
the MoMA in New York, where they
the broad appeal of high-end photographic publications has a role
were supplemented by Soviet periodi-
to play here.26 David King’s 1970s catalog designs for “Rodchenko,”
cals.
as well as other Oxford Museum of Modern Art exhibitions,
26 See Frédéric Chaubin, CCCP – Cosmic
Communist Constructions Photographed
carry with them the same feel of urgency and economy as the
(Cologne: Taschen, 2011), and Roman
subject matter itself.27 Anatole Kopp stated in 1970 that he had
Bezjak, Sozialistische Moderne
resisted making a coffee table book: “The illustrations cannot
(Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011).
speak for themselves.”28 In this exhibition, Pare’s images do the
27 “Rodchenko,” (Oxford: MoMA, 1979 and
other venues), curated by David Elliot.
talking, and they can be heard as a lament very much situated in
28 Kopp,
Town, 12.
the current day.
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DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 4 Autumn 2012