The Second Avant-Garde: Design of Domestic Objects in Soviet Russia, 1953-1991

ended

Russian/Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognized to have been an integral part of the European avant-garde and Russia’s first truly original contribution to world culture. In contrast, Soviet art and design of the post-war period is often dismissed by general public as propaganda, hack-work and shameful plagiarism that resulted in a uniform and shabby world of commodities. Thanks to a growing body of scholarship on Soviet design, as well as to a recent work of enthusiastic Russian curators who organized Moscow design museum, a positive narrative of Soviet design have begun to emerge. In particular, the genealogical connection between Russian avant-garde and late Soviet design is generally noticed by scholars. However, the concrete ways of translating the avant-garde’s ideas into late socialist design and commodity production have received relatively small attention. This research project takes avant-garde’s legacy as a key link between post-war Soviet and Western, in particular Scandinavian, design. It addresses the question of temporal and cross-European design connections by focusing on a “socialist object.” The latter is considered both as a reference to the avant-garde precedent and a concept useful for reaching beyond the standard narrative of Soviet design as a poor imitation of Western models. By relying on archival and published sources I will analyze the transition of objects through different settings – designers’ desks and workshops, artistic and technical councils, factory floors, department stores and people’s homes. My research will present a complex history of Soviet design as a second Russian avant-garde and as a part of post-war European development of visual and material culture. Thus it will provide the historical background for the current Russian designers' search for interconnection with European design schools and trends.