VKhUTEMAS exhibition in Berlin: Rediscovery of a Russian revolutionary art school

These works speak for themselves, refuting the lie that the October Revolution inevitably led to Stalinism. Continue reading

Women of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde

Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova, and Varvara Stepanova. Continue reading

Architecture in cultural strife: Russian and Soviet architecture in drawings, 1900-1953

“Paper architecture” — drawn but unbuilt — exercises a strange grip on the imagination. It affords a brief glimpse into lost worlds: not only the real or historical world in which architects actually lived, but the worlds they imagined themselves to be building. Continue reading

Яков Чернихов, «Архитектурные фантазии: 101 композиция» (1925-33) — Along with fully searchable, downloadable PDFs of the original Russian texts

Forty-five sketches by the brilliant former Suprematist painter and visionary architect Iakov Chernikhov, all composed between 1925-1933 and published together in his book Architectural Fantasies: 101 Compositions. For any of my readers who know Russian, please feel free to download … Continue reading

The Soviet Moment: The Turn toward Urbanism, the Crisis in the West, and the Crossroads of the Architectural Avant-Garde in Russia

Introduction to Part Two of The Graveyard of Utopia: Soviet Urbanism and the Fate of the International Avant-Garde The Soviet architectural avant-garde was never as unified as its counterparts in the West.  Almost from the moment of its emergence in … Continue reading

Captioned Images of the Soviet Avant-Garde (in Russian)

The following images are taken from Selim Khan-Magomedov’s vastly influential Russian-language book, Архитектура советского авангарда (Architecture of the Soviet Avant-Garde).  They are captioned in Russian.  Since the book includes so many excellent photos, and because it would take several weeks to … Continue reading

Dawn and decline: Two eschatological visions in turn-of-the-century Russia

Both eschatologies, it will be seen, predict a coming catastrophe. The religio-philosophical saw the utter destruction of the old world and perhaps some sort of spiritual rebirth rising from the ashes. The Marxist materialists saw the collapse of the capitalist mode of production, but not some sort of reversion to a prior mode of production, but rather the overcoming of capitalism in building a more perfect society. Continue reading

The aesthetics of Russian Orthodox Church architecture: A philosophical, historical, and critical investigation

The architecture of a cathedral can almost be seen as the ultimate unifying element for the aesthetic experience of the Orthodox service. Continue reading