Modern/Not Modern? Art for Propaganda's Sake

Soviet textile

celebrating communal agriculture

Despite the modernist prohibition against art to glorify king and country, designers in the new Soviet Union combined modernism with imagery celebrating the revolution.

Varvara Stepanova

Initially Soviet artists like Stepanova confined the revolution to 

innovative geometries.

But as the totalitarian government dictated

that communist principles invade all aspects of life,

 fabric artists incorporated industry, agriculture and

the five-year plan into cotton prints.

Gouache design for fabric by 

Sergei Burylin  (1876-1942)

Sergei Burylin's repeat patterns

combine art deco modernism and propaganda.

Sergei Burylin 

Sergei Burylin 

Here the USSR's symbol, the Hammer and Sickle, is

the figure in what looks like an old-fashioned

shirting print.

Liubov Popova, painting for as print (gouache)

1923-1924

Unknown designer

Sarra Buntis, 1931

V.I. Maslov, 1925

These textiles were featured in a 2006-7 

exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Soviet Textiles: Designing the Modern Utopia

By Pamela Jill Kachurin 

http://www.mfa.org/collections/publications/soviet-textiles

   

Another publication: I. Yasinkaya, Soviet Textile Design of the Revolutionary Period.

Do a web search for images and the words Soviet Textile to see a display of print design.

      

Read more about prints as propaganda in Jacqueline Atkins's catalog Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States, 1931-1945

See pictures from the exhibit:
http://www.designboom.com/history/propaganda.html

http://alfiesantiques.blogspot.com/2014/01/propaganda-scarves.html