- 7th November 1917 - St Petersberg (Petregrad at the time).
- Mass poverty in Russia.
- Bolshevik's - led by Lenin - group formed to overthrow the Tzar's .
- Tsar and family murdered and Russia became known as U.S.S.R and became a communist state.
Kustodiev "The Bolshevik" 1920.
Bolshevik's known as the Red Army, the red in this image symbolises the blood of the martyrs - slaughtered workers.
The giant figure dressed like an everyday working man is personification of a collective society.
Ivan Aivazosky - The Ninth Wave 1850.
Feeling of sublime - halfway between pleasure and pain.
'Romanticism' art is heavily disliked / hated by the Bolsheviks - find it belittling.
- Lenin dies 1924 - replaced by Stalin - not a progressive leader - banned experimental Avant Garde art - replaced with Socialist Realism art. (Art "understood by the average worker"). Design and art limited because of political ideas.
"Women of the Kolkhoz" by an unknown artist."
Lenin encouraged designers / artists to look at European modernist art. They extended the idea of geometry and visual experimentation.
El Lissitzky - "Beat the Whites with the Red wedge". Wedge a metaphor for the October siege - Bolsheviks overthrowing the Tsar. Radical new design - abstract - designed to communicate to the mass illiterate.
"Books" poster by Rodchenko. The black almost triangle shapes mirrors the red wedge used in Lissitzky's piece above. The image of a woman is important - revolutionary - equality between men and women.
Designers were expected to have a social role in "building the future'. This poster is to show education is for everyone and encourage illiterate people to start to educate themselves.
Superimposing photos onto each other - new methods of creating images - excited by photography. Artists called Constructivists - everything - design, photography, art made for a purpose - constructing new world.
Tatlin's tower - Monument to the third international. Alliance of international communist states. Symbolises Russian progress. 
Constructivists start to create new textile and wallpapers - every aspect of design is trying to be new - new forms of colour / industry etc. Use geometric, rational, scientific styles.
Vkhutemas - Russia's Bauhaus (before it came about). Equality of men and women doing design work - no female artists in western world.
Design fused with science. Experimental. Shut down by the Stalinists.
Communists "mortal enemies" of Western world - perhaps the reason why there are barely - if any books about Vkhutemas in our libraries.
Accepted style under socialist realism.
Come 1962 when Decree 394 is written it is basically said that - there is no design talent in Russia. They realise they have to pen a new institution - scared of calling it an art school - scared to admit communism failed - scared of Capitalism.
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