Leah Dickerman

Wallach Art Gallery

Covering the first decades of the Soviet Union, from the Civil War to the end of Stalin's Second Five-Year Plan in the 1930s, the graphic works in Building the Collective provide a remarkable overview of design during one of this century's most politically turbulent and artistically active periods. These designs, from the collection of Merrill C. Berman, challenge assumptions of a monolithic Soviet poster style, conveying the impressive range of graphic design as it responded to a rapidly evolving political situation. Providing historical context and focusing on images of labor, industrialization, and technology, Building the Collective demonstrates how the ideological imperative of imagining a new collective society existed in a fertile and sometimes contradictory relationship with the artists' efforts to redefine their role in post-revolutionary Russia. Building the Collective showcases over 100 posters and other graphic works, representing the talents of a wide variety of artists, from the acclaimed to the anonymous. Color reproductions of works by Gustav Klutsis, Aleksandr Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and the Stenberg brothers - as well as those of lesser-know but important designers such as Aleksandr Deineka, Viktor Deni, and Elena Semenova - are shown alongside posters created by "brigades" of designers who worked collectively and anonymously in the spirit of the times.

Building the Collective

Matthew Wilson Smith

Arnold Aronson

Et Aronson

Derek E.. Ostergard

Joseph Urban

Derek E. Ostergard

Associate Professor of German and Theater & Performance Studies Matthew Wilson Smith

Previous research on Joseph Urban (1872-1933) has focused on his architectural career; yet after moving from Vienna to the U.S. in 1912, he devoted much of his energies to the stage, especially productions for the Metropolitan Opera and the Ziegfeld Follies. A seminal figure in the history of American theater, he introduced to the U.S. the sophistication of European developments in stage design, experiments with lighting, and painterly effects which paralleled developments in modernist literature, painting, and dance. Architect of Dreams documents more than 100 finely rendered watercolors, photographs, and three-dimensional stage models. Arnold Aronson (professor of theatre arts at Columbia University) contributes a major essay. In other essays, Derek E. Ostergard contextualizes Urban's architecture, and Matthew Wilson Smith examines Urban's work in film.

The Theatrical Vision of Joseph Urban

Architect of Dreams

Wallach Art Gallery

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