The visual language of Soviet illustrated magazines in the 1930s: "Rabotnitsa," "Krestianka,: and "USSR in Construction"
Item
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Title
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The visual language of Soviet illustrated magazines in the 1930s: "Rabotnitsa," "Krestianka,: and "USSR in Construction"
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:e199655e14d3:11212
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identifier
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11544
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Creator
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Romanenko, Katerina,
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Contributor
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Rose-Carol Washton Long
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art history | Design | Cultural anthropology | illustrated periodicals | mass-media | photomontage | Soviet culture | visual culture | women's magazines
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Abstract
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The Soviet mass media's essential role in the mobilization of the masses for the construction of the new Socialist world during the 1920s and 1930s is well known. The regime needed to develop a universal means of communication that could easily reach its poorly literate population spread across an enormous geographic area. The Soviet printed press played a crucial role in shaping of the cultural and political discourse of the nation, and, as such, has attracted serious scholarly scrutiny. Yet, little attention has been paid to the actual distribution and consumption of art during Stalin's regime, and, so far, no study has explicitly focused on the printed media as an agent delivering art to the masses.;My study deals with an expensive, luxuriously printed monthly USSR in Construction, which was distributed to the Soviet elite and to readers abroad, and inexpensive mass periodicals, such as the illustrated magazines for women, Rabotnitsa (Female worker) and Krestianka (Female peasant), which were more accessible to ordinary individuals. Widely distributed, these two magazines featured a great diversity of visual information and provided representative examples of the media and methods used to present and promote visual language and cultural canons throughout the Soviet Union.;This dissertation explores the nature of the cultural information that related to the visual art, the use of graphic/handmade and photographic illustrations in the magazines' layout, and studies photomontage as a major design method of the 1930s. The nameless designers and highly established artists eagerly contributed to both ends of Soviet design: high---represented by USSR in Construction, and low---appearing in the women's magazines. This dissertation aims to show that Soviet visual language was formed as a result of the dynamic exchange between them and traces the nature of this process. Overall, the study of Soviet magazines provides an important insight into the formation of the Soviet mentality as they reflect the changes in socio-political as well as cultural spheres and reveal elements of the discourse's communication with the population.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Art History
