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Re: Rodchenko in Las Vegas

From:     blp
Category: Art
Date:     29 March 2008
Time:     06:51 PM

Review:

According to the bit of Zizek I've just been reading, exposing the means of production in the
postmodern moment becomes just another thing that can be fetishised. And I guess that's a risk for
anything. After Rodchenko, I went off to the Breaking the Rules show of Avant Garde graphics at the
British Library. Well worth a visit, but it does wear thin pretty quickly, the constructivist look.
Turns out some Hungarian avant gardist published a book showing how these types of layout could be
useful in advertising, plus the ad agencies caught on pretty quickly by themselves to the use of it
and lots of the photographers realised this was going to be the best way of making a living. 

All that said, leaving aside the misunderstandable issue of ideology for the moment, I do think
they're gobsmacking, the Rodchenkos. 

I'm sorry if you were offended that I kept telling you you hadn't understood. I think we were both
writing in some haste and not being as careful as we might be on, say, a site where it's easy to
publish and then go back and re-edit. 


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