Brodsky and Utkin: The Complete Works FROM THE PUBLISHER
Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin are the best known of a loosely organized group of Soviet artists known as "Paper Architects," who designed much but built little in the early days of Glasnost, in the late 1980s. Many of their elaborate etchings, in which they depicted outlandish, often impossible, structures and cityscapes of allegorical content, were collected in our 1990 book Brodsky & Utkin. Now, with the addition of forty-three new and never-before-published prints, we are pleased to announce this updated edition.
In their designs, by turns funny, cerebral, and deeply human, Brodsky & Utkin borrow from Egyptian tombs, Ledoux's visionary architecture, Le Corbusier's urban master palns, and other historical precedents, collaging these heterogeneous forms in learned and layered scrambles. Underlying the wit and visual inventiveness is an unmistakable moral: that the dehumanizing architecture of the sort seen in Russian cities in the 1980s and 1990s, and elsewhere around the globe, takes a sinister toll.
A new preface assesses the works of Brodsky & Utkin and reminds us that the greatest art is often born of adversity. Beautifully printed in 300-screen dry-trap duotones by the Steinhauer Press, Brodsky & Utkin is a book for artists, architects, and collectors alike.
Author Biography: Lois Nesbitt is a writer on art and architecture who lives in New York.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, glasnost "paper architects" born in 1955, conceived elaborate and fantastical structures in the restrictive 1980s, but their only built project was the imaginative interior of Moscow's Atrium restaurant. New York City subway riders may recall Brodsky's memorable 1996 Canal Street Subway Project, which transformed an abandoned station into a Venice lagoon with floating gondolas. In the second edition of this frustratingly unpaginated work (first published in 1991), Nesbitt, an art writer, presents 70 architectural etchings, including 43 previously unpublished prints. She positions Brodsky and Utkin in 20th-century Soviet realist traditions, notes influences and visual sources, and aggressively punctuates their humanity and dignity in the face of bureaucratic adversity and demeaning "official" designs. Outlandish, whimsical plates often incorporate witty captions and literary texts. Printed on creamy, low-contrast paper, they are best viewed in direct natural light. Although the pair has recently exhibited in Portland, OR, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, the bibliography and exhibitions list are not updated beyond 1991. The final page appears in reverse order in the review copy-perhaps intended as a fittingly unpredictable closing statement. More a curiosity than an essential purchase, this book may find a place in Russian culture and modern European history collections.-Russell T. Clement, Northwestern Univ. Lib., Evanston, IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Home
