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Into Production! Cigarette Ad
european institute for progressive cultural policies
Aleksandr Zelenskii, Advertisement for Sappho cigarettes, 1924. From “Into Production!”:
"Into Production!”: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism
Christina Kiaer
"In contrast to the dreamy, art-deco woman in the earlier Red October ad, and in contrast to the swooning “Sappho,” the Red October girl could be described as a “conscious” female subject. Of course this strange, jokey figure of a girl is not meant to actually represent the newly conscious woman emancipated by Bolshevism. But she functions as a sign for the discourse of female consciousness and emancipation, which was bound up within Constructivism with a set of ideas about new, active objects that can transform everyday life. Rodchenko’s wife Stepanova was his frequent model for this conscious Soviet woman, in photographs and photomontages published on book covers and in mass journals, such as his cover design for a book called The New Everyday. Life and Art (Novyi byt i iskusstvo), in which a confident Stepanova in a worker’s headscarf grins out at us much like the Red October girl.[22] Women and the novyi byt were connected, in Rodchenko’s imagination as much as in the Bolshevik discourse of women’s emancipation. But this connection did not lead him, like the Bolsheviks, to denigrate or attempt to eradicate byt."
Into Production! Cigarette Ad
european institute for progressive cultural policies
Aleksandr Zelenskii, Advertisement for Sappho cigarettes, 1924. From “Into Production!”:
"Into Production!”: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism
Christina Kiaer
"In contrast to the dreamy, art-deco woman in the earlier Red October ad, and in contrast to the swooning “Sappho,” the Red October girl could be described as a “conscious” female subject. Of course this strange, jokey figure of a girl is not meant to actually represent the newly conscious woman emancipated by Bolshevism. But she functions as a sign for the discourse of female consciousness and emancipation, which was bound up within Constructivism with a set of ideas about new, active objects that can transform everyday life. Rodchenko’s wife Stepanova was his frequent model for this conscious Soviet woman, in photographs and photomontages published on book covers and in mass journals, such as his cover design for a book called The New Everyday. Life and Art (Novyi byt i iskusstvo), in which a confident Stepanova in a worker’s headscarf grins out at us much like the Red October girl.[22] Women and the novyi byt were connected, in Rodchenko’s imagination as much as in the Bolshevik discourse of women’s emancipation. But this connection did not lead him, like the Bolsheviks, to denigrate or attempt to eradicate byt."