Fuel sep 2018 (2 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former Eastern Bloc - sinister, funny, poignant and surreal, they depict the social and architectural values of the period. Brutal concrete hotels, futurist TV towers, heroic worker statues - this collection of Soviet era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc through its buildings and monuments. They are interspersed with quotes from prominent figures of the time, that both support and confound the ideologies presented in the images. In contrast to the photographs of a ruined and abandoned Soviet empire we are accustomed to seeing today, the scenes depicted here publicise the bright future of communism: social housing blocks, Palaces of Culture and monuments to Comradeship. Dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, they offer a nostalgic yet revealing insight into social and architectural values of the time, acting as a window through which we can examine cars, people, and of course, buildings. These postcards, sanctioned by the authorities, intended to show the world what living in communism looked like. Instead, this postcard propaganda inadvertently communicates other messages: outside the House of Political Enlightenment in Yerevan, the flowerbed reads 'Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'; in Novopolotsk, art school pupils paint plein air, their subject is a housing estate; at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute students stroll past a five metre tall concrete hammer and sickle.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The first ever spomenik guidebook, with over 75 examples alongside map references and information on why they exist and who built them. Spomenik the Serbo-Croat/Slovenian word for monument refers to a series of memorials built in Titos Republic of Yugoslavia from the 1960s-1990s, marking the horror of the occupation and the defeat of Axis forces during World War II. Hundreds were built across the country, from coastal resorts to remote mountains. Through these imaginative forms of concrete and steel, a classless, forwardlooking, socialist society, free of ethnic tensions, was envisaged. Instead of looking to the ideologically aligned Soviet Union for artistic inspiration, Tito turned to the west and works of abstract expressionism and minimalism. As a result, Yugoslavia was able to develop its own distinct identity through these brutal monuments, which were used as political tools to articulate Titos personal vision of a new tomorrow. Today, following the breakup of the country and the subsequent Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, some have been destroyed or abandoned. Many have suffered the consequences of ethnic tensions once viewed as symbols of hope they are now the focus of resentment and anger. This book brings together the largest collection of spomeniks published to date. Each has been extensively photographed and researched by the author, to make this book the most comprehensive survey of this obscure and fascinating architectural phenomenon. A fold-out map on the reverse of the dust jacket shows the exact location of each spomenik using GPS coordinates.…