Mosselprom

This is the end elevation of the Mosselprom (The Moscow Association of Enterprises Processing Agro-Industrial Products) headquarters in central Moscow. When completed in 1924, to a design by David Kogan, at ten storeys it was one of the tallest buildings in the city. The painted advertisement was the work of Alexander Rodchenko and Vladimir Mayakovsky in the Soviet commercial Constructivist idiom. Mosselprom consumer products featured included cigarettes, beer, mineral water, biscuits, sweets and chocolate. Mayakovsky’s repeated slogan, “Nowhere else but in Mosselprom” rapidly assumed catch-phrase status among the Moscow public. The building is still in existence and the façade was renovated to its 1924 condition in 1997.


The image of Mosselprom was found in what appeared at first sight to be a conventional book, published in 1987, of tourist views of Moscow but closer examination revealed was an eclectic selection of paintings by Soviet artists of Moscow street scenes. Stylistically the paintings make few concessions to Modernism, often favouring a sub-Impressionist approach but despite this there are some fascinating images, a few of which are displayed here. Especially impressive is the painting of the pioneering female motorist taking on the city traffic in her open-top car but equally intriguing are the enigmatic images of a young woman carrying a large pane of glass and a bride and groom stepping forward into married life through the clutter of a city construction site.

Moscow

It’s fascinating to discover that many of the artistic avant-garde heroes and heroines of pre-Revolutionary Constructivism survived and went on to work for the state deep into the Stalinist era. El and S Lissitsky and A Rodchenko and V Stepanova consolidated their experimental graphic techniques in a series of propaganda publications in praise of Soviet achievements throughout the Twenties and Thirties. It took the cataclysm of the Second World War to finally sever all links between Modernism and the Soviet state. The post war visual language was profoundly conservative, calculated to reflect the power of the centralised state, and projected a sense of monumentalism and stability appropriate to a regime which placed control over all other values.




Moscow under Reconstruction was published in 1938 in a wonderfully elaborate production designed by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova in which the dynamic quality of urban life were conveyed via a sequence of photographic panoramas, montages, cutaways, fold-outs, and keyhole flaps which open to reveal details of following pages. The images on display here come from 1957, nearly twenty years and one world war later. This book, a simple large format picture book of Moscow, has minimal captions and no other text. The city portrayed is a sober, orderly and visually dull conurbation bathed in pallid sunshine. Massive, ponderous buildings dwarf the thinly spread human population and vast boulevards accommodate little more than a trickle of traffic. All is clean, free of litter and clutter and seems a world away from the frantic motion and dynamic energy of the city as visualised by Rodchenko and Stepanova.




The limitations of the colour process and printing contribute to the lack of definition and naturalism but they cannot be blamed for the pictorial conception which seems designed to convey an image of an ageless and eternal civilisation destined to endure into a more or less indefinite future. The graphic devices of 1938 have been abandoned in favour of a basic and simple presentation that arises more out of an absence of design than out of positive design decisions. A new conservatism predominates.




Half a century has passed and utopian visions of architectural imperialism are very much out of favour. Documentary photography often acquires additional significance as time passes but these images seem to travel in the opposite direction and take on the appearance of a world that may never have existed in a real sense. The wide open spaces and deep perspectives encourage the imagination to seek explanations for the urban anomalies. After a while they assume a theatrical air, at least one step removed from quotidian reality. Human traces are reduced to unfocused smudges; they seem to be in the city but not of the city. This is a city totally free of commercial branding. The power of the state resides in the monumental architecture and the rooftop sculptures that pierce the skyline. To find a city like this today would require a trip to North Korea.