In my intermittent ongoing OT series on visual populist? art I have now arrived at the beginning point that triggered both this series and my graphic art so called career. The Russians are coming! Not now but then. So I was sick of being a waitress and went to art school as I was a half ass good artist who wanted to make a buck or two. After enrolling in every freaking art school in LA, from LA City College to Otis (then +Parsons) and Art Center, a traveling show From Russia with Love came to the LACMA. I took myself to the museum on Wilshire Blvd paid my 15$ and had a minor art mind blow. They rocked. They being the Russian artists that made some great art after the revolution and before the Stalin eras godawful art. Bauhaus, Baby Russian style. So this art a show came to La around the same time in the late 70's as the punks were starting to musically mix it up and everybody was sick of Disco and slick airbrushed art.

Here's my fav. dirty commie rat artist El Lissititsky

El Lissitzky 1890-1941

Russian painter, typographer, architect and designer. Born in Polshinok and grew up in Vitebsk. Studied architecture at the Polytechnic in Darmstadt 1909-14, then returned to Moscow where he began to work in an architect's office. Also began in 1917 to illustrate Jewish books for children, at first in a style influenced by Chagall and popular prints. In 1919 appointed professor of architecture and applied art at the art school in Vitebsk, where Malevich was a colleague, and collaborated with him in the Unovis group. Began to make abstract pictures which he called Prouns, as 'the interchange station between painting and architecture'. Sent to Berlin in 1921 to establish contacts between artists in the USSR and Germany. Met Schwitters, Moholy-Nagy, van Doesburg and many others, and had his first one-man exhibition at the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1923. Designed books and periodicals with radical innovations in typography and photomontage. Spent 1924-5 in Switzerland, then returned to Moscow.

Kandinsky

More EL

This Russian artist seems to be the father of all these artists who slipped in before the gates of totalitarianism closed. Socialist Realism sucks.

Some 80's? music to go with this dry Russian art from the past and everybody knows they are coming once again

Enough with the Russians after all they are some kinda really nasty ruse. Lets all get up and dance to a song that a hit before your mother was born