Stop your Sericulture

Apparently, this blog is an 'amalgam of Stalinism and Surrealism'. Not quite sure what I think of that description. 'Deutscherite Aesthete', which I was accused of being the other day was perhaps more appropriate, but somehow similar in content...
Moving swiftly on, some addenda to the scans of 1960s peopleoids: no2self seems to have uploaded lots of this sort of thing, including most memorably some 1966 Letraset figures, which appropriately fits the sketchy links between synthpop and brutalism that I've been attempting: note the figures from the cover of The Human League's Being Boiled striding about above.



After a shameful lack of a building of the month for the whole of January, top nostalgists for the future The 20th Century Society have rather topically picked a Casino for their new entry, rather prettily designed in the Moderne style that pleasure and picture palaces were made in circa 1938. That this was extended to cinemas and department stores implies a curious lack in current capitalist aesthetics: that it no longer seems able to maintain a seductive commercial style, and with the odd signature exception (Koolhaas' Prada, or Future Systems' Selfridges and similar frippery) the shops, retail parks and cinemas of late 21st century capital are almost the nearest thing to a contemporary functionalism in the worst possible sense: obliterating any sense of dream or seduction in favour of a grim consumer utilitarianism.