Plakaty 137
This is one of Mayakovsky's ROSTA window public information posters, if I'm not mistaken. An explanation of what these are is provided in the extensively recently rewritten (by me) Constructivism page at Wikipedia. Perhaps my doing this reflects a certain megalomania - faked essays all over the world's universities will be based on something I wrote! (hmm, maybe I ought to keep that impulse private) The weight of history though does bear upon one's shoulders when writing such pages, which is my excuse for spending countless hours that could be spent on all manner of more sensible activities fiddling with the damn things.
posted by owen hatherley at 8:50 pm
3 Comments:
I took that picture for a former employer. Sorry about the lousy quality. I had never taken a digital photo before I started shooting those panels. This is only 4 of the 8 panels in that series. According to my former boss this is a late ROSTA panel from around the time of the NEP. This is a translation :
1) Formerly, to keep the ugly spider (Capitalist) from creeping on in again
2) It was necessary to be formalist and set up obstacles
3) Some Commissars overdid it, to get rid of the bourgeois spirit. There were naturally some fair constraints, but also some injustice
4) Before opening any cooperative store, you had to go around from office to office
5) Permission came after a year, but it wasn’t nice: half the goods were requisitioned and half rotted
6) Now the bourgeois is finished
7) We’ve had a breathing spell and now we’ve destroyed unnecessary formalism
8) Now if officials obstruct individuals or cooperatives, show them this law. It’s written in the law: no formalism! So whatever rank you have, learn to respect private initiative.
I can't vouch for the accuracy.
Thanks, Anonymous! I got the impression from the other ROSTAs that i'd seen translations of that they were written in verse: do you know if this one was?
we think that it was but our translator didn't have the skill to do a true translation. We were a bit lost with these panels and just did the best we could
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