Authors

Romanenkova Maria¹;  ¹ Personal capacity, Russian Federation

Discussion

Soviet printing in the second half of the 1950s–1980s formed a special approach to the representation of the ancient Russian artistic heritage. Wishing to conquer the reader's attention with the attractiveness of the publication, book designers often resorted to the techniques of avant-garde artists and modern Western masters. The mass production of books devoted to Russian medieval architecture was the ‘zone of responsibility’ of the publishing houses ‘Iskusstvo’, ‘Aurora’, and ‘Soviet Artist’, which regularly won in the all-Union ‘Art of the Book Design’ contest (1956–1997).

 However, the modern Western approach to the representation of national heritage was not welcomed unequivocally. Art historian Yuri Khalaminsky criticized the design of the brochure ‘Love and Preserve the Monuments of Old Russian Art’ made by Lev Zbarsky for inconsistency with the content of the book.

In my research I will prove that the authors of publications and the book artists sought to achieve a common goal: the inclusion of monuments of ancient Russian architecture in the cultural context of contemporary Soviet society. However, whereas the former, justifying the value of ancient buildings, remained within the framework of a conservative narrative, the latter sought to modernize them with the methods of Western book design.