UGG Australia - Design for a Cause

I'd really appreciate it if anyone could please vote for me in this competition (if you like my design of these UGG boots ofcourse!). It doesnt take long and it can be done through this link or on Facebook or Twitter (until 5th January)....

http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/af3624aeeb7a8e36ba5fa9d228877c97/363

Autumnal Sculptures

Please vote for my submission in this UGG Australia competition when voting is open from the 27th December to the 5th January:

http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/af3624aeeb7a8e36ba5fa9d228877c97/363

Many thanks!

REVOLUTION!

The Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 exhibition at the Royal Academy makes comparisons between the art and architecture of this intensely innovative period for the avant garde of the newly formed USSR. A taste of things to come is in the courtyard in front of the RA, where there's a (scaled down) recreation of Vladmir Tatlin's proposed Monument to the Third International, also known as 'Tatlin’s Tower' (below):

Much of the architecture inside the exhibition itself is shown through the magnificent contemporary colour photographs of Richard Pare. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact that many of the buildings are derelict and decaying, Pare's photography enhances the cold, functional Modernist 'sleeping beauty' of the buildings. His great use of composition and perspective is evident in both the next two photographs (below) of the Shabolovka Radio Tower (1922) in Moscow and the Gosprom Building (1929) in Kharkov, designed by Vladimir Shukhov and Samuil Kravets respectively.

Shabolovka Radio Tower (detail) (1998), Richard Pare



The tower itself was inspired by the design for 'Tatlin’s Tower'.

Gosprom Building (detail with covered skywalk) (1999), Richard Pare

I like the curvaceous shapes of the slopes and staircases, and the way the natural light works with them, in the interiors of these two buildings (below) again photographed by Richard Pare. These are the Tsentrosoyuz Building designed (in 1929-36) by the renowned (Swiss born) Modernist architect Le Corbusier, and secondly the Chekist Housing Scheme in Ekaterinburg designed (in 1929-36) by Veniamin Sokolov and Arsenii Tumbasov.

Tsentrosoyuz Building (1999), Richard Pare

 

Chekist Housing Scheme (1999), Richard Pare

This was originally constructed for the officers of the Cheka (the Soviet secret police, which subsequently became the KGB).

Below is the VTsIK Residential Complex in Moscow designed by Boris Iofan (in 1928-31) that was built to house high ranking Communist Party officials, but its the sickle and wheat design on the iron railing (in the foreground) that caught my eye...

VTsIK Residential Complex (1999), Richard Pare

These two interesting paintings by the female artist Liubov Popova are Spatial Force Construction (1920-21) (above) and Painterly Architectonics (1918-19) (below). They both also featured in the Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism exhibtion at the Tate Modern in 2009. I like the sense of intense activity and movement in them.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/building-the-revolution/

Jay Merrick's excellent preview of the exhibition for the Independent newspaper expresses just how influential this period of Russian art and (to a greater extent) architecture has been for nearly a century:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/russias-aesthetic-revolution-how-soviet-building-still-influences-todays-architects-2373447.html?action=Gallery&ino=2