Playing with Lenin

No experiment has been more expensive than Socialism with its factories, astronauts, proletariat and koljosians. But none has been more prolific in film, graphics, design and architecture than the Soviet model.

Paralized by a fortuitous chess move by Gorbachov, followed by Yeltsin's piss-ups and Putin's f-ups, it became the womb for some of the best and weirdest in art. And Ródchenko is one of its most brilliant sons.

You just have to see him in photographs, glowing, in an overall of his own design, where his garb and baldness reminds you of Yul Brynner (starring in that Anastasia movie, casually).  I can't stop hearing Carlos Varela's surrealist song in my head: "Tristan Tzara played chess with Lenin / in the same street where Dadá was born".  The red pieces against the bad ones.

Ródchenko. La construcción del futuro.
La Pedrera, hasta el 5 de enero de 2009.
Passeig de Gràcia 92, lun-dom, 10-20hrs.
Entrada libre

Text and photos by JCA