New First Unexpected

DON'T BE SILENT

The latest riff on Alexandr Rodchenko's original--this one from the Belarusian political art collective Project Antibrainwash, which I saw at EFA Project Space back in March:

"Don't Be Silent, 2011. Downloadable protest poster (36: x 48"). The text along the bottom reads: "Silence is consent."

Rodchenko's original:

Plakat Alexander Rodchenko "Books". The Board for the Leningrad branch of the State publishing house «Gosizdat». 1924 Reproduction Private collection © DACS 2008 © Rodchenko archives.

This image is appropriated time and again, most recently by the band Franz Ferdinand, and before that by the Dutch punk band, The Ex. And not least, by my wife as her Facebook profile pic:

EDUARD STEINBERG: BURIAL AND RESURRECTION

Composition: Burial and Resurrection (1987, Oil on canvas)

Painter Eduard Arkadevich Steinberg, considered by many to be the standard bearer of Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist legacy, died from cancer last week in Paris.

Steinberg was a prominent figure in the so-called second wave of the Russian Avant-Garde arts movement of the 1960s that included, among others, painters Erik Bulatov, Viktor Pivovrov, and Ilya Kabakov. Although the establishment of Socialist Realism in 1934 marked a clear end to the first wave of the Avant-Garde, the movement did not end there. After Stalin's death in 1953, and at the beginning of the Thaw, the second wave of the avant-garde--or Non-Conformists--began to emerge. Born between 1932 and 1938, these artists began their careers in the late 1950s. By the late 60's and early 70's, their paintings evolved as a conscious rejection of the official subjects of Socialist Realism--and, as a result, didn’t see much daylight until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.