Western "Poison" in the Ukrainian Posters of Late Socialism
Dr. Vasyl Kosiv
Lviv National Academy of Arts1.6.2021, 18:30
online / zoom / youtube
We invite you to the online lecture by Dr. Vasyl Kosiv on "Western "Poison" in the Ukrainian Posters of Late Socialism". This lecture launches the program "Urban Scraps: Space, Media and Visuality."
It was one of the late Soviet Union’s paradoxes: in the 1970s and 1980s, it was still impossible for Western modernism and popular visual culture to be exhibited in public galleries. Nevertheless, surrealism, op-art, pop-art, and psychedelic art were legally present in the urban public space. The lecture analyzes sources of inspiration and technique borrowings that were quite common but slightly different for each of the styles. It highlights particular combinations of Ukrainian content and folk-art patterns with clear non-Soviet visual expression. Interviews with the posters’ authors have brought personal stories to this research and challenge some of the common assumptions.
Discussant: Sergei Zhuk
The event will be delivered on an online platform zoom. To join the discussion, please, register.
Live streaming on Youtube will be available.
Working language — Ukrainian.
Dr. Vasyl Kosiv
Doctor of Arts, Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. Author of the book “Ukrainian Identity in Graphic Design 1945–1989” (Kyiv: Rodovid, 2019), which won the Grand Prix of the Lviv Book Forum in 2019, as well as the Grand Prix of the Ukrainian national Book of the Year 2019. He teaches the history of graphic design for undergraduate students and several theoretical disciplines for masters and graduate students.
Dr. Sergei Zhuk
Professor of History, Ball State University, USA
Sergei Zhuk holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and taught American colonial history, Russian/Soviet and Ukrainian History at the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. His research interests are international relations, knowledge production, cultural consumption, religion, popular culture and identity in a history of imperial Russia, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. He is currently writing a book about Soviet interference and meddling in U.S. domestic politics during the Cold War. His second book project is a comparative history of small towns in the US and Soviet Ukraine during the Cold War.
"Urban Scraps: Space, Media and Visuality" is a series of lectures on the city, culture, and history implemented in partnership by the Center for Urban History (Ukraine) and Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland).
