100 astonishing posters marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution are to be exhibited worldwide. But don’t be surprised if you sense some déjà vu… you may have seen some of them on RT first.
With RT’s interactive history project entering its culmination stage, the time has come to shine a light on some of the stunning artwork used in #1917LIVE – a re-creation of the revolution on Twitter. Artists were given the subject of 1917-2017 and a color scheme of red, white and black.
Remember that time when Lenin’s Twitter account went live for a Q&A session in October? And then the whole role-play action got a little out of hand because ‘Lenin’ hated the cover of the fictional medium then-titled ‘Russian Telegraph’?
Are you overwhelmed yet? There’s more to come: so now that the Bolsheviks have won, the outlet has been taken over, its name changed to ‘Revolutionary Times’. Seriously, if you’re not part of the action yet, now is still a good time to join (details below).
Well, the posters that featured in the announcements were actually part of a separate, open poster competition titled 1917-2017, and the artists who created the sharp images, Alexander Bogatov and Alexandra Kazakovskaya, agreed to collaborate with RT for that heated event.
The poster competition was launched by the president of the Moscow Global Biennale of Graphic Design, ‘Golden Bee’, Serge Serov: earlier this year artists were given nothing but the theme of 1917-2017 and a color-scheme of red, white and black.
“This project was somewhat of a test for international designers. I purposefully refrained from a positive or negative connotation, using neutral dates 1917-2017 as a vector,” Serov told RT.
Over 70 internationally renowned artists participated, also leaving space for lesser-known talent to emerge.
“At first I wanted to put together an exhibition from 100 posters for a world tour. But the project garnered so many interesting works, that I decided to form a long-list of 500 posters and offer it to curators around the world for them to choose which works they wanted to exhibit,” Serov said.
“This turned into an extension of the experiment. Selections are very different depending on where the exhibition takes place. It’s quite entertaining to follow this process,” Serov continued, explaining how his idea evolved in practice.
1917-2017 was presented in Moscow in April 2017 and, after a series of expos around the World, will return to the Russian capital in 2018 for the biannual ‘Golden Bee’.
Red, white and black were not only the colors of the Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power, but were also the visual language of the buzzing Russian avant-garde scene that produced some of the most iconic posters in the world.
“The avant-garde color scheme was also kind of a hint. It was mostly adopted by foreign authors. The West is still prone to romanticizing the revolution and appealing to the visual language of avant-garde is the best way to do it,” Serov concluded in his interview with RT.
According to research titled ‘Image of the revolution’s centenary in Russia and the World,’ Russians are far less optimistic about 1917, with only 4 percent of Russians and 8 percent of foreigners glorifying it. Some 78 percent of the participants from Russia portray the revolution as a terrible event in the country’s history, compared to 57 percent of contributors of the same opinion from abroad.
All the posters can be seen on the project's Facebook page here.
RT’s project about the revolution is still running, buzzing with revolutionary excitement. And you’re more than welcome to join either as a spectator or a character by following the hashtags #1917LIVE and #1917CROWD on Twitter.