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ted.com

15

Jan

2009

Vintage Russian Ads

What Dostoevsky has to do with sausage art and bicycles.

Today, we’re looking at that weird limbo of Russian heritage between the cultural zenith of the Dostoevsky era and the nadir of Russia’s current status as the Gas Grinch – namely, vintage Russian ads, the intersection of art and commerce.

Tobacco

From tobacco to tailoring, the collection speaks to a striking resemblance between the cultural valuables of Russian society and those of the Western world circa early 20th century, debunking the whole “us vs. them” notion of lack of cultural common ground.

Shoes

Cocoa

And while much of the typography and illustration appear to… ahem… “borrow” from their Western brethren, we notice some surprisingly sophisticated techniques rarely seen in Western vintage ads — such as this perspective treatment of type:

Bicycles

Soda

Courtesy of English Russia. (Remember sausage art?)

But before we get too caught up in the cultural common tangents here, let’s not forget the other side of the whole Soviet-American relationship, clearly and stride-stoppingly revealed in the Soviet propaganda of the day.

Freedom from the American

We encourage you to play around with English Russia, the second most addictive source of relentless amusement we’ve discovered last year.

via Coudal

  • Starving Artist No More Why da Vinci is rolling in his grave and thinking about peperoni pizza. Oh, the wonders of Russian art. The great novelists. The great playwrights. The great poets. And, now, the great sausage artists. That’s right, Russian art is branching out into the edible category with packaged meat art. See...
  • Man Men on Wheels: Vintage Car Ads Celebrating the Mad-Men-era nostalgia with an intersection of two of the era's greatest cultural landmarks -- cars and advertising -- with five fantastic collections of vintage car ads....
  • Vintage Russian Animation: Top 5 While Disney was building an empire in America, animators on the other side of the Iron Curtain were creating their own phenomenal masterpieces. Here are five gems....
  • Vintage Album Covers Three fantastic collections of vintage jazz album and LP cover artwork....
  • Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia For 33 years, prison guard Danzig Baldayev captured the body art on Russia's most infamous criminals in 3,600 incredible hand-illustrations and intimate photographs....

One Response

  1. Those are some funny looking ads! I love it.

    Is it jut me or are these CAPTCHA’s gettings harder? I’m starting to think Im a bot :(

    Kris on January 15th, 2009 at 10:02 am

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