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Where The Wind Blows

Poster
1989 (published)
Artist/Maker
Battling Pencil (design studio)
Artists of the RSFSR (publishers)
Zhelobinsky, V (designer)
Khotchinsky, V (author)
Place of origin
Russia (Published)
Moscow (published)
Saint Petersburg (published)

Poster depicting a bureaucrat as a weather vane pointing towards the direction of Perestroika

Object details

Category
Politics
Object type
Poster
TitleWhere The Wind Blows (manufacturer's title)
Materials and techniques
Colour offset lithograph
Paper
Printing Inks
Brief description
Poster by the Battling Pencil group from a portfolio of 24 entitled 'Perestroika For and Against'. Russia, 1989.
Physical description
Poster depicting a bureaucrat as a weather vane pointing towards the direction of Perestroika
Dimensions
  • Height: 43.8cm
  • Width: 33cm
Production typeMass produced
Marks and inscriptions
  • Battling Pencil logo
  • In return for a soft armchair and a high salary/The bureaucrat is ready to go the way the wind bows (Verse accompanying the image on the poster)
Credit line
Given by Peggy vance
Historical context
Fith poster in ‘Prerestroika [restructuring] For and Against’ portfolio. It illustrates the opportunism of the old-style Soviet bureaucrat. He is depicted as a weather vane pointing towards Perestroika and jettisoning old slogans 'The economy must be economic' and 'catch up and overtake'.

The portfolio contains a series of 25 satirical posters by a group of Leningrad artists known as ‘Battling Pencil’ on the theme of the struggle to restructure communism in the new political atmosphere under the regime of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachov (b.1931), appointed general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, with text and images edited by A.M Murtov and V.I. Kiunap respectively. Each poster is composed of an image with an accompanying verse in the tradition of the Russian lubok.
Production
Attribution note: published in a print run of 5,000
Subjects depicted
Bureaucracy
Perestroika
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.364-1990

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Record createdFebruary 18, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O188799/where-the-wind-blows-poster-zhelobinsky-v/
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