Brodsky & Utkin: The Complete Works by by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin; with a preface by Ronald Feldman
This month, Princeton Architectural Press is releasing the third edition of Brodsky & Utkin. First published in 1991 and reprinted in 2003, the book’s illustrations are shadowy manifestations of urban landscapes somewhere between a dream and a chaotic future, where all the history of architecture collides. Brodsky and Utkin’s prints are also currently on view at the Tate Modern in London as part of the ongoing Poetry and Dream displays from the museum collections.
Gallerist Ronald Feldman, who first brought their work to the United States, writes in a preface:
What do you do as an architect living in a country that sets limits on and penalties for architectural design? […] During the Cold War, the brave and inventive architects of the Soviet Union did not cease to advance their cause. They continued to explore their ideas in several ways, including one very simple but dangerous method: they drew what they couldn’t build, and thus invented paper architecture.
In an introduction, author Lois Beckett calls their paper architecture a “graphic form of architectural criticism.” Beckett adds that Brodsky, Utkin, and others “began producing visionary schemes in response to a bleak professional scene in which only artless and ill-conceived buildings, diluted through numerous bureaucratic strata and constructed out of poor materials by unskilled laborers, were being erected — if anything.”