El Lissitzky. Photomontage of the Wolkenbügel (Cloud-Iron) in Nikitsky Square, 1925.
When curator Jean-Louis Cohen introduces journalists to his new exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, his enthusiasm bubbles over. Before he can mouth welcoming platitudes, he whisks across the entrance foyer, gesturing before an oversized reproduction of his friend Roman Cie?lewicz?s ?The Two Superman.?
Installation view from Building a new New World © CCA
The image, first published on the cover of Paris-based art magazine Opus International in 1967, shows two mirrored comic book Supermans?one with ?CCCP? and one with ?USA? marked on their chests. Cie?lewicz, a Polish emigré working in France, intended it as political criticism: despite the superficial clash of contrasting ideologies, at the end of the day the two world military superpowers shared identical values and motives. Cohen includes the poster as a provocation to today?s architectural historians. ?Thirty years after the Cold War,? he says, ?It?s time to return to Cold War History and deal with it.? Map by Studio Folder (Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual)
?Building a new New World? uses design to examine the cultural, political, economic and, sometimes, architectural, relations between America and Russia over the last two centuries. With such a deep timeline, the result is necessarily episodic. Even though he is a well-known historian, Cohen does not attempt to explain historical change. Instead, he presents selected...