Public Lecture by Maria Gough

How to Make a Revolutionary Object: the drawings of Gustavs Klucis

A public lecture by Professor Maria Gough, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art, Harvard University.

This talk focuses on a corpus of presentation drawings for new media-driven structures for the revolutionary street:  radio-orators, projection screens, advertising stands, slogan signs, and newspaper kiosks.  Executed in the early 1920s by Gustavs Klucis (Gustav Klutsis), a Latvian immigrant to Moscow who would later enjoy renown as the leading Soviet photomonteur of the interwar period, these striking drawings have long captivated artists, architects, and designers due to their optical dynamism and graphic presence, explicit intertwining of radical aesthetics and agitational politics, and perspicacious concatenation of media and small-form architecture for revolutionary purposes.

Maria Gough studied law, philosophy, and history of art at the University of Melbourne, before completing an MA in the History of Art at Johns Hopkins and a PhD in History of Art and Architecture at Harvard (1997). Before joining the Harvard faculty in 2009, she served as William Wilhartz Assistant Professor of the History of Art at the University of Michigan (1996-2003) and Associate Professor of Art History at Stanford University (2003-2009). Professor Gough’s primary area of research and teaching is early twentieth-century European art, with a particular emphasis on the Russian and Soviet avant-gardes, Weimar aesthetics, and French modernism.

Professor Gough is in Australia as a Visiting Professor at Edith Cowan University and this guest lecture is sponsored by the Edith Cowan Centre for Global Issues.