Introduction to 'Problems of Soviet Design' and 'The Production (Industrial) Art of the Future' by Karl Kantor

摘要

Beauty and Utility: Sociological Issues of Material-Artistic Culture (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1967) is the first monograph written by the Soviet design critic, philosopher, editor and educator Karl Kantor (1922-2008). Kantor studied philosophy at Moscow State University after the Second World War, where he became familiar with classical European philosophy. Having survived a Stalinist anti-semitic purge in 1949, he taught dialectical materialism at a hydrotechnological institute, before being offered in 1957 a job as sub-editor at the journal Dekorativnoe iskusstvo SSSR [Decorative Arts of the USSR]. At his behest, this became the first Soviet journal to publish articles on design in contemporary culture. Like other reformist members of the 1960s Soviet intelligentsia, he believed that a return to the ideas of Karl Marx (particularly his early writings) could put Soviet society back on the path to communism, from which it had strayed during the Stalin years.