Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1184216
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0 | P E R S P E C T I V E 5 1 R E S O U R C E S GODLESS UTOPIA: SOVIET ANIT-RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA BY ROLAND ELLIOTT BROWN The iconography of atheism: Soviets against God! Soviet atheism is the great lost subject of the 20th century. The Soviet Union promoted atheism almost entirely for domestic consumption, decades' worth of arcane and astonishing anti-religious imagery remains unknown in the West. Drawing on the early Soviet atheist magazines Godless and Godless at the Machine, and postwar posters by Communist Party publishers, author Roland Elliott Brown presents an unsettling tour of atheist ideology in the USSR. Here are uncanny, imaginative and downright blasphemous visions from the very guts of the Soviet atheist apparatus: sinister priests rub shoulders with cross-bearing colonial torturers, greedy mullahs, a cyclopean Jehovah and a crypto-fascist Jesus; Russian cosmonauts mock God from space while vigilant border guards nab American Bible smugglers. Godless Utopia is the occult grimoire of a lost socialist anti-theology. THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE IN 100 BUILDINGS BY MARC KUSHNER The book explores the future of architecture by examining 100 diff erent buildings around the world. This book is great for anyone who loves architecture and is looking for design inspiration. This book is about pushing the limits of architecture by creating buildings to do more than solely providing shelter; for example, imagine a building that could eat smog. Environmentalists may also appreciate this book because it would make them think about how buildings could be designed in order to protect the environment. Overall, this book provides a glimpse of where we are now architecturally and where we could be in the future. STRIKING POWER: ICONOCLASM IN ANCIENT EGYPT BY EDWARD BLEIBERG, STEPHANIE WEISSBERG Striking Power—the very fi rst exhibition and publication to explore the history of iconoclasm in ancient Egyptian art—is an in-depth examination of the widespread campaigns of targeted image destruction that periodically swept through ancient Egypt, driven by political and religious motivations. Focusing on the legacies of pharaohs Hatshepsut (reigned c. 1478–58 BCE) and Akhenaten (reigned c. 1353–36 BCE), as well as the destruction of objects in Late Antiquity, the book pairs damaged works, from fragmented heads to altered inscriptions, with undamaged examples. Striking Power raises timely questions about the power of images and the ways in which we try to contain them.