What price radical chic?

Over the summer, there was a curtain shop on the road up from Archway that kept catching my eye.

It wasn't so much that I was out looking for curtains for my new home, but that I was riveted by the sight of a windowful of these very attractive banners on display in their shopfront.

Che Guevara guarding your windows! Prime socialist realist rocky-jawed heroes of the triumphant proletariat keeping out unwanted gazes! I could certainly see the attraction.

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I told my daughter about the banners and as soon as she saw them she wanted to have blinds in the said fabrics for her room. I muttered sanctimoniously about the implications of displaying images of such a supporter of brutal persecution as Che Guevara, to say nothing of the memory of those who died in such huge numbers in the Gulags of the Soviet Union in order to uphold the myth of the glorious proletarian collective farms. Not that she would have any desire to plaster Che over her blinds. She sees his image as a hopeless cliche worn by those who just want to look trendy. What she was attracted to were the thirties Soviet socialist realist posters.

I needn't have worried. We went to visit the shop and were quoted £55 ($100) a square metre for these fabrics of revolutionary fervour.

It left me wondering just who would be prepared to shell out that sort of money to proclaim their radical chic credentials... no doubt defended with a reference to irony.

The owner of the curtain shop was unpretentious and friendly and gave off the impression of an ex sixties radical who'd had a career as a comprehensive school teacher somewhere down the line.

"They don't sell very well," she said. I wasn't surprised.

Meanwhile my daughter is now thinking of silkscreening some blind fabric herself with an image of zionist-socialist pioneers...same sort of visual iconography, but with altogether more acceptable associations.

Maybe the curtain shop owner was a lot more sophisticated in her marketing approach than I first gave her credit for. I ended up ordering several hundred pounds' worth of impeccably tasteful and ideologically neutral vertical blinds for my living room windows.

Comments

[Aaron]

What took my eye was the revolutionary femme looks a bit like yourself. (ok this ones been kept in storage better).

I always loved the revolutionary art of Russia, it was so err 'inspiring' in its dynamic design.

I think some of the Russian art from the early part of the 20C is really quite revolutionary,- visually.

I much prefer your daughters idea of having silk-screened 'Zionist-socialist pioneers', as you acknowledge despite the current 'chic'ness of these heroes of the proletariat revolution, they never the less represent a very dark side of human nature.

Its funny, but a lot of the 'iconography' in Russian 'revolutionary' printing bears a certain stylistic semblance to the printing and brochure covers that can be found of the early Zionist days.

Despite its 'collective' themes, these images are inspiring, its just that despite good intentions initially, the Russian revolution ended up representing a massive repression of individual rights and state authorised terror whilst the other lead to the rather more positive outcome of the State of Israel.

As for that curtain shop owner, maybe hiding behind their revolutionary curtain, they've developed a zeal for all things capitalist.

You have to admit the last Russian curtain was rather heavy.

Aaron

[Lynne]

Seen on a T-shirt recently in downtown Toronto: Cli-Che.

And a film reviewer friend of mine notes with great amusement that little pocket packs of facial tissue with Che Guevara's image on it were handed out as a promo item at some screening. Quite a fitting tribute to the memory of Castro's Executioner General, eh?

[Paul]

Radical Chic has always been very expensive. I suppose you've read Tom Wolfe's priceless little book whose title (I think) originated the phrase?

[JJM]

Radical chic indeed.

I'll believe all this cutting-edge, no-holds-barred, avant-garde, politically challenging twaddle when I see Mohammed print curtains and pocket packs of facial tissue.

Now that would be a daring statement by the fashionable darlings.

Don't hold your breath though!

[Expresso Expression]

The best of the communist Russia propaganda stemmed from the Futurist and Constructivist art movements of the early 20th century. These people were real artists as well as ardent revolutionaries and their work is still aesthetically fresh but a bit passe for this sneering post-modernist age. The real kitsch was the social-realist stuff.