Mellon Forum // Toward a Third Monumentality: The Soviet Reception of Mexican Architectural Modernism

Da Hyung Jeong. . Michael Brinley, History. . . . This talk brings into dialogue two contexts that have tended to remain on the fringe of. . architectural historiography, namely Mexico and the Soviet 'peripheries,' or the non-Russian. . republics of the vast communist empire. After revealing striking analogies and parallelism--at. . the level of form, technique and undergirding discourse--between the new understandings of. . 'monumentality' (monumentalidad, monumental'nost') that emerged in postwar Mexico on the. . one hand and in the margins of the late Soviet Union on the other, it will hypothesize a network. . of knowledge exchange from which the so-called 'First World' was deliberately excluded, one. . that sustained and nurtured an affective material culture expressive of postcolonial sentiments,. . desires and aspirations. The close copies of Mexican designs produced in Soviet Central Asia. . are, as will be argued, to be read as contrarian texts betraying a yearning for a critical regionalist. . alternative both to Western modernism, dismissed as irreconcilable with socialist culture, and socalled. . Soviet modernism, which was really a form of Russian cultural imperialism in disguise.. . . . Special funding for this session is provided by the Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and the Program in Latin American Studies.. . The Fall 2024 Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment is kindly sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and African Studies, Anthropology, Art & Archaeology, Brazil Lab, Center for Collaborative History, Chadha Global India Center, Effron Center for American Studies, English, French & Italian, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Humanities Council, PIIRS, Program in Latin American Studies, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the School of Architecture.. . . . Mellon Forum events are free and open to the public. Lunch is provided while supplies last. --- Event Details: https://my.princeton.edu/rsvp?id=1951013