The Kunst ja Kodu almanac as a platform for DIY projects from 1958-1972.
The late 1950s witnessed a shift to an ideology based on “everything for the good of the individual”, and major changes were seen in art forms related to people’s spatial environment and everyday surroundings. Basically, more importance was placed on the objects that surrounded people. A key feature of artistic culture in the “thaw” era of the 1960s was that art began playing a direct and active role in people’s daily lives. Art forms that during the Stalin era had been overshadowed by dominant and ideologized genres such as painting and sculpture rose to the forefront again.
As it distanced itself from Stalinist dogmas, Soviet society developed new aims. One was raising standards of living, which also meant establishing and putting standards in place in more certain terms as well as modifying them. It meant new homes and the need to furnish them. Smaller collectives and groups were merged with bigger ones, thus forming plants and companies. A key theme of this era was the channeling of artists into industry. By the time the 1950s came to a close, over 100 artists had gone to work at industrial enterprises. This period saw the creation of a relatively strong network that allowed the relatively new field of product design to begin functioning, and the achievements in this field remained a fixture for many decades.
Amid these new currents, the Kunst ja Kodu almanac first appeared in 1958, which is a very intriguing phenomenon in many aspects. Given the theme of this year’s triennial – the dissemination of high-quality designs in the public domain – it is interesting to view Kunst ja Kodu as a platform that promoted do-it-yourself kinds of projects among the readership.
The central goal of Kunst ja Kodu was to develop the “reader’s aesthetic taste in matters of domestic culture” and in light of or in anticipation of the unavailability of necessary furnishings: “to provide working drawings for making household items the home-made way ... considering materials available to all, the existing opportunities and contemporary tastes” (1/1958). It retained these interests as well as its practical advice-giving position until the early 1970s, at which point a young editor with a new vision took over the editing of the magazine.
Alongside general educational topics, ideas and do-it-yourself projects proved important right from the early days.
Do-it-yourself projects are mostly associated with handicrafts traditionally performed by women, and here, too, these played a significant role when it came to textiles. But in light of the existence of another magazine, Käsitöö (Handicraft), the emphasis in Kunst ja Kodu was on furniture and home planning, offering “handicrafts for men, in connection with home furnishing” (1/1968). The primary focus in the case of the subject of homes was above all on prefab housing projects – mainly small flats. The central type of dwelling from 1959 on was the so-called khrushchovska. In 1961, construction began in the Mustamäe district of Tallinn, but coverage was also devoted to cooperative dwellings and summer cottages built according to individual homeowners’ designs.
The topics covered a wide range, from entrance halls to garden furniture. In each issue, there was an effort to focus on a specific topic. The projects ranged from interior layouts to drawings or designs of objects – primarily furniture, lighting and textiles – that could be used to reproduce the items. Notes on this subject could be found in various articles in the issues up to the early 1970s. At the end of the 1960s, new perspectives were introduced as well: dispatches from trips abroad on the topic of home and interior design.
The editorial board of the almanac, which was published 2-3 times a year, consisted of applied artists, architects and designers who were actively engaged in their field – Edgar Velbri, Helene Kuma, Tamara Vaskova, Leida Madisson (editor from 1958-1971), Vello Asi, Lydia Habicht and others. Many were contributors as well, offering ideas and drawings and giving younger contemporaries (Helle and Taevo Gans, Mait Summatavet and others) an opportunity to express their ideas.
A key aspect to Kunst ja Kodu’s publishing guidelines was an emphasis on modernity and up-to-dateness. Toward the end of the 1950s modernist tenets developed relatively rapidly, and the “modern style” promoted during this period was relatively clear and unequivocal in terms of content: simple stylized forms, clear outlines, occasional asymmetry, and simple materials; colour became an important element. Toward the end of the 1960s, artists started harmonizing with the pop styles, and forms became softer.
Alongside the quest for modernity, which had become something of a universal standard, there were repeated nods to the legacy of the past. A note of caution was struck against too definitively embracing the new, and the recommended practice was to find a happy medium between new and old – be it a folk-culture-related item or simply an item that had survived the through the generations and was historically attractive. (3/1960, 1/1963 etc) An uncritical acquiescence to modernity was seen as fraught with the danger of excessive conformism.
The pages of Kunst ja Kodu regularly included 2-4 project drawings. This was on one hand a possibility for designers of the day to reach their audience by offering ideas in the public domain; in another sense it was paradoxically a chance for fashion consumers to make their own everyday items according to carefully-designed and tested designs. Amid the general wave of mass-produced items, the ideas published in Kunst ja Kodu offered an increasing number of possibilities to stand distinct from standard solutions, and represented an alternative to the general climate of conformism. Although it is not known to what extent people actually used these ideas in their home improvements, considering the large print run of the almanac (starting from 20,000-25,000, and hovering around 9,000-10,000 in the 1960s) it represented an opportunity for a kind of alternative standard.
The main direction of Kunst ja Kodu changed in the 1970s. The innovator in this case was Andres Tolts, who had just graduated from the Estonian State Art Institute’s industrial art programme. Under Tolts’ editing and design direction (1973-1981) and with the help of co-authors consisting of young architects and artists, it became a key publication in terms of writing about art theories, modern art and more experimental thought. Thanks to Tolts’s vision, attitudes toward the living environment and how it was seen became much broader. Alternatives continued to be offered from the perspective of design culture. A new heading was added to the magazine – “Praktika” – which consisted as before of practical project ideas, but compared to the earlier years it appeared in a much smaller scope and became in a sense an obligatory part of the publication that satisfied the whims of the publisher (the aspect of saleability of such designs). As no supplements were published from 1973 on, this section of the magazine was fairly skeletal compared to earlier issues. The focus had shifted elsewhere; still, Kunst ja Kodu retained its important position in the discourse on design and art.
Kunst ja Kodu was published until 1990. A total of 59 issues appeared.
Curator: Kai Lobjakas
