Exhibition "Infographics in Russia. From everyday icons to the postmodern era"

On June 23, the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art opens the exhibition “Infographics in Russia. From everyday icons to the postmodern era. ” At the beginning of the twentieth century, the famous Austrian philosopher, sociologist and economist Otto Neurat expressed a revolutionary idea: the source of most social problems is information inequality. Since ancient times, mankind has been trying to solve the problem of communication, and one of such solutions is information design or infographics. Infographics is one of the oldest ways of communication, the first “infograms” are cave paintings that allowed millions of years to read these “messages” to people of a completely different culture.

Stop the night panel. Poster. 65.2x51.3 cm.

The exhibition will feature samples of infographics from different time periods from the collections of the Moscow Institute of Pedagogical Studies, the Polytechnic Museum, the work of the VisualSince studio, the Infographic Agency for Effective Communications, Soviet political posters from the collection of Sergo Grigoryan and works from the International Comic Book Festival KomMissiya. SAMSUNG will present the unique project “Live Pages” - a mobile application for interactive reading, which, through the use of innovative methods of visualization and word processing, offers a new, augmented experience in reading classical literature. The novel of the novel “War and Peace” and the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment” are already available in the application’s interactive library.

Five sections of the exhibition deployed in the exhibition space of the Museum characterize the five most striking stages of the existence of domestic infographics. In the section "Life Icon and Lubok" various objects and sculptural compositions from wood will be presented, including the life icon "The Walk of John the Evangelist" dating from the 18th century from the funds of the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art. The infographics of the 20s of the XX century are represented by exhibits from the Polytechnic Museum, the Soviet political poster from private collections of Sergo Grigoryan. For example, the poster “Organization of the green conveyor belt in the USSR” shows the growth of agricultural products, the poster “Metric measures” tells about the relationship of international measurement measures. The works of Moscow and St. Petersburg studios and artists working in such styles as comics, graphic novels, manga, animation will also be shown.

The history of infographics in Russia goes back to the Middle Ages, when hagiographic icons and lubok conveyed the most important information to people and solved the most complex moral, ethical and social problems. Illiteracy, linguistic and social differences were not an obstacle to the stories drawn, everyone understood them. In the 20th century, infographics easily coped with increasingly complex flows of information: it explained the essence of the new social system, clearly demonstrated the dynamics of the development of society, and was an unsurpassed agitator during the years of World War II.

The objective of the project is to show the history of infographics in Russia, current trends in information design, the scientific background of infographics as a universal metalanguage. The project clearly illustrates the use of infographics in almost all areas of human activity, including the most complex aspects of moral and social education. The exhibition is designed to combine the past, present and future of the history of Russian infographics.