"Cold War Modern" at the V&A

Over the weekend I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition on "Cold War Modern".

One of the names that inevitably caught the eye was Raymond Loewy. He was a prolific industrial designer and contributed to NASA during the 60s and early 70s, and his sketches shaped much of the look of American space exploration.

In the opposite corner, Soviet space design was represented by a couple of early space-suits, which looked incredibly uncomfortable and cumbersome. Indeed, the caption that went alongside the display of the type of suit that Aleksei Leonov carried out the first space walk in pointed out that it was so unwieldy that he struggled to get back into his Voskhod capsule.

There was also a great video loop of a 1950's American promotional film from IBM about their SAGE Computer. Armed with the mighty power of the punch-card, this machine was being fed "a constant stream of data" to keep the US defence system alert. The film 'On guard' explained to the American people how computers had brought them tomorrow's defence system today.

One thing I liked about the exhibition was that it fully exploited the V&A's wide remit, incorporating clips of films like '2001: A Space Odyssey' and 'Dr. Strangelove', as well as art, architecture and industrial design. Perhaps the only thing missing was any analysis of the impact that the cold war had on contemporary music.

Although there were some interesting consumer products that played music on display, the only really contemporary noise was the soundtrack to the Edgard Varèse installation 'Poème Electronique'. This piece, combining film, light projection, and electronic sound, was conceived for the 1958 Brussels World Fair, and is partially recreated in the gallery.

The period covered by the exhibition stopped at 1970, and so everything on display was from before I was born. However, I still have dim memories of living through the Cold War of the 1970s and early 1980s, so it was very interesting to see gathered together the art and artifacts that helped shape the designs of my childhood.

I found it even more relevant now that my travels through the former Soviet influenced areas of Eastern Europe have bought me face-to-face with Cold War constructions featured in the V&A exhibition like Berlin's Alex TV tower or the brutal Panelák 'social' housing of the Petržalka area of Bratislava.

You'll need to be quick if you haven't been and still want to catch the exhibition - it finishes on the 11th January.