As a graphic designer, my interests in innovative women of history are
often strongest for those involved in visual arts. And as a former
student of Russian and a devoted Russophile, my obsession with designers of post-revolutionary Russia is off the charts. Enter Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova.
Mass media, particularly so-called family television, from Bewitched to Everybody Loves Raymond, has long portrayed the home as women’s domain, an ultra-feminized realm in which housewives bustle and cluck while their hapless husbands do little more than hand out spending money and retreat to the most masculine part of the house: the study, or their favorite chair. There’s no denying the cult of the man’s chair in TV history: Those who knew Archie Bunker knew never to sit in his chair.