Constructivism (art)
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Years active | 1915–1934 |
---|---|
Location | Russia (1915–1922)/ Soviet Union (after 1922) |
Major figures | Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko |
Influences | Russian folk art, Suprematism, Cubism and Futurism |
Influenced | Bauhaus and De Stijl |
Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko.[1] Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space.[1] The movement rejected decorative stylization in favour of the industrial assemblage of materials.[1] Constructivists were in favour of art for propaganda and social purposes, and were associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks and the Russian avant-garde.[2]
Constructivist architecture and art had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements. Its influence was widespread, with major effects upon architecture, sculpture, graphic design, industrial design, theatre, film, dance, fashion and, to some extent, music.
Beginnings
Constructivism was a post-World War I development of Russian Futurism, and particularly of the 'counter reliefs' of Vladimir Tatlin, which had been exhibited in 1915. The term itself was invented by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular style of work, while its geometric abstraction owed something to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. Constructivism first appears as a term in Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Aleksei Gan used the word as the title of his book Constructivism, printed in 1922.[3]
Constructivism as theory and practice was derived largely from a series of debates at the
Art in the service of the Revolution
As much as involving itself in designs for industry, the Constructivists worked on public festivals and street designs for the post-October revolution Bolshevik government. Perhaps the most famous of these was in
The constructivists tried to create works that would make the viewer an active viewer of the artwork. In this it had similarities with the
Tatlin, 'Construction Art' and Productivism
The key work of Constructivism was Vladimir Tatlin's proposal for the Monument to the Third International (Tatlin's Tower) (1919–20)[4] which combined a machine aesthetic with dynamic components celebrating technology such as searchlights and projection screens. Gabo publicly criticised Tatlin's design saying, "Either create functional houses and bridges or create pure art, not both." This had already caused a major controversy in the Moscow group in 1920 when Gabo and Pevsner's Realistic Manifesto asserted a spiritual core for the movement. This was opposed to the utilitarian and adaptable version of Constructivism held by Tatlin and Rodchenko. Tatlin's work was immediately hailed by artists in Germany as a revolution in art: a 1920 photograph shows George Grosz and John Heartfield holding a placard saying 'Art is Dead – Long Live Tatlin's Machine Art', while the designs for the tower were published in Bruno Taut's magazine Frühlicht. The tower was never built, however, due to a lack of money following the revolution.[5]
Tatlin's tower started a period of exchange of ideas between Moscow and Berlin, something reinforced by El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg's Soviet-German magazine Veshch-Gegenstand-Objet which spread the idea of 'Construction art', as did the Constructivist exhibits at the 1922 Russische Ausstellung in Berlin, organised by Lissitzky. A Constructivist International was formed, which met with Dadaists and De Stijl artists in Germany in 1922. Participants in this short-lived international included Lissitzky, Hans Richter, and László Moholy-Nagy. However the idea of 'art' was becoming anathema to the Russian Constructivists: the INKhUK debates of 1920–22 had culminated in the theory of Productivism propounded by Osip Brik and others, which demanded direct participation in industry and the end of easel painting. Tatlin was one of the first to attempt to transfer his talents to industrial production, with his designs for an economical stove, for workers' overalls and for furniture. The Utopian element in Constructivism was maintained by his 'letatlin', a flying machine which he worked on until the 1930s.
Constructivism and consumerism
In 1921, the New Economic Policy was established in the Soviet Union, which opened up more market opportunities in the Soviet economy. Rodchenko, Stepanova, and others made advertising for the co-operatives that were now in competition with other commercial businesses. The poet-artist Vladimir Mayakovsky and Rodchenko worked together and called themselves "advertising constructors". Together they designed eye-catching images featuring bright colours, geometric shapes, and bold lettering. The lettering of most of these designs was intended to create a reaction, and function emotionally – most were designed for the state-owned department store Mosselprom in Moscow, for pacifiers, cooking oil, beer and other quotidian products, with Mayakovsky claiming that his 'nowhere else but Mosselprom' verse was one of the best he ever wrote. Additionally, several artists tried to work with clothes design with varying success: Varvara Stepanova designed dresses with bright, geometric patterns that were mass-produced, although workers' overalls by Tatlin and Rodchenko never achieved this and remained prototypes. The painter and designer Lyubov Popova designed a kind of Constructivist flapper dress before her early death in 1924, the plans for which were published in the journal LEF. In these works, Constructivists showed a willingness to involve themselves in fashion and the mass market, which they tried to balance with their Communist beliefs.
LEF and Constructivist cinema
The Soviet Constructivists organised themselves in the 1920s into the 'Left Front of the Arts', who produced the influential journal LEF, (which had two series, from 1923 to 1925 and from 1927 to 1929 as
The Productivist theorists Osip Brik and
Photography and photomontage
Although originated in Germany, photomontage was a popular art form for Constructivists to create visually striking art and a method to convey change; "
LEF also helped popularise a distinctive style of photography, involving jagged angles and contrasts and abstract use of light, which paralleled the work of László Moholy-Nagy in Germany: The major practitioners of this included, along with Rodchenko, Boris Ignatovich and Max Penson, among others. Kulagina, collaborating with Klutiso, utilised the use of photomontage to create political and personal posters of representative subjects from women in the workforce to satirise the humour of the local government. This also shared many characteristics with the early documentary movement.
Constructivist graphic design
The book designs of Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and others such as Solomon Telingater and Anton Lavinsky were a major inspiration for the work of radical designers in the West, particularly Jan Tschichold. Many Constructivists worked on the design of posters for everything from cinema to political propaganda: the former represented best by the brightly coloured, geometric posters of the Stenberg brothers (Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg), and the latter by the agitational photomontage work of Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina.
In
The Constructivists' main early political patron was
Constructivist architecture
Constructivist architecture emerged from the wider constructivist art movement. After the
A split occurred in 1922 when Pevsner and Gabo emigrated. The movement then developed along socially
Legacy
A number of Constructivists would teach or lecture at the
In the 1980s graphic designer Neville Brody used styles based on Constructivist posters that initiated a revival of popular interest. Also during the 1980s designer Ian Anderson founded The Designers Republic, a successful and influential design company which used constructivist principles.
Deconstructivism
So-called Deconstructivist architecture shares elements of approach with Constructivism (its name refers more to the
Artists closely associated with Constructivism
- Ella Bergmann-Michel – (1896–1971)
- Norman Carlberg, sculptor (1928–2018)
- Avgust Černigoj – (1898–1985)
- John Ernest – (1922–1994)
- Naum Gabo – (1890–1977)
- Moisei Ginzburg, architect (1892–1946)
- Hermann Glöckner, painter and sculptor (1889–1987)
- Erwin Hauer – (1926–2017)
- Hildegard Joos, painter (1909–2005)
- Gustav Klutsis – (1895–1938)
- Katarzyna Kobro – (1898–1951)
- Srečko Kosovel – (1904–1926)
- Jan Kubíček – (1927–2013)
- El Lissitzky – (1890–1941)
- Ivan Leonidov – architect (1902–1959)
- Richard Paul Lohse – painter and designer (1902–1988)
- Peter Lowe – (1938–)
- Louis Lozowick – (1892–1973)
- Berthold Lubetkin – architect (1901–1990)
- Thilo Maatsch – (1900–1983)
- Estuardo Maldonado – (1930–)
- Kenneth Martin – (1905–1984)
- Mary Martin – (1907–1969)
- Konstantin Medunetsky – (1899–1935)
- Konstantin Melnikov – architect (1890–1974)
- Vadim Meller – (1884–1962)
- László Moholy-Nagy – (1895–1946)
- Murayama Tomoyoshi– (1901–1977)
- Victor Pasmore – (1908–1998)
- Laszlo Peri– artist and architect (1899–1967)
- Antoine Pevsner – (1886–1962)
- Lyubov Popova – (1889–1924)
- Alexander Rodchenko – (1891–1956)
- Kurt Schwitters – (1887–1948)
- Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - (1894-1933)
- Manuel Rendón Seminario – (1894–1982)
- Willi Sandforth - (1922-2017) - German painter and designer
- Vladimir Shukhov – architect (1853–1939)
- Anton Stankowski – painter and designer (1906–1998)
- Jeffrey Steele – (1931–2021)
- Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg – poster designers and sculptors (1900–1933, 1899–1982)
- Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958)
- Władysław Strzemiński – painter (1893–1952)
- Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953)
- Joaquín Torres García(1874–1949)
- Vasiliy Yermilov(1894–1967)
- Alexander Vesnin – architect, painter and designer (1883–1957)
See also
References
- ^ a b c "Constructivism". Tate Modern. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
- ^ Hatherley, Owen (4 November 2011). "The constructivists and the Russian revolution in art and achitecture". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
- ^ Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of Art, Architecture and the City, Academy Editions, 1995, page 106.
- ISBN 9781856695848
- ISBN 0500237018
- ^ a voice of gesture of his thoughts
- ^ Benus B. (2013) 'Figurative Constructivism and sociological graphics' in Isotype: Design and Contexts 1925–71 London: Hyphen Press, pp. 216–248
- ISBN 0-00-686129-6.
Further reading
- Russian Constructivist Posters, edited by Elena Barkhatova. ISBN 2-08-013527-9.
- Bann, Stephen. The Documents of 20th-Century Art: The Tradition of Constructivism. The Viking Press. 1974. SBN 670-72301-0
- Heller, Steven, and Seymour Chwast. Graphic Style from Victorian to Digital. New ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001. 53–57.
- Lodder, Christina. Russian Constructivism. Yale University Press; Reprint edition. 1985. ISBN 0-300-03406-7
- Rickey, George. Constructivism: Origins and Evolution. George Braziller; Revised edition. 1995. ISBN 0-8076-1381-9
- Alan Fowler. Constructivist Art in Britain 1913–2005. University of Southampton. 2006. PhD Thesis.
- Simon, Joshua (2013). Neomaterialism. Berlin: Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-3-943365-08-5.
- Gubbins, Pete. 2017. Constructivism to Minimal Art: from Revolution via Evolution (Winterley: Winterley Press). ISBN 978-0-9957554-0-6
- Galvez, Paul. “Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Monkey-Hand.” October, vol. 93, 2000, pp. 109–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/779159. Accessed 15 Apr. 2023.
External links
- Resource on constructivism, focusing primarily on the movement in Russia and east-central Europe
- Documentary on Constructivist architecture Archived 27 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- Constructivist Book Covers
- Russian Constructivism. MoMA.org
- International Constructivism. MoMA.org
- The Influence of Interpersonal Relationships on the Functioning of the Constructivist Network – an article by Michał Wenderski
- Collection: "Soviet Constructivist Film Posters" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art