The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in RevolutionThe Artist as Producer reshapes our understanding of the fundamental contribution of the Russian avant-garde to the development of modernism. Focusing on the single most important hotbed of Constructivist activity in the early 1920s—the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscow—Maria Gough offers a powerful reinterpretation of the work of the first group of artists to call themselves Constructivists. Her lively narrative ranges from famous figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko to others who are much less well known, such as Karl Ioganson, a key member of the state-funded INKhUK whose work paved the way for an eventual dematerialization of the integral art object. Through the mining of untapped archives and collections in Russia and Latvia and a close reading of key Constructivist works, Gough highlights fundamental differences among the Moscow group in their handling of the experimental new sculptural form—the spatial construction—and of their subsequent shift to industrial production. The Artist as Producer upends the standard view that the Moscow group's formalism and abstraction were incompatible with the sociopolitical imperatives of the new Communist state. It challenges the common equation of Constructivism with functionalism and utilitarianism by delineating a contrary tendency toward non-determinism and an alternate orientation to process rather than product. Finally, the book counters the popular perception that Constructivism failed in its ambition to enter production by presenting the first-ever case study of how a Constructivist could, and in fact did, operate within an industrial environment. The Artist as Producer offers provocative new perspectives on three critical issues—formalism, functionalism, and failure—that are of central importance to our understanding not only of the Soviet phenomenon but also of the European vanguards more generally. |
Contents
Made in Moscow | 1 |
1 Composition and Construction | 21 |
2 In the Laboratory of Constructivism | 61 |
3 Formulating Production | 101 |
4 The Death of the Object | 121 |
The Konstruktor in Production | 151 |
Constructivism in Revolution | 191 |
Common terms and phrases
Aleksandr Rodchenko argues artist Arvatov Avant-Garde Babichev Berkholce Blitsau Bolsheviks Boris Brik Cesis cold structure Communist Composition and Construction Constructivist Costakis collection culture debate Decline drawings Easel to Machine economic El Lissitzky elements engineering exhibition factory factory's faktura gallery GARF f Gosudarstvennyi Group of Constructivists industrial INKhUK INKhUK i rannii invention inventor iskusstvo Kandinsky Karl Ioganson Kushner labor Laboratory of Constructivism Latvian Lenin Lissitzky Lodder material Medunetskii Moscow Moskvy f Mossredprom Narkompros Nikolai Tarabukin nonobjective Notes to Pages object OBMOKHU organization Osip Brik painterly painting party Petrograd Photograph courtesy principle problem productivist productivist platform proun radical reconstruction Red Technics Representation Revolution RKP(b role Sergei Shchukin Slavophiles Soviet spatial constructions Spengler Suprematism Tarabukin Tatlin theory Thessaloníki tion trans TsGAOD g TsMAM g Varvara Stepanova Viacheslav Koleichuk VKHUTEMAS Vladimir Stenberg Vladimir Tatlin workers Yve-Alain Bois Zasedanie Biuro Iacheiki zavoda Krasnyi Prokatchik руб
References to this book
New Trends in Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques Hamido Fujita,Domenico M. Pisanelli Limited preview - 2007 |