The Interpretation of Visual Motion by Shimon Ullman (review)

Lodder’s contribution is exceptional because she has studied in the Soviet Union at leisure, under the supervision of R. S. Kaufman and with the cooperation of Professor D. V. Sarab’yanov. She has a thorough knowledge of sources published in Russia. She has also benefited enthusiastically from access to Soviet archives and the manuscript departments of the major museums, and from acquaintance with the families and descendants of many artists who figure in her books. She made personal contact with some of the artists themselves, notably the late Vladimir Augustovich Stenberg. She has also drawn on Western sources in Great Britain, Europe and America. The result is the fullest study to date of a fascinating episode in the history of Russian art. Constructivism was an organic offshoot of the burgeoning of technical invention and sociological experiment that marked the period just before and just after the 1917 revolution. It dominated the 1920s in the Soviet Union, wherethe combination oftalent, daydream, devastation and extreme shortage of art materials gave the movement a unique quality of paradoxical tension. It is this aesthetic, even poetic, quality, rather than the functional, utilitarian basis of Constructivist theory, that appeals to us now and has brought about a renaissance of interest in this period. There have been major exhibitions and books on Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and Tatlin. Lyubov’ Popova, Olga Rozanovaand Varvara Stepanova have captured the attention of feminists and the admiration of critics.Russian Constructivism systematizes our knowledge of these figures and shows them to us in context, against the background of their lesser-known contemporaries and of organizations, institutions , journals, historical events, theory and practice. The whole history of the movement (construction, composition, design, architecture , monumental propaganda, painting, photography) is shown in its relationship to the sociology, aesthetics, poetics and philosophy of the day. For the first time, Constructivism is treated as “an approach to working with materials, within a certain conception of their potential as active participants in the process of social and political transformation” (p. I), instead of being spilled out over the wholeofmodern art. We are, however, also shown the links between Constructivism and Futurism, the roots of the movement in the nonutilitarian constructions of the prerevolutionary period, although these are not as vividly highlighted as wemight wish. The author concentrates principally, as the title suggests, on Constructivism in Russia, but a final chapter discusses the movement’s impact on Europe during and after the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung in Berlin, 1922. Miss Lodder concludes that Constructivism’s demise was not so much (or at least not solely) due to the forced curtailment of vital artistic activity by a repressive regime, but rather to the natural development of a realism inherent in the new technological aesthetic, which was propagated by the Constructivists themselves. Her conclusion makes sense in the general European context. To this I would add that the very attempt to reduce art to a utilitarian, objective function (boldly conceived and admirably executed as it undoubtedly was) in itself undermined the artists’ ability to resist pressure to conform. Since “functionalism” was the basis oftheir program, they considered not only their art but themselves as artists as somehow functional, depending on and responding to the requirements of the new society. For this reason, their end as members of the movement came naturally with the reprogrammingof state policy towardsthe end of the 1920s. Russian Constructivism is not the place to go for deeper considerations of the nature of art. Indeed, there are moments when the author’s capacity to analyse and empathize almost visibly founders under the sheer weight of accumulated material. This is a common fault with a published thesis, and Miss Lodder is not only a novice writer but a pioneering researcher. We await both her next book and the next book on Russian Constructivism. Meanwhile, there is much to be grateful for. The author herself writesclearly and translates the various Constructivist documents and manifestos well, not hiding behind jargon but striving always to elucidate the frequently rather dense artists’ prose. Extremely useful are the Biographical Sketches, which include two poets, Khlebnikov and Mayakovsky; one Commissar, A. V. Lunacharsky; and a sprinkling of critics-all of whom played their part...