In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CONSTRUCTIVISM BETWEEN PRODUCTIVISM AND SUPREMATISM 265 5 SYMBOLISM AND ITS DESCENDANTS CONSTRUCTIVISM T he Constructivist movement emerged around 1913 in the work of Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin (1885–1953). Tatlin took as his starting point the three-dimensional Cubist constructions of Picasso and Braque. In 1915 he exhibited a collection of painterly reliefs and corner reliefs. In these works he abandoned the artist’s traditional tools and techniques (brushes, oil paint, canvas, etc.) and adopted industrial materials such as metal and plastic. Constructivist objects occupied“real”space; thus, Constructivists’ painterly reliefs used the flat wall as a background, while corner reliefs used the intersection of two walls as a background. Constructivism was more than simply an artistic style. As Naum Gabo suggests, it was a general conception of the world. It depended on ideas about the nature of art, the relation between art and society, and the artist’s place in society. Readers will know these facts about Constructivism: it was an avantgarde movement of the Soviet Union of the early 1920s; its art was allied with the Bolshevik Revolution and addressed the masses; it was devoted to integrating art and life, and to this end it eschewed traditional artistic forms and artistic media and instead worked with the materials and methods of its time (i.e., with industrial materials and industrial methods of production). The idea that a work of art is a constructed object was central to the Constructivist view of Constructivism Between Productivism and Suprematism 266 MODERNISM AND REVOLUTION art, and Constructivist artists stressed the constructed character of their work. They worked with industrial materials and industrial methods of production, and as a consequence their art empahsized structure and geometrical form. Moreover, the industrial world is a dynamic world, a world in which change and movement are much in evidence; so Constructivist artworks often incorporated kinetic elements or otherwise emphasized dynamism. Constructivists viewed the artist as a worker, like any other worker in industrial society; thus, the duty of an artist was similar to the duty of every other member of society: to take raw materials and reshape them into objects possessing use-value. On November 7, 1922, in honour of the five-year anniversary of the Soviet Republic, Arseny Avraamov’s (1886–1944) Simfoniya gudkov (Symphony of Factory Sirens) was performed in the port of Baku. The orchestra consisted of factory sirens, cannons, hydro-airplanes, machine guns, artillery equipment, automobile and autobus horns, locomotives, and the foghorns of the entire Caspian flotilla.All were coordinated by a team of conductors using coloured flags and pistols. A “steam-whistle machine” sounded “The Internationale” and “La Marseillaise,” and noisy “autotransports” zipped across Baku to arrive at the festival square for a gigantic finale. (How fitted to cinema these aspirations were!) Aleksandr Mosolov (1900–1973) produced an orchestral sketch, Zavod (The Iron Foundry), as a movement for a ballet, Stal (Steel, 1927). The sketch was a brutalist piece that used cross-rhythms and layered beats to imitate the actions of a factory. Nikolai Roslavetz (1881–1944), who collaborated with Vladimir Mayakovsky and the Knave of Diamonds society, developed a new system of tone organization, which he called the Novaya Sistema Organizatzii Zvuka (New System of Organization of Sounds), to generate dense textures from synthetic chords as the basis for a new system of harmony; accordingly he became known as the Russian Schoenberg. In 1924 he composed two song cycles. Poeziya Rabochih Professii (Poems of the Workers) consisted of “Song of the Female Cleaner”and“Song of the Engineers”; Pezni Revolutzii (Revolutionary Songs) included“The Blacksmith,”“Revolt,”and“To the First of May,” all for singer and piano. In 1925 he composed “The Tobacco Plant”; parts of another song cycle; Pesni 1905 Goda (Songs of the Year 1905), including “The Last Miracle,”“The Rounds of Fire Have Been Silenced,”and“Mother and Son,”all for singer and piano; and added“The Weavers”and“The SewingWoman ” to Poems of the Workers. The Constructivists called for a new art—one that would be materialist and antispiritual. Rodchenko and other members of the Working Group of Constructivists declared:“The task of the Constructivist Group is the communistic expression of materialist constructive work…The cognition of the experimental trials of the Soviets has led the group to transplant experimental activities from the abstract (transcendental) to the real…Down with art.Long live technic. Religion is a lie.Art is a lie…Long live the Constructivist technician.”1 [3.143.168.172] Project MUSE (2024-04...

Share