Constuctivism

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as Bauhaus and the De Stijl movement. Its influence was pervasive, with major impacts upon architecture, graphic and industrial design, theatre, film, dance, fashion and to some extent music.In contrast to De-constructivism it focuses on the purity of form.

Constructivism describes post-Revolutionary work characterized by the use of industrial materials such as glass, sheet metal, and plastic to create nonrepresentational, often geometric objects.

The primary graphic motifs of constructivism were the rectangular bar and the triangular wedge, others were the more basic geometries of the square and the circle. In his series Prouns, El Lizzitzky assembled collections of geometries at various angles floating free in space. They evoke basic structural units such as bars of steel or sawn lumber loosely attached, piled, or scattered. They were also often drafted and share aspects with technical drawing and engineering drawing. Similar in composition is the de-constructivist series Micromegas by Daniel Libeskind.

The term Constructivism was first coined by two of the movements leading artists, Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner. The Constructivist art movement was very much intertwined with the political situation in Russia at that time. The Bolshevic Government’s Commissariat of Enlightenment effectively set out the basis for teaching of the new movement. Naum Gabo commented that the teaching at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow at that time was more concerned with political ideas than creating art.

As with Futurism, one of the main characteristics of Constructivism was a total commitment to and acceptance of modernity. The art was typically totally abstract, with the emphasis on geometric shapes and experimentation. Constructivist art was optimistic, but would not tend to be emotional in any way and subjectivity and individuality were subsumed in favour of objective, universal forms.

The theory and practice of Constructivism were worked out in a series of debates at the Institute of Artistic Culture in the early 1920s by the First Working Group of Constructivists. The original chairman of this group was Wassily Kandinsky, but he was ousted for his interest in mysticism. The first definition of Constructivism concerned the combination of material properties with spatial presence.

The first Constructivist art consisted of three dimensional constructions, but Constructivism would later extend to two dimensional art such as graphic arts posters and books.

In 1921, the New Economic Policy was established in the Soviet Union, which reintroduced a limited state capitalism in the Soviet economy. Rodchenko, Stepanova, and others made advertising for the co-operatives that were now in competition with commercial businesses

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.

An advertising construction 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 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 1923–5 and from 1927–9 as New LEF). LEF was dedicated to maintaining the avant-garde against the critiques of the incipient Socialist Realism, and the possibility of a capitalist restoration, with the journal being particularly scathing about the 'NEPmen', the capitalists of the period.

The Constructivists were early developers of the techniques of photomontage. Gustav Klutsis' 'Dynamic City' and 'Lenin and Electrification' (1919–20) are the first examples of this method of montage, which had in common with Dadaism the collaging together of news photographs and painted sections. However Constructivist montages would be less 'destructive' than those of Dadaism. LEF also helped popularise a distinctive style of photography, involving jagged angles and contrasts and an abstract use of light.

Constructivist architecture emerged from the wider constructivist art movement. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 it turned its attentions to the new social demands and industrial tasks required of the new regime. Two distinct threads emerged, the first was encapsulated in Antoine Pevsner's and Naum Gabo's Realist manifesto which was concerned with space and rhythm, the second represented a struggle within the Commissariat for Enlightenment between those who argued for pure art and the Productivists such as Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Vladimir Tatlin, a more socially-oriented group who wanted this art to be absorbed in industrial product.