Morning Comrades!
This current heat wave is doing my head in and other than working and looking at pleasing pictures not much else is happening. I might pop into town later this evening and see if I can squeeze in an ice cream but that’s that. With that, no deep political philosophy talk today but a little introduction to an artist who work, aside form being continuously influential I happen to enjoy a great deal: Alexander Rodchenko.
Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg to a working-class family who moved to Kazan after the death of his father, in 1909. He became an artist without having had any exposure to the art world, drawing much inspiration from art magazines. After 1914, he continued his artistic training at the Stroganov Institute in Moscow, where he created his first abstract drawings, influenced by the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich, in 1915. .
Rodchenko's work was heavily influenced by Cubism and Futurism, as well as by Malevich's Suprematist compositions, which featured geometric forms deployed against a white background. Rodchenko worked in Narkompros ( The People's Commissariat for Education ) and he was one of the organizers of RABIS - the widespread Trade Union of Art Workers in Bolshevik Russia and later in the Soviet Union, was a Soviet creative union of sorts that I wish we still had to day.
Alongside Vladimir Tatlin, Rodchenko essentially are known as the founder of Constructivism, the art form that has that to date inspires and is the foundation of most agit-propaganda that we all see so often and mostly enjoy. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space, obvious goals of the Bolsheviks after having taken over Tzarist Russia. The movement rejected decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials. Additionally, 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.
Together with his Constructivist contemporary Vladimir Mayakovsy, Rodchenko viewed himself as a crucial figure in the artistic representation of the regime. Throughout the 1920s, he completed numerous commissions for book covers, posters and Party propaganda images. Today, he is best known for the film poster design of Sergei Eisenstein’s epic Battleship Potemkin.
Featuring bright primary colors, aggressive geometric shapes and repeated bold lettering, Rodchenko successfully underpinned the stark dynamism of the Soviet regime. In rejecting passivity, the aim was to transform the submissive viewer into an active observer. With this in mind, he often worked with his wife Varvara Stepanova, providing graphic design for advertisements ranging from children’s dummies and cooking oil to beer and pharmaceuticals. In the 1920s, the regime had fully adopted Rodchenko as one of its tools for shaping the face of Soviet advertising.
Ultimately however, it was photography that came to play the most important role in Rodchenko’s artistic output. Through photomontage and the use of text, he fostered a new identity— he was no longer just an “artist” but also a dynamic, artistic “engineer.”
Speaking of Constructivist aims, Rodchenko once claimed, “We had visions of a new world, industry, technology and science. We simultaneously invented and changed the world around us. We authored new notions of beauty and redefined art itself.” Radical, pioneering and ambitious, Rodchenko achieved many of these aims.
Despite beginning as a commendable artistic figurehead for the Soviet State, with time Rodchenko’s compositions became regarded as disgraceful assaults on even the most radical of Communist art forms.
There were two main groups debating the fate of Soviet art: Constructivists and Traditionalists. Russian Constructivists, many of whom had been creating abstract or leftist art before the Bolsheviks, believed communism required a complete rupture from the past and, therefore, so did Soviet art. Traditionalists believed in the importance of realistic representations of everyday life. By 1928, the Soviet government had essentially decided that “Socialist Realism” was better suited for the dawning Soviet Union and thus Constructivism fell out of favour. At this point, although the term "socialist realism" was not being used, its defining characteristics became the norm.
Rodchenko, challenging the aesthetic and political manifesto of the Soviet state, he was expelled from the artist group October Circle. Falling out of favor with the government he so zealously supported, Rodchenko quietly returned to painting in the late 1930s. His photographic career came to an end in 1942, although he continued to organise image exhibitions for the state and to complete minor advertising commissions.
In this sense, Rodchenko was both an upholder and a transgressor of the Communist regime. Throughout his life, he was a passionate believer in the new future of the Soviet Union, yet ultimately, his work failed to comply with the political and social values of Russia at the time. Nonetheless, his legacy continues to define modernist art, especially in the mediums of painting, graphic design and photography. The latter has, in many ways, contributed to the entire notion of modern European camerawork. By the time of his death in 1957, he had been featured in over 50 art exhibitions and his work continues to make appearances in galleries as far reaching as New York’s MoMA and the Hayward Gallery in London.
I hope you enjoyed this brief change in tone and found in it some respite, a digital re-charge, maybe a jump-off point to dig deeper and find beauty in the world, despite it all. If anything, sticking around, pushing and continuing to be a thorn in the side of this modern day bullshit is absolutely worth.
Thank you for your time, interest and support. Yours, without compromise,
V.