Avant Garde in Russia

Avant Garde in Russia:

• questioning spacial relationships, visual architecture
• reoccurring use of black bars
• Lazistky(sp?) Constructivist
• his early work is supremacist, practical application
• 1929 poster using photo montage
• photography seen as modern way of creating art
• photo montages become popularly used
• ides of montage in cinema, The Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein
• experimenting with layering images, cutting images, juxtaposing sequences
• reveals power structure, social relationships
• Alexander Rodchenko most associated with Constructivism
• Rodchenko is doing graphic design, creating for the people, moral good
• 1910-1914 Rodchenko attends art school
• process is significance of the work
• starts working for magazine, uses collage, metaphor
• by 1932 Stalin is in power, oppose artists
• good art measured in functionality, therefore has moral value
• De Stijl is movement that develops in Netherlands, utopian approach to aesthetics
• De Stijl based on functionalism, should be useful
• characteristics include rectilinear planes, void of surface textures or decorations except for pure, primary hues and black and white, no illustration, mathematical structure
• looking for universal harmony to use in art
• Piet Mondrian is well-known in De Stijl
• Theo Van Doesburg is founder and leader, De Stijl dies with him in 1932
• ideas of De Stijl are applied to architecture, sculpture, painting, graphic design
• experimenting with structures, intellectual pursuit, text elements become structure
• in 1921 introduce format change exploring asymmetrical composition
• pivotal to modernist design and composition
• Van Doesburg worked with Dadaists

I think it's interesting that the artists seemed to take such a seemingly simplistic approach to design in the face of revolution. I don't know..I guess I've just been so exposed to American patriotism that I imagine art in response to governmental oppression to be loud and dramatic. But I guess these works have their own quiet drama going on if that makes any sense..as if their restraint was a message in itself. While I don't respond that emotionally to the works, who knows what my response might have been had I lived there at the time. I definitely appreciate the structural approach to design and exploration of spacial relationships..the resulting work is always clean, simple and balanced.