Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART
with surface texture and evidence of the brush giving way to ruler-drawn lines on
flatly painted planes. 34 Finally, in his hanging constructions of 1921 Rodchenko
cut into the plane to allow basic geometric shapes—exemplars of impersonality—to
generate structures in space: these are works pared to a minimum, with
material serving only to carry the relations defining the system, while capable of
assuming an infinity of configurations. In the same year he showed three
monochrome canvases, each in a primary color, applying the principle of strict
economy to the colored plane.
Of course, as theorists like Tarabukin pointed out, even so radical a form of
painting still ended with the production of art objects. 35 This state of affairs
involved an obvious theoretical instability. It expressed the equivocal position of
radical artists in a society that, whatever their wishes, like its capitalist sibling in
the West generated the distinction between rationalized production, on the one
hand, and fine art, on the other. The description of their art as “laboratory
work” proved inadequate to realize the Constructivists’ desired “rationalization
of artistic labor.” 36 They accordingly applied their skills to the design of useful
objects, along lines similar to those explored in Germany at the Bauhaus and
promoted in France by L’Esprit nouveau; to work in the theater and cinema; and
to political and product advertising.
Already in 1919 Rodchenko had produced a design, more a visualized conception
than a working drawing, for a public information kiosk combining as
many means as possible of disseminating information—a clock, posters, a billboard,
advertisements, a space for the sale of publications, a speaker’s rostrum.
The envisioned physical structure of this multimedia installation, intended to
tower over the spectators in the street, had political implications, as Victor
Margolin observes, primarily the
subordinate relation of the Soviet citizen to state power. The prominent
display of the clock emphasizes the social importance of precision and
efficiency . . . At the core of the project is the centralization of information
. . . The concentration of one-way information sources within the
kiosk establishes a relation between the individual and the state in
34 See the discourse of efficiency in Rodchenko’s essay The Line of 1921:
The paintbrush, so essential for a painting that had to convey the illusion of an
object in all its detail, has become an inadequate instrument and been replaced by
others which have made it easier and more convenient to treat the surface. Press,
roller, pen, rule and compass have come into use.
Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, p. 293
35 See Nikolai Tarabukin, “From the easel to the machine,” tr. C. Lodder, in F. Frascina and
C. Harrison (eds), Modern Art and Modernism (London: Harper and Row, 1983).
36 Statement of the First Working Group of Constructivists, from the Catalogue of the First
Discussional Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary Art, 1924; in J. E. Bowlt (ed.),
Russian Art of the Avnt-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934 (New York: Viking, 1976), p. 241.
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