The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution - Hardcover

Gough, Maria

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520226186 ISBN 13: 9780520226180

Publisher: University of California Press, 2005

Synopsis

The Artist as Producer reshapes our understanding of the fundamental contribution of the Russian avant-garde to the development of modernism. Focusing on the single most important hotbed of Constructivist activity in the early 1920s - the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscow - Maria Gough offers a powerful reinterpretation of the work of the first group of artists to call themselves Constructivists. Her lively narrative ranges from famous figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko to others who are much less well known, such as Karl Ioganson, a key member of the state-funded INKhUK whose work paved the way for an eventual dematerialization of the integral art object. Through the mining of untapped archives and collections in Russia and Latvia and a close reading of key Constructivist works, Gough highlights fundamental differences among the Moscow group in their handling of the experimental new sculptural form - the spatial construction - and of their subsequent shift to industrial production. The Artist as Producer upends the standard view that the Moscow group's formalism and abstraction were incompatible with the sociopolitical imperatives of the new Communist state. It challenges the common equation of Constructivism with functionalism and utilitarianism by delineating a contrary tendency toward non-determinism and an alternate orientation to process rather than product. Finally, the book counters the popular perception that Constructivism failed in its ambition to enter production by presenting the first-ever case study of how a Constructivist could, and in fact did, operate within an industrial environment. The Artist as Producer offers provocative new perspectives on three critical issues - formalism, functionalism, and failure - that are of central importance to our understanding not only of the Soviet phenomenon but also of the European vanguards more generally.

About this title

Review

"A bravura performance and a major contribution, marking Gough as one of her generation's leading interpreters of Russian avant-garde art."

From the Back Cover

"A bravura performance and a major contribution, marking Gough as one of her generation's leading interpreters of Russian avant-garde art."--Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0520226186
• ISBN 13: 9780520226180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 280