Gan's Constructivism: Aesthetic Theory for an Embedded Modernism - Hardcover

Romberg, Kristin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520298535 ISBN 13: 9780520298538

Publisher: University of California Press, 2019

Synopsis

This compelling new account of Russian constructivism repositions the agitator Aleksei Gan as the movement’s chief protagonist and theorist. Primarily a political organizer during the revolution and early Soviet period, Gan brought to the constructivist project an intimate acquaintance with the nuts and bolts of “making revolution.” Writing slogans, organizing amateur performances, and producing mass-media objects define an alternative conception of “the work of art”—no longer an autonomous object but a labor process through which solidarities are built. In an expansive analysis touching on aesthetic and architectural theory, the history of science and design, sociology, and feminist and political theory, Kristin Romberg invites us to consider a version of modernism organized around the radical flattening of hierarchies, a broad distribution of authorship, and the negotiation of constraints and dependencies. Moving beyond Cold War abstractions, Gan’s Constructivism offers a fine-grained understanding of what it means for an aesthetics to be political.
 

About this title

About the Author

Kristin Romberg is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From the Back Cover

This compelling new account of Russian constructivism repositions the agitator Aleksei Gan as the movement's chief protagonist and theorist. Primarily a political organizer during the revolution and early Soviet period, Gan brought to the constructivist project an intimate acquaintance with the nuts and bolts of "making revolution." Writing slogans, organizing amateur performances, and producing mass-media objects define an alternative conception of "the work of art"--no longer an autonomous object but a labor process through which solidarities are built. In an expansive analysis touching on aesthetic and architectural theory, the history of science and design, sociology, and feminist and political theory, Kristin Romberg invites us to consider a version of modernism organized around the radical flattening of hierarchies, a broad distribution of authorship, and the negotiation of constraints and dependencies. Moving beyond Cold War abstractions, Gan's Constructivism offers a fine-grained understanding of what it means for an aesthetics to be political.

From the Inside Flap

"This book rewrites the history of Constructivism in the visual arts, graphic design, and film from Gan's hitherto obscured perspective, and the research Romberg has done to reveal such a fine-grained image of her main protagonist is truly herculean. Born of the archive and yet entirely expressive of the moment in which it was written, this book is an extraordinary achievement. Romberg has reconceived what is possible to accomplish in the art historical monograph, and the story she tells is one we urgently need today."--Megan R. Luke, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Southern California

"Gan's Constructivism is a deeply original and urgently contemporary book. Abandoning the methods of traditional object-based aesthetics, Romberg reveals a second, previously unrecognized current within Russian Constructivism that emerged out of theater and fugitive performances of 'self-activity' rather than out of graphic arts or sculpture. The recovery of this event-based practice establishes an entirely new point of origin for the Russian avant-garde and its legacies."--Devin A. Fore, Professor of German, Princeton University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520298535
• ISBN 13: 9780520298538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312