I've decided to delve into Russian art history to learn a little bit more aesthetic modernism. Aleksandr Rodchenko's experimental career is probably the best to start. Alexander Lavrentiev's compilation of Rodchenko's writings illustrates both the originality of Rodchenko and the richness of the art scene that predated the Revolution but came into its own after the triumph of the Bolsheviks. Rodchenko reminds me of Miro, Picasso, or Warhol in the stylistic or conceptual creativity. Leafing through this richly illustrated book demonstrates the extent to which Rodchenko (and his contemporaries) continued to innovate through his career. Fortunately, Rodchenko was a gifted writer as well as artist, so he did a reasonably good job of explaining his work, or at least the general direction of his work.
Without a detailed understanding of the various competing movements at work in the early Soviet era, I can only say that Rodchenko's writings reveal several basic concerns. First, he wanted to be a relentless innovators and was prepared to overthrow most artistic conventions in search of a forward-facing aesthetic. He was, in other words, un-apologetically modern. He was also willing to jettison anything that wasn't immediately useful. Second, he wanted to create help the proletarian class to participate in an aesthetic revolution. "The proletariat sat in cellars," he said, "took shelter like animals in ditches," and "had no time for beauty, for elegance." Realizing that the proletariat had not previously had all that much time for art, he now urged artists to help the proletariat forge its own definition of beauty. Third, Rodchenko wanted Russia to be a leader in world art. As he stated: "We, the Russian Columbuses of painting, are discoverers of new roads in art." Here, one senses a slight paradox. On the one hand, he was an enthusiast for a politics of international revolution, and asserted that "We glorify the revolution aloud as the only engine of life." On the other hand, he was proud of Russia's decorative arts tradition and sensed that its local art scene could do more than any other nation's art scene to create definitions of art that were relevant to the future. He put the relationship between Russia and the rest of Europe this way: "The West, a market of art, was amazed by the decorative arts of Russia, and we of course forget about this and are still admiring Napoleon's hairdo and the house of Wilhelm." Fourth, Rodchenko wanted art to be an essential ingredient to almost every human endeavor. He wanted art to be transform buildings, city plans, clothes, and every other aspect of human experience. Every object deserved to be beautiful. Every object deserved his artistic attention. As he stated: "I prefer to paint ordinary things in an extraordinary way rather than paint extraordinary things in an ordinary way."
Below are a few of my favorite quotations from Aleksandr Rodchenko's Experiments for the Future: Diaries, Essays, Letters and Other Writings.
Down with art as a bright patch on the mediocre life of a propertied man... Down with art as a means to escape a life that isn't worth living.
...Our Russian nature is so boring, monotonous and gray...It's so sad and silent...What does Nature long for?
What is she forever thinking of?...
Nature has her own thoughts, her own sorrow...
A real Russian is also sad, he longs for something, and you'll never figure him out....
I will force people to die for objects, and objects to live. I'll put people's souls into things, and objects will become souls....
Mama is seriously ill...I'm afraid for her. She gives me money, after all. If she collapses, what will I do...
Russian critics, always snorting at Russian art, accusing it of imitating the West!
Look, Russia has given birth to its own art, and its name--is non-objectivity!
The collapse of all "isms" in painting was the beginning of my ascent.
Objects died yesterday. We live in an abstract spiritual creativity.
Work--is a pleasure. Life--is torment.
It is usually said that my works in painting are not really works but experiments for some sort of future works or for future artists..
At the INKUK meeting, Professor Shmit said that in Russia there is not and never has been any visual art, only decoration.
He also said that the inventor is never a great scientist nor the great scientist an inventor, that to be an inventor you have to imagine images, i.e., you have to be a bit of an artist, but not a dreamer whose images are blurry and indistinct.
In the West everything is stuck as it was before the war, the same old Picasso and Matisse. They all say they're looking to Russia with enormous hope, they'd trade places with us without a second thought...
In life, as well, we, humanity, are experiments for the future...
There is nothing eternal, everything is temporary.
The concepts of inviolable DOGMAS and classical CANONS are exploded by this issue, and the existence of ETERNAL BEAUTY in art is killed.
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