Page 31 - Studio International - April 1966

other, grosser, qualities, its optimism would be senti- way in which its most radical-sounding principles have
mental in spite of the moral preferences behind it (`the refused to date. Gabo's classically minded, traditionally
image of good—not of evil; the image of order—not of based, logically argued position supplies the blue-print
chaos; the image of life—not of death . . . I should (as relevant now as it ever was) for a twentieth-century
think that this is all that the constructive idea is driving art integrated into the society and philosophy of an ideal
at'). future. An art so unshakeable in its premises, so clear in
But its optimism goes beyond that. Quite as remarkable its conception of its role in the perspective of history, can
as the fact that The Realistic Manifesto outlined all the afford to trust that history will be on its side.
q
essentials of a Constructivist aesthetic a premier coup is the

Linear construction No. 4
(with black) 1962