Page 37 - Studio International - April 1966

been the way machines, bridges, and covered markets
have been built for a long time. But Tatlin has still to
prove that he is right in what seems to be his own personal
invention, a rotating cube, a pyramid and a cylinder of
glass. For good or bad, circumstances are going to give
him plenty of time to find arguments for his side.'
Trotsky goes on to subject Tatlin's famous project
(Monument to the Third International) to more disparaging
criticism, and in this he has severe reservations for what
he calls Futurism, but what he has to say is not disparag-
ing or dogmatically hostile.
Last year at the third Nouvelle Tendence exhibition (a
biennale at Zagreb), there was a contribution from a
group of artists working in Leningrad, headed by Lev
Nusberg and called Dvizjenie (movement). It has not
been possible to get a clear idea of what these artists are
doing (theoretically or practically), but one can suppose
that in the new space age the idea of abstract monuments
could be reintroduced to commemorate the technical
aspects of these achievements. It is too early to see the
implications of this development, but it remains a sur-
prising one and notable in that its first appearance out-
side Russia was at a Nouvelle Tendence exhibition. It is
understandable that the group should avoid the term
`constructivist' not only because of its connexion with an
earlier period that is now taboo and its suggested links
with constructivism in Europe (Gabo and Pevsner), but
Pevsner implicitly 'architectonic' (Duchamp has also because the term `constructivist' has now acquired a
Construction for an Airport 1937 referred to 'chamber architecture') but the rather special meaning.
Bronze, tin, and oxidized brass spirit of their work is essentially monumental,
whatever the scale, and therefore environmental. In 1958 at a conference in Moscow on the philosophical
Gabo's conception of the constructive idea is In this lies their proper relationship to problems of science a speaker is reported as saying, 'The
man creating an abstract image of the world — architecture as such and the key to their majority of contemporary mathematicians proceed to a
the constructive image. aesthetic intentions, i.e. the monumental
The constructions of Gabo and Pevsner are (constructive) abstract image. constructivist point of view, which has made possible great
advances in mathematics. However the [gnosiological]
initial point of view of constructivism leads to subjective
Parisian group 'Abstraction-Creation' (1931-7). We can idealism.'6
ask if at this point constructivism really took root in Perhaps it is no more than a coincidence that the terms
England. The answer is no. It was to be a false start. It `constructivist' and 'constructivism' are used here to
did much to encourage abstract art but it is hardly useful stigmatize a school of mathematical thought (the intui-
to call the work of any English artist at that period con- tionist school of L. E. J. Brouwer—sometimes referred to
structive. as 'constructionist'). But today the same charge of sub-
The constructivist epoch in Russia (1913-23) ended jective idealism would be made against constructivism
abruptly not only for the 'laboratory artists' but also for in the arts. The implication in the Russian scientist's state-
those who were projecting the anti-fine-art vision of total ment is that the results of constructivist mathematics are
integration. The amazing optimism of these years was valid and must be accepted; whereas in the case of con-
swallowed up by the new official line of Socialist Realism structivism in the arts (of which the speaker was probably
(which has persisted to the present day). ignorant), both the philosophical ideas and the results
Trotsky believed the development of art to be the highest are unacceptable—there was no basis for them to be
test of the vitality and significance of each epoch. Rarely accepted in 1920 and still less today. Since Materialists
can one find a Soviet intellectual today voicing senti- think the views of modern scientists concerning funda-
ments that suggest a new optimism. Ilya Ehrenburg can mental physical concepts are Idealist it is no surprise to
testify that 'genuine disinterested art, whose aim is not learn that even today this view prevails in Soviet philo-
the preserving of social hierarchies but the development of sophical thought.
5 Ehrenburg: volume four of man, is possible only in a new society'5 but it remains Despite Gabo's choice of Realist for the title of his mani-
Men, Tears, Life impossible to predict what may come out of Russia in the festo, the philosophical undertones were at variance with
MacGibbon & Kee, 1963.
future vis-à-vis re-appraisal of the new forms in visual art. those of the Materialists' conception of Realism (i.e.
6 Quoted in The Russian In Literature and the Revolution (1924) Trotsky was ex- Lenin's). To the extent that constructivism adopted as
Intelligentsia edited R. Pipes, tremely cautious in his remarks on Tatlin : `Tatlin is part of its philosophical basis the operationalist views of
Columbia University Press,
New York, 1961. undoubtedly right in discarding from his project national modern scientists it was inevitably denounced as Idealist
For a succinct discussion of styles, allegorical sculpture, modelled monograms, flour- (the position that denies the objective reality of the world
these views see Anatol ishes and tails, and attempting to subordinate the entire independent of observations).
Rapoport's Fights, Games and
Debates, Ann Arbor, 1960. design to a correct constructive use of material. This has We can see that the term 'constructivist art' has come to