Page 38 - Studio International - April 1966

Vantongerloo
Project for a bridge at Antwerp
Paris 1928

Friedman
Project for 'Paris Spatial'
1960-1

Friedman's conception of 'Spatial Urbanism' by-passes notions only space-filling scheme for identical regular cells in three-
of style, synthesis etc. If he were to label the aesthetic aspect of dimensions). In this scheme the designer is not an individual but a
his scheme he would call it 'automatic construction'. A technical collectivity—the anonymous inhabitants. Any personal preference
possibility unheeded by the constructivists is the realization of any determines a single cell; so a community will determine the
composition of objects suspended in space, solved here by design of a set of them without consciously engaging in aesthetic
utilizing the cubic infrastructure (the cubic space lattice is the spatial composition.

mean either one or all of the following: (1) The art of the irrationalist anti-art stand. GRAV (Groupe Recherche d'Art
constructivist epoch that flourished in Russia and Ger- Visuel) and to some extent NUL, ZERO (and the other
many (1913-25 or so) ; (2) Rigorous abstract art (sup- manifestations) took up a position opening the way to a
posedly 'mathematical') ; (3) A loose term to denote a new didactic standpoint, vis-à-vis fine art and individual
vigorous dialectic or ideological basis found in various expression, taking as their basis, amongst other notions,
movements (in art, architecture, and design)7; (4) Art `pure sensation'. This shows the possibility of a direction
that is neither painting or sculpture and becomes termed from Impressionism (retinal art) to a militantly scien-
constructivist or constructionist (constructed sculpture, tistic view of 'art', on the one hand a purely pheno-
relief constructions, space constructions, etc). menological attitude towards 'aesthetic' data, linked on
During 1960-1 the term constructivism and its deriva- the other with a kind of futurist dynamism concerning
tives surfaced again quite noticeably in a series of exhibi- the function and purpose of art.
tions in Europe. Before that, in the opening post-war Returning to some current interpretations of 'construc-
years, the wave of European formal abstract painting tivism', the problem seems one of projecting an acceptable
could not be brought under this term. and all-embracing prototype.
It was at this period too that the tidal wave of Tachism An artist who has striven for a functional clarity both in
7 See Joost Baljeu's (informal abstract art) started to subside—this had com- his work and thought is Max Bill. Bill is an exponent of
The Problem of Reality.
Marginal notes to the pletely disrupted the formalist groups that had been in Concrete art, the aims of which he has set out in numerous
Dialectical Principles in the the ascendancy in Paris in 1948, and so when the formal- articles culminating in the catalogue of the exhibition
aesthetics of Malevich, Tatlin, ists later consolidated into more compact grouping the Konkrete Kunst in Zurich in 1960.
El Lissitzky, Mondrian, and
Van Doesburg — The Lugano term constructivist (or its derivatives) returned, indicat- What most people call 'abstract' Bill calls 'concrete', and
Review, Vol I, 1965 (In this ing solidarity with the heroic epoch as well as covering by this he means a completely non-mimetic form of art
article Baljeu makes reference what was to become a new wave—kinetic and optical art, where the content is no longer derived from natural
to the influence on Mondrian
of the philosophical views of and the new groups. appearances.
Brouwer). In particular the groups moved towards adopting a non- One of the confusions here is that a non-mimetic art