Page 41 - Studio International - April 1966

Constructivism was launched by this act, there is more to grew up in the years from 1917 to 1920. The artists of the
its ideology than Tatlin's 'real object in real space'. One time were excited by the prospect of a new role that art
cannot dismiss the importance of Malevich's struggle could play in a socialist society. This was a period for
with content as a factor in the formation of its ideology. grandiose schemes on an environmental scale. Tatlin
Elsewhere, Mondrian, that super-Cubist, took the idea of designed a monument to the Third International which
abstraction from nature to its state of purest generality. was to be a rotating structure twice the height of the
He reduced the entire commotion of his visual experience Empire State building, issuing news bulletins and pro-
to a system of horizontal and vertical lines, which despite clamations by loudspeaker, radio, and even light projec-
its skeletal simplicity is a perfectly valid statement about tions on to clouds. It never got beyond the model stage,
the world and the objects upon it. but it remains a monument to the misplaced optimism of
The outbreak of the Russian revolution provided a situa- the movement. For in 1920 with the publication of The
tion which seemed to be sympathetic to new formula- Realistic Manifesto by Gabo and Pevsner the Constructivist
tions in art, and Constructivism as a collective ideology movement was hopelessly split into opposing factions.
Gabo and Pevsner had become the spokesmen for those
who saw it as a revolutionary movement in fine art, albeit
an art more integrated with the values and everyday life
of society. Tatlin led those who regarded pure art as
bourgeois and fundamentally anti-social; for them inte-
gration was to swallow art and their efforts were wholly
turned to industrial design and allied activities. Construc-
tivism as a movement in art lasted only a short time
after this in Russia, and Gabo and Pevsner left the
country in 1922. Most of the constructions with which we
are familiar are almost entirely the work of these two and
the product of the years after they left Russia.

Content
In writing about The Realistic Manifesto some thirty-five
Piet Mondrian years after the event, Gabo stated that it was more in the
Composition No. 10: nature of a résumé of the position arrived at by a number
Pier and Ocean 1915
Oil on canvas of men during the period from 1917 to 1920. Be that as it
33 1/2 x 39 3/8 in. may, I do not think that Gabo's role in Constructivism
State Museum Kroeller- should be underestimated. Gabo came to the arts from a
Muller, Otterlo
background of scientific study, and the habits of mind he
brought with him helped to indicate a direction in which
Vladimir Tatlin a valid content for non-figurative art could be sought.
Monument to the 3rd His use of structure as an independent entity is an
International 1919-20
Wood and metal example of this. One function of structure, in the sense
the term is used by engineers, is to achieve physical
rigidity, and this, Gabo demonstrated in his work, could
be turned into thematic material and made imme-
diately apparent to the intuition.
Content in Constructivism has come to be associated
with scientific, or mathematical, or any generally rational
discipline: it opposes a subjective replacement for figura-
tion. But it is difficult to decide when these qualities be-
came fully attached to its ideology: whether in Russia, or
in the later work of Gabo and Pevsner, or in the past
twenty years, when there has been a tendency to desig-
nate all that is severe or formal in art by the term 'Con-
structivist'. Whichever it is, its content has come to mean
an address to the understanding. The world of nature is
replaced by the world of man's experience and an idea
from mathematics is deemed as concrete a piece of reality
as a rock. The validity of Constructivist content has not
come from the fact that it peopled its world with abstract
objects, or even ideas, but rather that it is something
embodied in an act of understanding. It demands from
the spectator that he discover new modes of conceptual
activity to construct his experience; that he perform an
act in itself creative. This recasting of the spectator's role
is an important contribution to the idea of content.