Page 26 - Studio International - September 1970

2 culture'. That is to say, production-art is the
The Red Cossack, an Agit-prop (agitation-propaganda)
train of the Revolutionary period key to proletarian culture; and the con-
3 structivist faction did indeed come to domi-
Production Art: Tatlin with home-made oven and
suit in 1924 nate the activities of the Proletkult (Proletarian
Cultural and Educational Organization),
4
Rodchenko, Cover design for Lef, the Constructivist which thus championed industrial collabora-
journal, 1923
tion with the artist not as decorator but as
5
Rodchenko, Design for Workers' Club, 1925 designer: 'It is not the task of the painter to
embellish things already created, but he
6&7
Constructivism in the city and the theatre: Vesnin's should take part himself in bringing them into
project for the Leningrad Pravda building and designs
for the Kamerny Theatre production of Chesterton's existence.' The photograph of Tatlin with his
The Man who was Thursday, both 1923 home-made oven and suit which was pub-
lished in 1924 shows how far from art and
embellishment the Constructivists wished to
go. But the disorganization of Russian in-
dustry, the lack of money and raw materials,
the lack of official support, meant that they
were 'left in an intermediate space between
studio and factory', a space occupied by such
activities that could be organized by the
artist himself using such 'industrial' techni-
ques as typography, photography, the film
and poster. It was in such areas that con-
structivist art enjoyed its greatest triumphs.4
Nevertheless, constructivist theory continued
to assert that only in a true industrial collab-
oration could the production art which would
be the true expression of the proletariat be
developed. Hence the enthusiasm for con-
structivist ideas within the Proletkult, evi-
denced, for example, by Kushner :
The art-product and the product of indus-
try are : 1, spatial; 2, conceived in time; and
3, serve a function. It is the job of the new
artist-engineer to unite art and industry:
the artist with his intuitive understanding of
materials and visual forms must learn to
master the modern machine-tools in order
to create products for the organization of
everyda y life.
The Proletkult sponsored much environ-
mentally-relevant art from the time of the
Revolution—street decorations, posters, exhi-
bitions, concerts and the like; but the most
determined approach towards the factory
ideal itself took place within the Moscow
Vkhutemas or 'Higher Artistic Technical
Studios', which had incorporated from 1918
the reorganized Moscow Art School and the
Stroganov Institute of Applied Art (from