Russian Constructivism

y r o

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Russ ian

Construc

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Designs by Kasmir Malevich

CONTENTS: Opening Remarks

Eric Louw

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Introduction

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Main figures

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Vladimir Tatlin

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Alexander Rodchenko

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El Lissitzky

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Lissitzky’s Typography work

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The Stenberg Brothers

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Typography

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The construction of letterforms

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Sources Cited

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Opening Remarks y interest in Russian Constructivism began while attending a Typography class during the fall semester of 2010. As I was doing a design for one of the assignments, Prof.

Fillebrown who was teaching the class mentioned that it had a “Constructivism” feel to it.

Having never heard of the Russian Constructivism era before, I decided to look it up. Fastforward a month or two later and I was given the assignment of putting together a short publication on an era of type. Looking through my options, I didn’t have to spend much time making my decision on Constructivism.

To begin my research, I decided to start seeing what I could find on the internet. To my dismay, the vast majority of the information available seemed to relate more to the aspects of graphics and construction as they related to the movement, rather than type, however, I did find some information on the type of the time in several other books that spoke on the topic. See the typography section for more on that.

Overall, the feeling I get from this era is one of progression into modernity, a change from the old to the new. While seeing much of the design that characterized this period, along with the history that goes along with it, I’m drawn to the feeling of expectancy and excitement for the future and that is communicated by much of the work produced.

It is my desire that as you read through this book, the history and the art of this significant time in the history of modern graphics design will communicate the same interest and expectancy that it did to me as I researched it for this book. With that said, I present you with this book: A Brief History on Russian Constructivism.

Unashamed, 2010, by Eric Louw - The design that sparked my interest in Russian Constructivism when told that it had a “Constructivism” feel.

Introduction n 1917, Russia experienced a revolution in which the workers seized power from Czar Nicholas II. This was a Communist revolution, a people’s revolution that aimed to create a workers’ paradise where wealth would be shared equally. The revolution inspired architects and designers to create new design for the new Soviet society . In this era, Russia was becoming industrialized. The machine was transforming society, so Russia became a breeding ground for Modernism and the machine aesthetic. A movement emerged called Russian Constructivism, which was essentially the Russian form of Modernism.

The leader of the new Russian state was Vladimir Lenin, who believed that culture should support political needs, which effectively meant that all culture was viewed as propaganda. Lenin set up a number of agencies to regulate Soviet art and culture. The most important was called Proletkult, the Organization for Proletarian Culture. Many of the leading designers were commissioned to create works that mythologized the revolution.

In the 1920s, Russia was still a rural peasant country. Most of the population was illiterate – so the emphasis was on visual propaganda. For this reason, the Constructivist movement had a major impact on graphic design. The state commandeered trains and hired designers to cover them with Constructivist graphics. These ‘Agit-Prop’ trains travelled across Russia spreading revolutionary messages.1 Russian Constructivism became an early Soviet youth movement whose aim it was to encompass the whole spirit, cognitive and material activity of a man. In 1921 the Constructivists rejected “art” and instead devoted themselves to industrial design.

Constructivist art is committed to complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often geometric, experimental and rarely emotional. Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far more suitable to the movement than subjective or individualistic forms. Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements. New media was often used in the

An ‘Agit-Prop’ train covered with Constructivist graphics to spread revolutionary messages across Russia

creation of works, which helped to create a style of art that was orderly. An art of order was desirable at the time because it was just after WWI that the movement arose, which suggested a need for understanding, unity and peace.

The constructivists advocated the construction of an environment that actively guided life’s processes. They sought to interpret the aesthetic qualities of such materials as metal, wood, and glass and the formal possibilities of the new technology and of its logical, rational constructions.2 Famous artists of the Constructivist movement include Vladimir Tatlin who began the movement, and then others such as Alexander Rodchenko, The Stenberg Brothers, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Robert Adams, and El Lissitzky who all contributed to it in various ways.

Artists like Tatlin and Rodchenko turned away from sculpture and painting to stove design and graphic design, and photojournalism. The Constructivists declared themselves for the revolution and the movement that resulted was active from 1913 to the 1940s.3

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Main figures Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) ussian artist, called the father of constructivism though he rejected the role and was regarded in 1920s Western Europe as the man who led art into technology and industrial production. He was essentially poetic, capable of leadership but loved for his quiet ways, his craftsman’s skills and his playing and singing of Russian folk music on instruments he made himself.

Young Tatlin divided his study years between art schools in Penza and Moscow and time at sea as a merchant sailor. Friends described his studio and his life-style as essentially shipshape and his knowledge of rigging and sails shows in his mature work. Little of that, however, remains, the most important productions being a vast tower, shown in drawings and models, his stage production of a poem by Khlebnikov, and

Vladimir Tatlin, 1914-1915

models of a flying machine. Even less remains of papers etc. that might give us insight into his thinking but some may be gained from his close friendship with Khlebnikov who combined passionate enquiry into the functioning of mathematics, history, birds and language with speculation into the sort of world the revolution (which he prophesied) would bring, and wrote about towers and flight and in praise of Tatlin.

He began and ended his career as a painter and stage designer. Some of his training was in painting and restoring icons and he was later to stress that these had had an important influence on his work, but a major event in his formation was a visit to Paris, in 1914, where he called on Picasso and saw his current work, including constructed sculptures.

Dissatisfied with the old-fashioned sculptures that resulted, Tatlin conceived a project for a vast monument: to the revolution, an engineering structure of steel and glass, at once sculpture and architecture, Model of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International.

to outdo the Eiffel Tower of Paris in size and dynamic form and to house Comintern, the headquarters of

international Communist action. It would stand in Petrograd, straddling the river Neva like a Colossus and, pointing to the pole star, would link Earth to the cosmos. Retitled Monument to the Third International, it was displayed in large model form in the winter of 1920-21, drew a great deal of attention at home and abroad and was seen as a new form of art, at once visionary and real in its intended use of modern materials and technology. A smaller model was the centrepiece of the Soviet display at the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris.7

6 Alexander Rodchenko (1889-1956) lexander Rodchenko is considered among the great fathers of modern graphic design. Rodchenko’s amazing photo-collages and abstract compositions both were and are truly original. He shot most of his poster’s photographs himself and much of his work stands out as dynamic, bold, and full of life.5 Rodchenko attended art school (Kazan) where he became familiar with Russian Futurism. He then moved to Moscow, and in 1916 met the artists; Tatlin, Popova, and Malevich. After the 1917 Russian Revolution Rodchenko and fellow artists became important leaders in the new experimental art that looked to industry and production as an inspiration.

In 1921, Rodchenko began teaching at the reformed

Alexander Rodchenko with a pipe, 1922-1923, by Mikhail Kaufman

art school in Moscow, where he taught the fundamental principles of design with an emphasis on materials. And by 1923 Rodchenko moved from fine art (painting) to graphic design. The same year Rodchenko began collaboration work with the poet Mayakovsky on posters. Mayakovsky would supply the slogans while Rodchenko developed the visuals. It was with this poster design that Rodchenko developed a style of strong contrasts, blocks of bold color, arrangements with a strong diagonal emphasis, often contrasted with photomontage. Rodchenko also used a heavy, hand-lettered sans serif type that was also bold and concise, and imitated throughout Russia.6

Poster for the publishing house Gosizdat,1924 (Lilya Brik shouting out the word “books”).

Dance, An Objectless Composition, 1915.

Pioneer with a Horn, 1930.

7 El Lissitzky (1890-1941) l Lissitzky had a huge influence on graphic design, After being turned down by a Russian art academy because of his religious belief, Lissitzky instead went to an engineering and architecture school. His use of mathematical and structural properties had an effect on his art. In 1919, Marc Chagall asked Lissitzky to teach art at a school, 250 miles east of the Moscow. It was at this school that Lissitzky met Malevich another teacher, who had a large influence on Lissitzky.

Lissitzky saw the October 1917 Russian Revolution as a new beginning for mankind and felt that Communism and social engineering would create a new order and the new technology would provide for society’s needs. Lissitzky called himself a construc-

Portrait Photo of El Lissitzky

tor rather than an artist or designer, and he worked

to bring a unity between art and technology, by constructing new objects for mankind.

In his pieces called PROUNS (“projects for the establishment – affirmation – of a new art”), Lissitzky traveled to Berlin in 1921.

Postwar place and

Germany for

their

became

eastern ideas,

and here

a

meeting

western

artists

Lissitzky

made

contact with de Stijl, the Bauhaus, dadaists, and other constructivists. Germany had excellent

printing

capabilities

enabling

Lissitzky to develop his typographic ideas even more quickly. For in Russia, after the First World War there were shortages throughout the nation putting paper, type and ink Neuer (New Man), 1923 One of Lissitzky’s PROUNS pieces.

at a premium. With Lissitzky’s energy and willingness to experiment with the mediums;

photomontage, printmaking, graphic design, and painting; he became the voice of suprematism and constructivism ideas to Western Europe.

Constructivist typography developed its own distinctive look – letters and words were at right angles to each other, they were framed by bold rules and borders printed in one or two primary colors. A prime example of this would be Vladimir Mayakovsky’s collection of poems entitled: For the voice, of which El Lissitzky was the designer.

Lissitzky’s Typography work: Mayakovsky’s For the Voice n 1918, the radical poet Vladimir Mayakovsky campaigned for the separation of art and state and for the self-government of art institutions in his treatise, The Manifesto of the Flying Federation of Futurists. Five years later, thirteen of his most frequently quoted poems

8 were published in this remarkable edition in which the content was intended to be read aloud (hence the title). In order to facilitate the reading aloud he asked El Lissitzky to design the book. It was published in Berlin where Gosizdat (State Publishing House) had a branch office at the time, and it was mechanically set – according to El Lissitzky’s page-by-page sketch-layouts – by a German compositor who knew no Russian.

In his essay Typographic Facts, Lissitzky described his method of design: “To make it easier for the reader to find any particular poem, I use an alphabetical index. The possibilities of two-color printing have been exploited to the full. My pages stand in much the same relation to the poems as an accompanying piano to a violin.

Just as the poet in his poem unites concept and sound, I have tried to create an equivalent unity using the poem and the typography”

A separate poem appears on each spread. The tabs on the right-hand side of the pages are die-cut and stepped to enable the reader to find each one. They are in alphabetical order with symbolic codes linked to the relevant pages. Only materials already available to the typesetter were used: the shaping of some of the large characters are created from utilitarian rules, bars, and other devices used to lock up pages, along with vernacular printers’ symbols such as engraved

Mayakovsky’s For the Voice

hand blocks to suggest page-turns. (often used by modernist typographers to draw attention).

The generous use of white space adds to the book’s dramatic effect, permitting elements to float and to be carefully balanced.

In this single volume, El Lissitzky has succeeded in applying his Constructivist ideas without compromise and although the typesetter of the Berlin printing house who set the page-spreads considered him Crazy, after publication of this book, El Lissitzky was established as the leader of European typography in his generation. El Lissitzky was not simply one of the circle of pioneers in graphic design: his whole way of thinking about design put him ahead of the rest.

His work established a new set of reference points in graphic design.

Each poem is given a symbolic typographic identity, and the relevant image is used on the thumb index – a convenient, witty guide to the contents.4

Some of the pages in the book. Note the helpful thumb index.

9 The Stenberg Brothers ladimir (1899-1982), Georgii (1900-1933) Studied engineering, designed posters while at school. Became involved in the Constructivists movement as students. From 1922-1931, the brothers designed sets and costumes for the theater and contributed to the journal LEF (art journal of the left front).

The Stenbergs practiced in a wide range of media; sculptor, theater design, architecture, clothing, and shoes. But they excelled in their theater costume and graphic design. Especially in film posters because of the huge interest in movies in Russia and the government’s allowance for graphic design for the cinema.

The innovative aspects of the Stenberg posters include; distortion of perspective, elements of Dada’s photomontage, an exaggerated scale, a sense of movement, and a dynamic use of color and typography. This style and these characteristics were imitated by many.8

The Man from the Forest, 1928

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Battleship Potemkin, 1905

Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

The Traitor, 1926

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Typography he artists who formulated the idea of ‘production art’ were striving to broaden art’s boundaries, to spread it out amidst the life surrounding it as a participant in the creation of useful objects. For them there was no division of art into ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres. They sought out every opportunity to work for a mass audience, and this was why they entered into work for the printing industry with such enthusiasm. The vigorous renewal of typography which took place in the twenties was in many respects due to the arrival in the field of these productivists, the Constructivist artists, and the innovative outlook they brought with them. Design for printing had developed on the same wave as avant-garde painting and had assimilated its experience. Graphic designers too based their work on principles of functionality, concentrating on creation of expressiveness through emphasis on structure, and entirely eliminating decorativeness. The parallel development of and mutual influence between the Soviet Constructivists and the leaders of typographic change in Europe resulted in an entirely new set of typographical principles which were formally expounded in Jan Tschichold’s book of 1928, Die neue Typographie.

The construction of letterforms: s artists working in the field of printing, the Constructivists tried to use as their main tools the simple equipment of the typesetter.

It was a matter of principle for them to use purely typographical means.

Giant letter-forms of simple design, filling the whole page, make the cover of a book or magazine from the twenties immediately recognizable. Their design solutions are dominated by sharp contrasts of letter size and the use of various thicknesses of rule. These were their devices for exposing the structure of meaning in a text, and for imparting the necessary stresses to it.

A purely typographical cover is the very essence of Constructivism and the epitome of its visual language.9 Front cover of Veshch, Berlin, 1920’s, El Lissitzky

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A Tale of Two Squares, 1922, by El Lissitzky

The Baku Worker, 1925, Anonymous

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Sources Cited: 1 http://factoidz.com/soviet-cinema-and-russian-constructivism 2 The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979) 3 http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/constructivism/ http://anneserdesign.com/Constructivism.html 4 http://anneserdesign.com/Constructivism.html Letter Perfect: The Art of Modernist Typography, 1896-1953 by David Ryan http://books. google.com/books?id=4JV-10eXmOoC&printsec

Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties by M. Anikst 5 http://graphicdefiner.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/ alexander-rodchenko-and-russian-constructivism/ 6 http://anneserdesign.com/Constructivism.html 7 http://www.artprofessor.com/artists/vladimir-tatlin.php 8 http://anneserdesign.com/Constructivism.htm 9 Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties by M. Anikst IMAGES: Book Cover: Eric Louw 2010, http://www.EricLouw.Carbonmade.com Kasmir Malevich: Image 1: http://anneserdesign.com/Constructivism.html Image 2: http://creativebits.org/inspiration/snow_leopard_desktop_pictures Image 3: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suprematist_Composition_-_Kazimir_Malevich.jpg Unashamed 2010 Eric Louw 2010, http://www.EricLouw.Carbonmade.com Agit-Prop Train: http://www.thepolisblog.org/2009/12/imagining-socialist-city.html Vladimir Tatlin: Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%A2%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0 %BD.jpg Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International: http://digitalarts.ucsd.edu/~gkester/Teaching%20copy/VIS%2022%20Final%20Exam%20Images.htm

14 Alexander Rodchenko: With a pipe: http://chagalov.tumblr.com/post/1577520757/ alexander-rodchenko-with-a-pipe-1922-1923-by Poster for the publishing house Gosizdat: http://www.communisme-bolchevisme.net/ images_urss_soviet_posters.htm Dance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rodchenko Pioneer with the Horn: http://digitalarts.ucsd.edu/~gkester/Teaching%20copy/VIS%20 22%20Final%20Exam%20Images.htm El Lissitzky: Portrait: http://www.webdesigncool. com/100-years-of-propaganda-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly Neuer Man: http://www.thedctraveler.com/2006/10/ the-societe-anonyme-modernism-for-america-the-phillips-collection/ Mayakovsky’s For the Voice: http://designblog.rietveldacademie.nl/?cat=29 Stenberg Brothers: The Man from the Forest: http://abundancesecrets.com/motivational-posters/index. php?item=2884734 Battleship Potemkin: http://martinklasch.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html Man with a Movie Camera http://blog.largeformatposters.com/ smart-design/22-constructivism-poster-design-inspiration-samples/ The Traitor: http://letempsperduretrouve.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post.html Typography: Front Cover of Veshch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/20745656@N00/1263535078 A Tale of Two Squares: Scan from Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties, M. Anikst The Baku Worker: Scan from Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties, M. Anikst