Artist as Producer Russian Constructivism in Revolution

The Artist as Producer reshapes our understanding of the fundamental contribution of the Russian avant-garde to the development of modernism. Focusing on the single most important hotbed of Constructivist activity in the early 1920sand#151;the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscowand#151;Maria Gough offers a powerful reinterpretation of the work of the first group of artists to call themselves Constructivists. Her lively narrative ranges from famous figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko to others who are much less well known, such as Karl Ioganson, a key member of the state-funded INKhUK whose work paved the way for an eventual dematerialization of the integral art object.

Through the mining of untapped archives and collections in Russia and Latvia and a close reading of key Constructivist works, Gough highlights fundamental differences among the Moscow group in their handling of the experimental new sculptural formand#151;the spatial constructionand#151;and of their subsequent shift to industrial production. The Artist as Producer upends the standard view that the Moscow group's formalism and abstraction were incompatible with the sociopolitical imperatives of the new Communist state. It challenges the common equation of Constructivism with functionalism and utilitarianism by delineating a contrary tendency toward non-determinism and an alternate orientation to process rather than product. Finally, the book counters the popular perception that Constructivism failed in its ambition to enter production by presenting the first-ever case study of how a Constructivist could, and in fact did, operate within an industrial environment. The Artist as Producer offers provocative new perspectives on three critical issuesand#151;formalism, functionalism, and failureand#151;that are of central importance to our understanding not only of the Soviet phenomenon but also of the European vanguards more generally.

"The Artist as Producer confronts the problem of making a politics with art. Gough's balanced rigor in mining obscure archives on the one hand, while performing brilliant readings of recalcitrant artworks on the other gives her account of Constructivism's utopian promise and less-than-utopian outcome great texture. She has produced something very rare: an art-historical study that not only adds to our knowledge but captures the intense poignancy of modern art's serious ambition to undertake a revolution ofand#151;and withand#151;form."and#151;David Joselit, Professor, History of Art, Yale University

"To see a sculptor plunging into the politics and the cultural politics of the factory floor is a rare sight indeed in art history. It takes immense historical discipline to do it justice. Maria Gough takes the 'author as producer' question dear to Marxist aesthetics (think of Walter Benjamin, but think also of Trotsky, of Gramsci) and raises it into new relevance. The question always was and is a motor. This book shows us, beautifully, how and why."and#151;Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art, Vassar College

"The Artist as Producer is a remarkable and impressive piece of scholarship, which challenges existing assumptions about Soviet Constructivism and demands that we rethink the movement in its entirety."and#151;Christina Lodder, author of Russian Constructivism

Maria Gough is Associate Professor of Art History at Stanford University

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Made in Moscow

1. COMPOSITION AND CONSTRUCTION

Motivation

Vasily Kandinskyand#8217;s Inaugural Program: The Psychology of Expression and Perception

Medium-Specificity: The Working Group of Objective Analysis

Historicizing Medium-Specificity: In the Galleries of Sergei Shchukin

Differentiating Composition and Construction

The Debateand#8217;s Broader Contexts

2. IN THE LABORATORY OF CONSTRUCTIVISM

Tableaux

The Advent of a New Form

The Program

The Gallery

A Catalogue of Cold Structures (and One Mechanism)

Systemic Invention

3. FORMULATING PRODUCTION

Declaration and Dilemma

The Constructivist as Inventor

Two Drawings and the Problem of Sequence

Electrical Circuit (Representation)

Invention, without Determinate End

4. THE DEATH OF THE OBJECT

Not Our Sputnik

The Mortality of Cultures

Intermission: The Spengler Controversy in Russia, 1921and#150;22

The Utopia Silently Contained in the Image of Decline

Nonobjectivity: Urphand#228;nomen of Contemporary Culture

Nikolai Tarabukinand#8217;s Art of Production

5. RED TECHNICS: THE KONSTRUKTOR IN PRODUCTION

The Archaeology of an Experiment

In the Institute/At the Factory

Prokatchikand#8217;s Profile and Reconstruction

The Inventor at the Bench

Party Agitator and Production Organizer

The Artist as Administrator

Conclusion: Constructivism in Revolution

Glossary and Abbreviations

Notes

Selected Bibliography

List of Illustrations

Index