Alexander Rodchenko
Encyclopedia
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist
, sculptor
, photographer and graphic designer
. He was one of the founders of constructivism
and Russian design
; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova
.
Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist
and Productivist
artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution
. He worked as a painter and graphic designer
before turning to photomontage
and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."
Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg
to a working class family. His family moved to Kazan
in 1909, after the death of his father at which point he studied at the Kazan School of Art under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev, and at the Stroganov Institute in Moscow
. He made his first abstract drawings, influenced by the Suprematism
of Kazimir Malevich
, in 1915. The following year, he participated in "The Store" exhibition organized by Vladimir Tatlin
, who was another formative influence in his development as an artist.
Rodchenko was appointed Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund by the Bolshevik
Government in 1920. He was responsible for the reorganization of art schools and museums. He taught from 1920 to 1930 at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios (VKhUTEMAS
/VKhUTEIN).
In 1921 he became a member of the Productivist
group, which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He gave up painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films. He was deeply influenced by the ideas and practice of the film-maker Dziga Vertov
, with whom he worked intensively in 1922.
Impressed by the photomontage of the German Dadaists, Rodchenko began his own experiments in the medium, first employing found images in 1923, and from 1924 on shooting his own photographs as well. His first published photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky
's poem, "About This", in 1923.
From 1923 to 1928 Rodchenko collaborated closely with Mayakovsky (of whom he took several striking portraits) on the design and layout of LEF
and Novy LEF, the publications of Constructivist artists. Many of his photographs appeared in or were used as covers for these journals. His images eliminated unnecessary detail, emphasized dynamic diagonal composition, and were concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space.
Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was very abstract. In the 1930s, with the changing Party guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements.
Rodchenko joined the October circle of artists in 1928 but was expelled three years later being charged with "formalism
". He returned to painting in the late 1930s, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940s. He continued to organize photography exhibitions for the government during these years. He died in Moscow in 1956.
conceptual artist Barbara Kruger
owes a debt to Rodchenko's work.
His 1924 portrait of Lilya Brik
has inspired a number of subsequent works, including the cover art for a number of music albums. Among them are influential Dutch punk band The Ex, which published a series of 7" vinyl albums, each with a variation on the Lilya Brik portrait theme, the cover of Mike + the Mechanics album Word of Mouth
, and the cover of the Franz Ferdinand
album You Could Have It So Much Better
. The poster for One-Sixth Part of the World was the basis for the cover of "Take Me Out", also by Franz Ferdinand.
exhibition in Moscow. For artists of the Russian Revolution, Rodchenko's radical action was full of utopian possibility. It marked the end of easel painting – perhaps even the end of art – along with the end of bourgeois norms and practices. It cleared the way for the beginning of a new Russian life, a new mode of production, a new culture.
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, photographer and graphic designer
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
. He was one of the founders of constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
and Russian design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova
Varvara Stepanova
Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova , was a Russian artist associated with the 'Constructivist' movement.She came from peasant origins but was fortunate enough to get an education at Kazan School of Art, Odessa. There she met her lifelong friend and collaborator Alexander Rodchenko...
.
Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
and Productivist
Productivism (art)
Productivism was an art movement founded by a group of Constructivist artists in post-Revolutionary Russia who believed that art should have a practical, socially useful role as a facet of industrial production...
artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
. He worked as a painter and graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
before turning to photomontage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."
Life and career
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
to a working class family. His family moved to Kazan
Kazan
Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...
in 1909, after the death of his father at which point he studied at the Kazan School of Art under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev, and at the Stroganov Institute in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. He made his first abstract drawings, influenced by the Suprematism
Suprematism
Suprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations...
of Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...
, in 1915. The following year, he participated in "The Store" exhibition organized by Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was a Russian and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist movement...
, who was another formative influence in his development as an artist.
Rodchenko was appointed Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund by the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
Government in 1920. He was responsible for the reorganization of art schools and museums. He taught from 1920 to 1930 at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios (VKhUTEMAS
VKhUTEMAS
Vkhutemas ) was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, replacing the Moscow Svomas. The workshops were established by a decree from Vladimir Lenin with the intentions, in the words of the Soviet government, "to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for...
/VKhUTEIN).
In 1921 he became a member of the Productivist
Productivism (art)
Productivism was an art movement founded by a group of Constructivist artists in post-Revolutionary Russia who believed that art should have a practical, socially useful role as a facet of industrial production...
group, which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He gave up painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films. He was deeply influenced by the ideas and practice of the film-maker Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
, with whom he worked intensively in 1922.
Impressed by the photomontage of the German Dadaists, Rodchenko began his own experiments in the medium, first employing found images in 1923, and from 1924 on shooting his own photographs as well. His first published photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
's poem, "About This", in 1923.
From 1923 to 1928 Rodchenko collaborated closely with Mayakovsky (of whom he took several striking portraits) on the design and layout of LEF
LEF (journal)
LEF was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts , a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novy LEF...
and Novy LEF, the publications of Constructivist artists. Many of his photographs appeared in or were used as covers for these journals. His images eliminated unnecessary detail, emphasized dynamic diagonal composition, and were concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space.
Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was very abstract. In the 1930s, with the changing Party guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements.
Rodchenko joined the October circle of artists in 1928 but was expelled three years later being charged with "formalism
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
". He returned to painting in the late 1930s, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940s. He continued to organize photography exhibitions for the government during these years. He died in Moscow in 1956.
Influence
Much of the work of 20th century graphic designers is a direct result of Rodchenko's earlier work in the field. His influence has been pervasive enough that it would be nearly impossible to single out all of the designers whose work he has influenced. AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
conceptual artist Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...
owes a debt to Rodchenko's work.
His 1924 portrait of Lilya Brik
Lilya Brik
Lilya Yuryevna Brik is known best as a muse of Vladimir Mayakovsky. She was an older sister of Elsa Triolet and wife of Osip Brik. Pablo Neruda called her "muse of Russian avant-garde"...
has inspired a number of subsequent works, including the cover art for a number of music albums. Among them are influential Dutch punk band The Ex, which published a series of 7" vinyl albums, each with a variation on the Lilya Brik portrait theme, the cover of Mike + the Mechanics album Word of Mouth
Word of Mouth (Mike + The Mechanics album)
Word of Mouth is the third album by Mike + The Mechanics, released in 1991.There was some overlap with the marketing of the album and the making of Genesis's We Can't Dance, with Mike Rutherford being committed to both...
, and the cover of the Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand (band)
Franz Ferdinand are a Scottish post-punk revival band formed in Glasgow in 2002. The band is composed of Alex Kapranos , Bob Hardy , Nick McCarthy , and Paul Thomson .The band first experienced chart success when their second single, "Take Me Out", reached #3 in...
album You Could Have It So Much Better
You Could Have It So Much Better
You Could Have It So Much Better is the second studio album by Glaswegian indie rock band Franz Ferdinand that was first released 3 October 2005 in the United Kingdom. Recorded in both the United States and their own studio in Glasgow with producer Rich Costey, the album gave birth to the release...
. The poster for One-Sixth Part of the World was the basis for the cover of "Take Me Out", also by Franz Ferdinand.
The end of painting
In 1921, Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko executed what were arguably some of the first true monochromes (artworks of one color), and proclaimed "I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue, and yellow. I affirmed: this is the end of painting." These paintings were first displayed in the 5x5=255x5=25
5x5=25 was a two-part abstract art exhibition held in September–October 1921 in Moscow. Five atists presented were Aleksandra Ekster, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Vesnin...
exhibition in Moscow. For artists of the Russian Revolution, Rodchenko's radical action was full of utopian possibility. It marked the end of easel painting – perhaps even the end of art – along with the end of bourgeois norms and practices. It cleared the way for the beginning of a new Russian life, a new mode of production, a new culture.
External links
- The Rodchenko and Stepanova collection at The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
- Photos of Rodchenko on danyanovikov.narod.ru
- Rodchenko's art and fate: the experiment continues review of 1998-99 exhibition touring the US, Germany and Sweden reviewed on the World Socialist Web SiteWorld Socialist Web SiteThe World Socialist Web Site is the online news and information center of the International Committee of the Fourth International . The site publishes articles and analysis covering a wide range of topics and events all around the world. The daily 'Perspective' article presents the position of the...
- BMI Voyager - Rodchenko's works come to London
- Peter Schjeldahl on Alexander Rodchenko
- Henry Art exhibition information
- review of a recent exhibition of Rodchenko's art by C.B.Liddell
- Rodchenko's posters
- Rodchenko show at Palexpo