M. Rodchenko - V. F. Stepanova. A.N. Lavrentyev "Alexander Rodchenko: the beginning of a designer's career" Design geniuses series about Rodchenko

And Alexander Rodchenko was one of the founders of constructivism and the creators of the first Soviet advertising. He worked on propaganda posters, painted abstracts, illustrated books, and invented artistic photography techniques that are still used today.

“I was committed.” Meet the avant-garde

Alexander Rodchenko was born on December 5, 1891 in St. Petersburg, in the family of Mikhail and Olga Rodchenko. His mother worked as a laundress, his father as a theater props maker. They lived in a small apartment directly above the theater; to go outside, you had to walk straight through the stage every time. Therefore, the boy’s early childhood took place in a “behind the scenes” environment. Mikhail Rodchenko did not want his son to follow in his footsteps and insisted on getting a “real profession.” Immediately after finishing four classes at the parochial school, the boy went to study to become a dental technician and even worked as a prosthetist for some time. However, in 1911, he entered an art school in Kazan as a volunteer, where the Rodchenko family had moved by that time. Varvara Stepanova studied at the same school, who later became Rodchenko’s wife and colleague, a famous artist and designer.

In 1914, during an all-Russian tour, futurists came to Kazan - Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vasily Kamensky and David Burliuk. Their evening made a strong impression on Alexander Rodchenko: he realized that he wanted to engage in futuristic art.

At the end of 1915, Alexander and his wife moved from Kazan to Moscow. There, through mutual friends, he met the artist Vladimir Tatlin, one of the founders of the avant-garde movement. Tatlin invited Rodchenko to take part in the futuristic art exhibition “Shop”. Instead of an entry fee, Alexander Rodchenko helped organize the event: he sold tickets and told guests about the works presented.

“I learned everything from him [Tatlin]: attitude to the profession, to things, to material, to food and all life, and this left a mark for the rest of my life... Of all the modern artists I have met, there is no equal to him.”

Alexander Rodchenko

Kazimir Malevich. White on white. 1918. New York Museum of Modern Art, New York

Alexander Rodchenko. Black on black. 1918. Vyatka Art Museum named after V.M. I am. Vasnetsov, Kirov

During these years, Rodchenko finally decided on the direction of his own creativity. Inspired by Malevich’s painting “White on White” (“White Square on a White Background”), he created a series of works “Black on Black”. However, if Malevich’s painting is built on geometric shapes and a play of shades, then the main means of expression for Rodchenko was texture - it was she who made the composition three-dimensional.

Illustrator, decorator, avant-garde poster master

Alexander Rodchenko became one of the founders of constructivism - his works were distinguished by their laconicism and geometricism. The artist illustrated books, worked on sets for theatrical productions and filming, but his advertising posters became the most famous. In addition to the traditional means of painting and graphics, Rodchenko used photomontage techniques, creating laconic and informative collages.

The artist released a whole series of advertising posters together with Vladimir Mayakovsky: the poet was responsible for short, memorable slogans. Constructivist posters fully fit into the revolutionary ideology of the young Soviet state. They were called upon to educate, inform, and agitate.

Using the technique of photomontage, Rodchenko created not only posters, but also illustrations for books and magazines. In particular, to Mayakovsky’s poem “About This”.

Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Mayakovsky. “Nowhere except in Mosselprom.” 1925. Image: n-europe.eu

Photo experiments by Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko began taking photographs in 1924. By that time, he was not only an accomplished artist, but also a teacher - he taught at the Moscow Art and Technical Institute. At first, Rodchenko photographed only to collect new materials for collages, but later his innovative works became very popular. Rodchenko used unusual angles, thanks to which his works acquired special dynamics and realism. The most impressive images for those years were those with a diagonal composition, when shooting was done from top to bottom or bottom to top. Such methods contradicted the strict canons of photography at that time. But Alexander Rodchenko’s techniques quickly became popular with his colleagues, and many of them are used in professional photography to this day. However, some of his experiments were criticized. For example, the work “Pioneer Trumpeter”: in it a boy with a bugle is shot from a lower angle. They said about the photo that the boy looked more like a “well-fed bourgeois” than a Soviet pioneer.

Since the late 1930s, Alexander Rodchenko stopped experimenting with themes and genres. He practically did not photograph or draw, he only designed books with his wife.

After the Great Patriotic War, the artist became interested in pictorialism. This direction of photography made photographs look like paintings. Photographers achieved a similar effect through special light and shutter speed settings. During this period, Alexander Rodchenko was interested in the circus and theater and often photographed artists in the style of pictorialism.

The artist died on December 3, 1956. He did not live long enough to see the opening of his first photo exhibition, which was organized by his wife. Today, Rodchenko’s name is borne by the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, where his grandson, Alexander Lavrentiev, teaches.

Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova in a photo from 1920

Biography

In the late 1920s - early 1930s, he was a photojournalist for the newspaper “Evening Moscow”, magazines “30 days”, “Daesh”, “Pioneer”, “Ogonyok” and “Radio Listener”. At the same time he worked in cinema (artist of the films “Moscow in October”, 1927, “Journalist”, 1927-1928, “Doll with Millions” and “Albidum”, 1928) and theater (productions “Inga” and “Bedbug”, 1929), designing original furniture, costumes and scenery.

In 1932, he left the “October” group and became a photojournalist in Moscow for the publishing house “Izogiz”. In the 1930s, from his early creativity, imbued with revolutionary romantic enthusiasm, Rodchenko moved on to carrying out propaganda government tasks.

At the beginning of 1933, he was secretly sent to Belomorstroy. On behalf of the OGPU, he was to film the completion of construction and the opening of the canal for propaganda purposes, as well as create photo laboratories in the Gulag. Rodchenko describes the beginning of his business trip as follows:

I didn’t write because I didn’t know where, what, and didn’t have a pass. Now everything is all right. I'm healthy and looking good. I eat, drink, sleep, and don’t work yet, but I’ll start tomorrow. Everything is wonderfully interesting. I'm just resting for now. The conditions are excellent... Don’t tell anyone too much that I’m on the White Sea Canal...

From letters to his wife Varvara Stepanova

Together with the canal management, they met the steamship Karl Marx, on which a group of writers headed by Maxim Gorky arrived to celebrate the end of construction. According to Rodchenko, he took more than two thousand photographs at the White Sea Canal (no more than 30 are known today).

In December 1933, he developed the design for the 12th issue of the illustrated magazine “USSR on Construction”, completely designing it with his own photographs. He was an artist and photographer of the “writers’ monograph” about the White Sea Canal, which was called “The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin”.

Designer of photo albums “15 years of Kazakhstan”, “First Cavalry”, “Red Army”, “Soviet Aviation” and others (together with his wife V. Stepanova). He continued painting in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a member of the jury and designer of many photo exhibitions, was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the professional union of film photographers, and was a member of the Moscow Union of Artists of the USSR (Moscow organization of the Union of Artists of the USSR) since 1932. In 1936 he participated in the “Exhibition of Masters of Soviet Photographic Art”. Since 1928, he regularly sent his works to photographic salons in the USA, France, Spain, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia and other countries.

Family

• Daughter - Varvara Alexandrovna Rodchenko (1926−2019), artist.
• Grandson - Alexander Nikolaevich Lavrentyev (b. 1954), Soviet and Russian art critic, art historian, graphic designer, curator.

Heritage

The case is currently ongoing [ ] his grandson, Alexander Nikolaevich Lavrentyev, who teaches design and composition in many art educational institutions in Moscow, in particular at the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia named after A. Rodchenko and the Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Sciences, and also acts as an editor and consultant for scientific works about Alexander Rodchenko. [ significance of the fact? ]

Criticism

Bibliography

• Rodchenko A. M."Articles. Memories. Autobiographical notes. Letters." M., “Soviet Artist”, 1982. - 224 pp., 10,000 copies.
• Rodchenko A. M. and Tretyakov S. M.“Self-beasts” - M.: Career Press.
• Alexander Rodchenko: Angles [preface. A. Lavrentyeva] // Formal method: Anthology of Russian modernism. Volume 2: Materials / comp. S. Ushakin. - Moscow; Ekaterinburg: Armchair scientist, 2016. - pp. 681-814.

Publications

Documentary

Memory

Notes

1. Vigdaria Khazanova. Soviet architecture of the first years of October. 1917-1925 . - M.: Nauka, 1970.
2. Moscow Academic Order of the Red Banner of Labor Theater named after Vl. Mayakovsky, 1922-1982 / Auth.-comp. V. Ya. Dubrovsky. - 2nd ed. corr. and additional - M.: Art, 1983. - 207 p., ill. (pp. 198-207)
3. Klimov, Oleg; Bogachevskaya, Ekaterina. I myself wanted to be the devil. Why did Alexander Rodchenko film the construction of the White Sea Canal? (Russian). Meduza (July 7, 2015). - “Formally, I came to the White Sea Canal to try to find the missing photo archive of the famous artist and photographer Alexander Rodchenko; more precisely, that part of the photographic negatives that were made during the construction of the Stalin Canal in 1933. Informally, I wanted to know the reasons for falsifications (not to say crimes) in the history of Russian photojournalism and visual art during Stalinism.” Retrieved July 28, 2015. Archived July 28, 2015.
4. Rodchenko and Stepanova, Petrusov, et al. in the magazine SSSR na stroike (USSR in Construction) (undefined) Archived from the original on January 5, 2013.
5. USSR IM BAU ("USSR in Construction"). Illustrated Magazine. 1935 No. eleven (undefined) . Retrieved March 28, 2009. Archived January 5, 2013.

Alexander Rodchenko: the beginning of a designer's career

The article is devoted to the biography of Alexander Rodchenko, namely his professional development as a designer and the period of early constructivism, starting from graphic works, collages to photographic angles. The article uses original materials from my personal archive.

Keywords: Soviet avant-garde, Soviet design of the 20s, constructivism, Alexander Rodchenko, VKHUTEMAS

We could classify any versatile artist and architect as part of the design workshop. In addition to architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was involved in watch design. Fyodor Shekhtel, like any architect of the Art Nouveau era, treated architecture and its subject matter with equal attention and skill.

In the case of Alexander Rodchenko, we also constantly encounter his versatility and effective work in theater and cinema, printing and advertising, furniture and interior design. He was not an applied artist in the generally accepted sense. He is a designer, functionalist, constructor, organizer. His slogan is “Life, conscious and organized, is modern art.” He used design methods as universal in art. He designed graphics and paintings, spatial structures, photographs, posters, covers, clothing. The design involved the creation of series and rows united by a compositional principle, the nature of the elements, an internal geometric scheme, a frame, and utility.

The thirst for designing, creating his own imaginary world awoke in him as a child, in St. Petersburg, where 120 years ago in 1891 he was born into the family of theatrical proprietor Mikhail Rodchenko and laundress Olga Rodchenko. He introduced drawing design tools into graphics when he lived in Kazan and studied at the Kazan Art School. Here in 1914, during a performance by three futurists: Mayakovsky, Burliuk and Kamensky, who were touring Russian cities, he met like-minded people, becoming an adherent of the new in art. And he never changed his project approach, no matter what he did.

A master of geometric abstraction and a master of composition, he saw a trend—a departure from individualistic creativity to intellectual production—as the constructivists Aleksey Gan, Varvara Stepanova, Lyubov Popova then called their occupation. Life is art and art must become life.

Rodchenko began his public activities in the Fine Arts Department of the NKP in the art and production subdepartment, where, together with Rozanova, he was engaged in art and production workshops and traveled to handicrafts near Moscow. The head of the subdepartment, as it was written in the collection “Art and Production” in 1921, was “production artist I.V. Averintsev.” Soon, an Artistic and Production Council was created under the Fine Arts Department. The declaration of this council in 1920 stated:

“Combining elements of art with elements of production, the art industry, in addition to the indicated main goal, must pursue the same task of raising the artistic and general cultural level of the broad masses, promoting the rapprochement of art with industrial labor, the development of a master artist in the worker.”

In 1921, a report on the work of the Art Production Department was published in the IZO newspaper. It was reported that 12 workshop schools and branches of the Stroganov School, drawing schools at factories were reorganized, and 19 educational and production workshops were newly created. The following areas are being developed: costumes and headdresses, weaving and printing, metal work, toys.

The state was also interested in creating projects for a new subject environment that was democratic in nature and cost. In 1919, the Petrograd Council of Trade Unions financed a competition among artists and architects. The topic was chosen in such a way that painters, sculptors, and architects could take part in the competition. The architects were asked to draw up a project for a working house for 4 families.

“The remaining competitions are as follows: 1) a perspective view of the interior decoration of the rooms of a work apartment; 2) designs for costumes (dress, apron, etc.); 3) a tea set and 4) a design for a fork, spoon and knife in a case.”

The competition program, perhaps for the first time, formulated the need to design tableware, clothing and furnishings for workers’ apartments.

One of the first projects of early constructivism - the design of a tea set - was completed by Rodchenko in 1922, commissioned by the ceramics department of VKHUTEMAS. The initiative to develop a standard tavern set came from Alexey Filippov (jokingly called “Alfip”), who during these years headed the ceramics department.

Rodchenko's set of dishes reflected tea drinking habits in Russia. Firstly, the need for two teapots—one for brewing and one for boiling water. Secondly, the sugar bowl. If desired, one could drink tea with milk: the project also included a milkman. For serving, there was also a tray on which the innkeeper could bring cups, saucers and teapots.

The shapes of the dishes reflect a geometric approach to working with form and decoration. Both the teapots and the sugar bowl are spherical in shape on a conical base. The same stand was intended for the cups. However, what was drawn in the project in reality was somewhat different from what was planned. The resulting conical shape was not visible due to the overhanging spherical volume. In cross-section, both handles and spouts should have the cross-sectional shape of a circle. Cups are half spheres. The milk jug is a combination of a sphere and a cylinder and the same conical base.

The graphic design of the service is based on a combination of two series by the artist. Circles are a reminder of the series Concentration of Color and Forms of 1918, where glow, irradiation of color and form represented the main compositional idea. Compositions from circles with a gradient that gradually fades away are taken from this series.

The second motif is modular geometric constructions from lines, close to a series of engravings and drawings from 1921. The proportions of all elements in the compositions from this series are characterized by precise mathematical calculation: a combination of simple ratios 1:2, 1:3, 1:4. The lines are drawn either strictly parallel to each other, or at right angles, or at an angle justified by the type of construction.

There is dynamic symmetry in the arrangement and coloring of the elements. The moment of movement is especially emphasized in the drawing on the tray. At this moment, Rodchenko was interested in various technical inventions; his friend Alexey Gan was the chairman of the Association of Inventors. And Rodchenko often sketches diagrams of a “perpetual motion machine.” The design of a perpetual motion machine with rolling balls turned into a graphic composition. This composition, due to the arrangement of forms, was supposed to create in the viewer the impression of continuous compositional rotation. It is for this purpose that the principle of not mirror, but rotational symmetry was used.

The purely geometric composition on the service items evokes certain associations with the brewing process, the concentration of the aroma and taste of tea.

In November 1921, the newspaper “Ekran”, the herald of theater, art, cinema and sports, reported in the article “Art and Production” that an art and production section had begun to operate at the Moscow Scientific and Technical Club. Under the chairmanship of Academician Fyodor Shekhtel, they heard a report by Alexey Filippov on the topic “Art into Production”. It was reported that Russian handicrafts are popular at foreign exhibitions, and that in the State Artistic and Industrial Costume Workshops, under the leadership of artists Nadezhda Lamanova and Lyubimova, “extremely interesting experiments are being carried out to develop samples of clothing production.”

The State Experimental and Technical Factory of Glavodezhda (formerly Alshvang) is working to standardize production and develop clothing samples.

“The artistic and production section of the scientific and technical club proposes to summarize the materials of these works for the organization of a special interview devoted to the problem of costume from various points of view (artistic, economic, industrial, etc.).”

This note partly explains why the path of design pioneers in Russia began with the suit, with the development of the concept of “overall clothing”. Clothing production existed, technology was developing towards mass standardized production, functional problems of the suit and its design were discussed. Almost all artists who were in one way or another connected with the emergence of design in Russia offered their own example of solving these problems. Lyubov Popova made overalls for the theater in 1922. The miner and courier costume is designed by Gustav Klutsis. Rodchenko draws a costume for a design engineer, which is embodied in the material by Varvara Stepanov.

Rodchenko wore this suit to classes with his students. The suit was adapted to the designer's work. A blouse with pockets of different sizes for tools, sailor-cut trousers also with wide pockets. Leather inserts at the collar, sleeve cuffs and above the chest pockets emphasized the technicality and utilitarian nature of the clothing. It is in these places that the fabric most often wears out, becomes shiny, and gets dirty. The design of the costume itself resembled more of a pattern - with the stitching seams marked with a double line. The design was somewhat reminiscent of modern denim with its “open construction” principle.

And although Rodchenko’s overalls were universal, that is, they could be suitable for any profession, they are still associated precisely with the overalls of a constructivist, a designer, a person engaged in “intellectual production,” in Stepanova’s words.

The note quoted above also spoke about the announcement of a closed competition to create emblems for trade unions. Among such artists as Altman, Falileev, Favorsky, Nivinsky, Vesnin and Ekster, the name Rodchenko was also mentioned.

At the time of the formation of the first utilitarian projects of early constructivism, the field for activity seemed limitless. There was no connection to any specific type of production or activity. Constructivism seemed to be a universal method of organizing material in any field - theater, cinema, clothing industry, architecture.

Some passages from the manifesto of the “kinoks”, that is, the pioneers of documentary cinema Vertov and Kaufman, published in the first issue of Alexey Gan’s magazine “Kino-phot” sound in the same general vein.

“Cinema is the art of organizing the necessary movements of things in space and time into a rhythmic artistic whole, consistent with the properties of the material and the internal rhythm of each thing.” Rodchenko would also agree with this definition. Gan invites Rodchenko and Stepanova to cooperate and promote constructivism. From August to December 1922, Kino-Fota constantly published Rodchenko’s drawings, architectural projects, and collages. (Only in the last, sixth January issue for 1923 there were no publications of his works.)

Kinoki declare their task to be the realization of “the impossible in life.

Drawings in motion. Drawings in motion. Future projects. The theory of relativity on the screen".

As an illustration for this manifesto, Alexey Gan puts on a reproduction of Rodchenko’s linear-circular composition of 1915. Mechanized graphics, the rhythm of intersecting and filled in shaft order had to correspond to Vertov’s calls to study and master the images of the rhythms of technology.

The theme of cinema will be one of the cross-cutting themes for Rodchenko throughout his life as a designer, poster artist, book artist and photographer. From the titles for Dziga Vertov’s newsreels and projects of film cars for the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition of 1922–1923 to the album “The Cinematic Art of Our Motherland” in 1945.

Rodchenko began his design career in 1922 with the development of titles for newsreels by D. Vertov. He made hand-drawn titles with elements of his non-objective compositions, cut out volumes from paper and cardboard, on which the names of certain parts of the film were then written, attached letters to spatial structures and turned them in front of the camera. Titles were of several types: purely graphic, spatial, dynamic.

In projects for titles for newsreels, Rodchenko showed the possibilities of animation of inscriptions. Some of the names of the film fragments were fixed on spatial structures of 1920–1921. These structures rotated on a stand during filming. Other texts changed the inclination through an ingenious dynamic structure of two intersecting parallelograms. This is how the word “End” was processed. The letters moved from an oblique position to a vertical position synchronously with the movement of this frame structure. The word “Comintern” slid down the rollers of a rotary printing press towards the viewer. This fragment was filmed in a real printing house. There were examples of animation using light. The names of the countries: “France”, “Italy”, “China”, preceding fragments of foreign newsreels, were included in the three-dimensional relief made of cardboard. When shooting, the lamp illuminating this relief moved, the shadows moved on the screen.

Dynamic titles fit more naturally into the fabric of the film and attracted attention as a kind of attraction. Silent cinema was finding its visual “voice.” Alexey Gan even wrote a separate article on this topic in the Kino-fot magazine, where he analyzed the credits as an integral part of Dziga Vertov’s 13th cinematic truth.

Rodchenko’s collaboration with the Kino-phot magazine, which was published by Alexey Gan, was the first test for Rodchenko as a printing artist. He made several covers with photomontages. One of them is fundamental for early constructivism and its romantic attitude towards technology. On the cover, on a black and white background divided in half, was a portrait of the American inventor Thomas Edison. At the bottom was the signature “Rodchenko montage.” Edison, an inventor in technology, was a symbol of a new, rational, technically advanced art. Edison was related not only to cinema, but also, of course, to constructivism.

It was these collages that Rodchenko considered his “patented” images when he was preparing an advertisement for his design services. Three constructivists (who formed the core of the first legendary group of constructivists of INKHUK in December 1920) - Alexey Gan, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova - reported in 1922 that they were producing:

“bullying, discrediting art, parodies, cartoons, projects of sports, special and propaganda clothing, projects of labels, wrappers, stickers, new methods of advertising, patented images, light, spatial and volumetric [advertising].”

“Bullying” and proprietary images are most likely a satirical photomontage.

Discrediting art is the design of any trivial thing not previously considered worthy of the artist's attention: a lamppost, a sign, or the cover of a technical book. The taste assessment “beautiful-ugly” is not applicable to unexpected objects. The thing is created for business, not for admiration. Individual elements - text, planes, conventional graphic images - are strung together on a general construction scheme - a graphic design, which is too universal in meaning, too elementary for the usual aesthetic criteria to be applied to it.

Since March 1923, the magazine “LEF” was published, which united not only figures of avant-garde cinema and theater, but also literary figures, philosophers, critics, and artists. This magazine was in those years the only publication that devoted its pages equally to literature, cinema, theater, advertising, art and production, and photography. “Comrades, shapers of life,” was the appeal to all potential participants in this association—the Left Front of the Arts. It was not monolithic, this front and each of the magazine’s participants, each of the authors was unique in their own way, the only specialist in their field. The visual part of the magazine, which Rodchenko was actually in charge of, consisted of characteristic covers (all issues of the magazine, including “New LEF” for 1927–1928, were designed by Rodchenko), photographs of theatrical productions and film stills, publications of architectural projects, book covers, advertising, fabric projects and clothes. The illustrations seemed to introduce the literary content of the magazine into the context of a new subject culture that did not yet exist in reality, it was only a forecast, but bit by bit it filled the world around us thanks to certain implemented projects.

Rodchenko and Stepanova began to collaborate from the first issue, just like other artists, their colleagues in constructivism, so to speak.

In the second issue of the magazine, the first reproductions in print of Rodchenko’s constructivist projects appeared on a separate spread. Under the general heading “Works of the constructivist Rodchenko” were placed: covers of books by Aseev, Gan, as well as two versions of movie car projects for the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition.

Both the covers and the movie cars were reproduced from wooden engraved blocks (made by engraver Andreev). This form of presentation determined a lot. Firstly, the works were printed in two colors - red and black. Secondly, there were no halftones and each color reproduced exactly filled color areas—letters or solids. The covers of the books were composed of letters and there was no other design in them - they were purely font compositions in two colors that completely covered the cover format. In the same way, the projects for movie cars mainly consisted of inscriptions. The only difference was that they also had graphic elements that made it possible to recognize in their contours exactly cars—round wheel rims—as well as a hint of movie screens. Rodchenko proposed two options for arranging a screen on a truck—in the back, when a projection device is installed in the cab and viewers watch the movie in front of the screen, from the back of the screen. And the second option is when the screen is placed above the cabin and the film is projected upward. One option can be used for daytime demonstration, the other for evening demonstration. But be that as it may, these differences could only be considered on a general flat-graphic level. The projects of movie cars themselves were decided rather conditionally and expressed more the principle of colorographic design of existing volumes than the design and arrangement of components. By highlighting the inscriptions and emphasizing the direction of the film projection with stripes and arrows, Rodchenko created a catchy, memorable advertising image of the film car.

By order of the exhibition committee of the exhibition, Rodchenko also completed other design works: an advertising poster, designs for matches and cigarettes, an invitation card, and a design for the People's Commissariat of Agriculture kiosk.

As Rodchenko’s experience as a designer accumulated, a demand for such projects from various organizations also formed.

The influence of the New Economic Policy on the development of industry on the revitalization of life in Russia attracts the attention of historians, sociologists, and economists. The practice of Rodchenko and his fellow constructivists shows that it was at this time that the largest number of design orders appeared. Design, his fledgling field, became a barometer of economic recovery.

But not everyone shared Lef’s constructive attitudes in literature, cinema, and design. They opposed the aesthetics of ascetic minimalism in literature (fixation on facts) and art (photography, advertising design). The article by Vyacheslav Polonsky “Notes of a journalist LEF or Bluff?” was written quite sharply.

In the first issue of the LEF magazine, which resumed its publication in 1927, under the title “New Lef,” excerpts from Rodchenko’s letters from Paris were published, where in the spring and summer of 1925 he was engaged in the design of the Soviet section at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Art Industry. The LEF group, Mayakovsky and Rodchenko were targeted by the literary critic and editor Vyacheslav Polonsky. Even then, Lef was accused of “petty-bourgeois influence on Soviet literature.” From the detailed descriptions of the construction of the pavilion and the organization of the exhibition, the interior of the Workers' Club, Polonsky specially chose some personal, sometimes humorous descriptions of Rodchenko's journey in order to present him as a kind of naive and illiterate “Mitrofanushka”, who went abroad for the first time.

During a discussion of this publication in the Lef editorial office, Boris Malkin noted:

“Polonsky and Rodchenko quoted this exceptional constructivist master in a unique way.

Here are a few places that Polonsky for some reason overlooked.

“We need to stick together and build new relationships between artistic workers.

We do not organize any kind of life if our relationships are similar to those of the bohemians of the West.

I now understand that there is no need to imitate anything, but to take it and remake it our way.” “He writes about the “light from the East” in a new attitude to man, to woman, to things.”

What irritated Rodchenko in art criticism (he writes about this on the pages of Lef’s notebook) was the abundance of publications about Western culture, laudatory reviews and laconicism regarding domestic authors. Writing about the West is culture, writing about one’s own can be accused of being trendy.

1926 is another date for work created at the crossroads of genres: cinema, photography and literature. A short piece of information was published in the Kino newspaper.

Rodchenko was called the genius of Soviet propaganda in the mid-20th century. He was a talented, creative master. Alexander Rodchenko stood at the origins of the avant-garde in the USSR. It was he who set the latest standards in advertising and design, destroyed old ideas about graphics and posters, and created a new course in this direction. Behind all sides of this creative personality there is such a facet as photography, and not everyone knows about it. Rodchenko knew how to capture interesting moments and create unique masterpieces.

More than a photographer

In the 20s, Alexander Rodchenko began to create his first photographic works. He was a unique photographer. At that time he worked as an artist-designer in the theater. He had a need to capture his work on film, and so he discovered a new art that completely captivated and enchanted him. Alexander Rodchenko's main contribution to the development of the photo reportage genre was the first multiple photographs of a person in action. This is how he collected documentary-figurative ideas about the models. His unusual photo reports were published in all popular central publications: in the magazines "Ogonyok", "Pioneer", "Radio Listener", "30 Days", in the newspaper "Evening Moscow".

Alexander Rodchenko. Photography is art

Photographer Rodchenko’s calling card was photographs taken from different angles (foreshortening). With these photographs the master went down in history. The images were taken from an angle that is unusual for perception, often from a unique, unusual point. The perspective to a certain extent distorts and changes the perception of an ordinary object. For example, the photographs taken by the artist from the roofs are so dynamic that it seems as if the image is about to begin to move. It is not surprising that such a series of photographs was first published in the magazine “Soviet Cinema”.

Rodchenko set such canons in the art of photography that have taken pride of place in modern photography textbooks. For example, when performing a series of portraits of Mayakovsky, the photographer completely departed from the standards of conventional studio photography. But in the 30s, some of his experiments seemed too bold to the authorities. The photograph from the bottom of the famous "Pioneer Trumpeter" seemed bourgeois to some. The boy from this angle looked like a sort of “well-fed” bad boy. The artist here did not enter the framework of proletarian photography.

Alexander Rodchenko, biography

In 1891, Alexander Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg into a simple, humble family. My father's name was Mikhail Mikhailovich (1852-1907), he served as a theater props man. Mother, Olga Evdokimovna (1865-1933), worked as a laundress. Due to prevailing circumstances, in 1902 the family moved to a permanent place of residence in the city of Kazan. Here Alexander received his first education at the Kazan parish primary school.

Alexander Rodchenko (USSR, 1891-1956) was a member of the Zhivsculptarch society since 1919. In 1920, he was a member of the Rabis development group. In the 1920-1930s he was a teacher as a professor at the metalworking and woodworking faculties. He taught students to design multifunctional objects and achieve expressive forms by identifying design features.

Photo activities

In the 20s, Rodchenko was actively involved in photography. To illustrate Mayakovsky's books "About This" in 1923, he used photomontage. Since 1924, he became known for his psychological portraits of friends, relatives and acquaintances ("Portrait of a Mother", Mayakovsky, Tretyakov, Brik). In 1925-1926 he published perspective photographs from the series “House of Mosselprom”, “House on Myasnitskaya”. He published articles about the art of photography, where he promoted a documentary view of the world around him, defended the need to use new methods, mastering different points of view (lower, upper) in the photo. Participated in the exhibition "Soviet Photography" in 1928.

Alexander Rodchenko became a famous master of photography thanks to the use of different angles in photography. In 1926-1928 he worked as a production designer in cinema ("Moscow in October", "Journalist", "Albidum"). In 1929, based on Glebov's play, he designed the play "Inga" at the Theater of the Revolution.

30s

Alexander Rodchenko, whose work seemed to bifurcate in the 30s, on the one hand, is engaged in propaganda of socialist realism, on the other, he is trying to preserve his own freedom. Its symbol is the photo reports about the circus created in the late 30s. During this period he returned to easel painting. In the 40s, Rodchenko painted decorative compositions made in abstract expressionism.

The 30s are marked by the transition from early comprehensive works to the specific creativity of Soviet propaganda, which are completely imbued with revolutionary enthusiasm. In 1933, the photographer was sent to the construction site of the White Sea Canal, where he took many reportage photographs (about two thousand), but only thirty are known now.

Later, together with his wife Stepanova, the albums “First Cavalry”, “15 Years of Kazakhstan”, “Soviet Aviation”, “Red Army” were designed. Since 1932, Rodchenko was a member of the Union of Artists. In 1936 he took part in an exhibition of masters of Soviet photography. Since 1928, he regularly sent his works to exhibitions in salons in France, the USA, Great Britain, Spain and other countries.

Alexander Rodchenko, recalling his childhood, says that when he was 14 years old, he sadly wrote in his diary about the uncertainty in life. He was sent to study medicine, and he longingly dreamed of becoming a real artist. Finally, at the age of 20, Alexander quit medicine and went to study at an art school. In 1916 he will be drafted into the army, and yet practicing medicine will benefit him. He will be appointed manager of the sanitary train instead of being sent to the front.

In the 20s, Rodchenko and his wife organized a creative union. They developed a “new way of life” and combined many artistic techniques and arts. Together we designed a new clothing model - now it’s a jumpsuit. It was intended to hide gender differences between future generations and to praise the labor activity of Soviet people. In 1925, the first and last trip abroad took place in the master’s life; he was sent to Paris. There he designed the USSR department during the International Exhibition.

last years of life

After the war, Alexander Rodchenko fell into depression; the entries in his diary are only pessimistic. In 1947, he complains that life is becoming more boring every day. They stopped providing work for him and Varvara. A period of lack of money began. As the author himself said, all that remains is to pray to God. In 1951, Rodchenko was even expelled from the Union of Artists, although four years later he was reinstated, but it was too late, the artist stopped creating. He died in 1956, December 3. Alexander Rodchenko was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery.

Alexander Rodchenko is as much a symbol of Soviet photography as Vladimir Mayakovsky is of Soviet poetry. Western photographers, from the founders of the Magnum photo agency to modern stars like Albert Watson, still use the techniques Rodchenko introduced into the photographic medium. In addition, if it were not for Rodchenko, there would be no modern design, which was greatly influenced by his posters, collages and interiors. Unfortunately, the rest of Rodchenko’s work has been forgotten - and yet he not only took photographs and drew posters, but was also involved in painting, sculpture, theater and architecture.

Anatoly Skurikhin. Alexander Rodchenko at the construction of the White Sea Canal. 1933© Museum “Moscow House of Photography”

Alexander Rodchenko. Funeral of Vladimir Lenin. Photo collage for the magazine “Young Guard”. 1924

Alexander Rodchenko. The building of the newspaper "Izvestia". 1932© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Spatial photo animation “Self-Beasts”. 1926© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Rodchenko and art

Alexander Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg in 1891 into the family of a theater prop maker. Since childhood, he was involved in the world of art: the apartment was located directly above the stage, through which you had to pass to go down to the street. In 1901 the family moved to Kazan. First, Alexander decides to study to become a dental technician. However, he soon abandoned this profession and became a volunteer student at the Kazan Art School (he could not enter there due to the lack of a certificate of secondary education: Rodchenko graduated from only four classes of the parochial school).

In 1914, futurists Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burlyuk and Vasily Kamensky came to Kazan. Rodchenko went to their evening and wrote in his diary: “The evening ended, and the excited, but in different ways, audience slowly dispersed. Enemies and fans. The latter are few. Clearly, I was not only a fan, but much more, I was a follower.” This evening became a turning point: it was after it that a volunteer student at the Kazan Art School, keen on Gauguin and the World of Art, realized that he wanted to connect his life with futuristic art. In the same year, Rodchenko met his future wife, a student of the same Kazan art school, Varvara Stepanova. At the end of 1915, Rodchenko, following Stepanova, moved to Moscow.

Rodchenko, Tatlin and Malevich

Once in Moscow, through mutual friends Alexander met Vladimir Tatlin, one of the leaders of the avant-garde, and he invited Rodchenko to take part in the futuristic exhibition “Shop”. Instead of an entry fee, the artist is asked to help with the organization - selling tickets and telling visitors about the meaning of the works. At the same time, Rodchenko met Kazimir Malevich, but, unlike Tatlin, he did not feel sympathy for him, and Malevich’s ideas seemed alien to him. Rodchenko is more interested in Tatlin's sculptural paintings and his interest in construction and materials than Malevich's thoughts on pure art. Later, Rodchenko would write about Tatlin: “I learned everything from him: attitude to the profession, to things, to material, to food and all life, and this left a mark for the rest of my life... Of all the modern artists I have met, there is no equal to him".

Kazimir Malevich. White on white. 1918 MoMA‎

Alexander Rodchenko. From the series “Black on Black”. 1918© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / MoMA‎

In response to Malevich’s “White on White,” Rodchenko wrote a series of works, “Black on Black.” These seemingly similar works solve opposite problems: with the help of monochrome, Rodchenko uses the texture of the material as a new property of pictorial art. Developing the idea of ​​a new art inspired by science and technology, for the first time he uses “non-artistic” tools - a compass, a ruler, a roller.

Rodchenko and photomontage

Rodchenko was one of the first in the Soviet Union to recognize the potential of photomontage as a new art form and began experimenting with this technique in the field of illustration and propaganda. The advantage of photomontage over painting and photography is obvious: due to the absence of distracting elements, a laconic collage becomes the most vivid and accurate way of non-verbal transmission of information.

Working in this technique will bring Rodchenko all-Union fame. He illustrates magazines, books, and creates advertising and propaganda posters.

“Advertising designers” Mayakovsky and Rodchenko

Rodchenko is considered one of the ideologists of constructivism, a movement in art where form completely merges with function. An example of such constructivist thinking is the 1925 “Book” advertising poster. El Lissitzky’s poster “Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge” is taken as a basis, while Rodchenko leaves only a geometric design from it - a triangle invading the space of a circle - and fills it with a completely new meaning. He is no longer an artist-creator, he is an artist-designer.

Alexander Rodchenko. Poster "Lengiz: books on all branches of knowledge." 1924 TASS

El Lissitzky. Poster “Beat the whites with a red wedge!” 1920 Wikimedia Commons

In 1920, Rodchenko met Mayakovsky. After a rather curious incident related to the advertising campaign “” (Mayakovsky criticized Rodchenko’s slogan, thinking that it was written by some second-rate poet, thereby seriously offending Rodchenko), Mayakovsky and Rodchenko decide to join forces. Mayakovsky comes up with the text, Rodchenko is in charge of the graphic design. The creative association “Advertising-constructor “Mayakovsky - Rodchenko”” is responsible for the 1920s posters of GUM, Mosselprom, Rezinotrest and other Soviet organizations.

Creating new posters, Rodchenko studied Soviet and foreign photographic magazines, cutting out everything that might be useful, communicated closely with photographers who helped him shoot unique subjects, and eventually, in 1924, bought his own camera. And he instantly becomes one of the main photographers in the country.

Rodchenko the photographer

Rodchenko began taking photographs quite late, being already an established artist, illustrator and teacher at VKHUTEMAS. He transfers the ideas of constructivism into new art, showing space and dynamics in the photograph through lines and planes. From the array of these experiments, two important techniques can be identified that Rodchenko discovered for world photography and which are still relevant today.

Alexander Rodchenko. Sukharevsky Boulevard. 1928© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Pioneer trumpeter. 1932© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Ladder. 1930© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Girl with a Leica camera. 1934© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

The first step is angles. For Rodchenko, photography is a way to convey new ideas to society. In the era of airplanes and skyscrapers, this new art should teach us to see from all sides and show familiar objects from unexpected points of view. Rodchenko is particularly interested in top-down and bottom-up perspectives. This one of the most popular techniques today became a real revolution in the twenties.

The second technique is called diagonal. Even in painting, Rodchenko identified the line as the basis of any image: “The line is the first and the last, both in painting and in any design in general.” It is the line that will become the main constructive element in his further work - photo-montage, architecture and, of course, photography. Most often, Rodchenko will use the diagonal, since, in addition to the structural load, it also carries the necessary dynamics; a balanced, static composition is another anachronism that he will actively fight against.

Rodchenko and socialist realism

In 1928, the magazine “Soviet Photo” published a slanderous letter accusing Rodchenko of plagiarizing Western art. This attack turned out to be a harbinger of more serious troubles - in the thirties, avant-garde figures were condemned one after another for formalism. Rodchenko was very upset by the accusation: “How can it be, I am with all my soul for Soviet power, I work with faith and love for it with all my might, and suddenly we are wrong,” he wrote in his diary.

After this work, Rodchenko again falls into favor. Now he is among the creators of a new, “proletarian” aesthetics. His photographs of physical culture parades are the apotheosis of the socialist realist idea and a vivid example for young painters (among his students is Alexander Deineka). But since 1937, relations with the authorities went wrong again. Rodchenko does not accept the totalitarian regime that is coming into force, and his work no longer brings him satisfaction.

Rodchenko in the 1940-50s

After the war, Rodchenko created almost nothing - he only designed books and albums together with his wife. Tired of politics in art, he turns to pictorialism, a movement that appeared in photography back in the eighties of the 19th century. Pictorialist photographers tried to get away from the nature-like nature of photography and shot with special soft-focus lenses, changing the light and shutter speed to create a picturesque effect and bring photography closer to painting.. He is interested in classical theater and circus - after all, these are the last areas where politics does not determine the artistic program. The New Year’s letter from his daughter Varvara says a lot about Rodchenko’s mood and creativity at the end of the forties: “Daddy! I would like you to draw something to go with your works this year. Don’t think that I want you to do everything in “socialist realism”. No, so that you can do as you can do. And every minute, every day I remember that you are sad and don’t draw. I think you would be more fun then and know that you can do these things. I kiss you and wish you a Happy New Year, Mulya.”

In 1951, Rodchenko was expelled from the Union of Artists and only four years later, thanks to the endless energy of Varvara Stepanova, he was reinstated. Alexander Rodchenko died in 1956, just a short time before his first photographic and graphic exhibition, also organized by Stepanova.

The material was prepared jointly with the Multimedia Art Museum for the exhibition “Experiments for the Future”.

Sources

• Rodchenko A. Revolution in photography.
• Rodchenko A. Photography is an art.
• Rodchenko A., Tretyakov S. Self-beasts.
• Rodchenko A. M. Experiments for the future.
• Visiting Rodchenko and Stepanova!