Portfolio Task 3 - Avant-Garde

Avant-Garde

noun

A group active in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field, especially in the arts."

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing 2010

Vincent Todolo described Lyubov Popova and Alexander Rodchenko as being "key figures in the modernist avant-garde."
Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism, Margarita Tupitsyn, Tate Publishing 2009

Margarita Tupitsyn said that they sought to "imbue the Bolshevik ambition of modernising the country with the aesthetic of the avant-garde."
Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism, Margarita Tupitsyn, Tate Publishing 2009

Taking this evidence into account, we can assume that Rodchenko and Popova were producing works that could be described as avant-garde. By definition, revolution means that the people seek a new way of life. This is also provides evidence to say that the designers of the Russian Revolution sought to be avant-garde.

Costume Design, Popova, 1923

"I dont think non objective form is the final form: it is the revolutionary condition of form." Popova, 1921, Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism, Margarita Tupitsyn, Tate Publishing 2009

Popova sought to create non-objective form. By non objective form, Popova is describing an avant-garde way of design in that they are designing real life objects in a way that is unrepresentational and non egotistic, it looks like it couldlve been made by a machine. Glen Adamson makes this observation, in reference to Popova and Rodchenko he says, "unlike their paintings from about five years earlier, the drawings themselves are made to look as uninflected as possible, like they were produced automatically. Partly this was to imply that their approach to design was egalitarian. Their own skill in rendering the object was beside the point; it could only detract from the democratic re-invention of everyday life."
Glen Adamson, Blog: From Sketch to Product, The Victoria and Albert Museum (internet - unknown date)

Egalitarianism was a socialist ideal that was being strived for after the Russian Revolution. Since this is the case, we can can note that this design has the avant-garde quality of chipping away at the status-quo.


Design for an aircraft hangar, Alexander Rodchenko 1923

This is another example of the above ideas in avant-garde Russian graphic design of the time.
Rodchenko said "the quest for construction has led the artist through a stage of experimentation with spatial structures to the design of actual things, i.e. to industrial manufacture in which the artist will become the designer of physical objects."

The act of playing with spatial structures in aid of learning to create something new was an avant-garde practice in Russia. This renders the above design avant-garde.