ALEXANDER RODCHENKO AT THE HAYWARD GALLERY, LONDON
ALEXANDER RODCHENKO AT THE HAYWARD GALLERY, LONDON
Alexander Rodchenko abandoned painting and sculpture for photography, photomontage, then clearly an irritation to Stalin who clearly opposed his 'formalism' in favour of Socialist Realism. There's a fair amount of that in Rodchenko's work though, for most of his public work would have been channelled through the party, hence his snaps of marching muscled minions in Red Square replete with bobby sox and blue shorts. There are portraits of the poet Mayakovsky, who seems unusually intense, and Mayakovsky's lover, Lilya Brik. (and also a famous portrait of Osip Brik, Lilya's husband and member of the avante-garde grouping Noyvi Lef, presumably with the letters LEF in Cyrillic reflected on his glasses) Photomontage clearly had cinematic origins reflected in the fact that Rodchenko made collaborative posters for Dziga Vertov, maker of the seminal film 'Man with a Movie Camera'.
Rodchenko's relationship with Stalin turned sour after allegations of 'formalism', clearly indicating the threat that Rodchenko, his involvement with the avante-garde and succeeding movements, such as Constructivism, posed to the Party Chairman. Indeed a gradual movement towards formalism is evinced in Rodchenko's photography, from his early work which consists of experiments with camera angles, use of charascuro, and extreme effects of distanciation. Rodchenko realised that questioning the means of representation, the form rather than the banal content of Socialist Realism advocated by Stalin and the Party, maintained a terrible threat to Stalin, because the formal means of representation had to be left unchallenged, according to Stalin, thus normalising the outcomes of artistic, aesthetic representation (that could not be questioned or even shown to be entirely conditional, historical and conventional). Rodchenko maintained that the photographer was a new kind of artist, even a new kind of man (but not a woman), and the camera was a means towards social revolution. However, later in life he lapsed into an apolitical aesthetic stance, declaring that art must be kept separate from politics and was merely a way to bring the people to art not to something else. In the context of the era this movement was surprising since most artists at this time of unbelievable upheaval, war and immense human dislocation were gravitating in the opposite direction. But Rodchenko had clearly tired of politics through his involvement with Stalinism and the many shifts of political position that had been demanded of him, including the effect of terror.
The photographs themselves demonstrate Rodchenko's development throughout the era, from portraiture clearly influenced by his work as an artist, through photomontage influenced by his work in film, then the photographs take on an austerer architectural or sculptural formalism. However Rodchenko never became a fully fledged abstract artist, although his experiments with formalism, repetitions of machines and images of industrialisation, are beginning to tend in that direction. Rodchenko travels full circle through his career, from the intense political involvement of his art in the tens and twenties up to his eventual apolitical stance. If he wearied of politics it is unsurprising. But he is one of those artist fighters who managed to get through and his nachlass should be viewed dutifully, if at all today.
Paul Murphy, Hayward Gallery, London
Alexander Rodchenko abandoned painting and sculpture for photography, photomontage, then clearly an irritation to Stalin who clearly opposed his 'formalism' in favour of Socialist Realism. There's a fair amount of that in Rodchenko's work though, for most of his public work would have been channelled through the party, hence his snaps of marching muscled minions in Red Square replete with bobby sox and blue shorts. There are portraits of the poet Mayakovsky, who seems unusually intense, and Mayakovsky's lover, Lilya Brik. (and also a famous portrait of Osip Brik, Lilya's husband and member of the avante-garde grouping Noyvi Lef, presumably with the letters LEF in Cyrillic reflected on his glasses) Photomontage clearly had cinematic origins reflected in the fact that Rodchenko made collaborative posters for Dziga Vertov, maker of the seminal film 'Man with a Movie Camera'.
Rodchenko's relationship with Stalin turned sour after allegations of 'formalism', clearly indicating the threat that Rodchenko, his involvement with the avante-garde and succeeding movements, such as Constructivism, posed to the Party Chairman. Indeed a gradual movement towards formalism is evinced in Rodchenko's photography, from his early work which consists of experiments with camera angles, use of charascuro, and extreme effects of distanciation. Rodchenko realised that questioning the means of representation, the form rather than the banal content of Socialist Realism advocated by Stalin and the Party, maintained a terrible threat to Stalin, because the formal means of representation had to be left unchallenged, according to Stalin, thus normalising the outcomes of artistic, aesthetic representation (that could not be questioned or even shown to be entirely conditional, historical and conventional). Rodchenko maintained that the photographer was a new kind of artist, even a new kind of man (but not a woman), and the camera was a means towards social revolution. However, later in life he lapsed into an apolitical aesthetic stance, declaring that art must be kept separate from politics and was merely a way to bring the people to art not to something else. In the context of the era this movement was surprising since most artists at this time of unbelievable upheaval, war and immense human dislocation were gravitating in the opposite direction. But Rodchenko had clearly tired of politics through his involvement with Stalinism and the many shifts of political position that had been demanded of him, including the effect of terror.
The photographs themselves demonstrate Rodchenko's development throughout the era, from portraiture clearly influenced by his work as an artist, through photomontage influenced by his work in film, then the photographs take on an austerer architectural or sculptural formalism. However Rodchenko never became a fully fledged abstract artist, although his experiments with formalism, repetitions of machines and images of industrialisation, are beginning to tend in that direction. Rodchenko travels full circle through his career, from the intense political involvement of his art in the tens and twenties up to his eventual apolitical stance. If he wearied of politics it is unsurprising. But he is one of those artist fighters who managed to get through and his nachlass should be viewed dutifully, if at all today.
Paul Murphy, Hayward Gallery, London
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