| Artist: | Gabo, Naum |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Constructed Head of a Woman | |
| Date of Work: | c. 1917 | |
| Nationality: | Russian | |
| Context: | Post-Russian Revolution | |
| Movement: | Russian Constructivism | |
| Medium: | Celluloid and Metal | |
| Subject: Gabo dematerializes the sculptural mass of the woman's head into faceted planes and edges in space. He is following cubism's lead in this shift from mimesis to a mapping of the structural dynamics and inner construction of form, but he translates the tension between 3-D illusionism and the 2-D flat picture plane that characterized cubist painting into a construction that works with real space and real materials, in accordance with the stated utilitarian goals of the Russian Constructivists. Not a portrait of a person so much as an experiment in applied abstraction. Style: cubist painting's dematerialization of mass is extended here to constructivist sculptural relief, which "busts" the traditional notion of the sculpture bust, replacing its illusionism and material sense of mass with an exploration of abstract planes in actual space. Contrasting solid and void, Gabo's emphasis here is on structure and space rather than subject. He also does away with the pedestal, placing the constructed form in the corner, shifting the sculptural focus away from mass to space once again. The hope was to give these experiments in applied abstraction an actual, utilitarian function in helping to design and construct the new social order and what the communists called "the new man." Gabo along with the other constructivists embraced new materials rather than the marble or wood traditionally used for sculpture; here he constructs the woman's head out of celluloid and metal, reflecting a new machine aesthetic. Context: this construction dates from the very year of the Russian Revolution, which broke out in October 1917, during WWI. The period of heroic Communism and Russian Constructivism would follow between 1918 and 1921; after that, the party line grows ever more rigid and doctrinaire until Stalin finally establishes an official style of Soviet Realism in 1932, which is decidedly not conducive to experiment or abstraction, advocating a socially conscious naturalism that would be didactic (propagandistic) and easily graspable by the masses. During the early heroic years following the worker's revolution, however, the Constructivists were highly optimistic about the role the artist could play in building the new social order. Gone would be the bohemian marginalization and sad alienation forced on the artist in a modern capitalist society; under Communism, the artist would be a worker engaged in production art. They embraced the machine, which Communism saw as liberating the worker from labor, enabling one to see his or her work as one's art, meaningful and fulfilling. But work only took on meaning if it served a utilitarian purpose. Post-revolutionary Russia was not the time for art about art. The Russian Constructivists, under Tatlin's leadership, published a manifesto in 1923 devoted to bridging the gap between art and industry. They saw the artist's role as that of an engineer in direct contrast to Malevich, Suprematism's artist visionary from the pre-revolutionary days. In the utopian aftermath of the revolution, they attempted to apply the lessons of abstraction to utilitarian ends by adopting the slogan: "real materials in real space." Post-revolutionary reality, however, proved not to be so utopian: there was no money to build most of what they designed, and tensions grew in the ranks of the Constructivists as Tatlin became more and more rigid and demanding that the artist must serve the party line. Gabo and his brother, Pevsner, concerned about the increasing lack of artistic freedom, would break off from the group and publish their own manifesto in 1920. Called the Realistic Manifesto, its principal author was Gabo, who spoke of their constructions as a new Platonic reality of ideas and forms more absolute than any imitation of nature. In 1923, Gabo and his brother left Russia for good. | ||
