Gan's Constructivism
Aesthetic Theory for an Embedded Modernism
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of California Press
Published:26th Feb '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This compelling new account of Russian constructivism repositions the agitator Aleksei Gan as the movement’s chief protagonist and theorist. Primarily a political organizer during the revolution and early Soviet period, Gan brought to the constructivist project an intimate acquaintance with the nuts and bolts of “making revolution.” Writing slogans, organizing amateur performances, and producing mass-media objects define an alternative conception of “the work of art”—no longer an autonomous object but a labor process through which solidarities are built. In an expansive analysis touching on aesthetic and architectural theory, the history of science and design, sociology, and feminist and political theory, Kristin Romberg invites us to consider a version of modernism organized around the radical flattening of hierarchies, a broad distribution of authorship, and the negotiation of constraints and dependencies. Moving beyond Cold War abstractions, Gan’s Constructivism offers a fine-grained understanding of what it means for an aesthetics to be political.
"Kristin Romberg delivers an earth-shattering reevaluation of the Russian constructivist discipline of tectonics in her new biography of the art movement’s leading agit-man, Aleksei Gan. . . she has written such a tectonically textured testament to Gan—a book that attempts to synthetically respond to the demands of other fields external to history or Slavic studies—as might have made its protagonist proud." * H-Net *
"Devotedly and dauntingly researched (ten archives combed, no page unturned, every typeface identified by font and size), convincingly argued and eloquently written." -- Yuri Tsivian, * Russian Review *
"Romberg’s book illuminates the past but is oriented toward the future. It exemplifies a participatory, rather than receptive, mode for critical writing. Most importantly, it recalibrates the reader’s assumptions about the history of Constructivism, who makes it, and how it can be written." * ARTMargins *
"What is particularly noteworthy in Romberg’s account . . . is an awareness that no discussion of the Constructivist object is complete without considering, first, the changed material and social conditions for its production, including a new conceptualization of artistic labor; and, second, without allowing for its status as art, even where that term must no longer be understood, bourgeoisie-style, in terms of representation or institution." * Art Journal *
ISBN: 9780520298538
Dimensions: 254mm x 178mm x 23mm
Weight: 998g
312 pages