WHAT IS RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE?
Russian avant-garde was a very influential movement in the world of avant-garde art, that was at its height in Russia, from around 1890 to 1930 however it is said that its beginning could be as early as 1850 and its end could be as late as 1960. However personally I believe this may be due to the influences continuing from the movement which I will talk about, and the beginning is debatable as there were many things that inspired the movement in the first place. The Russian avant-garde movement includes many separate but closely related art movements that were prominent at the time of the movement as a whole. These closely related movements included movements such as: Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum and Neo-primitivism. The movement reached its most publicly popular height in the period of the Russian Revolution between 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas and concepts of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist realism. Socialist realism was the complete opposite of what Russian avant-garde was about, it was a style of realistic and state approved art which, it emerged at the end of the Russian Revolution where it was first used in 1932. I believe what most solidifies the fact that it was pretty much completely influenced by the soviet state was that the term was settled upon in meetings that included politicians of the highest level, including Stalin himself.
In order to gain a better understanding of the Russian avant-garde movement, these two videos made by the museum of modern art (MoMA) help a lot.
3 examples of work from the Russian avant-garde movement which I am particularly fond of…
SUB-MOVEMENTS OF RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE…
As I mentioned, within Russian avant-garde there were many closely related styles/sub-movements of art. In order to give myself a better understanding of the whole movement I then began to look into each sub-movement and what was included in each, here is some insight on a few of these sub-movements…
SUPREMATISM: this was an art movement which focused on basic geometric forms found in everyday life, such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, which were painted in a limited range of colours. The main artist involved in this movement was Kazimir Malevich who was believed to have founded the movement in 1913, which he then officially announced at one of his exhibitions in 1915. The actual term of supematism itself is a reference to the form of art that was based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling.” This was instead of a realistic depiction of subjects. Said about constructivism by Malevich was that ”Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.” Below are some examples of the art which came from the movement, all 3 from Malevich.
CONSTRUCTIVISM: This was a movement of ”architectural” art which the same as suprematism began in 1913. It began at this time, founded by artist Vladimir Tatlin. The constuctivism movement was actually very influential on the art world as a whole, causing major effects upon sculpture, graphic design, industrial design, architecture, theatre, film, dance and fashion. Below are some examples of the artworks which came from the constructivism movements. As you can see however, there were a lot of visual overlaps and similarities between constuctivism and suprematism.
RUSSIAN FUTURISM: This was another movement within the overall Russian avant-garde movement. It was a style and philosophy of work which was adopted by Russian artists who were influenced by the principles of Fillippo Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto of futurism.’ This manifesto expresses an overall concept called futurism that referred to a rejection of the past and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry. The Russian futurism movement is said to have begun in 1912 (a year earlier than the other two sub-movements which I have looked into) However instead of being influenced by an individual artist, this time the movement was influenced by a group of artists called Hylaea who were based in Moscow. It is only fair that I list the artists who equally made up this group, it included: David Burlyuk, Vasily Kamensky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksey Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich and Olga Rozanova. When looking at works of art from this movement it quickly became evident to me that a frequently used piece of symbolism within the art was the depiction of wheels and physical speed. The presumptions which I make from this is that the wheels and speed represent moving into the future. Below again are some examples of artwork from the movement which I have just spoken about.
INFLUENCES ON MODERN CULTURE AND FASHION FROM RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE…
As I began to explain before, the Russian avant-garde art movement has continued to influence many forms of creativity since its hay day. In terms of how it is still influencing creativity today, there are two creators that stand out to me as being particularly influenced by the movement, and they are fashion designer/photographer Gosha Rubchinskiy and graphic artist/obey clothing brand owner Shepard Fairey. These two artists show clear visual influence within their work from Russian avant-garde. This is particularly through the use of colour, shape, form and elements of text.
Gosha Rubchinskiy (Гоша Рубчинский), a Russian himself, shows a significant amount of influence from Russian avant-garde when it comes to the design of the garments which he designs for his self-named ”Gosha Rubchinskiy” brand. A brand which is very well known in the street high-fashion industry, who have collaborated with worldwide fashion brands such as Adidas, Levi’s, Burberry and Dr. Martens. The main way in which I believe the designs which Gosha produces reflect the movement is in terms of its political statements/rebellion and the use of bold graphic text. Below you can see examples of his work which I believe give a better understanding of my suggestions.
Shepard Fairey who as I said also takes inspiration from the Russian avant-garde. He emerged as a street artist from the skate scene and is best known for his ‘OBEY’ branding and the notorious Andre The Giant logo which he began his brand with as a sticker campaign. Similarly to Rubchinskiy, Fairey also reflects the movement is in terms of its political statements/rebellion and the use of bold graphic text. He is influenced by the Russian graphic rebel propaganda used at the time of the movement and also by the constructivism sub-movement which I explained earlier. His work seems to intend on using the similar effective aesthetic values of the Russian movement in order to get across messages about the political and social issues which we face within our modern society today. Below are some examples of Fairey’s graphic art which I have spoken about.
Visual analysis of a work by Shepard Fairey…
Here we have a piece of work titled Say Yes by Shepard Fairey, a screen printed graphic which was published in 2008 by Fairey. My first thought on this image were that there was a clear political message being put across by Fairey with the ‘say yes’ slogan which I initially believed to have been a link with the OBEY branding surrounding Fairey’s career, and that maybe ‘say yes’ was a message about conforming to society and political changes which is what the OBEY brand entails. Come to find out however that this piece is not intending on conveying any sort of political message, and however is actually a poster created for one of Fairey’s friends Steven Scott who is a part of the ‘afternoons’ band, the artwork is for a song called ‘say yes’ and from there the poster was printed 150 times as part of the project. This is better described by Fairey himself saying ”My friend Steven Scott who works at my favorite LA breakfast spot, The Mustard Seed Cafe, gave me a copy of his band’s demo CD. The band is called AFTERNOONS and their music is very symphonic, uplifting, indie rock in the vein of the Polyphonic Spree or newer Flaming Lips. The standout track is called “Say Yes” and I was so inspired by it that I decided to make a poster for the band to put up on the street, and a few to sell to recoup printing costs. The edition is only 150.” I then begun to become aware of the feeling that I had seen something very similar to this piece and quickly realised that in fact when researching the constructivism sub-movement of Russian avant-garde, I came across a poster by Aleksandr Rodchenko from 1924 which depicts a woman screaming a slogan however in Russian with blatant visual reflections to Fairey’s ‘say yes’ poster. Here is the Rodchenko poster which I believe to have somewhat inspired Fairey.
As well as many other clear aesthetic similarities, the joyful expression of the mouth in both Fairey and Rodchenko’s artwork clearly shows a great similarity. And although I am actually unable to find any hard evidence as to whether Fairey was directly inspired by Rodchenko’s piece, I am quite confident to say that I would be nearly certain that Fairey’s piece is a refence to this and that if not it would be a considerable coincidence which I have come across. Overall I believe that Fairey’s ‘say yes’ piece is a very successful work. The composition of the piece is great as it is full yet remains graphic and not over-complicated, also Fairey’s choice to only use 3 colours (most likely due to the screen-printing technique) is easy on the eye and reflects the style of Russian propaganda in which they tended to also limit the amount of colours used.