Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935, Reviewed by Colin Melia

// Royal Academy of Arts, 29 October 2011 to 22 January 2012 //

// Colin Melia is an MA candidate in History of Design at the Royal College of Art. His interests include twentieth century architecture and paper architecture. //

Richard Pare, Shabolovka Radio Tower, 1998, Photograph, 154.8 x 121.9 cm © Richard Pare

It is perhaps appropriate that as Anish Kapoor’s orbit tower nears completion on the Olympic site, the granddaddy of enormous climbing frames everywhere should stand (albeit in model form) in the same city.  Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, built in 1920 to commemorate the Russian Revolution, was intended to dwarf the Eiffel tower and project messages of socialism across the clouds yet rather predictably was never constructed.  Today, a ten metre tall model of Tatlin’s Tower stands in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts, looking like some kind of deranged and bizarre children’s play area; disappointingly, its true function is to greet visitors to Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935.

Liubov Popova, Painterly Architectonics, 1918-19 Oil on canvas 731 x 481 mm © State Museum of Contemporary Art - G. Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki, Greece

The two decades covered in this exhibition were characterised in Russia by optimism and creativity as artists searched for a new visual language that responded to the canons of socialism.  Constructivist artists such as Lissitzky and Klutsis, both well represented in the exhibition, believed themselves to belong at the vanguard of social change and endeavoured to move beyond pure art, focusing instead on ‘production art’; the application of art to practical purposes such as graphic design, theatre set design and industrial design.1.  Although the work of the constructivists was never mass produced as intended, their experiments with abstract form and colour (such as Popova’s Architectonics series, Lissitzky’s Proun drawings and Klutsis’s many designs for propaganda stands), drawn from the Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki, form one third of the exhibition.  Lissitzky described the Proun drawings as the ‘transitional stage’ between painting and architecture (2) and it is the final stage of this outworking of constructivist ideals that makes up the other two thirds of the exhibition; vintage photographs of newly constructed buildings drawn from the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow, and a selection of photographs taken by Richard Pare which document the present state of these same buildings.

The exhibition, housed in the top floor of the Academy, is sold very much as an exploration of the link between art and architecture and the first room runs true to form, featuring a juxtaposition of Rodchenko’s Linearism and a photograph of the Shabolovka radio tower featured on the exhibition poster; Linearism shows a series of overlapping circles and bears comparison with Pare’s striking shot of the radio tower viewed from below.  So far, so theoretical.

Venture further that this first room, however, and Pare’s photographs take centre stage.  First encountered is the Tsentrosoyuz union building by Le Corbusier, featuring an intriguing interior circulation system of sloping and curving ramps, strangely reminiscent of a Scalextric set.  Next up is the Gosplan Garage of 1936 by Konstantin Melnikov, seemingly set in motion by a huge circular window that is so dynamic it could burst free and roll off down the road at a moment’s notice.  Before long, the viewer encounters many more huge colour photos of daring and often playful structures; robust hydroelectric power stations, cylindrical bread factories, rusty textile mills and communal housing schemes all make an appearance.  These innovative and forward looking buildings are a far cry from the repetitive and monolithic apartment blocks which often spring to mind when soviet architecture is mentioned, yet through Richard Pare’s melancholic photographs, they are also distanced from the abstract artwork hanging, somewhat ignored, on the opposite walls.  Pare picks out crumbling stone and flaking paint, encroached on by vegetation.  Trees appear where once was open ground.  Pipes rust and break, factory floors appear eerily deserted.  These evocative photographs simultaneously speak of the compassionate aims of the constructivist movement and the tragedy of unfulfilled opportunities that was to befall the constructivists in the form of Joseph Stalin.  Dirty and falling apart, the architecture operates at a human scale far removed from the neat paintings of Rodchenko et al.

Melnikov House: entrance facade, M.A. Ilyin, 1931, 117 x 90 mm © Department of Photographs, Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow

The Academy has presented this exhibition as an exercise in art theory, where constructivist principles seep through the mediums of painting, sculpture and architecture; the advertising poster is dressed in the constructivist colour palette of red, white and black, with the most abstract of Pare’s photographs – his shot of the radio tower – featuring prominently.  Klutsis’s propaganda tower was similarly painted in red, white and black to hide a rough timber finish, and it is through photographs of peeling paint that these layers of theory are peeled away to reveal the more melancholy message Pare has to offer us.  The presentation side by side of old photos of new buildings with new photos of old buildings gives the show a twin sense of optimistic prophesy and bleak elegy, highlighting the morally charged nature of constructivist architecture while also drawing attention to the precarious position the remaining examples now occupy; Pare describes his continuing race to document further examples before they are cleared by property developers in exhibition literature.3.

This is not to say the link between constructivist art and architecture is not significant, nor that it is not worthy of its own show.  A handful of Pare’s carefully choreographed shots look remarkably similar to the paintings of Liubov Popova, demonstrating the abstract nature of the architecture the show sets out to promote, but these remain the exception.  The title, the colour scheme and the Shabolovka tower that make up the exhibition poster present to underground commuters an exhibition that ignores the moral qualities and depressing reality of constructivist architecture, whereas once inside the gallery Pare’s touching shots skew the show in the other direction, completely overshadowing and undermining the artwork.  Perhaps this was predictable when presenting work by a photographer with an eye for the atmospheric alongside inaccessible experimentations with line and form; the theoretical paintings simply do not compliment the photographs.  Maybe the artwork should have been presented alongside less evocative material, such as architectural drawings, or enlarged versions of the contemporary photographs from the Shchusev museum.

Rusakov Workers' Club: general view showing the three auditorium segments, Richard Pare, 1995, 50.8 x 61 cm © Richard Pare

The intended theoretical approach to this exhibition is still just about possible, if approached in a detached way, but this would be to ignore the best thing this show has to offer; a celebration of the laudable optimism of the constructivists, a warning of the peril these structures now face, and a quite stunning collection of haunting, beautiful photographs.  Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 really is a resounding success, albeit in an unintended way; the true power of the exhibition coming exclusively from the deft touch of Richard Pare rather than what his photographs, combined with constructivist abstract art, have to say about art theory.