Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction. Embedded Aesthetics and
Situated History
1. Critical Masses: Mass Action and the Prehistory of
Russian Constructivism
GAN’S CONSTRUCTIVISM
2. Gan’s Constructivism: Aesthetic Theory for an
Embedded Modernism
3. Constructivist Tectonics and the Wegenerian
Revolution
4. The Typographic and Tectonic Conditions of Gan’s
Constructivism
GAN’S PRODUCTIVISM
5. The Communist City: The Total Work of the
Constructivist Object
6. The Communist City, Side B: Montage and the Concrete
Human Character
7. Art in the Battle for Time: Cinematic Realism and the
Rationalization of Labor
Abbreviations for Archival Sources
Notes
List of Illustrations
Index
