2 Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy

2 • Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. He wanted 'to construct' art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20 th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements. Its influence was widespread, with major effects upon architecture, sculpture, graphic design, industrial design, theatre, film, dance, fashion and to some extent music.

3 • The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Aleksei Gan used the word as the title of his book Constructivism, printed in 1922. Constructivism was a post-World War I development of Russian Futurism, and particularly of the 'counter reliefs' of Vladimir Tatlin, which had been exhibited in 1915. The term itself would be invented by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular style of work, while its geometric abstraction owed something to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich.

4 • Constructivism as theory and practice came largely from a series of debates at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow, from 1920 to 1922. After deposing its first chairman, The First Working Group of Constructivists (including Popova, Alexander Vesnin, Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and theorists Aleksei Gan, Boris Arvatov and Osip Brik) would develop a definition of Constructivism as the combination of faktura: the particular material properties of an object, and tektonika, its spatial presence. Initially the Constructivists worked on three-dimensional constructions as a means of participating in industry: the Society of Young Artists exhibition showed these three dimensional compositions, by Rodchenko and a few other artists. Later the definition would be extended to designs for two-dimensional works such as books or posters, with montage and factography becoming important concepts.

5 • Tatlin was born in Kharkiv, the son of a railway engineer and a poet. He worked as a merchant sea cadet and spent some time abroad. He began his art career as an icon painter in Moscow, and attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He also was a professional musician-bandurist, and performed as such abroad. • Tatlin became familiar with the work of Pablo Picasso during a trip to Paris in 1913. • Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed the huge Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin's Tower. Planned from 1919, the monument was to be a tall tower in iron, glass and steel which would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the Monument to the Third International was a third taller at 400 meters high). Inside the iron-and-steel structure of twin spirals, the design envisaged three building blocks, covered with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds (the first one, a cube, once a year; the second one, a pyramid, once a month; the third one, a cylinder, once a day). For financial and practical reasons, however, the tower was never built.

6 • Tatlin's Constructivist tower was to be built from industrial materials: iron, glass and steel. In materials, shape and function, it was envisaged as a towering symbol of modernity. It would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The tower's main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height, around which visitors would be transported with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain four large suspended geometric structures. These structures would rotate at different rates. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and legislative meetings, and this would complete a rotation in the span of one year. Above the cube would be a smaller pyramid housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. Further up would be a cylinder, which was to house an information centre, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. At the top, there would be a hemisphere for radio equipment. There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across the clouds on any overcast day.

• The rise of constructivism was prompted by four factors. • First, leading rationalists challenged critical theorists to move beyond theoretical critique to the substantive analysis of international relations.

• Second, the end of the Cold War undermined the explanatory pretensions of neorealists and neo-liberals, neither of which had predicted, nor could adequately comprehend, the systemic transformations reshaping the global order. • Therefore, the end of the Cold War opened a space for alternative explanatory perspectives and prompted critically inclined scholars to move away from a narrowly defined meta-theoretical critique.

• Third, by the beginning of the 1990 s a new generation of young scholars had emerged who accepted many of the propositions of critical international theory, but who saw potential for innovation in conceptual elaboration and empirically informed theoretical development.

• Not only had the end of the Cold War thrown up new and interesting questions about world politics, the rationalist failure to explain recent systemic transformations encouraged this new generation of scholars to revisit old questions and issues so long viewed through neo-realist and neo-liberal lenses.

• Finally, the advance of the new constructivist perspective was helped by the enthusiasm that mainstream scholars, frustrated by the analytical failings of the dominant rationalist theories, showed in embracing the new perspective, moving it from the margins to the mainstream of theoretical debate.

• Constructivists are divided between modernists and postmodernists. • They have all, however, sought to articulate and explore three core ontological propositions about social life, propositions which they claim illuminate more about world politics than rival rationalist assumptions. • First, to the extent that structures can be said to shape the behavior of social and political actors, be they individuals or states, constructivists hold that normative or ideational structures are just as important as material structures.