Experiment/3KcnepHMeHT, 1 (1995), 271-78.

JULIETIE R. STAPANIAN-APKARIAN

ALEXANDER RODCHENKO AND VLADIMIR MAIAKOVSKY1

Well before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, artistic revolution had captured the imaginations and passions .of many Russians. Intense exper• imentation by Russian writers and visual artists in the 191 Os and 1920s led to the distortive dynamism of Russian Cubo-Futurism, the mystical geometries of Suprematism, and the attempts by the Constructivists to organize the concrete materials of modern life into new structures. With Lenin's takeover in 1917, revolutionary artists suddenly found themselves in the world's foremost laboratory for potential social change. Vigorous debates erupted in the first decade of the young state as artists vied for the opportunity to realize their ideas on an unprecedented scale. Among the leading voices in the avant-garde's efforts to build a new culture were those of Constructivist artist Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko ( 1891- 1956) (Fig. 93) and Futurist poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Maiakovsky (1893-1930) (Fig. 94). Not only have the independent accomplishments of both men now become artistic monuments, but their collaborative works also form a major legacy of the Modernist endeavor. Rodchenko was raised and educated in Kazan. After graduation in 1914 he moved to Moscow. There, with compass and ruler experiments (1915) and black on black paintings (1918), he moved with other ex• perimental artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, and Vladimir Tatlin. Rodchenko became increasingly absorbed in the construction of objects in real space. By looking to industrial models, he helped advance from pure Constructivism to the idea of "production" or "productivist" art: artists were now renamed artist-constructors, who, like engineers, were to reorganize the materials of life in order to transform society. Heeding the

1. For a comprehensive study of Rodchenko's career, see S. Khan-Magomedov., Rodchenko. The Complete Work (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986). Other useful overviews of Rodchenko include: Aleksandr M. Rodchenko, Varvarva F. Stepanova, The Future Is Our Only Goal, ed. Peter Noever (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1991 ), with essays by A. lavrentiev and A. Volker; G. Karginov, Rodchenko (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979); and Rodchenko and the Arts of Revolutionarv Russia. Catalog of exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1979. The primary source for Maiakovsky is the thirteen-volume V. V. Maiakovsky. Po/noe Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: ANSSR, 19 5 5-61), edited by A. Metchenko et a/. 272 Experiment,/3KcnepHMeiiT

call for innovation in art education generated by such a radical revision of artistic practice, Rodchenko taught at Vkhutein (Higher State Artistic and Technical Institute, 1927-30) in Moscow, where he directed the Metalwork Department. . . Rodchenko's.int(;!rest in di-scarding past tradition and bringing art into everyday life echoed Maiakovsky's powerful dissident voice. Trained as a painter before becoming a professional poet, Maiakovsky came from his leadership of the pre-Soviet bohemia to embrace the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. One night in 1914, Rodchenko first saw Maiakovsky at a Futurist art "happening," when he bought a photograph of Maiakovsky, the Futurist poet-rebel who, posthumously, became a Soviet poet laureate. Despite the great quantity and diversity of Maiakovsky's artistic work, it consistently relates to a persona closely identifiable with the poet himself. Born with strong physique and booming voice, Maiakovsky's artistic persona displays a hyperbolic sensitivity combined with a sharply provocative revolutionary stance. With his initial training as a painter, Maiakovsky became a masterful manipulator of literary images; and his poetry, is rich in verbal play, neblogisms, innovative rhymes, and rhythms, that bring his language close to the content and cadences of everyday speech. (As Rodchenko notes in the reminiscence below, Maiakovsky often composed while walking.) While Rodchenko received acclaim for his innovative use of lettering and. numbers in his design work, Maiakovsky became noted for his technique of heightening prosodic features wiith typesetting styles like the "short column" and "staircase" arrangements of verselines on the printed page. In 1923 Rodchenko designed photomontages to illustrate Maiakov• sky's long poem Pro eto (About It). In addition to the cover, Rodchenko created twelve strikingly original photomontages, several of which were not included in the first publication. Rodchenko was much involved in innovative book graphic design (he designed over thirty-five books by Maiakovsky) and he made a series of photographs of cardboard figures for a planned production with cutouts of Samozveri (Self-Made Animals, 1926}, a children's book (not realized) by Sergei Tretiakov. Rodchenko also did many of the covers, layouts, and other art work for Lef (Left Front of. the Arts, 1923-25) and its continuation Novyi Lef (New LEF, 1927-28}, edited by Maiakovsky. The pages of this journal now document much of the theoretical advances and artistic polemics of the time. Contributors included the F~rmalist theoretidans Osip Brik a:nd Viktor Shklovsky, the artist Anton L~yinsky, and the poet Nikolai Aseev. Rodchenko worked extensively in photojournalism and with his wife, the artist Varvara Stepanova,.contributed to the propaganda journal SSSR na stroike/USSR in Construction. With his interest in black and white