Custom Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/Art-As-Education--Constructivism-And-In 👈

1. Art as Education:
Constructivism and Instrumentalism
Lyubov Bugaeva
‘The same laws of economy and material limitation should
govern the production of a ship, a house, a poem, or a pair
of boots” (Alexander Rodchenko).
“Where ends and means interpenetrate and inform one
another, however, the application of techne, or productive
skill, in the arts leads to enriched experience, whether the
art product be a painting or a pair of shoes” (Larry Hickman
on Dewey).
The thing, or the object, that is one of the principal philosophical categories originating in
the classical Greek philosophy, in the 1920s undergoes its next interpretive transformation in
the philosophy of pragmatism and finds itself in the center of attention in the art of
Constructivism. A close look at the object in these two independent and dissimilar modes of
conceptualizing the world discloses certain parallel thinking.
1. Philosophy of Object
In 1922 in Berlin Ilya Erenburg and El Lissitzky (Lisickij), ideologists of Constructivist art,
founded the journal Veshch (Vešč’) / Gegenstand / Objet (Object, or Thing) notable for its
short period of existence (the first doubled volume was published at the beginning of 1922;
the third and the last volume — in the middle of 1922) and for its universal character (the
journal’s content reflects a broad spectrum of innovative ideas in various fields and spheres of
art). The introductory article of the first issue connects the emergence of the journal with
“exchange of practical knowledge, realizations, and “objects” between the young Russian and
West European artists”. The object in this declaration is at the same time a link, “a meeting
point” between Russia and the West and a symbol of the beginning of new – creative –
epoch.1 The fundamental characteristic of the contemporary life is seen as the prevalence of
the constructive method:
“We find it [the constructive method] just as much in the new economics and the development of industry
as in the psychology of our contemporaries in the world of art”;2
“We have called our review Vešč’ (Object) because for us art means the creation of new “objects”. That
explains the attraction that realism, weightiness, volume, and the earth itself hold for us”.3
By objects the founders of the journal meant not functional and primitive utilitarian
objects of everyday life but objects of art. From the point of view of Lissitzky and Erenburg,
“every organized piece of work — whether it be a house, a poem, or a picture — is an
“object” directed toward a particular end, which is calculated not to turn people away from
life, but to summon them to make their contribution toward life’s organization”.4 Then the
goal of art is the revelation of objects that is actually the revelation of the life’s mystery and
the sense of life. The authors of the journal Veshch created a syncretic artistic ideology

2. 2
institutionalized in the conception of the Constructivist art. Although Constructivism (the
Russian Konstruktivizm) was already initiated in 1913 with the abstract geometric
constructions of Vladimir Tatlin and articulated in 1920 in Realist Manifesto by Vladimir
Tatlin, Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo the Constructivism of Veshch stands out as a special
trend within the Constructivism in general, theoretically the best worked out one. The first
issue of the journal Veshch presented the editor’s program and stated the basic propositions of
the concept of object in the Constructivist art. Schematically they come to the following
tenets.
• Usefulness
Franc Hellens, a Belgian writer, connects usefulness with the technological development.
For Hellens “literary language evolves together with the spirit of the age, which is itself
subject to the influence of economic and social evolution”.5 The realistic present of
mechanical simplification finds its match in refinement, preciseness, and usefulness. Hellens
advises artists, writers and film directors in particular, to read technical books to find
inspiration there and then to draw attention in their works “to what is positively “useful”,
exclusively necessary, to things that produce movement, to dynamic force”.6
• Existence of a project
Franc Hellens makes a comparison of a motorcar with an old cart. According to Hellens,
the former is marvelous and affects us by the inner beauty of its engineering; “the key to its
style is simplicity of line and the absence of arabesque and ornamentation”.7 The principal
idea of the Constructivist artists as articulated by Hellens is the ideal construction made of
geometrically correct elements. The conception of mathematically calculated harmony based
on the rational foundation brings Constructivists very close to the social and political
utopianism since both look forward to the project of an ideal future. Constructivism as well as
utopianism strives for explication of the principles of the object’s construction that afterward
leads to the inner parallelism of various spheres of art.
The conception of Constructivist art presented by the journal Veshch has a number of
cross points with the conception of art generated by the participants of the Dutch movement
De Stijl. Some of the Veshch contributors, including Teo van Desburg, a Dutch architect and
designer, the founder of the De Stijl journal, took part in the movement De Stijl.
Constructivists replace the notion of “style” with the notion of the construction that serves as
the foundation for the object and for the society in general:
“The word stijl also has another meaning: a ‘post, jamb or support’. In particular it refers to the upright
element of a crossing joint in cabinet-making and carpentry. ‘Style’ as conceived by Van Doesburg and
other early De Stijl collaborators was not seen as the surface application of ornament or decoration, but as
an essential ordering of structure which would function as a sign for an ethical view of society”.8
One of the principle goals of the advocates of new art becomes “a stripping down of the
traditional forms of architecture, furniture, painting or sculpture into simple ‘basic’ geometric
components or ‘elements’”.9 The project that forms the basis of objects becomes explicit in
the compositions of lines. In the middle 1920s van Desburg under the influence of works of
Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko and Lissitzky comes to the conclusion that the

3. 3
diagonal can represent the human body in motion and in addition becomes convinced that
“diagonal relationships more completely realized ‘the spiritual’, because they opposed the
gravitational stability of the natural and material structure of horizontals and verticals”.10
• The unity of form, matter and material
Van Desburg argues the semiotic intersection of form, matter and material:
“With the development of the idea that a notion should be expressed in form, and form in methods, a
significant change is taking place in monumental art. The illustrative and decorative character must be
rejected on grounds of standing in perfect contradiction to essence. For the essence consists of creating, in
accordance with a constructivist plan, an aesthetic space with the aid of the correspondence of colors”.11
• Non-mimetism
Albert Gleizes, a French painter, in the 1920s bent for Cubism and Abstractionism,
evaluates positively the collapse of the realistic and mimetic painting. The pictorial realism
that is dependent on perspective vision is based on the external resemblance of the original
and its representation. In absence of the external resemblance the mind repossesses its key
position in the creation of a work of art:
“The object has to free itself from illusions weakening it. Instead of a painting reflecting the outside
(general) world distorted by emotions, it should be an internal, personal image constructed according to
immutable, universal laws. <…> The internal, personal world is consistent with the laws of
constructivism. This is the downfall or more precisely the purge of the realistic interpretation; it is a
revelation of that which is important and definitive, which goes beyond the fortuitous and transient that
up until now have constituted the exclusive focus of painters and sculptors”.12
Fernand Léger, a French painter, sculptor, ceramist, graphic artist and scene-painter,
echoes to Albert Gleizes in his rejection of mimetic art:
“Herein lies the dramatic tension. A bad artist copies an object residing in a state of similitude. A good
artist depicts an object being in a state of equivalence. <…> Those who depict are being truthful. Those
who copy are lying”.13
Lissitzky, an advocate of nonobjective art, also stands in opposition to mimesis. Non-
objectiveness for him seeks to reveal the inner structure of the object and in fact means the
creation of “new objectiveness” that differs from the familiar world of objects and excludes
mimesis.
• Rhythm
The Constructivist artist not only discovers a scheme or a project at the foundation of the
object but also feels a rhythm. To paint is
“<…> to bring the surface to life with lines, forms, and color. Just as the world is a majestic rhythm of
both perfection and infinity, the picture, too, is rhythm reduced to the proportions of the frame and visible
because it is stripped of random incidents that obscure it. It is like the rhythm of the universe, perfect and
infinite”.14
• Contextuality
The object in Constructivism is contextual; it means that it exists in a certain spatial and
temporal continuum. Lissitzky developed an idea of a new space in his own invented form of
abstract art that he called Proun (Project for the Affirmation of the New). Proun is a
combination of geometrical forms that includes a viewer looking at them from various angles.
In Proun the space is configured by the movement of viewer’s eyes; moreover, the space is
transformed by the viewer who actively inhabits it.15 Subsequently, several of Lissitzky’s
compositions utilize shifting axes and multiple perspectives to convey the idea of rotation in
space. The artistically created space is subjectively situational.

4. 4
2. Philosophy of Object: Instrumentalism
The 1920s—1930s is the acme of Constructivism and is the period of John Dewey’s shaping
the conception of Instrumentalism within the philosophy of pragmatism in its application to
the sphere of aesthetics. In the July of 1928 Dewey visited Leningrad and Moscow. Though
the visit to the Soviet Russia did not change considerably Dewey’s aesthetic preferences yet it
possibly contributed into Dewey’s thoughts on the role of art in the society. The conception of
instrumental knowledge as well as the interpretation of the object in art was theoretically
postulated in his Art as Experience (1934) where Dewey defined the notion of “useful”. For
Dewey both fine and practical art have a common principle; “so far as the action is useful not
simply to something else, but in itself and to the whole self, there is beauty”.16 Hence one of
the characteristics of the object in instrumentalism is:
• Usefulness
What in Dewey’s terminology is termed as instrumental in the sphere of art is connected
with the notion of knowledge and skills. High skill in one or another sphere of art can be
achieved in case the object causes the constantly renewed sense of excitement.
Instrumentalism is manipulation (in the best sense of the word: manipulation as usage) of the
works of art. In the act of manipulation in the focus of attention alongside with the perception
of the outer side of the aesthetic object is the object’s inner structure that makes possible the
very act of manipulation. Instrumentalism, like Constructivism, aims at the explication of the
principles of the object’s organization. Dewey works out the concept of “design” that reflects
the outer as well as the inner structure of the object. In Dewey’s terminology design has a
double meaning:
“It signifies purpose and it signifies arrangement, mode of composition. <..> Only when the constituent
parts of a whole have the unique end of contributing to the consummation of a conscious experience, do
design and shape lose superimposed character and become form”.17
Thus, according to Dewey, the next characteristic of the object of art is:
• The existence of a project
While creating the work of art the artist pays attention not only to the physical
characteristics of the material he uses (for Dewey these characteristics are different from the
characteristics-sensations of the object in Hume’s philosophy) but also to the meanings of
these characteristics. Thus, according to Dewey, the object of industrial art has form intended
for special usage that can become aesthetical in case “it serves immediately the enrichment of
the immediate experience of the one whose attentive perception is directed to it”.18 Dewey
combines the notions of form and matter and marks the dynamic character of form connected
with the material used to produce a particular work of art. Hence the object of art is
characterized by:
• The unity of form, matter and material
Dewey never considered art to be based on simple-minded mimetic resemblance to nature.
What he called the “realistic” art in contrast to the naturalistic one is the art that “reproduces

5. 5
details but misses their moving and organizing rhythm”.19 The object of art in Dewey’s sense
is distinguished by
• Non-mimetism
Dewey claims that “because rhythm is a universal scheme of existence, underlying all
realization of order in change, it pervades all the arts, literary, musical, plastic and
architectural, as well as the dance”.20 Thus Dewey, like Constructivists, notes such
characteristic of the object as
• Rhythm
The experience in Instrumentalism as well as art is “the result of interaction between a live
creature and some aspect of the world in which he lives”.21 For Dewey “the attributes of the
work of art depend not only on the persons experiencing it (as well as on the art product) but
also on the circumstances of the experience”.22 Thus Dewey inserts experience into certain
contexts. According to Dewey,
“Esthetic recurrence in short is vital, physiological, functional. Relationships rather than elements recur,
and they recur in differing contexts and with different consequences so that each recurrence is novel as
well as a reminder”.23
The notion of the problematic situation introduced by Dewey locates and contextualizes
human experience; actualize the search for new solutions in the situation “here and now”. The
experience in Instrumentalism then is not a discrete and extemporal experience but is
connected to the emotional sphere and “aesthetic form is not the “exclusive result of the lines
and colors” but “a function of what is in the scene in its inte.raction with what the beholder
brings with him”.24 Dewey’s accent on the immediate in the aesthetic experience brings in
the characteristic of the object that is
• Contextuality
Consequently, Dewey’s view of the object in relation to the Constructivist theory
represents the figure of Uroboros — step by step Dewey’s conception demonstrates the same
logic of argumentation as the Constructivist conception does.
3. Art as Designing
The first issue of the journal Veshch formulated alongside with the general principles of
the object’s structure the general principles of Constructivist art. The art is:
• Nature- and experience-based
Gleizes considers an engine more human and natural than a tree or even a human body;
for him the technical development surpasses the evolution of nature:
“Scientists (for example) have created metallic organisms that can produce energy, which until now was
thought only to derive from natural organisms. Engineers will soon replace the muscles of both man and
animal”.25
Hence, a painting based on the constructive principles as well as an engine is naturally
based: “it will be subject to precise laws of design not from the realm of imagination but
deriving from the meticulous study of nature”.26 Jacques Lipchitz, a French sculptor and one

6. 6
of the founders of Cubism, declared in 1922 that in his art he had already created “an object
which was quite autonomous in nature and was parallel to nature.27
The difference between the new art and the traditional art, according to Constructivists,
lies in the experimental character of new art that is far from being speculative. The
Constructivist painter in the process of creating a work of art addresses his own intuition and
experience in order to counterbalance addressing the traditional form predetermined by
artistic or literary canons:
“We are no longer dealing with some kind of opinion put forward by a certain individual concerning an
image that existed some time in the past; distortions or thoughts born out of a particular case are always
unlawful: here is individual revealing himself through the constructivist laws of the universe. This is not
an interplay of memories <…> but rather an interplay of architectonic laws that rest upon everything
around us”.28
In Dewey’s natural metaphysics of experience art occupies a special role. Comparing art
and nature Dewey defines art as “a natural event in which nature otherwise partial and
incomplete comes fully to itself”.29 Larry Hickman points out that in Dewey’s view the
parallelism of nature and art is based on their creativity:
“<…> mimicry is only one of the many senses in which art imitates nature. In a richer and more general
sense, art imitates nature because nature is fecund and productive, and brings forth consequences, and this
is also what productive skill accomplishes <…> The imitation of nature by means of the development and
use of technology — productive skill — is, then, more than simple mimicry, though it may be that”. 30
For Dewey “science is an art” and “art is practice”,31 which is similar to inquiry
diverging not from theory but from the mode of practice “not intelligent, not inherently and
immediately enjoyable”.32 Hence, for Dewey art is nature- and experience-based.
• The objective, non-individual character
The objective character of scientific methods in Constructivism becomes a model for art;
art turns into a specific branch of science. In 1919 Punin, a commissar of the Russian museum
in Petrograd, Russia, wrote that young artists are looking for such methods of work that will
allow them to create objective artistic forms that are irrespective of the influence of personal
subjective factors. However, realism in Constructivism does not mean “truthfulness” as
mimetic reproducing of reality. Léger distinguishes between the conventional “visual realism”
and the “new” or “conceptual realism”33 and finds realism in devotion to the basic principles
of the object’s organization. In Lissitzky’s interpretation the linear perspective that focuses
rays in the subject’s point of vision is connected with subjectivity in art while the
denunciation of linear perspective correlates with the rejection of subjectivity. The objectivity
and “new realism” are routed in the above-individual character of art. The collectiveness is
affirmed as the main characteristic of art of the future:
“All artists irrespective of their nationality share one final goal: to find a common and architectonic
foundation for the plastic experiment. Following the quest for a universal method of expression with
various “isms”, artists have come to realize that the art of the future is collective, and constructive, and
anti-individualistic art”.34
The counter-individual character of art declared by the journal Veshch finds its
realizations in numerous works of Constructivists. Thus L szl Moholy-Nagy, a Hungarian
painter whose artistic works were influenced by geometrical compositions of Lissitzky and
Malevich, in 1922 presented Telephone Painting, according to the legend, ordered on the
phone; later he started to use a sprayer for painting and rejected a signature in order to

7. 7
increase the impression of anonymity and thus escape from the inevitable subjectivity of a
work of art.
Dewey also considered the creative activity of an artist as an integral part of human
creativity. Art is not separated from real life and is not confined in museums.35 The art
product is the result of experience and “is not something that happens in an encapsulated
subjectivity” but “has an objective locus, evoked and informed by a transaction between
organism and environment”.36 Then “the history of human experience is a history of the
development of arts”.37 Dewey points out that
“A work of fine art, a statue, building, drama, poem, novel, when done, is as much a part of the objective
world as is a locomotive or a dynamo. And, as much as the latter, its existence is causally conditioned by
the coordination of materials and energies of the external world”.38
Therefore the next feature of art in Instrumentalism is objectiveness and realistic non-
individual character.
• Universalism
In the 1920s the project of scientific and aesthetic reorganisation of the world on basis of
the idea of universal harmony becomes extremely popular. In avant-garde of universalistic
approach are the artists associated with Veshch: Lissitzky and van Desburg, Rodchenko and
Nadezhda Udaltzova. Rodchenko worked over the creation of universal clothes, Udaltzova —
over the creation of the universal bags for women. Lissitzky created prouns, geometrical
forms floating in cosmic space, van Desburg — the universal style in art:
“The development of the new art towards the abstract and the universal, excluding the external and the
individual, has rendered possible the realization of a collective style, achieved through common efforts
and common notions. Towering above the individual and the nation, this style articulates precisely and
concretely the loftiest, most profound, and most general requirements of beauty”.39
Behind all the artistic attempts to create a universal object there lays an aspiration to
reorganize the world revolutionary and to develop a new mentality that will transgress the
limits of the individual consciousness and at the same time will not reject the individuality but
reorganize it artistically. Universalism that borders on globalism finds its reflection in
international aspirations of creators of “new art” starting with the title of the journal presented
in three languages Veshch / Gegenstand / Objet and ending with multilingual manifestos of
artists and the international auctorial personnel of the journal. As Lissitzky and Erenburg
claimed, “art is today international, though retaining all its local symptoms and
particularities”.40 The efforts of the Veshch contributors were aimed at creation of “the new
collective, international style” as a result “of work undertaken in common”.41
Dewey, like Constructivists, insisted on art’s universal instrumental value. For him art’s
special function and value are connected with it enriching experience. Thus songs sung by the
harvesters do not only bring aesthetic experience into their work but also initiate desire to
work and make the work creative. In the same way the work of fine arts does not only raise an
aesthetic sense of excitement but enriches human perception and communication. The
aesthetic experience is an integral part of Dewey’s recognition of the global functionality of
art and is related to his understanding of the aesthetic experience as the one where “the whole
creature is alive”.42 For Dewey the selectivity of art

8. 8
“<…> extracts matter from a multitude of objects, numerically and spatially separated, and condenses
what is abstracted in an object that is an epitome of the values belonging to them all <…> creates the
“universality” of a work of art”.43
In the Instrumentalism within the work of art there are no “oppositions of individual and
universal, of subjective and objective, of freedom and order”:
“<…> the “universal” is not something metaphysically anterior to all experience but is a way in which
things function in experience as a bond of union among particular events and scenes”.44
Dewey thus prescribes to art the universal cosmic character.
• Connection of art and industry
Constructivism owes its origin to the early Futurism of “The first Manifesto of futurism”
(1909) by Marinetti that treats the technical achievements of the beginning of the 20th
century
as the turn from the “epoch of man” to the “epoch of technique”. Léger who tried to convey
mechanical elements in his paintings states:
“I believe that the presence of beauty in an industrial object does not rule out the presence of artistic
creation. Aim: How to achieve the equivalence of objects by combining the conscious (construction, will,
knowledge of three-dimensional methods) with the unconscious (creative instinct)”.45
Van Doesburg in his lectures in 1922 declares “that the machine ‘represents the very
essence of mental discipline <…> mechanics is the immediate balance of the static and
dynamic — the balance of thought and feeling’”.46 Van Doesburg links liberation of man
with development of industry; the latter opposes hand labor that puts man down to the level of
instrument. The photomontage, one of the principal artistic methods of Constructivism,
connects the new art and the technical means; its main goal is integration of objects from the
world of machines into the world of art.47
As for Dewey he asserts that the separation of fine art and practical industrial art brings
the esoteric meaning to fine arts.48 The technology in Dewey’s terminology, like in
Constructivism, is not in opposition to art. Besides, life in general resembles the industrial
cycle as it produces new values, new feelings, and so on.49 As Constructivists, Dewey thus
asserts the connection of art and industry.
• Serial character
Le Corbusier, a French architect, theoretic of architecture and design, in the 1920s on the
pages of the magazine Esprit Nouveau demonstrated himself as an active advocate of the new
functional art like serial art. Le Corbusier did not only work out several city projects where
the life activity of the citizens was organized in a number of vertical levels strictly divided
into functional zones but also proposed to build houses in series to develop the unity of
thoughts and feelings determined by the unity of living conditions. Thus the architect likened
the human activity to mechanical operations and identified “the industrialization of building
and the manufacture of prefabricated products as achievements — essential factors that will
play an important role in future architecture”.50
The idea of serial art was developed in the 1920s by the participants of the movement De
Stijl. J.J.P. Oud, the leader of Dutch functionalism, referring to Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice
pointed out that though the components of Wright’s Robie house were machine-made they
anyway possessed the aesthetic value.51 In July 1922 De Stijl published the key article by
Moholy-Nagy “Production and Reproduction”. The article reads that reproduction and the

9. 9
serial production abolish representation in the familiar sense and emphasize the concept of
design. The separate picture becomes a structural element of the whole work of art.52
Instrumentalism, similar to Constructivism, treats the serial production positively. Hence
the experience, that is one of the central categories in instrumentalism, is interpreted as the
series of the problematic situations in progressive change; while solving these situations the
subject structures his life and construes himself. In Instrumentalism the relations between the
original and a copy are irrelevant; relevant is experience, the sense of excitement caused by a
work of art; “a copy which can be distinguished from the original only by X-rays,
microscopes, and chemical analysis is aesthetically equivalent to the original, whatever its
market-value might be”.53
• The artist as a scientist and an engineer
Science was a source of inspiration for the avant-garde in general and for Constructivist
art in particular. In Constructivism that assigns a special role to science the artist is often
compared with the scientist:
“The destruction of the theme as a pretext will before long enable the generation now free from academic
models and trying to prolong the reign of ambiguity to actually enjoy art. The artist will be like the
scientist”;54
“I conclude from this that one can only truly build with the aid of numbers and geometry, and not by
geometrizing either our futurist pursuits of yesterday or our cubist ones of today. This geometrization is
only an apparent construction; the real construction remains invisible behind the surface of the painting; it
serves as “means” and not as an “end”. An artist must be a good geometrician and good mathematician
and must be well acquainted with certain elements of physics and biology. I have stated in my book that
art is science made human and that art and science are inseparable. The future belongs to those artists who
are at the same time architects and constructors, rather than to modistes who work exclusively from and
for the sake of emotions”.55
Visually the concept of the artist as an engineer of the world is represented in Lissitzky’s
infamous photomontage and photogram “The Constructor” (1924). In this piece Lissitzky
positions himself as the “artist-constructor” who abandoned the paintbrush for the compass.
For Dewey “science is an art” and “is one among the arts and among the works of art”;56
moreover, art bears the palm in their interrelation.57 However, while for Constructivists the
artist is a scientist, for Dewey the scientist is an artist.
• Practice-based: the activity of the artist and the viewer
Man, both the artist and the viewer, is active in Constructivist art. The relations between
the artist and the reality remind of Karl Marx’s idea of the dialectic active unity of the knower
and the known in the act of knowing. According to Marx, cognition is an active process; the
subject in the act of cognition transforms himself as well as the object of cognition. The artist
of Constructivist art turns a passive spectator into an active participant of art:
“Today man is aware of his creative mission. He is no longer content with passive adaptation. Physical
needs lead to a faster pace calling for decisions devoid of sentimentalism”;58
“<…> the aims of monumental art can be achieved on a completely different basis by placing man inside
the plastic arts (and not in front of them), thereby enabling of him to fully participate in this art”.59
Lissitzky in his children’s book “Suprematist Story of Two Squares in Six Constructions”
while narrating the cosmic version of October revolution suggests for readers to create models
to illustrate the plot of the story and thus to establish order in the world of chaos that will be
an analogue of the new revolutionary world order. Van Doesburg, who often used in his

10. 10
magazine the images of children’s toys, asserts the game-like character of art that follows its
own rules”.60 The “demonstration spaces” created by Lissitzky in Germany such as Room for
Constructivist Art (Dresden, 1926) and Abstract Cabinet (Hanover, 1927—1928) also
required the activity of the viewer. The visitors were encouraged to open and close doors to
shape exhibition space, to slide panels to reveal or hide pictures, change light, etc.
The category of inquiry presupposes developing experiential activity of the artist who
expands his experience in the process of creating, or producing works of art. For Dewey
aesthetic perception is open for considering and re-considering. Dewey’s notion of open
transformative aesthetic experience is then similar to openness of text interpretation in post-
structuralism. In Dewey’s aesthetics, “the artist creates only an art product; the work of art is
what the product does in the person’s experience, and this depends on the person as well on
the product”.61
4. Art, Education, and Revolution
In the aesthetic conception of Constructivism as well as of Instrumentalism, art appears
like socially oriented meta-language that in a certain way constitutes reality. Veshch was
declared to “take the part of constructive art, whose task is not to adorn life, but to organize
it”.62 The participants of the movement De Stijl collaborating with the journal Veshch
accented the social dimension of art with reference to the ideas of the Dutch architect H.P.
Berlage, who argued that the “collective values rather than excessive individuality should be
emphasized in housing blocks and public buildings, while retaining the elements of plurality
and tolerance”.63 The position of the Constructivists was active and socially conscious:
“Vešč stands apart from all political parties, since it is concerned with problems of art and not of politics.
But that does not mean that we are in favor of art that keeps on the outside of life and is basically
apolitical. Quite the opposite, we are unable to imagine any creation of new forms in art that is not linked
to the transformation of social forms <…>”.64
The aesthetics of Constructivism in general correlates with the ethic of early bolshevism.
Constructivists, the members of UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art) in particular, never
tried to separate themselves from the politics; on the contrary, they participated in decorating
the town for the revolutionary festivities, organized philosophical discussions and
revolutionary exhibitions. Russian Constructivists enthusiastically greeted the October
revolution and was looking for the cooperation with the Soviet authorities. Rodchenko
worked for the Moscow bureau of the Section of Visual Arts (Izo) of the People’s
Commissariat for Public Education (1918–1921), was one of the most active participants of
the Left Front of the Arts (Lef) and identified himself with the new revolutionary government.
Since 1924 Rodchenko, as well as Lissitzky, had been creating the photo-chronicle of the
“great change” in the society. Lissitzky in his last years announced that his social mission as
an artist was to coordinate and to align his artistic missions and goals with the missions and
goals of the Soviet state. He asserted that
“<…> art is becoming recognized for its inherent capacity to order, organize and activate the
consciousness through the inner charge of its emotional energy”.65

11. 11
The transformative power of art connects art with ideology; art becomes ideological. The
ideological orientation of Constructivist art has a theoretical ground. In his article “Art and
Pangeometry” Lissitzky re-codes and reinterprets spatial structures and sets up
correspondence between the artistic conceptions and the ideological systems. For Lissitzky
linear perspective is linked with a certain historical ideology (say, bourgeois individualism);
hence other spatial and artistic systems are based on other ideological conceptions, including
collectivistic one. Constructivism was an attempt to create a system that was in tune with the
contemporary ideology.
The recognition of social and ideological character of art is too characteristic for Dewey’s
conception. However, in Dewey’s case the social and ideological character of art roots more
in communicative character of the work of art. According to Dewey, “the work of art is the
transaction between the art product and its appreciator, and is itself a process of producing
new artifacts, both tangible and intangible”.66 From Dewey’s point of view “it is not so much
the artist who communicates as it is the object or event produced, an aesthetically rich and
suggestive artifact doing its work”.67 As the result of their communicative character works of
art serve as a means of creating the common collective way of life:
“Works of art that are not remote from common life, that are widely enjoyed in a community, are signs of
a unified collective life. But they are also marvellous aids in the creation of such a life. The remaking of
the material of experience in the act of expression is not an isolated event confined to the artist and to a
person here and there who happens to enjoy the work. In the degree in which art exercises its office, it is
also a remaking of the experience of the community in the direction of greater order and unity”.68
Art being the product of culture and a means to express views and ideas within the certain
culture possesses moral function. Dewey thinks that art can be legitimately and productively
motivated by the proletarian, commercial, or religious interests.69 However, Dewey argues
that even in this case the artwork is to be evaluated on the basis of how its objective aims are
achieved and not on the basis of motifs of its creation. In his estimation, far from being
negative, of the situation in the Soviet Russia in the late 1920s (in 1928, the final year of New
Economic Policy — NEP) Dewey notes the central role of propaganda in the system of
education and in the society in general as well as parallelism of propaganda and education in
the Soviet Russia:
“An incidental confirmation of the central position, during the present state of “transition,” of educational
agencies is the omnipresence of propaganda. The present age is, of course, everywhere one in which
propaganda has assumed the role of a governing power. But nowhere else in the world is employment of
it as a tool of control so constant, consistent and systematic as in Russia at present. Indeed, it has taken
on such importance and social dignity that the word propaganda hardly carries, in another social medium,
the correct meaning. For we instinctively associate propaganda with the accomplishing of some special
ends, more or less private to a particular class or group, and correspondingly concealed from others. But
in Russia the propaganda is in behalf of a burning public faith. One may believe that the leaders are
wholly mistaken in the object of their faith, but their sincerity is beyond question. To them the end for
which propaganda is employed is not a private or even a class gain, but is the universal good of universal
humanity. In consequence, propaganda is education and education is propaganda. They are more than
confounded; they are identified”.70
Dewey argues that “public agitation, propaganda, legislative and administrative action are
effective in producing the change of disposition which a philosophy indicates as desirable”,
however he also marks that they are effective “only in the degree in which they are educative
<…> in the degree in which they modify mental and moral attitudes”.71 After his visit to

12. 12
Leningrad and Moscow Dewey evaluates the function of propaganda in constitution of
people’s consciousness through education and ideologically oriented art:
“<…> those experiences convinced me that there is an enormous constructive effort taking place in the
creation of a new collective mentality; a new morality I should call it, were it not for the aversion of
Soviet leaders to all moral terminology; and that this endeavor is actually succeeding to a considerable
degree — to just what extent, I cannot, of course, measure”.72
In Constructivism as well as in the entire Soviet society visual propaganda becomes an
integral part of life and art and a means of education:
“The role of art in shaping and reorganizing, not reflecting, public consciousness was promoted very
early in the Russian Revolution. Visual propaganda was obviously a direct and successful way of
achieving the mammoth task of educating, informing and persuading the people, and was particularly
effective in a country whose population was neither fully literate nor united by a single language. <…> as
Lissitzky said, ‘No kind of representation is as completely comprehensible to all people as
photography’”.73
Constructivist photomontage teaches the new approach to art and the new view of the
world:
“Photography for Moholy-Nagy was of inestimable value in educating the eye to what he called the ‘new
vision’. He believed that in our efforts to come to terms with the age of technology, to become part of it
and not to sink back into a retrogressive symbolism or expressionism, the camera with its capacity ‘to
complete or supplement our optical instrument, the eye’ would help us to disengage ourselves from
traditional perceptual habits”.74
Constructivist artists who saw one of the goals of art in promotion and propaganda of new
ideas and new consciousness gave preference to the art of photomontage owing its capacity to
show visibly and in astonishing way “the great social work under construction”.
Constructivists considered the documentary character of art a powerful means of persuasion
and influence possessive of educational and informative value. Thus, for example, a poster
about hunger with photos of starving people could produce a stronger impression than a
placard on the same theme.75 Moreover, Constructivists distinguished between Soviet
military and political photomontage and so called photomontage represented in the US
advertisements. Gustav Klutsis, Soviet avant-garde artist and one of the creators of
photomontage, established connection between the Soviet type of photomontage, the newest
method of plastic art, on the one hand, and the revolutionary politics and the technical
development, on the other hand.76 The idea of the world transformation finds its expression
in Constructivist works, e.g Klutsis’s montage Dynamic City (1919—1921), where the new
Communist world is being constructed, and in his montage The Old World and The World
being built Anew (1920) where “the positive image of Lenin is superimposed over two circles
in which the old world, with its whips, chains and prison, is confronted by the new, a circle
framing Lenin’s head and filled with construction work”.77
Although Instrumentalism does not assert construing reality on the basis of the knowledge
but the possibility of such construing is present there. The openness of instrumentalism to the
idea of world-making allows Dewey appraise positively the social practice of the Soviet
Russia and brings him close to the conception of Constructivist ideological art. At any rate the
transformative power of art declared in Constructivism and Instrumentalism is aimed at the
humanity and the surrounding world:
“Only by reconstructing the basic foundation can one resist the inevitable fall. There is only one way out
for the artist: to reconstruct man. Things must be thought through to the very end”.78

13. 13
The break with the previous tradition, the proclamation of revolutionary transformation of
man and the world, and the ideological character of avant-garde art and Constructivism in
particular allow us to speak about Constructivism as the revolution in art. The artists
themselves considered the change of orientations and priorities in art they undertook as the
“phenomenon of spiritual revolution”.79 “Suprematist Story of Two Squares in Six
Constructions” by El Lissitzky depicts the revolutionary renovation of the world through the
images of red and black squares that arrived to the Earth from the space and deconstructed the
old traditional order of things. The renowned project by Lissitzky Lenin Tribune (Proun no.
85) with the red cube as the basis for the platform where Lenin stands connects the social
revolution of 1917 with the world revolution in the arts. The ideologists of Constructivism
used to position themselves as revolutionaries. Revolutionary is the idea of Constructivist
photomontage as a new form of art. Photomontage used by the political forces for propaganda
goals in both the Soviet Russia and Europe is typically “associated particularly with the
political Left, because it is ideally suited to the expression of the Marxist dialectic”.80
Dewey, like Constructivist artists, in his conception of Instrumentalism aesthetics marks a
revolutionary character of art:
“For all art is a process of making the world a different place to live, and involves a phase of protest and
of compensatory response”.81
However, he, like the Constructivists, does not speak about revolution in social sense; for
him the spiritual transformation is of greater importance. Dewey conveys his impressions of
the people in the Soviet Russia as of the people whose consciousness and mentality have been
radically changed or transformed and points to the world significance of those revolutionary
changes:
“The people go about as if some mighty and oppressive load had been removed, as if they were newly
awakened to the consciousness of released energies”;
“<…> the more basic fact of a revolution—one which may be hinted at, but not described, by calling it
psychic and moral rather than merely political and economic, a revolution in the attitude of people toward
the needs and possibilities of life”;
“<…> the outstanding fact in Russia is a revolution, involving a release of human powers on such an
unprecedented scale that it is of incalculable significance not only for that country, but for the world”.82
The first third of the 20th
century is the period of “spiritual revolution” as well the period
of the technical revolutionary changes connected with the development of the technical means
of reproduction. According to Walter Benjamin’s “Die Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner
technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” (“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”,
1935), reproduction of works of art becomes more and more reproduction of a work intended
for reproduction. The possibility to make an endless number of photos from the negative, as a
result, makes the question of authenticity pointless. When the criteria of authenticity stops to
function then the social function of art changes in principle. While the former art was based
on ritual; the new art becomes based on politics. Constructivist art was an avant-garde art in
the “spiritual revolution” as well as in the technical revolution of means of reproduction when
it proclaimed the serial character of new art and its intention to be reproducible.
The “spiritual revolution” of Constructivist art and the conception of art formulated in
Dewey’s Instrumentalism when turning art to experience, nature, context, liberated art from

14. 14
the power of tradition and from the contemplative character of art. However, Constructivist
art set free from the power of tradition turned to politics — spiritual state power. At the same
time the new type of relations was created between a human being and an instrument – the
unity of the artist, a creator, a designer, and the instrument, which is the Constructivist
method (in case of Constructivism) or the method of inquiry (in case of Instrumentalism). In
such unity the artist and the method becomes a kind of the micro-world competing, despite all
his loyalty, with the state.83 No wonder, that the idea of transformation of the macro-world
following the example of the micro-world creative relations characterizes both –
Constructivism and Instrumentalism.
The Spirit, or the state, tends to have power over its competitor. This tendency leads to
interference into any form of activity produced by the microcosm. Russian Constructivism is
an agent of the revolution and at the same time is a patient of the Stalinist “cultural
revolution”, a victim of state violence. While in the 1920s the Soviet state was supportive to
the artistic searches and experiments, in the 1930s the situation changed. Though the art
continued to keep its ideological character, the ideological directions of the Soviet society
became different. The aggression of the Soviet state in the times of the “cultural revolution”
was aimed at the revolutionary art of the Russian avant-garde. On the one hand, the State
aimed its aggression against man in general; the turn to the socialist realism art in the 1930s
despite its orientation towards an individual was antihuman. On the other hand, the State
aimed its aggression against a human being, the artist-constructor, the artist-engineer, in his
unity with an instrument – constructive method. It does not surprise that one of the first
Stalin’s processes was famous miner’s process in 1928 where engineers were to be accused of
various crimes.
The Constructivist artists that found themselves in the totalitarian state (Soviet Union,
Germany or Italy in the 1930s) and who were not exterminated by the state as Klutsis
(executed in 1938) had to either change their artistic method or change themselves. The
variants of their artistic evolution were:
— Rejection of the Constructivist method, and incorporating themselves either into an
existing powerful (state) paradigm in art (Alexander Deineka) or to another system of
expression, mythological, for example (Jacques Lipchitz, Albert Gleizes);
— Migration to another space, usually the USA, where it was possible to continue using of
the Constructivist method (L szl Moholy-Nagy, Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo);
— Turn from the philosophical ideology of art to ideological artistic propaganda (El
Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko) and to the art of reproduction (in the first place, to the art of
photography). In this case Constructivist art is reproduction without the creative part of the
man-instrument unity – reproduction that is mechanical and not artistic.
Many of the Russian Constructivist artists followed the latter version of the artistic
development in the conditions of the totalitarian environment. Lissitzky in 1927—1930 turned
increasingly to film and photography. During the last decade of his life Lissitzky worked as a
designer for the Soviet propaganda journal USSR in Construction published in the Soviet

15. 15
Union in four languages. One of his works of the period was the portrait of Stalin. In 1941,
the year of his death, he signed a contract for the typographical design of the collected works
of Lenin. To the end of his life, Lissitzky continued to align his art with the politics of the
Soviet state.
As for Dewey, the fate of his art conception is luckier than the fate of many Constructivist
artists. Dewey did not have to reject Instrumentalism. Moreover, Dewey’s educational
projects are an attempt to create “art of educational engineering”,84 an attempt of non-
mechanical reproduction of the micro-cosmic unity of the creator with the instrument that is
the constructive method of inquiry. How successful it was and to what results it led is the
question of another paper.
Notes
1. Lisickij, El; Erenburg, Il’ja. “The Blocade of Russia Is Coming to an End”, Veshch /
Objet / Gegenstand. Ed. By Il’ja Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 55—
57, p. 55.
2. Ibid., p.55.
3. Ibid., p.56.
4. Ibid., p.56.
5. Hellens, Franz. “Literature and Cinematography”, Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed. By
Il’ja Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 72, p. 72.
6. Ibid., p. 72.
7. Ibid., p. 72.
8. Ibid., p. 8.
9. Ibid., p. 11.
10. Ibid., p. 71.
11. Desburg, Teo van. “Monumental Art”, Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed. By Il’ja
Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 151, p. 151.
12. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”,
Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed. By Il’ja Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint
1994, 149—150, p. 149.
13. Léger, Fernand. “Fernand Léger’s Response”, Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed. By
Il’ja Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 151—152, p. 151.
14. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”,
p.150.
15. Briski-Uzelac, Sonja. “Proun”, Russian Literature, 1996, XXIII—II, 81—88, p. 85.
16. Dewey, John. The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882— 1953. The Early Works:
1882— 1898 (EW). Southern Illinois University Press. 1969—1991. V.2. Psychology, p.
272.
17. Dewey, John. The Collected Works. The Later Works: 1925— 1953 (LW). V.10. Art
as Experience , p. 121—122.

16. 16
18. Ibid., p. 121.
19. Ibid., p. 157.
20. Ibid., p. 154.
21. Ibid., p. 50.
22. Kaplan, Abraham. “Dewey”, in: Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V.10. Art
as Experience, vii—xxxiv, p. xvi.
23. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 10. Art as Experience, p. 174.
24. Marsoobian, Armen T. “Art and the Aesthetic”, in: The Blackwell Guide to American
Philosophy, Ed. By Armen T. Marsoobian and John Ryder. Blackwell Publishing, 2004,
364—393, p. 378.
25. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”, p.
150.
26. Ibid., p. 150.
27. Lipchitz, Jacques. “Jacques Lipchitz’s Response”, Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed.
By Il’ja Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 152—153, p. 153.
28. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”, p.
150.
29. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 1. Experience and Nature, p. 279.
30. Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington and
Indianapolis, 1990, p. 74.
31. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 1. Experience and Nature, p. 268.
32. Ibid., p. 269.
33. Messensee, Caroline. “Fernand Léger — L’Esprit moderne or the Vision of a Better
World”, in: Fernand Léger. L’Esprit moderne. Rupertinum, 2002, 27—31, p. 29.
34. Desburg, Teo van. “Monumental Art”, p. 150.
35. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 10. Art as Experience, pp. 12, 13.
36. Kaplan, Abraham. “Dewey”, p. xv.
37. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 1. Experience and Nature, p. 290.
38. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 10. Art as Experience, p. 151.
39. Desburg, Teo van. “Monumental Art”, p. 153.
40. Lisickij, El; Erenburg, Il’ja. “The Blocade of Russia Is Coming to an End”, p. 55.
41. Ibid., p. 56.
42. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 10. Art as Experience, p. 33.
43. Ibid., p. 73.
44. Ibid., pp. 88, 291.
45. Léger, Fernand. “Fernand Léger’s Response”, p. 151.
46. Overy, Paul. De Stijl, p. 150.
47. Ades, Dawn. Photomontage. Thames & Hudson, 1996, p. 13.
48. Marsoobian, Armen T. “Art and the Aesthetic”, p. 373.
49. Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology, pp. 68, 76.

17. 17
50. Le Corbusier-Sonier. “Contemporary Architecture”, Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed.
By Il’ja Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 81, p. 81.
51. Overy, Paul. De Stijl, p. 147—148.
52. Ades, Dawn. Photomontage, p. 153.
53. Kaplan, Abraham. “Dewey”, p. xxiii.
54. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”, p.
150.
55. Severini, Gino. “Gino Severini’s Response”, Veshch / Objet / Gegenstand. Ed. By Il’ja
Erenburg / El Lisickij. Berlin, 1922. Reprint 1994, 152, p. 152.
56. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 1. Experience and Nature, p. 287.
57. Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology, p. 75.
58. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”, p.
150.
59. Desburg, Teo van. “Monumental Art”, p. 151.
60. Overy, Paul. De Stijl, p. 151.
61. Kaplan, Abraham. “Dewey”, p. xxix.
62. Lisickij, El; Erenburg, Il’ja. “The Blocade of Russia Is Coming to an End”, p. 56.
63. Overy, Paul. De Stijl, p. 24.
64. Lisickij, El; Erenburg, Il’ja. “The Blocade of Russia Is Coming to an End”, p. 56.
65. Lissitzky, El. “Ideological Superstructures”, in: Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie, El
Lissitzky. London, 1968, p. 371.
66. Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology, p. xiii.
67. Ibid., p. 63.
68. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 10. Art as Experience, p. 87.
69. Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology, p. 65.
70. Dewey, John. “Impressions of Soviet Russia”, in: The Collected Works (LW). V.3,
203—250, pp. 221—222.
71. Dewey, John. The Collected Works. The Middle Works: 1899—1924 (MW). V.9.
Democracy and Education, p. 338.
72. Ibid., p. 223.
73. Ades, Dawn. Photomontage, p. 63.
74. Ibid., p. 148.
75. Ibid., p. 72.
76. Ibid., p. 63.
77. Ibid., p. 68.
78. Gleizes, Albert. “On the Position of Contemporary Painting and Its Tendencies”, p.
149.
79. Ibid., p. 149.
80. Ades, Dawn. Photomontage, p. 41.
81. Dewey, John. The Collected Works (LW). V. 1. Experience and Nature, p. 272.

18. 18
82. Dewey, John. “Impressions of Soviet Russia”, pp.203, 204, 207.
83. Smirnov, Igor. Khozyain i rabotnik (Master and Worker), Logos. 1999. No. 9 (19),
105—116.
84. Dewey, John. “Education as Engineering”, The Collected Works (MW). V. 13, 323—
328, p. 325.