I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue and yellow. I affirmed: it’s all over. Basic colors. Every plane is a plane and there is to be no representation.
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Then there’s this:
From here, Constructivism proceeds to the negation of all art in its entirety, and calls into question the necessity of a specific activity of art as creator of a universal aesthetic.”
Varvara Stepanova: Lecture on Constructivism, 22 December 1921.
In one of the relatively the early rooms of the Tate exhibition Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism (where the context is provided by quotes from the Great Worker-Overalled One himself) there is a famous text reproduced on the wall, where Rodchenko wrote:
When I look at the number of paintings I have painted, I sometimes wonder what I shall do with them, there are over ten years work in them. But they are as useless as a church. They serve no purpose whatsoever.
Baroque thoughts to follow.
“I sometimes wonder what I shall do with them”
As the poet says, you could always hang your trousers over one of them. But was it an El Greco or a Degas? I can’t remember now.
That last quotation is beautiful, Katy. I’m nabbing it!