Rational composition and design

- Tan Liang

The constructivist movement in Russia was one of the important contents of the international modernist movement in the early 20th century. The Russian constructivist design was an avant-garde art movement and design movement that was developed among a small group of Russian advanced intellectuals before and after the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. The purpose of constructivism is to change old social consciousness, advocate the use of new ideas to understand the role art work and art should play in society, and resolutely put forward design as social service. Constructivist artists hope to create a new way of life for future generations by redefining the vocabulary and composition of plastic arts.

Suprematism and constructivism have revealed a universal law for people: a certain element of visual arts, such as lines, colors, and forms, has its own expressive power, and thus is independent of any relationship of the world appearance. Kasimir Malevich, Gabo, Klee and others brought the latest abstract arts into constructivism. The modern art of the early 20th century, especially the geometric shapes and forms of cubism and constructivism sculptures, has great reference value for the two-dimensional art design and architectural space design.

One: Two-dimensional art design

The supremacy representative, Malevich's graphic work, made a simple geometric shape of various combinations and colors, but conveyed a sense of power and space. He used dynamic rhythmical combinations to arrange the picture to be tense and complex, and the geometrical composition represented emotional fluctuations. FL Lissitzky, Malevich's student, is an important figure in the dissemination of Russian supremacism. His graphic work, "Use Red Dice in White," is a completely abstract form that strongly expresses the modern concept of revolution. One of the posters. Lisitzky emphasized the combination of abstract forms and social applications, combining geometric shapes, photographs, and fonts in an avant-garde manner, from which one can see the characteristics of “modern” designs. The poster design background of the film “Battleships and Waves of Generals” is composed of abstract lines. The main body is the sailor who shouted and combines the geometric shapes, photos and font design elements organically. He introduced photographic technology into graphic design and produced a photographic montage, embodying the sense of mechanical rhythm that constructivism respects. The Soviet director Eisenstein has created a montage of constitutionalism-style new movie clips, and his director's film "Battleships and Waves" fully embodies this style.

A1exander M. Rodchenko is one of the three founders of constructivism. He is not only the most important photographer in Soviet history, but also an important artistic tutor in the Soviet Union's October Revolution. Rochinko's ideas are the most radical. In 1923, he published an astonishing theory, claiming that “painting is dead, and the artist should have the triple task of an artist, designer, and engineer.” Then he put paint brushes and oil paint on it and picked up the camera. He thinks: “The camera is the ideal eye of a socialist society and people.” “Only photography can respond to all the criteria of future art.” They work hard for a change in their own cultural environment. In their works, the idea of ​​anti-individualism is displayed through a purely geometric concept. Today, more than half a century later, in the works of contemporary photographers, it also shows the influence of constitutionalism. This may be the result of our tradition of artistic inheritance. How to treat inheritance and innovation is also a question that every photographer should ponder.

Constructivism affects the graphic design of many European countries, especially in the design of Bauhaus's Moholy-Nagy. His graphic works are all absolutely abstract works. The Bauhaus books, posters, photographs and movies produced by him all have strong rational features and show the positive effects of rationalization on design. He believes in the power of simple structures and uses planes to express this power. The spatial design of the layout of the contemporary American design master April Greiman is, to a certain extent, a clear reference to the visual thinking of the constructivist Master Lizitzki on space, balance and styling, and applied it to practice. in. She emphasizes the decisive effect of human intuition on design, and emphasizes the expressiveness of the form. He claims that one can sacrifice readability for performance. Ai Purui's layout design, on the one hand emphasizes the two-dimensional expression in the visual, that is, the use of planar language. On the other hand, she used layout techniques to introduce depth to the layout. Overlapping styling, highly indicative lines and many different character lines, dynamic, directional and spatially floating geometrical figures suggest a strong perspective. This is the key to making her design work full of vitality.

II: Space Design

Malevich designed a number of so-called supremacist architectural models, such as "Individual Forms in Space," which became important blueprints for future architecture and influenced the international style of modern architecture. The influence of Russian constructivism was very distinctive in the design of Walter Gropius. Constructivism regards structure as the starting point of design as the center of architectural expression. This position has become the basic principle of the modern architecture of the world.

Tatlin is the founder of constructivism. He studied all kinds of materials on the basis of a series of geometric shapes, and believed that the formation of materials and organic combinations is the basis of all designs. The Third International Monument is Tatlin's masterpiece. It is an abstract composition of sculptures, architecture, and engineering. It uses power, space, and various materials. It embodies the constructivism's grandeur of space, time, movement, and light. Conceived. The elements of virtual space design are consistent with constructivist sculptures. Constructivism sculpture has in-depth thinking and understanding of the characteristics of materials and mechanical structures. They use cubes and cylinders to form magnificent architectural structures. They represent both the indifference and impersonality that are unique to the industrial era and the contrast of nature's power. "The profound silence when the machine is at rest."

Gabo's sculpture transforms volume into lines and planes. He believes that the focus of art should be on the momentum in space rather than on the sense of volume. It first introduced the true movement of mechanical power into sculpture and created the first active sculpture. . The modern installation art was influenced by the Jiabo sculpture style. The installation art seems to satisfy the physiological needs and psychological balance of the busy contemporary people and fully reflect the changing world, because the stationary objects in the installation art are not absolutely static, they exist. The space environment and society are in an eternal movement, so their own significance is constantly changing.

For Russian constitutionalists, they have surpassed Malevich. They defended the notion that art is autonomous spiritual activity. It was Tatlin who pioneered this idea and was adopted by his productionist successors. And get developed. The idea is that artists should receive retraining to become qualified technicians and engineers in order to achieve the same status as workers and brothers in a modern industrial society. One of the most important resources of Technology Art is related to the reinterpretation and use of light and movement reproduced in Kinetic art and Lumino-Kinetic Art. The Bauhaus experimental artist in Weimar, Germany, developed an art that combines light and movement. Bauhaus's Moholy Nagy and Alexander Calder independently explored a real sports art in the 1920s and 1930s, but it was only in the 1950s that Kinetic Art was truly form.

Whether we are in graphic design or space design, the method of creation created by constructivist artists has a very important guiding role in modern design.

Author: Tan Liang, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts · Digital Animation Design Master