Unseen Objects

This article is reprinted from the Russian Avant-garde Galley forum, to benefit those who do not participate in forums or would like to see it in a different layout.

Another fascinating article I have found on a page of a Russian journal "Energiya promyshlennogo rosta" (Energy of Industrial Growth) from July 2008 (full credit in the bottom). I am translating it to you here in full. Enjoy.

Unseen Objects

Exceptional developments created by the fathers pioneers of Soviet industrial design have enriched the world design, but passed over homeland industry.

Julia Popova

S.Burylin. Sketch drawing
for fabric pattern "Factory".
The great Ivanovo-Voznesensk
manufacturing. 1927.

L.Popova. Sketch for
fabric pattern. 1923-24.

A multitude of misconceptions exist regarding industrial design. One of these maintains that design cannot develop where there is no competition (for example, in plan economies). Another - that the designer though is pushed forward by technological progress. In fact, it is partially true. Sometimes, the situation of lack of competition creates a sort of sterile laboratory conditions, where ideas are born to then overturn the acceptable outlook on things. The deficit of new technologies at times acts as the trigger for designer searches no less effectively than technological breakthroughs. But the one thing absolutely essential for industrial design is industry. And it is most eloquently confirmed by the history of Russian post-revolutionary design riding on the wave of futuristic idea and the belief in the artist as constructor of the new daily life.

A.Rodchenko. Chess table.

E.Zernova. A Giant of agricultural
machine construction. 1931.

N.Dan'ko. Porcelain chess set "The Red and the White".
New objects - old styling. State porcelain factory, 1922.

Even before the revolution the futuristic artists have declared for all to hear, that they find traditional limits of art too tight. The believed that there is but one way for the art to suit the fast-changing world: by breaking through its limits. Instead of portraits, still lives and "stories" they longed to demonstrate speed; instead of objects and figures - the rapidly changing environment. In 1914 Mikhail Larionov and Ilya Zdanevich wrote, by way of explanation of why the futuristic artists go out into the street with their faces painted: "To the frenzied city of arc lamps, to the streets bespattered with bodies, to the houses huddled together - we bring our painted faces; we're off and the track awaits the runners. ... Art is not only a monarch but also a newsman and a decorator. ... We decorate life and preach - that's why we paint ourselves. ... After the long isolation of artists, we have loudly summoned life, and life has invaded art, it is time for art to invade life".

Lazar Lissitzky working on theatre
set maquette for the play "I want
a baby" by S.M.Tretyakov produced
by V.Meyerkhold. Photo from 1929.


Lubov' Popova in her studio. Photo from 1920.

After the revolution the art attempted to "invade life" via architecture, theatre and objects. Beginning with 1918 discussions never ceased in St.Petersburg about art and industry. On the pages of the newspaper "Iskusstvo komunny" (The art of the commune) and the journal "IZO" Boris Arvatov and Osip Brik formulated ideas, which became the basis of the "industrial art" movement. "The artist must", wrote Osip Brik, "begin at once the truly creative work. The factories, plants, workshops await for the artists to come to them with models of new, hitherto unseen, objects". Arvatov was developing ideas of new art forms: "In place of the old separation of artist by subjects (masters of landscapes, portraits, genre etc.) industrial divisions will arise: we shall distinguish woodworking artists, textile artists, metalwork artists..." Without any market competition the whole responsibility for the necessity and user quality of the "unseen objects" was also laid on the artist-constructor. And these artists were to graduate from industrial (today we would say designer) faculties of the VKhUTEIN/VKhUTEMAS, where such renown artists taught as Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Lubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin, Lazar (El) Lissitzky.

Aside from teaching, the artists, in their aim to supply new objects for the new daily life went to the plants and factories, which have just barely survived the devastation of that time. They attempted to receive authorization for organizing experimental laboratories, that is designer offices, for creating the new objects, discussing these projects collectively, and then implemented them in production. V.Tatlin tried to organize such a laboratory at the "Novy Lesner" factory; L.Popova and V.Stepanova have worked for nearly two years at the First State Textile Printing factory, studying all production cycles in the way of true designers. The fabric pattern sketches they developed for the factory have entered history of the world textile design, but have never become realized in mass production. Their drawings of extraordinary quality, utilizing such "modern" motifs as airplanes, tractors, sickles and hammers have forever remained monuments of decorative art and unrealized dreams of the "industrialists"...

L.Popova. Prozodezhda #5. Sketch from 1921.

A.Rodchenko. Design for a box of
caramels 'Krasny Oktyabr'. 1923.

V.Stepanova at her desk.
Photo by A.Rodchenko, 1924.


A.Rodchenko in working overalls
of his own design, made by V.Stepanova.
Photo from 1922.

It is not the factories and pants which have become experimental laboratories, but the industrial workshops at VKhUTEMAS. It is there that the prototypes of the first objects for the new daily life were born, a daily life which was to have nothing in common with neither the bourgeois luxury, nor the "burgess" pettiness, nor the hopeless poverty of the exploited classes. The new daily life was to be both comfortable and functionally-reasonable; both mobile an simple. Simplicity meant a total lack of any sort of decoration (as Le Corbusier would later say, "decoration is insulting"); mobility meant preferance for thansforming objects: a wardrobe bed in one; a combined frying pan and pot.

The VKhUTEMAS graduates have created, as their graduation works, projects for wandering exhibition equipment; modular equipment for viewing halls and conference rooms (A.A. and P.A.Galaktionov); interior for long-route buses, whose seats converted into sleeping cots (G.V.Pavlov); equipment and library combined for moving cinema on a truck (D.A.Zaonegin); interior of eight-seat airplane with seats converting into beds (P.K.Zhigunov); camping teapot-cooking pot combined (B.Bykov); a home folding washing stand (A.A.Istratov); built-in wardrobe doubling up as divider with a window for passing food between the dining room and the kitchen (B.Sokolov); and even such a remarkable thing as a combined shaving and drinking set (Yu. Borkin). Many of these was produced after the new Soviet design has gain fame all over the world. At the famous International exhibition of decorative arts in Paris in 1925 the Russian pavilion showed Alexander Rodchenko's project for a worker's club. It had shelf stands for journals and newspapers, a long school-desk-like table with flip-top flaps and seats with tall curved backs. The Russian pavilion received International recognition, which had nothing to do with Russian reality. Soviet industry has taken home nothing from this exhibition, as well as it took nothing from the home projects El Lissitzky has created.

A.Rodchenko. Gears for AMO
automobile. Photo from 1929.


N.Altman. Porcelain plate
"Land for the workers".

A similar fate awaited all radical designer ideas in the clothing area, as well. Inspired by the Prozodezhda for actors by Lubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova and Alexandra Exter designed new clothing for production and active relaxation. Tatlin created a versatile transformer-coat, which was a coat with large pockets and alternative lining for winter or autumn seasons, and remained the sole owner of this coat. As far as design of all these "unseen objects" is concerned, alas, one cannot really discuss it. When one discusses an object, one cannot judge whether the object's design is good or bad based on pictures or prototypes. Until a folding chair proves its ability to fold and unfold, all the great attributes of its form are fiction. Not until the owner of a bed which is supposed to fold into a cabinet niche is satisfied that it is capable of doing it without daily repairs, doe this bed exist. Not until the lining is known to actually be replaceable and not tear off for a few seasons in a row does the alternating-lining coat cease to be a mere project. Thus, when looking, for instance, at the transforming table, designed in 1926 by on of Rodchenko's students, one can only shrug. Here is a rather massive table, divided in two by a vertical wall. It has many sliding drawers of various sizes. The dividing wall may be moved away, the table halves may fold, allowing the table to change form and size. But how would all the multiple parts making up the table remain attached to it with all their axles and consoles or slide on their rails depends not only on the constructor's ideas, but also the quality of the material the structure elements are made of. For all the folding, sliding and combining "daily life objects" created in the 1920s at the new industrial faculties, without exception, this was a determining factor. Which, however, remained undetermined.

N.Rogozhin. A chair on a
curving foot. 1927-29.

Zemlyanitzin. A folding chair.
Graduation project. 1927.

V.Tatlin. Photo ca 1915.

L.Popova. Design for
fabric pattern. 1923-24.

Due to the fact that these objects have never become real objects, one may only guess how they would have been greeted by their potential users. But after NEP, when many (to the best of their abilities, naturally) have finally got their hands on the "meshchanstvo" they craved so much, it is questionable whether the ascetic folding washstands would have been met by any mass ecstasy by the users. The products of the Petrograd State factory of art furniture had more chances, as in 1921 after a period of pause in production it began to produce chairs and sofas in the old styles, and in 1923 has produced a boudoir in the Louis XVIth style for the All-Russian exhibition of agriculture. The Soviet clerks relied on pictures from old foreign magazines for models of their clothes, and the clothing production industry was rules not by experimental factory laboratories, but seamstresses, who could reproduce the "Paris fashion" from the materials available.

As early as 1907 the German architect Peter Behrens, holding the post of art director in AEG company, the largest German producer of home electrical devices, said that "through mass production of utility objects, satisfying perfect aesthetic requirements, good taste may in time be developed in the people". So too, was the opinion of the German artistic group Bauhaus, whose ideas of industrial production and utility objects were close to those of our "industrialists". In 1920s in Dessau they organized their own experimental production, counting on orders from large companies. But their prototypes rarely were met by success. As to our "industrialists", the very industry did not allow them to become disillusioned with the users. The design of new production, produces in the Soviet companies workfloors in 1920s, the years of the first Soviet diesel locomotives, automobiles, hydroelectrical stations equipment, - was fed from other sources. But this, as they say, is a whole different story.

"Worker club". The interior of the Russian
pavilion at the International exhibition
of decorative arts in Paris, 1925.

A page from the journal "Noby Byt"
with Tatlin's model of versatile coat. 1924.

This article is translated in full from the journal "Energiya Promyshlennogo Rosta" (The Energy of Industrial Growth) from July-August 2008. You may read the page online (Russian).

If you would like to comment, discuss or otherwise express anything about this article - you are welcome to do so here, at the forum topic.