SPATIAL CONSTRUCTION NO. 12
ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO, 1920
Alright, Rodchenko. The great quitter of modern art. The guy doesn't drift away from stuff, he just ends it. A year or so after this, he puts up three canvases in Moscow. One's just red. One's just yellow. One's just blue. And he announces, that's it, it's all over. Painting, taken to its logical conclusion. His words. Then he actually quits. Walks off, makes ads, takes pictures. This is also a man who designed his own work jumpsuit, pockets everywhere for the tools, had his wife sew it, and wore it to teach his classes. Because that was the whole idea after the Revolution. No more genius in a smock. An artist is an engineer now. They even called themselves Constructivists. Builders. So look what the engineer built. One flat sheet of plywood. That's it, that's the material. Ovals drawn inside ovals, cut out, fanned into space, tied with wire. The whole recipe fits on an index card. Which was the point. He doesn't even give it a title, he gives it a number. Spatial Construction number 12. Like a part in a catalog. And it hangs from the ceiling, because pedestals were for the old guys. Get up close, look at the inner rings. Still kind of silver, right? Aluminum paint. It was supposed to catch the light while it turned, he called the series Light-Reflecting Surfaces. The outer rings are back to plain wood. That part's just time. Now, 1921. A room in Moscow, hung full of these things. The big show, the one that launched them. Everything we know about that room comes from two photographs. Two. Almost nothing in those pictures still exists. One little piece by another guy. And this. Funny thing, though. You could build one of these tonight. Same sheet, same cuts, same wire. And it wouldn't count. Everyone knows it wouldn't. Only the original counts. Which is the exact feeling Rodchenko spent his life trying to kill. It grew back anyway. On this one. Not bad for an index card.