Burning bridges and abandonment of the past, a new look at the new time, a shocking daring beast with a screaming voice - all this is the vanguard in architecture.
After the revolution of 1917, the artistic life of the country was rapidly changing: young innovative artists set as their goal to create new art that meets the requirements of modernity. They constructed a new life, tried to change their environment. First of all, this was expressed in the most striking phenomenon - architecture.
Production art
Many artists and architects at the end of the 20s of the XX century studied the experience of Malevich and Tatlin as an example to follow. Young creators experimented in creating abstract geometric shapes, this is especially noticeable in the architecture of the avant-garde. Many innovative artists completely abandoned easel production of all kinds of works: easel paintings, graphics and, of course, buildings. In the twentieth century, the so-called production art is created, which is called the avant-garde in architecture. The direction exists to this day.
New current
Production art is an artistic movement in the culture of the USSR of the 20s. The movement's participants set the task: to influence with the help of the avant-garde in architecture industrial production. They believed that the creation of furniture, clothes and buildings of a new type would help shape a new person and a new society.
Until now, the art of Russian avant-garde is very popular and known throughout the world, and Malevich and Kandinsky are original icons of art. It was they who invented a completely new artistic language, which had not existed before in the world. It was thanks to them that the opportunity appeared to breathe new life into culture.
Vanguard in architecture
During the victorious procession of the new trend throughout Russia, about 500 objects were built, of which about a hundred in Petrograd (at that time in Leningrad). This city was not chosen by chance, since it is it that is an example of classical traditions in architecture.
The condition of many buildings today is depressing, almost everything needs to be renovated, since they suffered an unenviable fate: the famous Kirov Culture House, which was built according to all the laws of architecture of the Leningrad avant-garde, is a monument that in the modern world is an ordinary business house, which is for rent. The areas are rented out to everyone, the list of tenant enterprises is very diverse: here you can find a billiard club, cafeterias, shops, and even tire shops.
Commercial establishments are located inside the Federal Monument of Architecture - it even sounds paradoxical.
The emergence of the term “avant-garde”
Today, looking back at the past of the 20th century, our contemporaries can busily declare that art somehow went to this direction, that the appearance of the Russian avant-garde in architecture was inevitable. However, it should be understood that the arrival of such a direction in the world of art for the world community was like a piano falling on his head - a sonorous and very heavy piano ...
In 1885, the French critic Theodore Duret first used the word "avant-garde" in art criticism. The term originally came from military affairs. "Vanguard" in French means "advanced detachment." These are precisely the military forces that are moving towards the enemy in order to reconnoiter the situation and prevent an attack.
Initially, the word did not take root in art: it so happened that the avant-garde artists never called themselves that and were even against this word. The term began to be used later, in the 50s of the 20th century, with the light hand of the French critic Michel, Russian art of the beginning of the 20th century was called the avant-garde. The name quickly took root, despite the fact that the creators of the new direction were against it.
Vanguard style in architecture
Today, this concept has combined completely different directions, not only related to the structure of buildings, but also to painting, and literature, and cinema. They are so different that some contradict the others. Almost everything that was created at the beginning of the 20th century is sometimes called the vanguard, the direction is often confused with modernity, but this is fundamentally wrong.
Everything that unites the architecture of the avant-garde era, to one degree or another, postulates a rejection of traditionalism and dogmatism. The impudent style defies classical canons, rejects traditional social cultural values as if before a certain artist there was nothing.
Late flow
Constructivism is the extreme stage of the avant-garde of the late 1920s, when this realistic art arose. Beginning in 1932, practically all artistic groups, all but socialist realism, were abolished and liquidated. The avant-garde in the architecture of the 20th century, more precisely, its late manifestation, existed for less than 12 years.
In fact, constructivism in architecture appeared much earlier: vivid examples - the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Crystal Palace in London Hyde Park. The first project of the Russian Constructivist building belongs to Vladimir Tatlin, one of the leaders of the Russian avant-garde.
In 1920, he was planning to build a monument to the Third International in Petrograd - a tower-shaped building that would be one third more than the creation of the Eiffel.
Style feature
The main principle of constructivism was the primary role of the functionality of the building, it was she who determined its appearance. The followers of constructivism have been active in various fields of artistic creativity: photography, fine and decorative arts.
The main feature of the style was the opposition to the luxurious life of the bourgeoisie with simplicity and practicality. This is especially noticeable in the architecture of southern Russia of the avant-garde era. If we talk about other industries, the latest subject forms and non-objective composition are still preserved in the collection of the Yekaterinburg Museum.
Constructivism is one of the avant-garde trends in Russian and world architecture. He left a noticeable mark in the appearance of European cities of the 20-30s of the last century. The architecture of southern Russia of the avant-garde era created a new society, formed new interests and values, for example, a recreation center - the House of Culture. The place where Soviet citizens spent whole days at leisure.
Ban avant-garde
The fact is that in 1932 a government decree was issued on the creation of creative Unions of artists, writers, composers and architects on the aesthetic basis of socialist realism, that is, from 1932 virtually any avant-garde forms ceased to exist. In Soviet art at the time of the ban on innovation, many museums in the country turned out to be a large number of works made in the original style. This happened for one reason: between 1918 and 1922, the Soviet government, supporting new art, officially bought the work of innovative artists and distributed them to museums in the country.
In the 40-50s of the twentieth century, after a change in cultural policy, orders began to come from Moscow to write off works created by avant-garde artists. The further fate of the collections depended on the loyalty of museum workers, some hid works to preserve them for future generations. So, for example, made the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts. But someone strictly followed orders and destroyed work. The surviving paintings were banned for many years and were not exhibited; even artists and art historians did not know about them until perestroika, when the avant-garde emerged from the underground and took its rightful place in the history of world art of the 20th century.
Modernism
Under the vanguard should be understood the artist's complete rejection of the traditional aesthetics, the destruction of familiar forms and the creation of new ones. The avant-garde is abstract, has little in common with naturalness and nature.
Carelessness is a new art where content is not important, but content. Modernism, with which the avant-garde is often confused, transforms, improves and supplements, that is, it modernizes an already existing concept. He does not seek to break the connection with the canons, but only gives a new rethinking. Modernism preceded the avant-garde, was an aesthetic rebellion within art, while the avant-garde was a trend that went against the artistic tradition itself.
Modernism reinterprets, and the avant-garde seeks to create a masterpiece from scratch.
Where the avant-garde originated is unknown, but the roots of this progressive trend are spread all over the world. By the way, many art historians single out precisely Russian art of the early XX century as the starting point for the emergence of this trend.