Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1127877 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: French, English, German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 344 pages

Amazon.com Review
This is the most complete volume published outside of Russia to capture the photographic work of Alexander Rodchenko, one of the former Soviet Union's greatest artists. In it, Alexander Lavrentiev, grandson of the photographer, includes more than 400 pictures reproduced under a broad categorical structure that allows the reader to gain insight into Rodchenko's work. What comes across most clearly from the content and form of these photos is the artist's desire to depict an image of purposeful individuality and an idealized relationship between humankind and the built world under construction in the Soviet Union. Individual portraits generally contain a device, such as a reflection, or capture some movement that obliterates the standard style of Western portraiture. Buildings, even trees, are photographed to draw attention to the space they hold rather than to depict scenic landscapes. The photos are stunningly original.

From Publishers Weekly
Russian constructivist artist Rodchenko (1891-1956), known for his avant-garde paintings, collages, graphics, sculpture and stage designs, took up photography in 1924 and proceeded to transform the medium with his dynamic compositions, inventive use of photomontage and radical experiments with foreshortened perspective. In this comprehensive monograph, art historian Lavrentiev, the artist's grandson, presents more than 400 of Rodchenko's photographs, most of them in black and white, and discusses the artist's life, aesthetics and working methods. His text?in English, German and French?is lucid and perceptive. This is an impressive volume. There are brutally honest portraits of the artist's wife, friends and fellow artists, and bleak scenes of life in the former Soviet Union, with its gloomy streets, ugly industrial buildings, official sports events and somber military parades. The powerful photographs, distinguished by the artist's use of extreme angles that often distort the figures to the point of grotesqueness, are telling statements about the world in which Rodchenko lived.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
An art historian and Rodchenko's grandson, Lavrentiev (Vavara Stepanova: The Complete Works, MIT, 1991) has compiled a lavish and valuable survey of the Soviet artist's contributions to the field of photography. The more than 400 works reproduced here are largely drawn from his years of greatest creativity and engagement with the avant-garde, 1924-1935. But Lavrentiev has wisely included a selection of Rodchenko's graphic works and photomontages to give context and, surprisingly, a few lyric, even sentimental, color photographs from the 1950s. The short, largely biographical text?printed in English, German, and French?will be of interest for its succinct discussion of Rodchenko's justification of photography as art. Researchers will be most appreciative, however, of the "list of photographs," which includes not only title and year but also details of the camera and lens used and citations to where the work has been published and exhibited, whenever available. Because of the size of his oeuvre, a comprehensive catalog of Rodchenko's works will probably never be produced; this beautiful, yet affordable, volume is a large step toward filling that void. For all libraries collecting works on 20th-century artists. A contributor to Montage & Modern Life, 1919-1942 (MIT, 1992), Tupitsyn here has reworked her dissertation into a suprisingly engaging account of the evolution of Soviet photography from radical artistic experimentation to predictable propaganda tool. Though the writing is at times dry and quote laden, the stories of collaboration among Gustav Klutsis, Elizar Langman, Rodchenko, and others and their eventual dissolution in pursuit of varying ideologies are both well told and well documented. And the publisher is to be commended for not skimping on either the quality of the book's design or the number of illustrations, which are consistently relevant to and well integrated with the text. This will be a valuable addition to any academic library collecting works on the early 20th-century avant gardes.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.