The Struggle for Utopia
Subtitle: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917-1946
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: June 20, 1998
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780226505169
Subjects: History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -; Sociology, Social Studies; First World War, 1914-1918; Inter-war period, 1918-1939; Postwar period, 1945 to c 2000; Second World War, 1939-1945; Art; Art & Art Instruction; Russia; European; History - Modern (Late 19th Century to 1945); Art / History / European; Fine Arts; History - General; 20th century; Art and society; Avant-garde (Aesthetics); History; Modernism (Art)
First sentence: The utopian imagination-a means to envision new possibilities for human life-was particularly strong at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917 when the opportunity arose to transform an entire nation.
Description: Following World War I, a new artistic-social avant-garde emerged with the ambition to engage the artist in the building of social life.

Nowhere is this project more evident than in the lives of Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy whose careers covered a broad range of artistic practices and political situations. The remarkable continuity between the various forms of their work stems from their belief that art had to be extended beyond the aesthetic sphere.

But given that the social situations they confronted changed radically in their lifetimes, their operative strategies were severely tested and underwent significant revisions. Through close readings of their work as it relates to the situations in which they were active, Victor Margolin examines the way these three artists negotiated the changing relations between their social ideals and the political realities they confronted.

He follows them and their affiliations through the 1920s and 1930s in Moscow, Berlin, and Chicago, documenting their contributions to utopian architecture, Constructivist ideology, industrial design, photography, visual communication, and design education. Each essay features one or two of the artist-designers and shifts from one medium to another through a chronological narrative that begins with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and ends in Chicago just after World War II.

Focusing on the difficult relationship between art and social change, Margolin brings important new insights to our understanding of the avant-garde's role in a period of great political complexity.