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By Alexander Lavrentiev
Grant, Moscow, Russia, 2000.
255pp., illus.
ISBN 5-89135-150-1
Reviewed by Kevin Murray, Australia.
E-mail: kmurray@mira.net


It would be difficult normally to recommend a book written almost entirely in Russian to an English-speaking audience. However, in the case of Constructivist Laboratory, lucid pictures compensate for opaque Cyrillic letters.

The book functions as an album of trends in graphic design found in Russian in the heady decade of the 1920s. These trends include Russian Futurism (Tatlin, Malevich, etc.), Suprematism (Lissitsky, Mayakovsky, etc.), Constructivism (Rodchenko, Stenberg, etc.), Photomontage (Stepanonova, Telingater, etc), Geometric Illustration, particularly in children's literature (Chihagova), Constructivist Typography (Gan, Lissitsky, etc.) and finally Corporate Identity such as advertising.

The designs are extraordinarily dynamic. Quite simple forms are gathered in a deliberately flat manner, yet they combine in a gesture that dramatically calls to action. Typography crowds the page to fully exploit available paper. There is such a wealth of experimentation it seems that graphic design which followed in the 20th century only captured a fraction of the possibilities suggested at that time.

The work of Alexander Rodchenko is particularly striking. With his able subject, Lily Brik, he was able to combine photography with montage to produce compelling propaganda. The book contains a series of contemporary advertising that drew on his original 1925 poster advertising Leningrad Gosizdat-each featuring the joyful Lily Brik, cupping her face to shout out the advertiser's message.

Less well-known from this period are works by Vassily Kamensky, who in 1914 produced printed works on wallpaper. It is interesting to note this early use of found materials, which seemed to decline as the work became more official.

Constructivist Laboratory is a terrific resource for pursuing the aesthetic revolution that was so sadly derailed by the political one.

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