Chapter 15

Chapter 15 discussed how cubism and futurism influenced Russian graphics and became suprematism and constructivism. Civil war and other political issues allowed a brief period of creativity. Kasimir Malevich founded suprematism, which was a style of painting with basic forms and pure color. He didn't believe in utilitarian function and pictorial representation, but that art must remain a spiritual activity. El Lissitzky was the eptiome of a constructivist, which was the opposite of a suprematist. They felt that paintings were useless and concentrated on industrial design. Among his achievments, Lissitzky developed a design style called Prouns, designed covers for the magazine Wendingen, created the journal Veshch and totally designed a book of poetry. Lissitzky also used the photomontage to make dramatic and powerful posters or magazine covers. After his death he was remebered as a great pioneer of design and type. Another influential constructivist was Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev. He simplified forms to their basic geometric shapes while he illustrated books for young children and became the father of the modern picture book. He was inspired by how children actually draw and called it "infantilism". De Stijl was a movement that strived for equilibrium and harmony universal in art. Piet Mondrian's works were where the philosophys and visual forms were formed. He used only primary colors and painted abstract images of horizontal and vertical lines. Bart Anthony Van der Leck and Theo Van Doesburg both used a similar paint style during the 1910s. Doesburg worked with the De Stijl theories to sculpter, architecture, typography and on the cover design of a book. He didn't used curves in his typography. He prefered sans serif with horizontal and vertical structure composed in rectangular blocks. Doesburg experimented with his architecture using asymmetries in the spaces. The Schroeder House helped De Stijl architectural theory to become realized with its radical design. The De Stijl movement died out as an organized art movement along with Deosburg, since he was De Stijl, according to the book, with his energy and creativity. I thought that Lebedev's work was the most interesting, along with the application of the De Stijl theory to architecture. The simplicity of Lebedev's geometric forms and children's illustrations feel refined and expressive at the same time. I feel like they would communicate well to a child and he did his job to the best of his ability by putting himself back to his childhood to decide how to paint.
What made the Schroeder House so radical when Frank Lloyd Wright and the Glasgow group designed buildings similarily?