ABSTRACT
Architecture is a necessary art, and it is intimately bound up with the social reconstruction which must take place under a Communist regime. Corresponding to the new architecture, to a large extent arising from the same fertile ground of the Bauhaus experiment founded and directed by Gropius, is the art generally known as 'abstract'. Communist artists from Germany will tell someone that they have 'been through all that'; that abstract art is dead, and that in any case it is incomprehensible to the proletariat and of no use to the revolutionary movement. Philosophically it is the issue between materialism and idealism. But the relation between mind and reality, between the individual and the community, is not one of precedence; it is more one of action and reaction, a process of tacking against the wind. And so with the individual and the community: complete freedom means inevitable decadence.
