ABSTRACT
The very name of the journal in which Brik's statement appeared signified the hope of the perfect world to come in which the aesthetic impulse, at last fully realized, would be indistinguishable from the practical tasks of social reconstruction. Both in its achievements and its repudiations, in its versatility and its fragmentation, Alexander Rodchenko's career tells us much about the whole Constructivist phenomenon—about its inspired aesthetic innovations as well as its doctrinaire political motives. Rodchenko worked as a photographer and designer. And just as his early geometrical paintings and drawings and his constructed sculpture exhibited remarkable gifts and a no less remarkable courage, his photographs and graphic designs are work of a high quality and individual vision. The Revolution brought Rodchenko an important administrative post—he became Director of the Museum Bureau. He turned his attention to the theater, to film, and to architecture, working as a designer.
