Barbara Hepworth
Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture, she was one of the few female artists of her generation to achieve international prominence. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War. Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, the eldest child of Gertrude and Herbert Hepworth, her father was a civil engineer for the West Riding County Council, who in 1921 became County Surveyor. Hepworth attended Wakefield Girls' High School, where she was awarded music prizes at the age of twelve as noted by Sophie Bowness in "Rhythm of the Stones: Barbara Hepworth and Music" and won a scholarship to and studied at the Leeds School of Art from 1920, it was there that she met Henry Moore. They established a friendly rivalry that lasted professionally for many years.
Hepworth was the first to sculpt the pierced figures. They would lead in the path to modernism in sculpture. Despite attempting to gain a position in what was a male-dominated environment, Hepworth won a county scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art in London, studied there from 1921 until she was awarded the diploma of the Royal College of Art in 1924. Following her studies at the RCA, Hepworth travelled to Florence, Italy, in 1924 on a West Riding Travel Scholarship. Hepworth was the runner-up for the Prix-de-Rome, which the sculptor John Skeaping won. After travelling with him to Siena and Rome, Hepworth married Skeaping on 13 May 1925 in Florence. In Italy, Hepworth learned how to carve marble from Giovanni Ardini. Hepworth and Skeaping returned to London in 1926, where they exhibited their works together from their flat, their son Paul was born in London in 1929. Her early work was interested in abstraction and art movements on the continent. In 1933, Hepworth travelled with Ben Nicholson to France, where they visited the studios of Jean Arp, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuşi.
Hepworth became involved with the Paris-based art movement, Abstraction-Création. In 1933, Hepworth co-founded the Unit One art movement with Nicholson and Paul Nash, the critic Herbert Read, the architect Wells Coates; the movement sought to unite abstraction in British art. Hepworth helped raise awareness of continental artists amongst the British public. In 1937, she designed the layout for Circle: An International Survey of Constructivist Art, a 300-page book that surveyed Constructivist artists and, published in London and edited by Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Leslie Martin. Hepworth married Nicholson on 17 November 1938 at Hampstead Register Office in north London, following his divorce from his wife Winifred; the couple had triplets in 1934, Rachel and Simon. Rachel and Simon became artists; the couple divorced in 1951. Hepworth and their children went to live in Cornwall at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Hepworth lived in Trewyn Studios in St Ives from 1949 until her death in 1975.
She said. Here was a studio, a yard, garden where I could work in open air and space." St Ives had become a refuge for many artists during the war. On 8 February 1949, Nicholson co-founded the Penwith Society of Arts at the Castle Inn. Hepworth was a skilled draughtsman. After her daughter Sarah was hospitalised in 1944, she struck up a close friendship with the surgeon Norman Capener. At Capener's invitation, she was invited to view surgical procedures and, between 1947–1949, she produced nearly eighty drawings of operating rooms in chalk and pencil. Hepworth was fascinated by the similarities between surgeons and artists, stating: "There is, it seems to me, a close affinity between the work and approach of both physicians and surgeons, painters and sculptors."In 1950, works by Hepworth were exhibited in the British Pavilion at the XXV Venice Biennale alongside works by Matthew Smith and John Constable. The 1950 Biennale was the last time that contemporary British artists were exhibited alongside artists from the past.
Two early public commissions, Contrapunctal Forms and Turning Forms, were exhibited at the Festival of Britain in 1951. During this period, Hepworth moved away from working only in stone or wood and began to work with bronze and clay. Hepworth used her garden in St Ives, which she designed with her friend the composer Priaulx Rainier, to view her large-scale bronzes, her eldest son, was killed on 13 February 1953 in a plane crash while serving with the Royal Air Force in Thailand. A memorial to him and Child, is in the parish church of St Ives. Exhausted, in part from her son's death, Hepworth travelled to Greece with her good friend Margaret Gardiner in August 1954, they visited Athens and many of the Aegean Islands. When Hepworth returned to St Ives from Greece in August 1954, she found that Gardiner had sent her a large shipment of Nigerian guarea hardwood. Although she received only a single tree trunk, Hepworth noted that the shipment from Nigeria to the Tilbury docks came in at 17 tons. Between 1954–1956 Hepworth sculpted six pieces out of guarea wood, many of which were inspired by her trip to Greece, such as "Corinthos" and "Curved Form".
The artist increased her studio space when she purchased the Palais de Danse, a cinema and dance studio, across the street from Trewyn in 1960. She used this new space to work on large-scale commis
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, the second most populous German federal state. With a population of around 1.5 million, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, as well as the 12th-largest city in the European Union. The city's metropolitan region is home to 6 million people. Straddling the banks of the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps, it is the seat of the Bavarian administrative region of Upper Bavaria, while being the most densely populated municipality in Germany. Munich is the second-largest city in the Bavarian dialect area, after the Austrian capital of Vienna; the city is a global centre of art, technology, publishing, innovation, education and tourism and enjoys a high standard and quality of living, reaching first in Germany and third worldwide according to the 2018 Mercer survey, being rated the world's most liveable city by the Monocle's Quality of Life Survey 2018. According to the Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute Munich is considered an alpha-world city, as of 2015.
Munich is a major international center of engineering, science and research, exemplified by the presence of two research universities, a multitude of scientific institutions in the city and its surroundings, world class technology and science museums like the Deutsches Museum and BMW Museum.. Munich houses many multinational companies and its economy is based on high tech, the service sector and creative industries, as well as IT, biotechnology and electronics among many others; the name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning "by the monks". It derives from the monks of the Benedictine order, who ran a monastery at the place, to become the Old Town of Munich. Munich was first mentioned in 1158. Catholic Munich resisted the Reformation and was a political point of divergence during the resulting Thirty Years' War, but remained physically untouched despite an occupation by the Protestant Swedes. Once Bavaria was established as a sovereign kingdom in 1806, it became a major European centre of arts, architecture and science.
In 1918, during the German Revolution, the ruling house of Wittelsbach, which had governed Bavaria since 1180, was forced to abdicate in Munich and a short-lived socialist republic was declared. In the 1920s, Munich became home to several political factions, among them the NSDAP; the first attempt of the Nazi movement to take over the German government in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch was stopped by the Bavarian police in Munich with gunfire. After the Nazis' rise to power, Munich was declared their "Capital of the Movement". During World War II, Munich was bombed and more than 50% of the entire city and up to 90% of the historic centre were destroyed. After the end of postwar American occupation in 1949, there was a great increase in population and economic power during the years of Wirtschaftswunder, or "economic miracle". Unlike many other German cities which were bombed, Munich restored most of its traditional cityscape and hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics; the 1980s brought strong economic growth, high-tech industries and scientific institutions, population growth.
The city is home to major corporations like BMW, Siemens, MAN, Linde and MunichRE. Munich is home to many universities and theatres, its numerous architectural attractions, sports events and its annual Oktoberfest attract considerable tourism. Munich is one of the fastest growing cities in Germany, it is a top-ranked destination for expatriate location. Munich hosts more than 530,000 people of foreign background; the first known settlement in the area was of Benedictine monks on the Salt road. The foundation date is not considered the year 1158, the date the city was first mentioned in a document; the document was signed in Augsburg. By the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, had built a toll bridge over the river Isar next to the monk settlement and on the salt route, but as part of the archaeological excavations at Marienhof in advance of the expansion of the S-Bahn from 2012 shards of vessels from the eleventh century were found, which prove again that the settlement Munich must be older than their first documentary mention from 1158.
In 1175 Munich received city fortification. In 1180 with the trial of Henry the Lion, Otto I Wittelsbach became Duke of Bavaria, Munich was handed to the Bishop of Freising. In 1240, Munich was transferred to Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, when the Duchy of Bavaria was split in two, Munich became the ducal residence of Upper Bavaria. Duke Louis IV, a native of Munich, was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328, he strengthened the city's position by granting it the salt monopoly, thus assuring it of additional income. In the late 15th century, Munich underwent a revival of gothic arts: the Old Town Hall was enlarged, Munich's largest gothic church – the Frauenkirche – now a cathedral, was constructed in only 20 years, starting in 1468; when Bavaria was reunited in 1506, Munich became its capital. The arts and politics became influenced by the court. During the 16th century, Munich was a centre of the German counter reformation, of renaissance arts. Duke Wilhelm V commissioned the Jesuit Michaelskirche, which became a centre for the counter-reform
Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury is a city in the U. S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, 33 miles southwest of Hartford and 77 miles northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in Connecticut; as of the 2010 census, Waterbury had a population of 110,366, making it the 10th largest city in the New York Metropolitan Area, 9th largest city in New England and the 5th largest city in Connecticut. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Waterbury had large industrial interests and was the leading center in the United States for the manufacture of brassware, as reflected in the nickname the "Brass City" and the city's motto Quid Aere Perennius?. It was noted for the manufacture of watches and clocks; the city is along Interstate 84 and Route 8 and has a Metro-North railroad station with connections to Grand Central Terminal. Waterbury is home to Post University and the regional campuses of the University of Connecticut, University of Bridgeport, Western Connecticut State University as well as Naugatuck Valley Community College.
The land was inhabited by the Algonquin bands. According to Samuel Orcutt's history, some Puritan residents of nearby Farmington "found it expedient to purchase the same lands from different tribes, without attempting to decide between their rival claims." The original settlement of Waterbury in 1674 was in the area now known as the Town Plot section. In 1675, the turbulence of King Philip's War caused the new settlement to be vacated until the resumption of peace in 1677. A new permanent location was found across the river to the east along the Mad River; the original Native American inhabitants called the area "Matetacoke" meaning "the interval lands." Thus, the settlement's name was Anglicised to "Mattatuck" in 1673. When the settlement was admitted as the 28th town in the Connecticut Colony in 1686, the name was changed to Waterbury in reference to the numerous streams that emptied into the Naugatuck River from the hills on either side of the valley. At that time, it included all or parts of what became the towns of Watertown, Wolcott, Naugatuck and Middlebury.
Growth was slow during Waterbury's first hundred years, the lack of arable land due to the constant flooding of the Naugatuck River in particular, discouraged many potential settlers. Furthermore, the residents suffered through a great flood in 1691 and an outbreak of disease in 1712. After a century, Waterbury's population numbered just 5,000. Waterbury emerged as an early American industrial power in the early 19th century when the city began to manufacture brass, harnessing the waters of the Mad River and the Naugatuck River to power the early factories; the new brass industry attracted many immigrant laborers from all over the world, leading to an influx of diverse nationalities. Waterbury was incorporated as a city in 1853 and, as the "Brass Capital of the World", it gained a reputation for the quality and durability of its goods. Brass and copper supplied by Waterbury was notably used in Nevada's Boulder Dam and found myriad applications across the United States, as well. Another famous Waterbury product of the mid-19th century was Robert H. Ingersoll's one-dollar pocket watch, five million of which were sold.
After this, the clock industry became as important as Waterbury's famed brass industry. Evidence of these two important industries can still be seen in Waterbury, as numerous clocktowers and old brass factories have become landmarks of the city. Of note in Waterbury's industrial history was the production of silverware, starting in 1858 by Rogers & Brother, in 1886 by Rogers & Hamilton. In 1893, Rogers & Brother exhibited wares at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1898, both companies became part of the International Silver Company, headquartered in nearby Meriden. Production continued at the R&B site until 1938. Today designs by the two companies are in the collections of the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, in many historical societies and museums across the United States. In June 1920, labor unrest occurred in the town, with striking workers fighting with police on the street. Over 30 were arrested Lithuanians, Russians and Italians.
The strikers numbered some 15,000, with most being employed at Scovill, Chase Rolling Mill, Chase Metal Works. One striker was shot to death by police. At its peak during World War II, 10,000 people worked at the Scovill Manufacturing Co sold to Century Brass; the city's metal manufacturing mills occupied more than 2 million square feet and more than 90 buildings. The first Unico Club was founded in Waterbury in 1922 by Dr. Anthony P. Vastola, it now has 150 regional groups. The membership is composed of business and professional people of Italian lineage or those who are married to an Italian-American; the clubs sponsor educational and civic programs. Waterbury's Fr. Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in New Haven, Connecticut, on February 2, 1882. Though the first councils were all in Connecticut, the Order spread throughout the United States in the following years. Established in 1894, St. Joseph's Church holds the distinction of being the first Lithuanian worshiping community in Connecticut and second oldest in the country.
Sacred Heart was the first Catholic high school in Connecticut, September 6, 1922. One of the first full-length sound motion pictures was made in the 1920s at the studios of the Bristol Co. at Platts Mills by Professor William Henry Bristol, who experime
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasised speed, youth and objects such as the car, the airplane, the industrial city, its key figures were the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, Luigi Russolo. It aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past. Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurism's artistic style. Important Futurist works included Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's painting Abstract Speed + Sound, Russolo's The Art of Noises. Although it was an Italian phenomenon, there were parallel movements in Russia, England and elsewhere; the Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, film, textiles, music and cooking. To some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Surrealism, to a greater degree Precisionism and Vorticism.
Futurism is an avant-garde movement founded in Milan in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti launched the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, which he published for the first time on 5 February 1909 in La gazzetta dell'Emilia, an article reproduced in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro on Saturday 20 February 1909, he was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and the composer Luigi Russolo. Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old political and artistic tradition. "We want no part of it, the past", he wrote, "we the young and strong Futurists!" The Futurists admired speed, technology and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, they were passionate nationalists. They repudiated the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality, "however daring, however violent", bore proudly "the smear of madness", dismissed art critics as useless, rebelled against harmony and good taste, swept away all the themes and subjects of all previous art, gloried in science.
Publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, the Futurists wrote them on many topics, including painting, religion and cooking. The founding manifesto did not contain a positive artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting; this committed them to a "universal dynamism", to be directly represented in painting. Objects in reality were not separate from one another or from their surroundings: "The sixteen people around you in a rolling motor bus are in turn and at the same time one, ten four three; the motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it."The Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911 they used the techniques of Divisionism, breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes, adopted from Divisionism by Giovanni Segantini and others. Severini, who lived in Paris, attributed their backwardness in style and method at this time to their distance from Paris, the centre of avant-garde art.
Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism and following a visit to Paris in 1911 the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists. Cubism offered them a means of expressing dynamism, they painted modern urban scenes. Carrà's Funeral of the Anarchist Galli is a large canvas representing events that the artist had himself been involved in, in 1904; the action of a police attack and riot is rendered energetically with broken planes. His Leaving the Theatre uses a Divisionist technique to render isolated and faceless figures trudging home at night under street lights. Boccioni's The City Rises represents scenes of construction and manual labour with a huge, rearing red horse in the centre foreground, which workmen struggle to control, his States of Mind, in three large panels, The Farewell, Those who Go, Those Who Stay, "made his first great statement of Futurist painting, bringing his interests in Bergson and the individual's complex experience of the modern world together in what has been described as one of the'minor masterpieces' of early twentieth century painting."
The work attempts to convey feelings and sensations experienced in time, using new means of expression, including "lines of force", which were intended to convey the directional tendencies of objects through space, "simultaneity", which combined memories, present impressions and anticipation of future events, "emotional ambience" in which the artist seeks by intuition to link sympathies between the exterior scene and interior emotion. Boccioni's intentions in art were influenced by the ideas of Bergson, including the idea of intuition, which Bergson defined as a simple, indivisible experience of sympathy through which one is moved into the inner being of an object to grasp what is unique and ineffable within it; the Futurists aimed through their art thus to enable the viewer to apprehend the inner being of what they depicted. Boccioni developed these ideas at length in his book, Pittura scultura Futuriste: Dinamismo plastico. Balla's Dynamism of a Do
Kinetic art
Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or depends on motion for its effect. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are the earliest examples of kinetic art. More pertinently speaking, kinetic art is a term that today most refers to three-dimensional sculptures and figures such as mobiles that move or are machine operated; the moving parts are powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of styles. There is a portion of kinetic art that includes virtual movement, or rather movement perceived from only certain angles or sections of the work; this term clashes with the term "apparent movement", which many people use when referring to an artwork whose movement is created by motors, machines, or electrically powered systems. Both apparent and virtual movement are styles of kinetic art that only have been argued as styles of op art; the amount of overlap between kinetic and op art is not significant enough for artists and art historians to consider merging the two styles under one umbrella term, but there are distinctions that have yet to be made.
"Kinetic art" as a moniker developed from a number of sources. Kinetic art has its origins in the late 19th century impressionist artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet who experimented with accentuating the movement of human figures on canvas; this triumvirate of impressionist painters all sought to create art, more lifelike than their contemporaries. Degas’ dancer and racehorse portraits are examples of what he believed to be "photographic realism". By the early 1900s, certain artists grew closer to ascribing their art to dynamic motion. Naum Gabo, one of the two artists attributed to naming this style, wrote about his work as examples of "kinetic rhythm", he felt that his moving sculpture Kinetic Construction was the first of its kind in the 20th century. From the 1920s until the 1960s, the style of kinetic art was reshaped by a number of other artists who experimented with mobiles and new forms of sculpture; the strides made by artists to "lift the figures and scenery off the page and prove undeniably that art is not rigid" took significant innovations and changes in compositional style.
Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet were the three artists of the 19th century that initiated those changes in the Impressionist movement. Though they each took unique approaches to incorporating movement in their works, they did so with the intention of being a realist. In the same period, Auguste Rodin was an artist whose early works spoke in support of the developing kinetic movement in art. However, Auguste Rodin's criticisms of the movement indirectly challenged the abilities of Manet and Monet, claiming that it is impossible to capture a moment in time and give it the vitality, seen in real life, it is impossible to ascribe Manet's work to any one era or style of art. One of his works, on the brink of a new style is Le Ballet Espagnol; the figures' contours coincide with their gestures as a way to suggest depth in relation to one another and in relation to the setting. Manet accentuates the lack of equilibrium in this work to project to the viewer that he or she is on the edge of a moment, seconds away from passing.
The blurred, hazy sense of color and shadow in this work place the viewer in a fleeting moment. In 1863, Manet extended his study of movement on flat canvas with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe; the light and composition are the same, but he adds a new structure to the background figures. The woman bending in the background is not scaled as if she were far away from the figures in the foreground; the lack of spacing is Manet's method of creating snapshot, near-invasive movement similar to his blurring of the foreground objects in Le Ballet Espagnol. Edgar Degas is believed to be the intellectual extension of Manet, but more radical for the impressionist community. Degas' subjects are the epitome of the impressionist era, his "modern subjects" never obscured his objective of creating moving art. In his 1860 piece Jeunes Spartiates s'exerçant à la lutte, he capitalizes on the classic impressionist nudes but expands on the overall concept, he places them in a flat landscape and gives them dramatic gestures, for him this pointed to a new theme of "youth in movement".
One of his most revolutionary works, L’Orchestre de l’Opéra interprets forms of definite movement and gives them multidimensional movement beyond the flatness of the canvas. He positions the orchestra directly in the viewer’s space, while the dancers fill the background. Degas is alluding to the Impressionist style of combining movement, but redefines it in a way, seen in the late 1800s. In the 1870s, Degas continues this trend through his love of one shot motion horseraces in such works as Voiture aux Courses, it wasn’t until 1884 with Chevaux de Course that his attempt at creating dynamic art came to fruition. This work is part of a series of horse races and polo matches wherein the figures are well integrated into the landscape; the horses and their owners are depicted as if caught in a moment of intense deliberation, trotting away casually in other frames. The impressi
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art, he wanted'to construct' art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements, its influence was widespread, with major effects upon architecture, graphic design, industrial design, film, fashion and, to some extent, music. The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Aleksei Gan used the word as the title of his book Constructivism, printed in 1922. Constructivism was a post-World War I development of Russian Futurism, of the'counter reliefs' of Vladimir Tatlin, exhibited in 1915.
The term itself would be invented by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular style of work, while its geometric abstraction owed something to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. Constructivism as theory and practice was derived from a series of debates at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow, from 1920 to 1922. After deposing its first chairman, Wassily Kandinsky, for his'mysticism', The First Working Group of Constructivists would develop a definition of Constructivism as the combination of faktura: the particular material properties of an object, tektonika, its spatial presence; the Constructivists worked on three-dimensional constructions as a means of participating in industry: the OBMOKhU exhibition showed these three dimensional compositions, by Rodchenko, Karl Ioganson and the Stenberg brothers. The definition would be extended to designs for two-dimensional works such as books or posters, with montage and factography becoming important concepts.
As much as involving itself in designs for industry, the Constructivists worked on public festivals and street designs for the post-October revolution Bolshevik government. The most famous of these was in Vitebsk, where Malevich's UNOVIS Group painted propaganda plaques and buildings. Inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky's declaration'the streets our brushes, the squares our palettes', artists and designers participated in public life during the Civil War. A striking instance was the proposed festival for the Comintern congress in 1921 by Alexander Vesnin and Liubov Popova, which resembled the constructions of the OBMOKhU exhibition as well as their work for the theatre. There was a great deal of overlap during this period between Constructivism and Proletkult, the ideas of which concerning the need to create an new culture struck a chord with the Constructivists. In addition some Constructivists were involved in the'ROSTA Windows', a Bolshevik public information campaign of around 1920; some of the most famous of these were by the poet-painter Vladimir Vladimir Lebedev.
The constructivists tried to create works that would make the viewer an active viewer of the artwork. In this it had similarities with the Russian Formalists' theory of'making strange', accordingly their main theorist Viktor Shklovsky worked with the Constructivists, as did other formalists like the Arch Bishop; these theories were tested in theatre with the work of Vsevolod Meyerhold, who had established what he called'October in the theatre'. Meyerhold developed a'biomechanical' acting style, influenced both by the circus and by the'scientific management' theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Meanwhile, the stage sets by the likes of Vesnin and Stepanova tested Constructivist spatial ideas in a public form. A more populist version of this was developed by Alexander Tairov, with stage sets by Aleksandra Ekster and the Stenberg brothers; these ideas would influence German directors like Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator, as well as the early Soviet cinema. The key work of Constructivism was Vladimir Tatlin's proposal for the Monument to the Third International which combined a machine aesthetic with dynamic components celebrating technology such as searchlights and projection screens.
Gabo publicly criticized Tatlin's design saying, "Either create functional houses and bridges or create pure art, not both." This had caused a major controversy in the Moscow group in 1920 when Gabo and Pevsner's Realistic Manifesto asserted a spiritual core for the movement. This was opposed to the utilitarian and adaptable version of Constructivism held by Tatlin and Rodchenko. Tatlin's work was hailed by artists in Germany as a revolution in art: a 1920 photograph shows George Grosz and John Heartfield holding a placard saying'Art is Dead – Long Live Tatlin's Machine Art', while the designs for the tower were published in Bruno Taut's magazine Fruhlicht; the tower was never built, due to a lack of money following the revolution. Tatlin's tower started a period of exchange of ideas between Moscow and Berlin, something reinforced by El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg's Soviet-German magazine Veshch-Gegenstand-Objet which spread the idea of'Construction art', as did the Constructivist exhibits at the 1922 Russische Ausstellung in Berlin, organised by Lissitzky.
A Constructivist International was formed, which met with Dadaists and De Stijl artists in Germany in 192
October Revolution
The October Revolution known in Soviet historiography as the Great October Socialist Revolution and referred to as the October Uprising, the October Coup, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolshevik Coup or the Red October, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin, instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November 1917, it followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year, which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and resulted in a provisional government after a transfer of power proclaimed by Grand Duke Michael, the younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II, who declined to take power after the Tsar stepped down. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions. After the Congress of Soviets, now the governing body, had its second session, it elected members of the Bolsheviks and other leftist groups such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to important positions within the new state of affairs.
This initiated the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic. On 17 July 1918, his family were executed; the revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the occupation of government buildings on 7 November 1917; the following day, the Winter Palace was captured. The long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. In contrast to their majority in the Soviets, the Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which won 370 seats, although the SR Party no longer existed as a whole party by that time, as the Left SRs had gone into coalition with the Bolsheviks from October 1917 to March 1918; the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the Constituent Assembly came into conflict with the Soviets, it rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, resulting in the Constituent Assembly being dissolved the next day by order of the Congress of Soviets.
As the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 3rd, as seen in contemporary documents. In Russian, however, "переворот" has a similar meaning to "revolution" and means "upheaval" or "overturn", so "coup" is not the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use, it is known as the "November Revolution" having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, replaced his government with the Russian Provisional Government. However, the provisional government was riven by internal dissension, it continued to wage World War I, which became unpopular. A nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased.
Gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, other industrial centers, leading to mass unemployment. At the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913. Russia's national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles; the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. Throughout June and August 1917, it was common to hear working-class Russians speak about their lack of confidence and misgivings with those in power in the Provisional Government. Factory workers around Russia felt unhappy with the growing shortages of food and other materials, they blamed their own managers or foremen and would attack them in the factories. The workers blamed many rich and influential individuals, such as elites in positions of power, for the overall shortage of food and poor living conditions.
Workers labelled these rich and powerful individuals as opponents of the Revolution, called them words such as "bourgeois and imperialist."In September and October 1917, there were mass strike actions by the Moscow and Petrograd workers, miners in Donbas, metalworkers in the Urals, oil workers in Baku, textile workers in the Central Industrial Region, railroad workers on 44 railway lines. In these months alone, more than a million workers took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution. Workers were able to organize these strikes through factory committees; the factory committees represented the workers and were able to negotiate better working conditions and hours. Though workplace conditions may have been increasing in quality, the overall quality of life for workers was not improving. There were still shortages of food and the increased wages workers had obtained did little to provide for their families.
By October 1917, peasant uprisings were common. By autumn the peasant movement ag
