The Constructive idea sees and values Art only as a creative act. Heretofore these elements have been abused by being used to express all sorts of associative images which might have been expressed otherwise, for instance, in literature and poetry.īut this point was only one link in the ideological chain of the constructive concept, being bound up with the new conception of Art as a whole and of its functions in life. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast new field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected. It has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world that their life and their action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature that those elements are not chosen by convention for any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. This was the main obstacle to the rejuvenation of Art, and it was at this point that the Constructive idea laid the cornerstone of its foundation. This was because in all our previous Art concepts of the world a work of art could not have been conceived without the representation of the external aspect of the world, It has always been so in Art that either one or the other predominated, conditioning and predetermining the other. I say ‘have to’ because never before in Art have they acted in such a way in spite of the obvious necessity of this condition. In a work of art they have to live and act as a unit, proceed in the same direction and produce the same effect. The thought that Form could have one designation and Content another cannot be incorporated in the concept of the Constructive idea. It does not separate Content from Form – on the contrary, it does not see as possible their separated and independent existence. These two elements are from the Constructive point of view one and the same thing. It embraces those two fundamental elements on which Art is built up, namely, the Content and the Form. In it lies a complete reconstruction of the means in the different domains of Art, in the relations between them, in their methods and in their aims. The basis of the Constructive idea in Art lies in an entirely new approach to the nature of Art and its functions in life. The revolution which this school produced in the minds of artists is only comparable to that which happened at approximately the same time in the world of physics. One may estimate the value of particular Cubistic works as one likes, but it is incontestable that the influence of the Cubistic ideology on the spirits of the artists at the beginning of this century has no parallel in the history of Art for violence and intrepidity. The Cubistic school was the summit of a revolutionary process in Art which was already started by the Impressionists at the end of the last century. The immediate source from which the Constructive idea derives is Cubism, although it had almost the character of a repulsion rather than an attraction. But, however long and however deep this process may go in its material destruction, it cannot deprive us any more of our optimism about the final outcome, since we see that in the realm of ideas we are now entering on the period of reconstruction. They are more like floods, which do not depend on the strokes of the oarsmen floating on the waters. Historical processes of this kind generally go their own way. It is innocent to hope that this process of disintegration will stop at the time and in the place where we want it to. The war was only a natural consequence of a disintegration which started long ago in the depths of the previous civilization. They had already begun at the end of the last century and proceeded in ours with unusual speed until there was no stable point left in either the material or the ideal structure of our life. The revolutions have spared nothing in the edifice of culture which had been built up by the past ages. Our century appears in history under the sign of revolutions and disintegration.
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