JF Ptak Science Books: Art’s Other Dead End Kid: Alexander Rodchenko (Book Cover Designs)

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The initial reaction to this fantastic set of book cover designs by Aleksandr Rodochenko (found at the FlyerGoodness blog, here) was for inclusion in this blog’s History of Lines series, given their high dependence on stark geometry and all. All of the designs are by Aleksander Rodchenko and are from the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Rodchenko (1891-1956) was among the pioneers of modern art, filled up enough with it that by 1921 he and a group of other Soviet Artists gathered for a show called 5×5=25, which effectively was an anti-art show, declaring in its works the end or death or withering of art.  Rodchenko presented monochrome works1 deciding to abandon painting.

[Source: FlyerGoodness, here–many more on that site.]

He did not abandon other forms of art, however. (He was also a little late on the anti-art business, as the other Dead End Kid  M. Duchamp came to it in 1914, and then famously producing his L.H.O.O.Q. in 1919 as well as his series of Readymades to make his point razor sharp.  Duchamp was done with art and stayed done, making his anti-art into an expression, and then lived his life accordingly, filling it with not-art and chess.)

Rodchenko continued in art though in other venues, working in sculpture and design in the 1920’s-1940’s,and returning to abstract expressionism in the 1940’s.

In the middle he was very prolific. Some of his popular work in book design included the following terrific examples:

Notes:

“September-October: With Alexandra Exter, Lyubov Popova, Stepanova, and Aleksandr Vesnin, presents work in 5×5=25,
a two-part exhibition held at the Club of the All-Russian Union of
Poets (Klub vserossiskogo soiuza poetov). Each artist shows five works
in each part. The first part opens in September and features works
especially produced for the occasion; Rodchenko exhibits Line (Liniia,1920), Grid (Kletka, 1921), and the three monochrome paintings Pure Red Color (Chistyi krasnyi tsvet), Pure Yellow Color (Chistyi zheltyi tsvet), and Pure Blue Color
(Chistyi sinii tsvet, all 1921), which are often referred to as a
triptych…” from the Museum of Modern Art website presenting their 1998 Rodchenko Retrospective; this section being a useful chronology of Rodchenko’s career.

More images following: