Karel Teige: Constructivism and the Liquidation of "Art"

Constructivism must not mean a temporary aesthetic and artistic mode to us, but an important current stage in the development of human thought and work, a naming of the present moment in the history of humanity, the youngest nuance of Europe. It is not a narrow artistic ism, one of those that occasionally come to stir the waters of the boredom of artistic life, but a creative and living, powerful and penetrating movement that is increasingly taking hold today in all civilized countries, a movement that is very general and entirely international, a healthy directive for all productive work. The triumph of its opinion and its method, evident everywhere, is a distinctive and essential feature of our time. Constructivism is the beginning and the sign of new architecture, the advent of a new epoch of culture and civilization in general.
The slogan of constructivism, one might say, interprets itself, almost philologically and etymologically. From the verb to construct. Thus, constructivist is simply synonymous with constructive. This interpretation, however primitive, is in reality much closer to the truth than the conception of constructivism as the latest artistic ism, as the dernier cri of studios and exhibitions. For in constructivism, one cannot think of art. If we consider constructivism as a shadow of the present, a naming of the current epoch of culture and civilization, we must emphasize that it does not bring a new formalistic system, an aprioristic order aesthetic, that it abandons all traditional forms, betrays the nine Muses of classical Parnassus: it is not concerned with forms, but with functions. The realm of all previous art is formalism. Constructivism proclaims the denial of formalism by functionalism. It is not interested in a new artistic formula for the fundamental reason that it is not interested in art at all.

The liquidation of art.
With constructivism, we proceed to the regular liquidation of art.
We declare the complete collapse of existing varieties of so-called art. If we still use the word "art" today and perhaps will continue to do so, it must be noted that it does not signify for us the sacred and noble art with a capital A, the fine academic art, ars academica, les beaux arts, which modern times are deposing from the throne. For us, the word art comes from the verb to be able, and its product is artificiality, artifact. It is thus a word simply denoting any artificial perfection and skill. In this sense, one can speak of architectural art, industrial art, theater, film, just as well as culinary, poetic, photographic, travel, dancing art; Czech allows talking of medical, accounting, surveying art; there exist books and manuals on the art of paying debts, on chiromancy, on the art of tying a tie, on the art of getting married. Art is simply the way of using certain means for a certain function, and both the function and these means are quantities that are more or less variable. Art, according to the Larousse dictionary, is the application of knowledge to the realization of a certain task.
So much for explanation, that we do not attribute any sacred or cultic elevation to art, do not surround it with the smoke of incense. We sincerely renounce all aesthetic fetishism. Modern vitality considers so-called art a relic of aesthetic mentality, and the futurists in Italy and Russia spat upon the altar of art. The rational opinion of prejudice-free constructivism asserts that all problems of so-called art are outdated for us today, that "art" itself has no value for us, that it is at an end, that "art" and "artists" are simply losing their raison d'être today. The degeneration of existing artistic fields, painting, sculpture, theater, is so evident that it cannot be concealed.
Our civilization is not a civilization of art and crafts (l'époque des arts et des métiers), but a civilization of the machine (le siècle de la machine).
If the constructivists declared (in the words of Ilia Erenburg) that new art will cease to be art, they did not intend to commit a brilliant paradox or a futurist iconoclasm. They merely wanted to state a fact, to express a finding. That there are no eternal values in art, and that today's art is looking forward to its demise. If we understand art simply as products that precisely correspond to a certain material or spiritual need, which are a satisfaction for man, a whole complex being, then in that sense art is eternal, even if its forms and methods change as much as possible, it lasts as long as the human race lasts. However, if we understand art as individual fields of crafts that have delegated their nine representatives to Parnassus, then we must admit that these fields may fail and be replaced by others. A person's need to live and to dress is probably nearly eternal: but this does not imply that decorative art would be eternal. A person's need for poetic pleasure, spiritual entertainment, the need for sensibility, evoked through colors, shapes, sounds, words, and scents, is probably constant, but this does not imply that there will always be a need for easel paintings, symphonic orchestras, and literature. All the more so if the living thirst for beauty finds its satisfaction in modern man much more elsewhere, in the midst of life’s drama, than in so-called art. A person with modern sensibility feels the inadequacy of existing art.
Constructivists do not come at all with proposals for new art but with plans for a new world, with a program for new life. They do not realize some aesthetic theories, but create a new world. They come simply with a proposal for a new globe. They intend to reconstruct the world on a new basis, oriented towards a more accurate social balance. They deny en bloc all classicisms and romanticisms, all artisms and aestheticisms, for which the same brave will and clear and far-sighted intelligence is required. They have left the stale museums, the graveyards of thought, and have shaken the dust from their shoes. Since the past is dead and history is no longer the teacher, it is unnecessary to invoke museums, traditions, and history. Renan correctly predicted that the time will soon come when man will cease to care about his past. Therefore, we can reduce all history to statistics. It is more telling and less deceptive.
All modern artistic isms, even the most contradictory, sought their analogies in the past in order to thus prove their legitimacy. With a little goodwill, this always had to succeed. In history, one can find everything; historical examples can justify everything. If you want, you will find cubism, orphism, futurism, and impressionism even among the old masters. However, in history, for every argument for there is always simultaneously an argument against, and so it goes on indefinitely. A Gothic plan, or even San Vitale in Ravenna, could be cited as analogies for new architecture; and likewise, Asian, Moroccan, and even Tibetan architecture, whose plans are in contrast entirely unmodern. Thus, we forego forever the confirmation of modern principles with art-historical arguments, simply because we have convinced ourselves that they are not arguments at all and that we know how fundamentally incomparable the modern era is with any past epoch.
The twilight of artistic models has arrived. Eyes that can see, intelligences that can understand, and sensibilities that can feel have recognized that in the realm of so-called art, there are more models than real values. The so-called eternal values are the idol; in reality, they are nothing but long-dead values.
The skeptical and disbelieving modern spirit cannot be deceived by the superstition of eternal values. Our stoic era knows that every human act is provisional, that there are no definitive states, that nothing lasts except what no longer lives. Eternity belongs to cosmic forces, and we do not need to, and cannot, care for it. There is no other truth except occasional, ephemeral truth. The fundamental feature of the modern spirit is skepticism towards every dogma, every absolute validity, every eternal value. It stretches its strength not to be bound by any prescription, to take into account all other circumstances and eventualities with each thing. Modern life has become so strong and inventive through this skepticism, as no weakened by belief. The modern unbelieving spirit, passionately proclaiming its freedom and lack of prejudice, has complete and unconditional devotion to the living and colorful life present in the moment; it ignores any order outside this dominant life. Constructivism knows what a world without absolute values looks like.
The rational spirit of constructivism is necessarily realistic. It has a rather ironic attitude towards eternity and absoluteness. It knows that the heavens, considered indestructible, record nothing but the constant passing of the universe. Modern philosophy, which examines every fact, breaking it down into its essential elements, regardless of external labels (for instance "art") under which it occurs, searching for the possibilities hidden within it, must primarily ask what it was before it became what it is. Criticism must therefore be the science of the evolution of artistic genres. And here we recognize that there is no absolute truth in art when its soul is in constant transformation; the concept of truth is altogether excluded by the concept of development. And if the world is in development, so too is man, who is not at all a finished being, but a continual expansion towards the perfect type, a constant attempt at a new human. And the person of one generation does not require and does not shape such poetry as the preceding generation. There is no eternal duration, but an eternal change and renewal. A new, active, dynamic conception of eternity, in which static permanent values and truths have no place. Absolute and normative aesthetics are impossible and nonsensical. The ideal erotic type changes in space and time fundamentally; and with it, even more, the ideal type of beauty directly or indirectly dependent on it changes. The notion of beauty is, for a black woman, in full lips, for the athlete Fairbanks, for Plato the ephebe, for the Jew in Tunis a fat bride, for today’s girl: herself.
We cannot rely on the principles of traditional and classical aesthetics. Classical aesthetics is insufficient for all phenomena of today’s production and cannot be the foundation of modern criticism. Its theorems cannot be maintained in validity, as it has been found that they do not correspond to truth. Every work has its contemporary order, its principle, and thus its aesthetics. Aesthetics can only have value if there is some relative work to which its principles relate. The theory by itself has no value and meaning, only the theory of a certain relative work, direction, movement.
There are no historical traditional ideals and aesthetic norms, no inherited laws. Modern culture and civilization are facts of their own laws and methods. If a certain work proves its viability despite the prevailing opinions that have arisen, it would be foolish to condemn it. If new phenomena of technical civilization demonstrate that with their poetic intensity they are an excellent substitute for dying forms of art, we will welcome them with enthusiasm. We do not want to suppress any opinion that could probably bring about a necessary solution. Neither antique beauty nor medieval beauty is comparable and homogeneous with today’s beauty, and we will not invoke it either. Often, the so-called eternal order of art is emphasized. But this supposedly eternal order, by the way deduced from artistic realizations, in reality ex post, would logically have to exist a priori. Works, however, are not principles, but results, outcomes grown from many and versatile experiences. If new facts of life and culture arise, philosophy, ethics, morality, as well as aesthetics and criticism automatically require new judgments and measures. To today’s relativism and pragmatism, both truth and beauty are a certain kind of good; thus, they are not an independent category, which in certain limits can be accepted as correct. It is therefore a question of a certain usefulness of art, in which there is the ethos of production. For this usefulness, by the way, we do not consider material utilitarianism exclusively.
The functionality of art (not any form, content, tendency, or the German "Inhaltsästhetik") is the first and most important criterion. Therefore, we shall no longer waste our time on abstract words about form and content and their relationship: the correctly posed question asks for the function. In place of the previous artistic formalism— all art was formalistic— the constructivist era places functionalism. It is not concerned with forms, but with realities of maximum functionality. And at this point, we part ways forever with traditional aesthetics and so-called art.
Having left the sanctuaries of art, we stand amidst actual life. Modern life is without faith, being the faith of modern man. It creates its products not according to the dictates of aesthetic and ethical theories, but to the measure of man. Against all stylistic and aesthetic criteria, constructivism places its human measure. “Such as man has become, he is in fact a being resistant to nature. In that lies his greatness and beauty. Human beauty is artificial, and only thus is it appropriate and natural to man, it is an invention, gradually perfected, one of the visible works and a masterpiece of intelligence.” To constructivists, man is the measure of all things. Architecture, cities, machines, sports, all are according to human measure. Man is the measure for all tailors. He is therefore also the stylistic principle of all architecture, for are not our abodes essentially another part of our clothing? And must not our abodes adhere to us as constructively as our garments, to be just as functional, hygienic, discreet, and elegant? The modern style, modern culture lacks a unified canon of form; it is functionalist; it has no unified constructive principle, as antiquity or Gothic had, for example. The common denominator of all is man.
Man is the stylistic principle of constructivism. See the skeleton, which contains all the visual and constructive laws in operation: silence and energy of surfaces, purity, delicacy, certainty of the profile, asymmetry and balance of organs whose function designates and determines the masses, the continuous movement of expressive surfaces, fluidity and continuity of curves, as required by the unity of the organism.
And see modern constructions to human scale and evaluate them with human measure. The anatomical architecture of the iron frame of a hangar, which escaped the formula of medieval architecture, which was a fortress. There are no load-bearing walls; the skeleton is on the inside, on the surface a thin skin. To express this constructive skeleton on the surface was a temporary architectural fad: after all, man has the construction expressed only at the ankles and certain joints!
Perret's house on rue Franklin in Paris from 1903 is to the measure of man. It is a designer's tour de force. There is no internal courtyard, and the façade opens cleverly through layering into the opposite gardens. Direct lighting. There are no load-bearing walls; the entire structure is supported by a few minimally dimensioned concrete pillars. The façade, without attempting to disguise the constructive skeleton in any way, does not even try to express it.
Man dresses and arms himself with civilization. The form of civilization is the result of his struggle with nature and exploitation of nature, and it changes from generation to generation. The primitive man has a biomechanical civilization. The primitive supplements his tools with the skill of his muscles. Modern man has a mechanical civilization; he directs the complex organization of his tools and production with even more complex forces of spirit. We have emerged from caves and become inhabitants of large cities, and although all passeists proclaim a return to nature, “the dissolution of cities” (Taut), we cannot renounce what we have just culturally become: city dwellers. The intervention of the machine has caused a significant metamorphosis of culture and civilization, has prompted the liquidation of art. For mechanical civilization is fundamentally in contradiction with the civilization of art and crafts. This contradiction will not be resolved by the denial of cars, gramophones, cinemas, and linotypes. Aesthetes have whimsical notions of life. As long as we live in concrete houses, dress, use running water, electric lighting, travel by train, and read newspapers, we are not naked in a paradisiacal jungle. The machine sealed the fate of crafts. All efforts to revive them have proven not only futile but also undesirable. The machine liquidates art and crafts. At first, it imitated manual labor, imitated it very poorly; evidently, that is why there could arise resistance to machine production, as proclaimed by Ruskin. Ruskin resembles Don Quixote of Marx's aphorism: Don Quixote suffered for the deluded notion that itinerant knighthood could be compared to all forms of civilization. Moreover, we adapt poorly to the demands of the present mechanical civilization since our historical education is most easily confined to a deep study of the time when mechanics made no progress. Wells points out that historical knowledge regarding Europe begins when the Greeks traveled the world on horses or sailing ships and galleys, up to the days when Napoleon, Wellington, and Nelson moved in almost the same way in vehicles and ships nearly identical. The discovery of steam and electricity — here the Muse of history wrinkles her nose and closes her eyes. And so there was a certain incubation period before the modern productive thought was able to accept the machine. Then immediately the machine created new social, spiritual, and moral relationships and conditions, caused a change in the environment, and eventually became the professor of modern aesthetics and the liquidator of art. It becomes part of man. And it is obvious that its eruption either kills art or takes it over. So speaks Elic Faure. More precisely, it can be said that it replaces it.
Our time is the time of science and technology. At first, it ushered, sometimes very disrespectfully, religion out the doors of its offices. Consistently and sincerely, it has renounced any mysticism. With ideal enthusiasm, it has declared itself materialistic to the last consequences. The flag of positivism has waved joyfully. Experiments are conducted. After trust in religion has been lost, science is worthy of trust. Scientists believe that by their work they can install paradise on earth. This paradise is called technical civilization. In the silence of laboratories, radium, x-rays, Juvar, serums have been discovered. As a result of special discoveries of pure science made under the microscope, tremendous and far-reaching upheavals occur in production; in industry, applying it reaches new and new inventions. As a result, opinions change again, medical practices are corrected, hygiene is reformed, as is legislation and morality. The driving force of this progress is the machine. The machine shortens working hours while achieving maximum performance. Its law is the law of minimum effort with maximum effect. It is the law of economics. The law of economics is the law of all work. And work is the only law of the world, the regulator that leads organized matter to an unknown goal. Industry produces in a single year as many products as the manufactural production of entire centuries could not match.
Mechanical civilization has given modern people “the song of iron, the buzzing song of electric sparks, and they have understood it: it is the song of their time; they hear its merciless cadences in the crashes of trains that pass over their heads,” says Kellermann in the novel Der Tunnel.
The machine is not a picturesque plot, but a structure and unfolding of such and such organized energies. It is not the subject of art, but a lesson for the spirit. If it is an example of modern aesthetics, almost a symbol of modern beauty in its organism and appearance, it is through its activity and its mission the liquidator of artistic crafts and thus of all existing art that has stagnated in the stage of manufacturing.
“Les belles formes sont les plans droits avec les rondeurs," stated Dominique Ingres. And with this quote, you can verify the beauty of a mechanical product.
Are not, for example, ball bearings a perfect plastic pleasure to the eye? The shine of a magnificent modern material, the precision of the geometric shape — and the circle and sphere are the shapes that are most fundamental and flattering to our eye - suggest directly the perfection of their traditionality. This beauty precisely corresponds to the character of our time, resilient and sober, factual and industrious.
When we speak of the aesthetics of the machine, it must be noted that we do not intend to preach the deification of the machine. While sentimentalists can only reasonably curse the machine, futurists praised it; however, it is necessary to rationally recognize what the machine is a source of learning, in what way it can be significant for the new sensibility. We live in a steel age, and polished steel fascinates our gaze; mechanical beauty, if it is not the work of supposed practical reason, is simply the work of modern man; it is a fixed point in the culture of the time. The machine is the interference element of modern concepts. Machines have been accepted by modern artists in a way so far more or less incomplete and primarily artistic. And basically naturalistic. The noble beauty of the machine does not require being adorned with ornamentation or a panegyric poem. Marinetti's poems and Léger's images of machines have not lent beauty to machines and limousines. It is better to leave machines where they are; they belong in factories and not in paintings, sculptures, or poems.
The lesson that machines provide us is approximately this: We see that where an engineer conscientiously worked, without any aesthetic concerns, and the artist did not interfere in the work, new materials achieved pure and 100% modern beauty. The machine was not made for show, but for use; yet the view of a factory in motion is a dizzying modern theater. Clear profiles, bright outlines, precise and categorical movements of the machine urge us to develop the logical creative abilities of the spirit and liberate feelings perverted by existing art, which, otherworldly, was a craft training in metaphysics. Transferring machine shapes, whose beauty lies in their precision and functionality, outwardly and decoratively into paintings or architecture, as was done in the past in "Jugendstil" and is still happening today, is an act of false and unconscious machinistic romanticism and a fundamental delusion. The ancient Greeks certainly would not have transferred the clones of ships into architecture, while these machinistic romantics today calmly transfer shapes derived from aerodynamic calculations onto furniture or abodes, static objects. (Mendelsohn's, Einstein's tower in Potsdam).
What is the lesson of the machine? The principles of mechanical modern aesthetics have not been invented by craftsmen artists, but by modern constructors who did not think about art. They aimed at perfect fulfillment of a specific task. And we affirm that whenever a perfect fulfillment and resolution is reached for a given task and problem— the most economical, the most precise, and the most complete— the purest modern beauty is achieved without any secondary aesthetic considerations. It cannot be said that this beauty begins where perfectly fulfilled usefulness ends; it is simply impossible to distinguish between beauty and the utility of a structure. It cannot be said that architecture begins where construction ends. It cannot be said because at the moment when we reach all-encompassing, purposeful perfection, we simultaneously and automatically reach beauty. The starting point of this beauty cannot be established, just as we do not know where a curve changes direction; we do not know when a thing, having responded to practical needs, appeals to our aesthetic sensitivity. We know that form by itself is indifferent and moves our sensitivity and interests our vitality only when it is associated with some function. Here we affirm that all beauty begins approximately where indifferent purposelessness ceases. The vast modern beauty resides in every object made for a precisely determined purpose, which exactly realizes the intentions for which it was created. All the confusion of today’s visual artists arises primarily from their uncertainty about the goal, purpose, and mission of their work. In contrast, modern beauty emerges from the products and constructions of modern industry. New proportions, games of volumes and masses, for which we do not find examples in history, carry numbers, i.e., order. These undeniably beautiful constructions evoke a masculine atmosphere. Their modern beauty is mathematical. It is the beauty of a perfect system.
One might object that some machines can be, while perfectly functional, unappealing and ugly. This is not entirely correct. If they are ugly, it is primarily because they are not indeed completely functional, but their perfection is only relative and requires further improvement. We might say that an ugly machine directly calls for further improvement, that its ugliness is a symptom of inadequacy. We assert that the more a machine is perfected, the more beautiful it is. And it is perfect and consequently beautiful only when, not beauty, but absolute functionality was the exclusive interest of the constructor. If you have two machines of the same purpose, whose practical perfection has been deemed equivalent, and one of them is uglier, do not doubt that the other, more beautiful one, will be practically more effective. Machines arise from calculation, and calculation always leaves room for several possibilities, opens the way for several methods. Deciding on the most advantageous (implicitly the most beautiful) outcome is the work of mathematical intuition. The mathematical intuition that intervenes here does not mean at all the intervention of artistic, aesthetic, formal intuition: there is no place for sentiment, fantasy, and taste where a disciplined and logical mathematical spirit works.
The mathematical spirit of the machine explains everything. It explains its lawful perfection. It also explains its hidden and natural irrationality. There, where we speak of mathematical intuition, there, where we explain the beauty of the machine — and the beauty of the machine is an irrational value of a rational product — we recognize that behind the rational assessment, there exists the presence and functionality of the irrational. Mathematics, or geometry, has been formulated as the art of precisely tying imprecise facts. Mathematical thinking also operates with fictions, with deliberately false conclusions that are voluntarily accepted as correct. This artificial correctness proceeds from the suppression of irrationality in unimportant places; π, an irrational number, can be rationalized up to many decimal places but only partially; however, irrationality cannot be extinguished. Every machine with ball bearings, every cylinder contains π, an irrational element. The circle, the basic shape — its formula is irrational. All the inexplicability of the beauty of the machine is apparently in its irrationality. And so machines can be not only an example of the modern, logically working brain but also of modern nervous sensibility. Nothing is more nervous than a vibrating engine.
The intervention of irrationality, the intervention of mathematical intuition. We speak of the intervention of the elementary and mechanical logic contrasted with the intervention of the biomechanical element: invention. The biomechanical force of human inventiveness cannot be defined. In a series, there is always a place for upheaval: invention is the only unpredictable random element of industry and technology. Every other randomness is excluded, where randomness (as was the case in so-called art) prevailed, invention cannot manifest itself.
The aesthetics of the machine therefore tells us: A beautiful product is one that has been created as perfectly and purposefully as possible, with economy and precision, without any aesthetic considerations. The machine is the work of a specialist, an engineer; not of an artist. We need specialists. A perfect specialist realizes perfect things. But that is not enough. He can only respond to given needs; he cannot awaken new needs. A specialist, isolated from the rest of life, is therefore an uncultured phenomenon that cannot push development forward. The inventor is a specialist — a modern man. The biomechanical element of inventiveness is the vital force. We need inventors.