Exhibition “Rodchenko School. Favorites. Exhibition of Alexander Rodchenko How to get to the Multimedia Art Museum

From September 24 to November 13, the Multimedia Art Museum will present an exhibition of works by the legendary Soviet photographer, a representative of the Russian avant-garde of the 20th century, Alexander Rodchenko. Entrance for participants is free.

The Russian avant-garde of the 20th century is a unique phenomenon not only in Russian, but also in world culture. The dazzling energy of creation, accumulated by the artists of this great era, still nourishes the modern artistic culture and each of us who come into contact with the art products of the era of Russian modernism. Alexander Rodchenko was certainly one of the main generators of creative ideas of that time. Painting, design, theater, cinema, printing, photography... - all areas of artistic culture, which were invaded by the mighty talent of this very beautiful and very strong man, underwent a transformation, everywhere he opened up fundamentally new paths.

The beginning of the 1920s was the "epoch of the gap", to use the term of Viktor Shklovsky, one of the best critics and theorists of that time, the moment when - albeit for a short time, albeit illusoryly - a resonance arose between artistic and social experiment. It was at this time, in 1924, that Alexander Rodchenko, an already established and well-known artist who placed the slogan “We must experiment”* at the center of his aesthetics, invaded photography. The result of this invasion is not only the masterpieces he created, which are included in the classics of world and Russian photography, but also a change in ideas about the nature of photography and the role of the photographer. Design thinking is brought into photography. It turns out to be not only a reflection of reality, but also becomes a way of visual presentation of dynamic mental structures.

Rodchenko introduced the ideology of constructivism into photography and developed methodological tools for its implementation. The techniques he discovered were rapidly replicated. They were used both by his students and like-minded people, as well as by aesthetic and political opponents. However, the use of the “Rodchenko method”, which included the diagonal composition discovered by him, foreshortening and other techniques, did not automatically guarantee the artistic scale of photography. The practice of Rodchenko as a photographer turned out to be involved not only and not so much on formal methods, for which he was mercilessly criticized already from the end of the 1920s, but on the deep inner romance inherent in him back in his student years (suffice it to recall his amazing fairy tale letters, which he wrote to Varvara Stepanova during the first years of their acquaintance). This romantic beginning, laid in childhood, spent behind the scenes of the theater where his father worked, was transformed into the powerful utopian thinking of Rodchenko the constructivist, who believed in the possibility of a positive transformation of the world and man.

In the 1920s, in each new photographic series, Rodchenko set new tasks and created manifestos about what photography and life should become, transformed by the constructivist artistic principle. In the 1930s, especially in the late 1930s, exhausted by criticism and harassment, he tried to analyze both life and artistic practice, including his own, the evolution of which largely determined the later socialist realist aesthetics. By the way, in the entire history of Russian photography in the first half of the 20th century, Alexander Rodchenko is the only one who, thanks to his printed articles and diary entries, left unique evidence of the artistic reflection of a photographer-thinker who consciously carried out his work.

Tired of the continuous revolutionary transformations that created a reality far from the ideals that inspired the early period of his work, on February 12, 1943, he notes in his diary: “Art is a service to the people, and the people are led in all directions. And I want to lead the people to art, not the art to lead somewhere. Was I born early or late? It is necessary to separate art from politics ... "**

Alexander Rodchenko, who was betrayed by friends and students, who survived persecution and was deprived of the opportunity to work and earn a living, to participate in exhibitions, expelled from the Union of Artists, who was seriously ill in the last years of his life, was lucky. He had a family: friend and colleague Varvara Stepanova, daughter Varvara Rodchenko, her husband Nikolai Lavrentiev, grandson Alexander Lavrentiev and his family. A small but very close-knit clan charged with creative energy. As for Alexander Rodchenko, creativity has become the main thing in their lives. Rodchenko's work was re-recognized by the world and his country. With Alexander Rodchenko we discover and study the history of Russian photography, which cannot be imagined without his work.

Contact Information

Address: Moscow, Ostozhenka, 16.

Ticket price: adults: 500 rubles, full-time students of the Russian Federation: 250 rubles, pensioners and schoolchildren: 50 rubles, disabled people of groups I and II: free of charge.

For members of the Russian Photo Club, admission is free.

Opening hours and days: 12:00 - 21:00, every day except Monday.

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About the exhibition

Exhibition “Alexander Rodchenko. Experiences for the future. To the 125th anniversary of the birth"
Until November 13, 2016, the Multimedia Art Museum invites everyone to an exhibition dedicated to the Russian avant-garde of the 20th century and dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the birth of one of its brightest representatives, Alexander Rodchenko. Get your tickets right now if you don't want to miss the opportunity to personally touch the works of art of this amazing phenomenon of Russian and world culture.

In the early 1920s, the "epoch of the gap" (a term coined by Viktor Shklovsky, one of the foremost critics of Russian avant-garde theorists) refers to Alexander Rodchenko's turn to photography. By 1924, when the resonance between artistic and social experiment finally arose, Rodchenko was already a prominent figure in the Russian avant-garde, who declared himself in almost all areas of creative activity: painting, design, theater, cinema, printing and others. Already established and well-known artist, who placed the slogan “We are obliged to experiment” at the center of his aesthetics, Alexander Rodchenko, with his inherent creative energy, is mastering a new field for himself.

The result of this “invasion” by Rodchenko into photography was not only his masterpieces, recognized as classics of world and Russian photography, but also a change in ideas about the nature of photography and the role of the photographer. In the work of Alexander Rodchenko, a photograph from a document that captures a moment of the past turns into a space of projective thinking. It not only reflects reality, but also becomes a way of visual presentation of dynamic mental structures. So. Alexander Rodchenko introduced the ideology of constructivism into photography, and also developed methodological tools for its implementation. The "Rodchenko Method" consisted not only in open imdiagonal composition, foreshortening and other techniques, but also in the deep inner romance inherent in his student years.

The results of this experiment, which entered the history of world photography, will be presented at the Multimedia Art Museum until November 13.

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Additional Information

The exhibition will be held from September 24 to February 12, 2017
Opening hours: 12:00 – 21:00
Every day except Monday.

For free:
— Disabled people of the 1st and 2nd group

To qualify for the benefit, please bring a valid document with you.

In connection with the 20th anniversary of the museum, a special pre-New Year ticket price has been introduced!

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Address: Moscow, st. Ostozhenka, house 16

Multimedia Art Museum

Information about Multimedia Art Museum

The Multimedia Art Museum (MAMM), also known as the Moscow House of Photography, is the first museum in Russia dedicated to photography. For more than two decades, hundreds of exhibitions of not only domestic, but also foreign professionals have been organized here. This unique venue is of great importance for the cultural life of Moscow and the whole country, it is enthusiastically spoken about all over the world. The museum is open to guests from Tuesday to Sunday from 12:00 to 21:00. Monday is a day off. You can order tickets for events organized by the Multimedia Art Museum on our website.

Features of the Multimedia Art Museum

The museum has more than two and a half thousand square meters of exhibition space. Nowadays, MAMM does not limit itself to photography alone - the museum focuses on all contemporary art.

The museum constantly hosts conferences, lectures, master classes with the participation of eminent authors, large-scale projects are organized here that other venues cannot afford. On the ground floor of the museum there is a lecture hall and a cinema hall, a photo laboratory and even a department for storing prints and negatives, of which more than 80 thousand have accumulated to date. On the ground floor, guests can use a convenient wardrobe.

MAMM is equipped with the necessary technologies for people with limited mobility. It has a ramp at the entrance, a wheelchair-accessible toilet, and an elevator that allows access to all the halls of the building.

You can view the poster of the Multimedia Art Museum on the website. The scheme of the Multimedia Art Museum is also available here. In addition, on our website you can always see what age audience this or that event is designed for.

How to get to the Multimedia Art Museum?

The museum is located at 16 Ostozhenka Street. The two nearest metro stations are Park Kultury (radial) and Kropotkinskaya, from the last of which you need to walk only 400 meters to the museum. Guests can also take advantage of the public surface transportation that runs close to these metro stations.

It will be easy for drivers to get to the museum. Not far from it passes Prechistenskaya Embankment, as well as Gogolevsky Boulevard, turning into Novy Arbat, from where you can easily get to the Garden Ring.

From September 14 to October 7, the Multimedia Art Museum will host the exhibition “Rodchenko School. Favorites".

During the twelve years of its existence, the Rodchenko School, which is a structural subdivision of MAMM, has largely contributed to the formation of the landscape of new Russian art.

The exhibition includes photographs, videos and installations, with the help of which students and graduates of the Rodchenko School explore the reality that is rapidly changing before our eyes, as well as reflect on the nature of art, which is being modified and transformed under the influence of information technologies.

One of the features of contemporary art is its multi-level nature. New technologies do not cancel traditional forms and genres, allowing us to look at the problems that society is facing today from an unusual angle.

Vika Laschenov's video “Singing songs one floor up while someone is swimming with dolphins” is an ironic reflection on the phenomenon called “office plankton”, an international class of employees not connected with production processes, “hanging” somewhere between on- line and offline. Laschenov's project, imbued with humor, refers viewers to the art of the Oberiuts' absurdity.

Absurdism as an aesthetic and semantic device is also used by Igor Samolet and Sveta Isaeva, each working with their own family history. The black box (that's the name of Isaeva's video) is a device designed by the artist's grandmother and helps to understand the reasons for the crash of an aircraft. In a frozen and closed space, the author herself and members of her family (grandmother, mother, aunt) retell each other fragments of stories of collective and personal flights and disasters.

Igor Samolet's photo series "Breakfast for Artyom" is a reflection on whether a person can compete with gadgets in an attempt to attract the attention of a new generation of children. The task of the artist is to come up with such a game in reality, so that it turns out to be more interesting than electronic. Igor Samolet creates a live performance involving his little nephew. Live game and human communication win over computer games at least for a while.

The competition between the real and the simulated also becomes the object of Anton Andrienko's attention in the Sreda photo project, dedicated to modern shopping centers. Trying to make this environment comfortable for consumption, the owners fill it with grotesque and sometimes absurd scenery depicting wildlife. Society, cut off from nature, equips a space around itself, only similar to the lost "natural" environment.

The study of another - intellectual - space is undertaken by Sasha Pirogova in her project. Today, when the word is increasingly being replaced by action or image, and the material book is being crowded out by digital technologies, a new understanding of the library as a social institution is required. The Biblimlen project (short for Lenin Library) is a physical, playful intrusion into the traditional, strict, disciplined space of Leninka, the country's main library.

Anna Rotaenko uses the visual language of GTA V in her video installation "Real Weapon". The artist translates real situations into the game world, which for her is an analogue of the capitalist system, which only declares the possibility of action, but in reality all scenarios are programmed in advance. With the "Real Weapon" project, the author illustrates the situation of the closure of critical reflection in the vacuum of escapism.

Danila Tkachenko, winner of the World Press Photo (2014) and European Publishers Award for Photography (2015) in the Closed Territories series, analyzes the theme of humanity's utopian desire for technological progress, which sometimes becomes a factor in man-made disasters.

Alexander Rodchenko(1891-1956) was absolutely universal in his work: a photographer, an architect, a designer, a true multimedia artist. Multimedia Art Museum, who has held fifty exhibitions of the remarkable master both in Russia and abroad, today opened, perhaps, the most complete of all Rodchenko's exhibitions, reflecting all the stages and logic of the development of his work.

"Experiences for the Future" dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the birth and the 60th anniversary of the death of the artist. The project, which is supervised by Olga Sviblova and Alexander Lavrentiev, Rodchenko's grandson, involves the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin, Theatrical Museum. A. A. Bakhrushin, MAMM, museums of Astrakhan, Vyatka, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm.

Mikhail Kaufman
"Alexander Rodchenko in a workshop in a production suit against the background of spatial structures"
1924

Rodchenko did not distinguish between genres of visual art. And this is clearly seen in his works in painting, graphics and linocut, spatial structures, posters, architectural sketches, collages, fabric designs, photomontages, scenery and costumes for theater and film productions and photographs, of course. It seems that since the advent of the diagonal composition and the technique of foreshortening, invented by Rodchenko, no special discoveries have happened in world photography. Everyone continues to quote the Russian constructivist, sometimes without realizing it. Rodchenko created the typeface now known throughout the world as "Rodchenko font".

"Girl with a watering can"
1934

In 1925, Rodchenko was commissioned to design an exhibit for the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. It was a working club, exemplary in design and at the same time typical in character of the premises, an absolute prototype of a functional space. Rodchenko hung posters on the walls, including his own poster, Kinoglaz, for Dziga Vertov's 1924 documentary about the new state, the USSR. One of his episodes dedicated to the pioneers, by the way, can be seen at the current exhibition. All titles with elements of non-objective compositions were made by Rodchenko - he glued volumes from paper and cardboard and attached letters to them. And under the master's hand, silent cinema acquired a "visual" voice.

Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova
"Young Gliders" Opening sketch for the magazine "USSR in Construction"
1933

Rodchenko, of course, is a person who is ahead of his time, who foresaw the possibilities of a modern computer. “Recently, Anti was daydreaming, he would like to find himself in time for five hundred years ahead - to see what happened to his paintings in the future, and return back immediately. He, of course, is sure that there have never been and never will be such things as his.”, - wrote in 1920 in the diary of Varvara Stepanov about her husband (Anti is the home name of Rodchenko).