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October 13, 2005
Why it still talks to us
Rotchenko's work is 70 years old. Fuller's work is 40 years old. What is so modern in Rotchenko's approach that we still think of it as inspiring?
We live in an industrial society and (to some extend) an industrial city. Everywhere we look we see shapes organized by human beings. Most of these objects are elementary(square, rectangle, circle, etc...). Most things are produced in big numbers, all equals.
Rotchenko though in terms of precise production, but in a world where mass production wasn't a fact.
Therefore we are misleading ourself if we think of him as part of the historical path toward mass production. In his era, producing a straight line wasn't something obvious. Regular shapes were the exception, not the rule.
Rotchenko's ideas about simplifying shapes are in some respect comparable to Mondrian's but Mondrian is not though so much as a pionneer. Both had simplicity as an objective, not multiplicity.
I definitely think that our love for Rotchenko is partly due to that cultural misunderstanding. A sort of ethnocentrism that makes his work positive to our contemporary eyes.
Posted by Duc, Thomas at October 13, 2005 07:06 PM