A deep examination of central European art's constructivist avant-garde, Esther Levinger's book features some unusual methodology and aspects: selected protagonists for each chapter, that is, each of the central European countries’ constructivist art, is discussed in the book through a few of its leading representatives. These selections serve as guidelines but do not limit the richness of the material of the book.
Levinger's topic is the art of the progressive, left-leaning minority in the central Europe of the 1920s and 30s, when “artists in the region shared a firm belief in progress (social, scientific, and technological) and the merits of objectivity” (2). Although this belief was shared by the wider international community of artists, Levinger outlines that “the organizational model” of artworks in central Europe was architecture, and the constructivists aspired to the cleanness and systematic order of architecture. “Picture-architecture,” a term used by the Hungarians Lajos Kassák, Sándor Bortnyik, László Moholy-Nagy, and Béla Uitz, as well as the Polish Władysław Strzemiński, but originating from the unmentioned Russian painter Ljubov Popova, was a case in point. Levinger underlines the courage of the leftwing artists to reject the Soviet-type socialist realism for freedom of expression.
After an introductory description and interpretation of constructivism in its birthplace, Russia, and its “Migration and Reception in Central Europe,” this avant-garde's presence in Vienna, Warsaw, and Prague is discussed, where Vienna is the outpost of Budapest, as Hungarian constructivists lived in exile there. One of the central dilemmas of the time, the conflict between individualism and collectivism of the future culture, is clearly highlighted in the early 1920s concepts of Kassák and the critic Ernő Kállai. While they all struggled with utopian ideas, which soon proved to be unrealizable, the Moscow debate about “composition” as opposed to “construction” trickled down, somewhat altered, as art forms of “antitethical social and political regimes: composition in capitalism and construction in communism” (32). As they had to place suprematism on this palette, it was found “passive” as opposed to the vigorous activity of constructivism.
The selected hero of the Hungarians in Vienna exile is Uitz, who was the most receptive to the concept of a collective artwork and is presented, in a very nuanced account, as more revolutionary than fellow Hungarian artists Bortnyik and János Mácza. The Warsaw scene's protagonists are Mieczyslav Szczuka and Teresa Zarnower, who saw social problems as inseparable from issues of art and championed the “beauty of utilitarianism” (66.) Typography is abundantly illustrated in this context projecting clarity and democracy. The Czech scene features, among others, Karel Teige, a central figure of the international avant-garde with ties to most European movements.
An exciting topic addressed by Levinger is the idea of happiness implied in the constructivist visions. Imagining a humanistic world of a totality, which would restore a (presumably) lost harmony, and anticipating the power of new technologies used for the benefit of humankind were cornerstones of the constructivist utopias thriving in central Europe in the early 1920s. The future world was anticipated as belonging to the “collective human being” (111). Therefore, artworks had to reflect regulated compositions, “in unity with the organic whole in nature” (120)—a precondition of human happiness.
The chapter on Władysław Strzemiński's Unism also underlines the importance the Polish artist—similarly to Teige—attributed to typography as part of the visual arts “since a printed page was seen before it was read” (174). Typography demonstrated standardization, bringing visual works close to industrial production: an interconnection, which was key to the concept of constructivism as rational order. Levinger demonstrates Strzemiński's mathematical method of image making also applied to sculpture and architecture. In their use of color, both Strzemiński and his wife Katarzyna Kobro relied on primary colors and followed the principle of standardization. The last chapter of the book is dedicated to Poetism, Teige's “dialectical counterpart of constructivism” (226), a dynamic, conceptually and practically unlimited direction, which, rhyming to the earlier discussion of constructivism and the vision of happiness, also sets “joyful communal life” as its goal (227).
As most iterations of constructivism, Poetism also endeavored to terminate alienation. Throughout Levinger's thoroughly researched book, the overview of constructivism in central Europe reveals the many different local contexts, each bending the original Moscow idea. Four original texts complete the volume.
