Paedia

Gerta Overbeck-Schenk - Little girl playing - 1923–1927

Fritz Steisslinger - Drei Buben beim Spielen am Tisch - 1925

Ernst Nepo - Familienporträt. Kinder der Familie Keller - 1929

Heart of Stone

"His heart is like ice, he feels no pain

... For the creatures downtrodden by destiny...

The tears of those unfortunates thrown in the bustle

His heart of stone knows no warmth."

Nella in Alexander Bogdanov, Engineer Menni. A Martian Stranded on Earth, 1913

Lazar Khidekel - Black suprematism circular - ?

Alexander Rodchenko - Logo design for Dobrolet - 1923

Mária Balážová - Serpent Geometry 2 - 1994

Stretching his Hand to the Master of Things

“In place of a romantic, an idealist, an aristocratic dreamer about pure symbol, about abstract aesthetics of the word, in place of symbolism, futurism and imaginism, arrived a living poetry of the word-object, and its creator is not an idealist-dreamer Mozart, but a rigorous and severe artist-master Salieri, stretching his hand to the master of things and materialistic values, to the builder and producer of the material (reified) world.“ 
Ossip Mandelstam, O prirode slovaб 1922, 
quoted and translated in Edward Możejko, “Tracing the Modernist Paradigm” 
in Modernism, ed. Astradur Eysteinsson, 2007 vol.1

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy - Unnown Photographer - 1937

via moholy-nagy.org

The Divine Parallelepipeds

"Then, as this morning on the dock, again I saw, as if for the first time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish blue rows of Numbers. And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life."

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 1921

quoted in James C. Scott, Seeing like a State, 1998

Walter Gropius - Bauhaus master houses - Dessau - 1925/1926

Cornelius van Eesteren and Theo van Doesburg - Axonometrics east/north of Maison Particulière - 1923

Iakov Chernikov - Aristography - 1914/1927

Perverse Optimism

"The formula 2 + 2 = 5 instantly riveted my attention. It seemed to me at once bold and preposterous--the daring and the paradox and the tragic absurdity of the Soviet scene, its mystical simplicity, its defiance of logic, all reduced to nose-thumbing arithmetic. . . . 2 + 2 = 5: in electric lights on Moscow housefronts, in foot-high letters on billboards, spelled planned error, hyperbole, perverse optimism; something childishly headstrong and stirringly imaginative. . . "
Eugen Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 1937
quoted here

2+2=5 - 1931

"The arithmetic of an industrial-financial counter-plan plus the enthusiasm of workers." Soviet poster promoting the first five-year plan

Alexander Vesnin - 5 x 5 = 25 - 1921

Charles Demuth - The figure 5 in gold - 1928



"How could we divide the unit, if it were here that ultimate unity which characterizes a simple act of the mind ? How could we split it up into fractions whilst affirming its unity, if we did not regard it implicitly as an extended object, one in intuition but multiple in space ?"
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, 1889

Since One Must Be Arbitrary

“In or about December 1910, human character changed.
I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden,
and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg.
The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless;
and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.” 

Virginia Woolf, Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, 1924

Hugh Ferriss - Philosophy - 1929

Antonio Sant'Elia - Project For The New Cemetery In Monza - 1912

Iakov Chernikov - Pantheons of the Great Patriotic War - 1942-45
via Icif.ru

“The fact is that around 1910 a certain space was shattered. It was the space of common sense, of knowledge (savoir), of social practice, of political power, a space hitherto enshrined in everyday discourse, just as in abstract thought, as the environment of and channel for communication; the space, too, of classical perspective and geometry” 

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 1974

A Spacious Hive

"A Spacious Hive well stock'd with Bees,

That lived in Luxury and Ease;

And yet fam'd for Laws and Arms,

As yielding large and early Swarms;

Was counted the great Nursery,

Of Sciences and Industry."

Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, 1705

John Leighton - Plan for hexagonal boroughs - 1865 - via Kosmograd

Konstantin Melnikov - Melnikov House - 1927 - Moscow

Du Besset-Lyon Architects - Lons le Saunier Library And Cinémas - 2012 - via ArchDaily

Inventing God

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"

Voltaire, Response to the 'Three Impostors'. 1768

Annie Besant & Charles W. Leadbeater - Plate from 'Thought Forms' - 1902

Naum Gabo - Linear Construction - 1942/43

That Idea above the Soul

“An invisible current causes modem philosophy to place the Soul above the Idea. 

It thus tends, like modern science, and even more so than modern science, 

to advance in an opposite direction to ancient thought.” 

Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903

Gustav Klutsis - The Dynamic City ( Dinamicheskii gorod ) - 1919

Dan Gaymers - Polythene Underground - 2011

Adolph Gottlieb - The Red - 1972

Aleksei Kruchenykh - His one concern was for the idea

"...he misjoined his words; he cared nothing about spelling; his one concern was for the idea: in these habits, to our general surprise, he remained unchanged to the very end."

Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Work, translated by Stephen MacKenna

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Chetyre Foneticheskikh Romana - 1927

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Universal War - 1916

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Valia Zdanevich - 1923

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Zamaul'II - 1919

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Zaum' - 1921

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Zaumniki - 1921

City of the Sun

“We have been jumping into the future since 1905” 

Khlebnikov in a letter to Burliuk in 1915, reported by Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History, p. 157

Ivan Leonidov - City of the Sun - 1943

NASA / Reuters - Venus passing in front of the Sun - 06.06.2012

The Space of the XXI Century Civilization

"While deeper penetrating into the nature, we leave behind 

us a geometrical landscape. XXI century: the stone, 

thrown into the water, makes squares."

Chuklov S.,Chuklova V.

Chuklov S.,Chuklova V., 
The Space of the XXI Century Civilization, 1988

Wilkinson Eyre Architects,
Bridge of Aspiration, 2003, 
Photographed by Alex Robertson, via N-Arkitektur

Tour de force

"It is a question of building which is at the root 

of the social unrest of today"

Le Corbusier, Towards an architecture, 1923

Construction of Disneyland, 1953-1955

(via retronaut)

Vladimir Tatlin - Monument to the Third International - 1919 (via Ross Wolfe)

Eiffel Tower by Germain Krull, 1928

Alexeevich Kudriashev

 Alexeevich Kudriashev, Construction of a Rectilinear Motion, 1925

 Alexeevich Kudriashev, Construction of a Rectilinear Motion, 1925 

 Alexeevich Kudriashev, Luminescence, 1926

via Kosmograd