The Formation of Kosovel’s Constructivism: A Conflict Between Composition and Construction

Abstract

Černigoj and Kosovel corresponded from 1923 onwards. For Kosovel, Černigoj’s arrival in Ljubljana represented a confrontation with the European avant-garde context and testing of his own, already formed, artistic viewpoints. In addition to his Bauhaus education, the Ljubljana “school” tied to Kosovel was also important to Černigoj; it unveiled the meaning of post-gravitational art to him and in this way ensured a synthesis between suprematism and constructivism in the Trieste Constructivist Ambient. – In Ljubljana, Černigoj was not yet able to combine Malevich’s suprematist perception of surface and Tatlin’s transparent spatiotemporal construction of space, which Lissitzky had already tried to achieve in 1921. In mid-1925, Kosovel excellently summarized his demands for movement as a synthesis of time and space (he had already written to Černigoj about this in January 1924; ZD III, 535) in his diaries following the principle of “moving philosophy” (ZD III, 651) as well as in a number of his other comments on the “movement principle” and in his conses. At the discourse level, this resulted in a sharp distinction between construction and composition, one of the most important theoretical postulates of the constructivist movement. The concepts of composition and construction are used to elucidate Černigoj’s Ljubljana exhibit and the Trieste Constructivist Ambient, which Kosovel conceptually outlined in his poem “Kalejdoskop” (“Kaleidoscope”) as early as 1924 and 1925, and formulated with the syntagm “metaphysical materialism”. Because Černigoj was not willing to change his viewpoints, at least not before he left Ljubljana, the “friendly dispute” between him and Kosovel can only be explained with international avant-garde developments – that is, with two different, conflicting concepts of constructivism. This originated in the fact that at the Bauhaus school Černigoj had two very different teachers (Kandinsky and Moholy-Nagy) and thus even in Ljubljana he continued to be torn between Kandinsky’s disengaged aestheticism and Moholy-Nagy’s radical spatial constructivism. He supported the views related to composition and abstraction, whereas Kosovel supported leftist views connected with the semantic dominant and construction. This can also be seen in Černigoj’s use of the terms “synthesis” and “monumental”, which were also used synonymously by Kandinsky. All of this prevented Černigoj, even in the Trieste Constructivist Ambient, from finally fulfilling Gropius’ Bauhaus Idea of a unification of the arts under the primacy of architecture. – In 1927, thanks to Stepančič, the Trieste Constructivist Ambient achieved the goals Kosovel demanded of Černigoj in 1924 and described in his poem “Kalejdoskop”. In addition to the mobiles, a white square also floated beneath the ceiling hung by strings; through this, for the first time in history Malevich’s work stepped out of the context of a painting hung on the wall, and was thus relieved of the historical burden of a painting composition. From then one, its static nature “grew into space” and turned into a movable construction. These are the facts that place the Trieste Constructivist Ambient among the most important events in the historical avant-garde in general. The dispute that developed at the INHUK between Kandinsky and Rodchenko, and then continued between Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, and Gropius at the Bauhaus school, and was also transferred to Černigoj and Kosovel in Ljubljana, was finally resolved. With this, Stepančič managed to break the barrier between the framed “painting” subjected to aesthetics and the “construction” as a formation of new “space” outside aesthetics and museums (Kosovel). This represented a contact with the roots of constructivism, which Kosovel had already achieved through his conses in 1924 and 1925.