The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) are currently hosting an exhibition (30 July – 18 October 2015) that features the Russian avant-garde artist, architect and designer, El Lissitzky (1890 – 1941). This exhibition is a forerunner to the centenary commemoration of the Easter Rising (1916), following which Ireland subsequently gained independence. The exhibition El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State, explores the work of El Lissitzky, and contemporary artists, who have voiced a political message through their artworks.
The exhibition is being held in IMMA’s Garden Galleries. Spanning across three floors, it begins in the basement with a Futurist video: Victory Over the Sun. The costume and stage design was by the artist, Kasimir Malevich (1878 – 1935), who later founded the Suprematist art movement, and greatly influenced El Lissitzky.
The exhibition features a range of posters, book covers & hand-drawn proofs created by El Lissitzky. To my surprise, the second floor features two children’s books by El Lissitzky: About 2 Squares and The Four Fundamentals of Arithmetic. I found this room particularly inspiring and I could relate to it in terms of my own work. The simple imagery used in his children’s book produced dynamic layouts.
About 2 Squares was the artist’s first children’s book. It is a story about two squares, one red and one black; these two colours regularly feature in Lissitzky’s work. Heller & Vienne devote a chapter in his book, 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design, to this particular colour combination. The authors maintains that the result is a balanced combination; however he also argues that it was an aggressive duo in so far as “at the service of Soviet propaganda, red and black had demonstrated their pugnacious nature and versatility.” (Heller & Vienne, 2010, p.68). While red often represents danger, it can also be viewed as a symbol of power. This use of colour combination is evident in El Lissitzky’s famous political work: Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (see image below).
El Lissitzky’s children’s book: The Four Fundamentals of Arithmetic, features geometric shapes, solid colours and type as an image in the form of characters created from a combination of letters. Lissitzky encourages the children to interact with the book, to act out the book with materials that is available to them. The literature provided at IMMA quotes El Lissitzky, “this is how to use letters to put together every kind of arithmetical method – try it yourself” (Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2015). The interactive aspect of El Lissitzky’s work appeals to me, in relation to the development of my own work. While interactive books are not a new concept today, viewing this exhibition renewed my ambition to review the possibilities for beneficial interaction between the reader and the book, the viewer and the artwork.
El Lissitzky continues to have a notable impact on both the design and art world. Rick Poyner, design-critic and author, notes in his book: No More Rules, Graphic Design and Postmodernism (2003), that “young designers constantly evoked the achievements of modernism leading lights…”(Poyner, 2013 p. 76). Rather than merely copying earlier designers, the new generation took “…a sense of dynamism, a sense humanism, and non-acceptance of traditional rules and values” (Poyner, p. 76). Poyner singles out the postmodern designers: Karl Kleflish, Neville Brody (see image below), and Malcom Garrett, as artists who drew heavily on El Lissitzky’s oeuvre.
Resources:
Heller, S. & Vienne, V. (2012) 100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design. Laurence King, London, p.68.
Irish Museum of Modern Art (2015), El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State, exhibition catalogue, 30 July – 18 October 2015, Dublin: IMMA.
Poyner, Rick, (2013) No More Rules, Graphic Design and Postmoderism (Mini Edition). London: Laurence King, pp 70-77.
Edel McMahon 
2 thoughts on “Exhibition: El Lissitzky | The Artist and the State”