Abstraction & revolution

Utopias are an expression of aspirations that cannot be realized, of efforts that are not equal to the resistance they encounter.
—Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star (1908)

A revolution strengthens the impulse of invention. That is why there is a flourishing of art following a revolution. . . . Invention is always the working out of impulses and desires of the collective and not of the individual.
—Vladimir Tatlin, International Iskusstv (1919)

The reality principle—la force des choses—will, in the end, always prevail over utopian passions.
—Irving Kristol, “The Adversary Culture of Intellectuals” (1979)

The fate of abstract art in Russia in the decade following the...

 

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