Word: constructivist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Sculptor Naum Gabo, a near neigh bor of Breuer's in Connecticut, the Bijenkorf commission was the dream of a lifetime. A constructivist (along with his brother, Antoine Pevsner) since the movement's pioneer days in Russia, Gabo still bases his work on the esthetics of mathematics, modern material, and machine motifs. His present work, which took more than a year to construct in steel and aluminum bronze, is as abstract as he has ever done. "I'm not a naturalist," he explains, "who works from a face, a landscape or an event. I have only...
...execution of his work and the mathematical balance applied to composition. Furthermore, the materials he uses, wire and sheet steel, are products of a technologically advanced culture. However, for the most part these materials are welded into flowing metal metaphors. In contrast to painter Ferdinand Leger or the constructivist sculptors who have also integrated science and aesthetics, Calder is not primarily concerned with industrial or mechanical shapes. His design, as the titles "Spider" and "Big Worm--Little Worm" suggest, stems from nature. Beyond direct observation of natural phenomena the biological shapes of Arp and especially Miro have influenced...
...menacing array of medicine bottles. Although he never left Belgium, Ensor's pictures helped set off detonations all over Europe. "I indicated all the modern experiments," he boasted. "When I look at my drawings of 1877 I find cubist angles, futurist explosions, impressionist flakings, dada knights and constructivist structures." Some Ensor followers: Swiss Paul Klee, Russian Marc Chagall, Belgian Paul Delvaux...
...What is this? Constructivist staging or what?" cried New York Times Critic Olin Downes. The Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson was equally dyspeptic; his evening at the Metropolitan Opera House reminded him of "the French chef who in serving a New England boiled dinner had carved the beets like roses and turned turnips into lilies . . ." The critics' ire and ulcers were aroused last week by the Met's new streamlined production of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, the wonderful old pair of operatic favorites...