Rodschenko II, 1982
Information about the artwork
- MaterialAcrylic on canvas
- Dimensions130 x 240 cm
- Year of acquisition2017
- Inventory numberUAB 1064
- On viewCurrently not exhibited
- Copyright© Albert Oehlen. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn [2025]
More about the artwork
Albert Oehlen’s early works systematically connect conflicting traditions from the history of painting. He is interested in the key moments of criticism. Here, for instance, he revisits Alexander Rodchenko, a Russian Constructivist, who had proposed in the 1920s that art should, above all, serve society—a clear rejection of the self-referentiality of painting.
Oehlen’s paintings are based on a photograph of Rodchenko’s wife, Varvara Stepanova, with students from Moscow’s Vkhutemas art school, and a picture of Rodchenko’s spatial constructions. But these artists and artworks of the avant-garde do not seem heroic here. The wooden sculptures look like dusty objects found in an attic, and the individuals in the upper painting come across as somewhat clumsy. Oehlen is not so much attempting to distance himself from these earlier artists’ ideas but rather tracing, in a nostalgic manner, the revolutionary spirit of the time: By the 1980s, artistic utopias had receded into the distance. Finally, they would end up in the bourgeois medium of painting themselves.
