Objectless composition 1918

Alexander Rodchenko made this ‘Objectless Composition’ and I can only imagine the kind of mental space he was in, trying to escape the weight of representation. The ochre background feels aged, but there’s nothing old about the ambition here. The geometric forms float in a colour scheme that’s part earthy, part industrial. Check out the shades of brown against the green and blue. They create a kind of stacked sandwich, held together by those wild, errant lines. You see how those red lines shoot out like stray thoughts, connecting and disrupting the balance. I get a real sense of Rodchenko wrestling with how to make something new, maybe even feeling the anxiety of influence. I bet he’s looking at Malevich’s suprematism and is thinking how he can push it further. It is a struggle a lot of painters identify with!