Magic windows: Friedrich Kiesler and department store constructivism

Haran, Barnaby

Abstract

This paper concerns the use of Constructivist aesthetics by Friedrich Kiesler in window displays for Saks Fifth Avenue department store in New York in 1928. This event arguably concluded the dissipation of the revolutionary potential of Russian Constructivism, a process that commenced with the formation of International Constructivism. Yet although severely abstracted, Russian Constructivism remained a touchstone for Kiesler, further evident in his study Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display (1930), where he defined ‘an ideology of the shop window’ that understood America as a paradigm of both mass and machine and Kiesler also designed the Film Guild Cinema, where Russian montage epics were projected onto an ocular ‘machine eye’ screen. Kiesler’s work was part of a larger manifestation of versions of Constructivism in the United States that extended from the Communist movement to fashion and advertising.

Citation

Haran, B. (2013). Magic windows: Friedrich Kiesler and department store constructivism. In J. C. Welchman (Ed.), Sculpture and the Vitrine (69-94). Routledge

• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Apr 12, 2019
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 69-94
• Series Title: Subject/Object: New Studies in Sculpture
• Book Title: Sculpture and the Vitrine
• ISBN: 9781409435273
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1592943
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/Sculpture-and-the-Vitrine/Welchman/p/book/9781409435273
• Contract Date: May 1, 2012