"The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life"

El Lissitzky casts the artist as an engineer of reality, not a decorator. To construct a new order of life is to move from mimicking what exists to organizing how people live, perceive, and relate. The verb construct matters: it implies structure, method, materials, and collaboration. The artist becomes a builder of environments and systems, a choreographer of social rhythms, aligning form with function and ethics with aesthetics.

Rooted in the avant‑garde’s response to industrial modernity and revolution, this vision collapses the wall between art and life. Typography, architecture, exhibition design, clothing, and urban planning become tools for shaping collective experience. Abstract geometry and modular forms promise clarity, legibility, and reproducibility; a universal visual language can knit diverse publics together. The studio becomes a laboratory for prototypes that test how space directs behavior, how images guide attention, and how tools refine habits.

Yet constructing an order is never neutral. It places responsibility on the artist to imagine futures without imposing them. A new order must remain porous and revisable, resisting the authoritarian temptation to fix life in rigid grids. The ethical task is to design frameworks that empower participation, distribute access to beauty and utility, and acknowledge the plurality of needs. True construction is infrastructural: it builds platforms on which others can create.

The urgency of this task persists. Interface designers shape how we read, buy, and vote; information design governs what we notice; environmental art and urban design influence how communities adapt to climate stresses. Artists who craft alternative imaginaries, speculative prototypes, and communal spaces are not escaping reality but proposing testable models for living together differently.

Ultimately, the call is to make art that reorganizes attention, reallocates resources, and reconfigures relationships. To construct a new order of life is to treat culture as scaffolding for everyday practice, to fuse vision with utility, and to measure success by the quality of shared life it enables.