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John E. Bowlt - Russian Art of The Avant-Garde - Theory and Criticism 1902-1934-Thames & Hudson (1988)
John E. Bowlt - Russian Art of The Avant-Garde - Theory and Criticism 1902-1934-Thames & Hudson (1988)
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Russian Art
of the Avant-Garde
Theory and Criticism
1902-1934
Edited and Translated
by John E. Bowlt
T&H
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viii / Preface
photocopies of the original texts have been deposited in the Library of The
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Apart from the rendition of the Russian soft and hard signs, which have
been omitted, the transliteration system is that used by the journal Soviet
Studies, published by the University of Glasgow, although where a variant
has already been established (e.g., Benois, not Benua; Burtiuk, not Burlyuk;
Exter, not Ekster), it has been maintained. Occasionally an author has made
reference to something irrelevant to the question in hand or has compiled a
list of names or titles; where such passages add nothing to the general dis-
cussion, they have been omitted, although both minor and major omissions
have in every case been designated by ellipses. Dates refer to time of publi-
cation, unless the actual text was delivered as a formal lecture before publi-
cation. Wherever possible, both year and month of publication have been
given. In the case of most books, this has been determined by reference to
Knizhnaya letopis [Book Chronicle; bibl. R11; designated in the text by
KL]; unless other reliable published sources have provided a more feasible
alternative, the data in Knizhnaya letopis have been presumed correct.
Many artists, scholars, and collectors have rendered invaluable assis-
tance in this undertaking. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my
debt to the following persons: Mr. Troels Andersen; Mrs. Celia Ascher; the
late Mr. Alfred Barr, Jr.; Mr. Herman Berninger; Dr. Milka Bliznakov;
Miss Sarah Bodine; Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Burliuk; Miss Mary Chamot;
the late Lord Chernian; Professor Reginald Christian; Mr. George
Costakis; Dr. Charlotte Douglas; Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick; the late Mr.
Mark Etkind; the late Sir Naum Gabo; the late Mr. Evgenii Gunst; Mrs.
Larissa Haskell; Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Hutton; the late Mme. Nina
Kandinsky; the late Mme. Alexandra Larionov; Mr. and Mrs. Nikita D.
Lobanov-Rostovsky; Professor Vladimir Markov; M. Alexandre Polon-
ski; the late Mr. Yakov Rubinshtein; Dr. Aleksandr Rusakov and Dr.
Anna Rusakova; Dr. Dmitrii Sarabyanov; the late Dr. Aleksei Savinov;
Mr. and Mrs. Alan Smith; the late Mme. Anna Tcherkessova-Benois; and
Mr. Thomas Whitney. In addition, a number of people should be thanked
for their help in my revisions for the second edition: i.e. the late Frau
Antonina Gmurzynska; Mr. Vladimir Kostin; Mr. Aleksei Korzukhin; Dr.
Evgenii Kovtun; Professor Nicoletta Misler; and Mr. Aleksandr Parnis.
x / Preface
I am also grateful to the directors and staff of the following institutions for
allowing me to examine bibliographical and visual materials: British Mu-
seum, London; Courtauld Institute, London; Lenin Library, Moscow; Li-
brary of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York;
New York Public Library; Radio Times Hulton Picture Library, London;
Royal Institute of British Architects, London; Russian Museum, Leningrad;
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London; Solo-
mon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Sotheby and Co., London; Tay-
lor Institute, Oxford; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; Victoria and Albert Mu-
seum, London; Widener Library, Harvard.
Last but not least I would like to extend my gratitude and appreciation to
my two editors, Barbara Burm and Phyllis Freeman, for without their pa-
tience, care, and unfailing cooperation this book would not have been pos-
sible.
JOHN E. BOWLT
Contents
Preface Vii
List of Illustrations XV
Introduction xix
Nonobjective Art
OLGA Rozanova: The Bases of the New Creation and the Reasons Why
It Is Misunderstood, 1913 102
Concretists 240
The Projectionist Group 240
The First Working Group of Constructivists 241
The First Working Organization of Artists 243
Osip BRIk: From Pictures to Textile Prints, 1924 244
ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO: Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snap-
shot, 1928 250
YAKOV CHERNIKHOV: The Construction of Architectural and Machine
Forms [Extracts], 1931 254
Notes 298
Notes to the Preface 298
Notes to the Introduction 298
Notes to the Texts 300
Bibliography 309
A: Works Not in Russian 309
B: Works in Russian 338
Index S59
List of Illustrations
xix
xx / Introduction
By the early 1850s, however, the academy was beginning to lose its
cohesion and supremacy as a combination of disturbing circumstances grad-
ually made itself felt. It became obvious that ecclesiastical and “‘salon’’ art,
for which the academy received and executed commissions, had become
moribund, devoid of inspiration. Students at the academy began to sense the
evident discrepancy between what they were expected to depict and what
they could depict—if they tumed their attention to contemporary social real-
ity. The advent of a democratic intelligentsia led by Nikolai Chernyshevsky
assisted significantly in the formation of a new artistic consciousness: Cher-
nyshevsky’s tract Esteticheskie otnosheniya iskusstva k deistvitelnosti [The
Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality], published in 1855, attracted certain
already dissident artists, such as Vasilii Perov, who suddenly found their own
conceptions clearly mirrored in such tenets as “that object is beautiful which
displays life in itself or reminds us oflife.’’?
The practical extension of Chernyshevsky’s doctrine was the action under-
taken by fourteen students of the academy who, in 1863, protested against a
set piece for an annual competition and withdrew from its sphere of influ-
ence. Seven years later it was some of this group who formed the nucleus of
the famous Society of Wandering Exhibitions. Championed by the important
critic Vladimir Stasov and later patronized by the collector Pavel Tretyakov,
the Wanderers [from the Russian word peredvizhniki] erected a new artistic
code founded not on pure aestheticism, but on social and political attributes. In
this way, thanks particularly to such impressive painters as Ivan Kramskoi and
Vasilii Surikov, the realist movement came to dominate the artistic arena of the
1870s and 1880s.
The Wanderers, although compared sometimes to apparently similar
Western artists such as Courbet and Daumier, were a distinctive group
somewhat isolated from Europe. Indeed, their domination of the progressive
art scene in Russia, together with their own nonchalance toward, or even ig-
norance of, modern Western European trends, contributed, for example, to
the sudden but anachronistic recognition that French impressionism enjoyed
among Russian artists and collectors in the late 1890s. Conversely, their
isolation contributed to the West’s failure to recognize them, although their
formal and stylistic uninventiveness would, in any case, have found little
sympathy with a taste nurtured on the impressionists’ unprecedented effects
of light and color.
Because of their close affinities with their social and political environ-
ment, the Wanderers must be judged, inevitably, in such a context. One
critic, writing in 1915, was able to sense this in his appraisal of Ilya Repin,
perhaps the most famous of the realist Wanderers: ‘‘Repin outside Russia is
Introduction / xxi
further the choice of genres that was to be favored by the new Russian
painters at least until 1912.
These salient features of what came to be known as neoprimitivism domi-
nated Russian avant-garde art between 1908 and 1912, the period that wit-
nessed the sudden appearance of ‘‘wooden spoons instead of aesthetes’
orchids.’’ '? The recognition and impact of such art forms as the Jubok,
signboard painting, and children’s drawing had already been witnessed dur-
ing the 1880s and 1890s as a result of the Abramtsevo and Talashkino
activities, but the second wave of interest created a less stylized, less ‘‘nos-
talgic” product. The neoprimitivists, in fact, found in naive art a complex of
devices that had little in common with the basic aesthetic of Western idealist
painting, and these they emphasized often to the detriment of mimetic value.
Their disproportionate concentration on such specific artistic concepts as in-
verted perspective, flat rendition of figures, distinct vulgarization of form,
outline by color rather than by line, and consequently, the shift in visual
priorities began a process of reduction that one is tempted to relate ulti-
mately to Malevich’s White on White (1918).
In a lecture in 1938, the painter Kuzma Petrov- Vodkin summed up this
period of artistic fragmentation: ‘‘There was no school. . . . In Moscow,
Zolotoe runo was ending its days in languor . . . the banner raised by
Shchukin began its revolutionary course. Young artists bristled up... .
became anarchistic, and rejected any teaching.’’ '* The banner raised by
Sergei Shchukin—and, one should add, by Ivan Morozov—was a reference
to the two large collections of contemporary Western painting that both men
had accumulated by the mid-1900s.
The effect of canvases by Cézanne, Derain, Gauguin, Matisse, Van
Gogh, etc., on the young Moscow artists was considerable, although not
exclusive. The private showings of these collections undoubtedly influenced
the aims of certain movements within the Russian avant-garde, but there
was, after about'1910, an equally intense reaction against them, notably by
Goncharova and Larionov, who declared their allegiance to indigenous tradi-
tions—as Goncharova indicated in her speech on ‘‘Cubism’’ of 1912 (see p.
Pals
This dual attitude to the Western masters produced two distinct trends
within the Russian neoprimitivist movement, a phenomenon noticeable espe-
cially in the framework of the Knave of Diamonds group. This important
group, convoked by Larionov and Aristarkh Lentulov in 1910, divided
quickly into ‘‘Russian’’ and ‘‘French’’ factions after its first exhibition,
December 1910/January 1911. This inner divergence culminated in the de-
xxviii / Introduction
parture of Larionov and his sympathizers and their formation of the Don-
key’s Tail group later in 1911, while the more academic faction of the
Knave of Diamonds retained the original name and changed the organization
from a mere exhibition platform into a formal society. As such, the Knave
of Diamonds maintained a cohesive, although increasingly eclectic front
until 1918, and since it looked to Paris for inspiration, such highly compe-
tent members as Robert Falk, Petr Konchalovsky, Aleksandr Kuprin, Ilya
Mashkov, and Rozhdestvensky were labeled variously as Cézannists and
cubists. Larionov, on the other hand, attempted to base his new conception
of art on indigenous and Eastern stimuli and hence disowned any rela-
tionship with Western painting; but in fact, as his futurist and rayonist state-
ments reveal, Larionov was not averse to borrowing certain concepts from
Italian futurism, but they did not form the basic substance of his artistic
tracts. In contrast to the articulate Larionov, the ‘‘French’’ members of the
Knave of Diamonds were comparatively reticent, an attitude paralleled in
their more detached, more measured approach to painting. Although they
did not issue a joint statement of intent, we can accept Ivan Aksenov’s cri-
tique as their formal apologia and can summarize their artistic credo as the
“‘deliberate simplification and coarsening of form and the resultant conden-
sation of color and precision of line.’’ 1° Under the influence of cubism,
most members of the Knave of Diamonds moved from decorativeness and
polychromy toward a more acute analysis of form and a more architectonic
composition. But however distorted their pictorial interpretations, they never
lost contact with the world of objects and remained at a stage before nonre-
presentation. Even at the end of 1914, when French cubist infiuence was
most pronounced, the critic Yakov Tugendkhold could write of their current
exhibition that the “‘sense of reality . . . and the gravitation toward the
beautiful flesh of objects has again been found.’’ 1° Always opposed to
caprice and debilitating psychological connotations in art, the majority of the
‘‘French’’ Knave of Diamonds artists were among the first to accept the re-
alist principles of AKhRR [Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia]
in the early 1920s.
One of the most recognizable characteristics of the more derivative can-
vases of the Knave of Diamonds members is their lack of movement, their
often monolithic heaviness. And it was this in particular that distinguished
them from the ‘‘Russian’’ tendency of neopriniitivism favored by Gon-
charova, Larionov, et al. The latter artists’ evident interest in the dynamic
qualities of the canvas—tension, rhythm, contrast—led them immediately to
the principles of Russian cubofuturism and rayonism. Although Filippo
Marinetti’s ‘‘Futurist Manifesto’’ was published in Russia in 1909, and ex-
Introduction | xxix
tracts from similar Italian declarations appeared in the review Soyuz molo-
dezhi [Union of Youth] in 1912,!7 Italian futurism as a whole was in-
terpreted very freely by Russian artists and, while exerting a certain
influence, did not constitute a key element of the Russian avant-garde. Suf-
fice it to say that futurism in Russia came to embrace all extreme movements
in art and literature from neoprimitivism to suprematism. It was because of
this that Larionov managed to include both futurism and rayonism within a
single manifesto. To a limited extent, the Italian and Russian versions of fu-
turism did share one common essential, i.e., the concept of dynamism, of
mechanical movement, and it was this in part that gave impetus to the ex-
treme leftist painters, who quickly condemned the Knave of Diamonds as an
academic flower. Futurism and rayonism, however diverse, reflected the
new reality of urban civilization, of men dependent on machines: such
famous canvases as Goncharova’s Cats (1912), Larionov’s Glass (1912-13),
and Malevich’s Knife Grinder (1912) are linked closely to the concepts of
speed, light, and energy.
It is a curious paradox, however, that both Larionov and Malevich could
have reacted against their own dynamic, industrial conceptions of art and
subsequently have imbued rayonism and suprematism with spiritual, astral
qualities. In a letter to Alfred Barr in 1930, for example, Larionov could
describe rayonism in terms rather different from those in his ‘‘Rayonist
Painting’ (see pp. 91 ff.): ‘‘Ultimately, rayonism admits of the possibility
of a definition and a physical measurement of love, ecstasy, talent—those
spiritual qualities of the lyrical and epic state. . . .’’ 18 It was this marked
tendency toward an intuitive, mystical fourth dimension (and not toward
a Western, temporal one), this ‘‘painting of the soul’’ '® that formed the
genuine and original contribution to the international cubofuturist and ab-
stract movements.
As the old traditions collapsed, numerous groups arose, for the most part
intensifying the process of disintegration, while, inevitably, not always ad-
vancing valuable replacements. Such a criticism might be leveled at some of
David Burliuk’s theoretical and practical endeavors, which were often the
product of unbridled enthusiasm rather than of systematic thinking. But
Burliuk’s saving grace was his elemental vitality and unflinching organiza-
tional support of progressive art. Even after the Revolution, on his emigra-
tory journey to Japan and the United States, he found time to contribute to
exhibitions and discussions of the new art in central and eastern Siberia.?°
Sensitive critics such as Benois tended to dismiss his work outright and even
invented the verb burliukat, with its derogatory meaning of ‘‘to fool
around.’’ The verb was applied to many artists of the time who took advan-
xxx / Introduction
Tatlin, and the painter and critic Markov. Organizing the ‘‘Donkey’s Tail’’
exhibition in direct opposition to the second ‘‘Knave of Diamonds’’ exhibi-
tion, which had just closed, Larionov voiced his disdain forcefully: ‘‘My
task is not to confirm the new art, because after that it would cease to be
new, but as far as possible to try to move it forward. After organizing the
Knave of Diamonds two years ago . . . I did not realize that under that
name would arise such a popularization of works that have nothing in com-
mon either with the new art or with the old. . . .”’ 23 The second exhibi-
tion, the ‘‘Target,’’ was more precise in its ideological proclamation and, in
visual terms, acted as the first public platform for the advocacy of rayonism.
Moreover, the latter was represented not only in its figurative stage, e.g.,
Larionov’s Rayonist Sausage and Mackerel (1912), but also in its abstract
development, e.g., Goncharova’s Rayonist Perception—Blue and Brown
(1913). A year later, shortly before he and Goncharova left for Paris,
Larionov staged the exhibition “‘No. 4,’’ which, although subtitled ‘‘Exhibi-
tion of Futurist, Rayonist, and Primitivist Pictures,’’ was primarily a display
of rayonist and so-called pneumorayonist works. Larionov’s preface to the
catalogue underlined the contemporaneous orientation toward painting for
painting’s sake, even though most of the exhibits were still representational
or at least thematic: ‘* ‘Exhibition No. 4’ is the fourth in the cycle of exhibi-
tions organized by a group of artists who have nothing in common except
youth, a forward striving, the solution of mainly painterly problems, and a
uniform mood of feeling and thought. . . .”’ 74 Apart from the ‘“‘electric’’
and rayonist pictures by Larionov and Goncharova—some of which, signifi-
cantly, were called ‘‘constructions’’ [postroeniya]|—the ferroconcrete poems
of Vasilii Kamensky and Shevchenko’s essays in dynamism exemplified the
fundamentals of cubofuturism.
Rayonism was again represented by Goncharova and Larionov during
their reappearance in Moscow at the grand ‘‘Exhibition of Painting. 1915”
in March of that year.2> However, their efforts were overshadowed by other,
more audacious contributions, and the whole exhibition proved to be a sen-
sational scandal: ‘‘the Burliuks hung up a pair of trousers and stuck a bottle
to them; . . . Mayakovsky exhibited a top hat that he had cut in two and
nailed two gloves next to it. . . . Kamensky asked the jury persuasively to
let him exhibit a live mouse in a mousetrap. . . .”’ ?® Such diverse artists as
Natan Altman, Chagall, and Kandinsky added to the pictorial kaleidoscope;
but perhaps the most original and valuable contribution was by Tatlin, an
artist who, together with Malevich, would exert a profound influence on the
remaining phases of the avant-garde movement. It was evident from Tatlin’s
exhibits, one of which consisted of a ‘‘leg knocked off a table, a sheet of
xxxii / Introduction
iron, and a broken glass jug,’’ 27 that he was concerned with constructing a
work of art by combining and contrasting the intrinsic properties of various
materials. This move away from the surface of the canvas to a three-dimen-
sional conception had, of course, already led Tatlin to the creation of his
reliefs and counterreliefs; two of his painterly reliefs were presented at the
parallel exhibition ‘‘Tramway V,’’ organized by Ivan Puni in Petrograd.
The year 1915, therefore, pinpointed two distinct tendencies within the
avant-garde movement: one toward volume, the other toward plane. Tatlin
and Malevich emerged as the respective leaders of these two fundamental
but contradictory concepts.
Although Malevich was represented at the ‘‘Exhibition of Painting.
1915,’ it is not known precisely which works he showed because his con-
tributions were not detailed either in the catalogue or in the reviews. It is
doubtful that he sent examples of suprematism since at the concur-
rent ‘‘Tramway V’’ his canvases, such as Portrait of M. V. Matyushin
(1913) and Englishman in Moscow (1913-14), were still representational.
Although in his writings Malevich dated his formulation of suprematism in
1913, there is little concrete evidence in the form of exhibition catalogues
and contemporaneous descriptions that would corroborate this assertion. On
the other hand, it is entirely possible that by 1914 Malevich was already
thinking in terms of the “‘new painterly realism,’’ since his paintings and
graphics of the time had definite alogical, abstract elements. In any case, the
idea of art as something beyond representational value was, of course, not
new and had been propounded by Kandinsky, Markov, and Rozanova at
least as early as 1913; undoubtedly Malevich relied on certain of their ideas,
particularly those of Markov, and expanded them into his theory of suprema-
tism, which saw its written and visual propagation at the very end of
1915. At the exhibition “‘o.10,’’ organized by Puni (December 1915/Jan-
uary 1916), Suprematist compositions occupied the center of attention, and
their effect was augmented both by collective manifestoes (see pp. 110 ff.)
and by a collective picture painted by Kseniya Boguslavskaya, Ivan Klyun,
Malevich, Mikhail Menkov, and Puni, presumably according to suprematist
principles. In addition, Malevich accompanied his own contribution by an
independent declaration in the catalogue: ‘‘In naming certain pictures, I do
not wish to show that I have regarded real forms as heaps of formless pain-
terly masses out of which a painterly picture was created having nothing
common with the model.’’ ** It should, however, be noted that although
many of the contributions were exercises in combinations of purely painterly
elements, the word ‘‘suprematist’’ did not accompany any of them.
The ‘‘o.10”’ exhibition was memorable for publicizing a second innova-
Introduction | xxxili
tion—Tatlin’s artistic method: not only was a whole room devoted to his
reliefs, but a pamphlet on his reliefs and corner reliefs was published simul-
taneously. Unlike Malevich, however, Tatlin had previously exhibited his
abstract works several times since his one-man show in May 1914 and had
already influenced younger artists, such as Lev Bruni, so that their combina-
tions of materials and textures on surface and in space were the dominant
feature at the “‘Shop’’ exhibition, organized by Tatlin in February 1916.
This exhibition served essentially as a vehicle for advancing both painterly
and constructional reliefs (by Bruni, Klyun, Tatlin), but the ideological op-
ponents (Malevich, Lyubov Popova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova) were well
represented too, despite the fact that Malevich submitted no suprematist
works.
Although the ‘‘Shop’’ was the last major exhibition of the leftists before
the Revolution, Malevich, Tatlin, and their confréres did not diminish their
artistic activities. But however much the developments of suprematism and
the counterrelief constituted audacious advances in art and however far-
reaching their effect, ultimately they questioned the very legality of easel
art: it was felt that the absolute in art had been reached, and although
Malevich beckoned us to the zero of form, he provided no function for art,
no pragmatic justification. As early as 1909 Lentulov, in a letter to Benois,
had voiced his reservations as to the ultimate purpose of the avant-
garde: ‘‘You involuntarily ask yourself: ‘What next? What’s to be
done with it all? Does anybody need it?’ ’’ ?® A temporary answer to
such questions was provided by the Revolution of October 1917.
Lenin; their numbers were swelled, albeit briefly, by the return of colleagues
from abroad—Chagall, Kandinsky, Naum Gabo, Anton Pevsner, David
Shterenberg, et al. Such favorable circumstances enabled many of the avant-
garde artists to take up positions of administrative and pedagogical authority
within the new cultural hierarchy, and consequently, the leftist dictatorship
in art became a definite, although ephemeral, reality. Specifically, the uto-
pian ideas of this leftist dictatorship were disseminated both on a theoretical
and on a practical level in three essential ways: through state exhibitions and
state acquisition of leftist works, through infiltration into the reorganized art
schools, and through the establishment of highly progressive research pro-
grams within various influential institutions. But because of this broad artis-
tic tolerance, many divisions and conflicts concerning the direction and
function of art arose among the leftists themselves. Some, like Altman,
believed that Communist futurism [Komfut] was the only doctrine that could
successfully transform all the ideological, creative, and organizational
aspects of art. Others, like Rozanova, a member of Proletkult (the proletar-
ian culture organization, led by Aleksandr Bogdanov), believed that only the
proletariat (i.e., not the peasantry) could create a proletarian art and that
much of Russia’s cultural inheritance could be ignored. Of all the major art
organizations, in fact, Proletkult was the only one that managed to maintain
a degree of independence, perhaps because it had been established as a for-
mal entity as early as February 1917—and this position worried Lenin con-
siderably. By 1919 Proletkult had a substantial sphere of influence, operat-
ing its own studios in all the main urban centers, and its emphasis -on
industry allied it immediately with the emergent constructivist groups. Con-
sequently, its formal annexation to Narkompros in 1922 and the automatic
restriction of its activities was a political move that presaged the increasing
government interference in art affairs during the mid- and late 1920s.!
Through the Visual Arts Section [IZO] of Narkompros,*? the now ‘‘of-
ficial’’ artists embarked on an ambitious program of reconstruction. In 1918,
under the auspices of Tatlin in Moscow and Shterenberg (general head of
[ZO) in Petrograd, the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Archi-
tecture and the Stroganov Art School were integrated to form the Free State
Art Studios [Svomas—later Vkhutemas/Vkhutein],?° and the St. Petersburg
Academy was abolished and replaced by the Petrograd State Free Art Educa-
tional Studios [Pegoskhuma—later Svomas, and then the academy again 34].
Such studios provided a further dynamic impulse to the development of
avant-garde art mainly because of their initially flexible structure and be-
cause of their radical teaching faculty: Klyun, Malevich, Rodchenko, Shev-
chenko, and Udaltsova were among those who worked at Svomas/Vkhu-
Introduction | xxxv
tic Sciences was being projected, in fact, that Kandinsky reworked his plan
for Inkhuk and presented it in abbreviated form as a proposal for the pro-
gram of the Physicopsychological Department within the academy (see pp.
196 ff.).
Equally innovative activities were being pursued by the Petrograd affilia-
tion of Inkhuk, called IKhK, which arose in 1922 as an extension of the Mu-
seum of Painterly Culture. IKhK was divided into four sections: Painterly
Culture, headed by Malevich; Organic Culture, headed by Matyushin; Mate-
rial Culture, headed initially by Tatlin; and General Ideology, headed by
Punin. Within their sections, Malevich and Tatlin devoted much time to the
study of ‘‘new forms for the new life and for art industry,’’ while Ma-
tyushin’s experiments remained purely in the laboratory realm, oriented to
such specific problems as ‘‘color fields’’ and ‘‘space and its significance for
aesthetic value.’’ *° Although IKhK was smaller than its Moscow counter-
part, it contained the most promising of Malevich’s students, especially
Ilya Chashnik and Nikolai Suetin, who had followed him from Vitebsk, as
well as Matyushin’s gifted assistants, led by Boris and Mariya Ender.
Despite constant criticism, IKhK, like Inkhuk, managed to take a very
active part in artistic affairs: it organized the large exhibition ““Union of
New Trends in Art” in 1922 and staged Velimir Khlebnikov’s Zangezi, with
sets by Tatlin, in 1923. IKhK was closed in 1926, and by 1929 Inkhuk,
which iost its autonomy in 1924, had also ceased to function.
Despite the enthusiasm and intense activity peculiar to the Revolutionary
period, comparatively little “‘pure art’’ was created between 1918 and 1920.
This was due, in the main, to the deliberate orientation of artistic energies
toward the so-called mass activities involving street decoration, designs for
mass dramatizations, and agit-transport, to the economic and material uncer-
tainty of the country (Tatlin, for example, experienced great difficulty in ac-
quiring appropriate metals and plaster), *° and to the underlying theoretical
obscurity of the role of art in a socialist framework. Such reasons accounted
for the large proportion of pre-Revolutionary works submitted to the sequence
of state exhibitions of 1918-21 and to the famous Berlin exhibition of 1922;
they accounted also for the temporary cessation of written manifestoes con-
cerned with easel art. At the same time, many of the articles and proclama-
tions that appeared in such journals as /skusstvo kommuny [Art of the Com-
mune] and /zobrazitelnoe iskusstvo [Visual Art] were rhetorical and florid,
but deficient in practicable ideas. In any case, since politics had become
suddenly an integral part of the artist’s world view, his statements of the
Revolutionary period were often correspondingly tendentious and extrinsic,
and not until about 1922 do we once more find manifestoes concerned
Introduction /~ xxxvii
specifically with the aesthetics of art. It was then that a second, but weaker,
wave of interest in pure or easel art was voiced in declaration or in public
debate.
Indicative of this renewed interest was the exhibition ‘‘5 x 5 =25,”’
organized in Moscow in September 1921 under the auspices of Inkhuk. The
‘*five,’’ each with five contributions, were Aleksandra Exter, Popova, Rod-
chenko, Stepanova, and Aleksandr Vesnin, who Set as their task to examine
‘color, partially solving the problems of the interrelationships of color, its
mutual tension, its rhythmization, and to pass on to color construction based
on the laws of color itself.’’ 4" Rodchenko gave his farewell to pure painting
in three canvases painted respectively red, yellow, and blue. These he saw
as the culmination of a process that he described in the catalogue:
1918 At the exhibition ‘‘Nonobjective Creation and Suprematism’’ in
Moscow I proclaimed spatial constructions and, in painting, Black on
Black, for the first time.
1920 At the Nineteenth State Exhibition I proclaimed line as a factor of
construction for the first time.
1921 At this exhibition I have proclaimed three basic colors in art for the
first time.4?
But the 5 X 5 =25 group disintegrated quickly with the realization that art as
an end in itself had already run its course, a move that had been anticipated
by Stepanova’s statement that “‘technology and industry have confronted art
with the problem of construction not as contemplative representation, but as
an active function.’’ #2 At a plenary session of Inkhuk on November 24,
1921, the majority of the group, together with their associates, condemned
easel painting as outmoded and useless and advocated new artistic values in
the ‘‘absoluteness of industrial art and constructivism as its only form of
expression.’’ 44 In accordance with this declaration many entered the world
of industrial production: Popova and Stepanova turned to textile design,
Rodchenko to photography, Vesnin to architecture, etc.
Although this was an abrupt and extreme measure, the more so since the
majority of the artists concerned had been established painters, their action
had already been foreshadowed by a group of young artists from the Mos-
cow Svomas who were members of Obmokhu [Society of Young Artists].
As early as 1919, they had been provided with a studio equipped with metal-
cutting machines and stamping machines and with welding apparatus, which
indicated their fundamental conception of art as something applied and
extra-aesthetic. They designed and produced stencils for postcards and
badges, worked on theater sets, constructed traveling libraries, and de-
xxxvill / Introduction
the constant, rational laws of art so that art criticism, like constructivism,
would become a science and leave behind its intuitive, literary principles.
As Tugendkhold wrote in 1926: ‘‘The fundamental methodological aspira-
tion of Marxist art criticism is the affirmation of a scientific approach to
atte” 45
While in general, the most radical artists turned their attention to produc-
tional design and concentrated on this throughout the 1920s, some still con-
cerned themselves with easel painting but began to reverse the trend from
futurist to realist representations. This change in artistic thinking was in-
spired partly by the founding of several groups of easel artists in the early
1920s. One of these was NOZh [Novoe obshchestvo zhivopistsev—New So-
ciety of Painters], a group of former pupils of Exter, Malevich, and Tatlin
who were quick to respond to the new mass taste, as they indicated in their
declaration at their first exhibition in 1922: ‘‘We, former leftists in art, were
the first to feel the utter rootlessness of further analytical and scholastic aber-
rations. . . . We have not taken the road tramped by the theory of con-
structivism, for constructivism, in proclaiming the death of art, conceives
man as an automaton. ... We want to create realistic works of
art. . . .’’ 4® The force of such a declaration, diametrically opposed to
statements of the preceding decade, stimulated the rapid development of
similar organizations, especially AKhRR. The re-establishment of more con-
ventional artistic values, reflected also in the resurrection of pre-Revolu-
tionary associations such as the World of Art and the Union of Russian Art-.
ists, was strengthened by the declaration and creative output of AKhRR
demonstrated at its first official exhibition in June/July 1922. And it was the
1922 manifesto of AKhRR that, with certain modifications, came to serve as
the springboard for the formal advocacy of socialist realism in the early
1930s.
Although the AKhRR credo was the most influential and far-reaching
within the context of Russian art in the 1920s and thereafter, it did not, at
least initially, liquidate other artistic developments. With the establishment
of NEP [New Economic Policy] in 1921, the private art market was re-
opened and was soon flourishing. As a direct result, the new bourgeois pa-
tron stimulated the development of a peculiar and highly interesting visual
compromise between nonrepresentation and representation. This was no-
ticeable within the framework of the short-lived Makovets society, formed
in 1922, though the symbolic, apocalyptic visions of its greatest member,
Vasilii Chekrygin, have yet to be ‘‘discovered.’’ *” A more subjective con-
ception of reality was favored also by the members of OST [Society of Easel
Artists], such as Aleksandr Deineka and Aleksandr Tyshler, who at times
xl / Introduction
Born St. Petersburg, 1870; died Paris, 1960. 1898: cofounder of the World of Art;
coeditor of its journal and of other art journals; 1900 and thereafter: active as a stage
designer; 1908: designed costumes and decor for Sergei Diaghilev’s production of
Boris Godunov in Paris, the first of many contributions to ballet and opera presenta-
tions in the West; 1918: director of the Picture Gallery at the Hermitage; 1927:
settled in Paris; author of many books and articles.
The translation is from Benois’s Istoriya russkoi zhivopisi v XIX veke (St. Petersburg,
June 1902), p. 274 [bibl]. R26]. Benois’s awareness of the disintegration of contem-
poraneous social and cultural values was shared by many members of the World of
Art group, not least by Diaghilev (see his ‘‘V chas itogov’’ [At the Hour of Reckon-
ing] in bibl. R44, 1905, no. 4, pp. 45-46) and by Lev Bakst [bibl]. R243]. But unlike
many of his colleagues, Benois was opposed to the cultivation of individualism (see
his “‘Khudozhestvennye eresi’’ [Artistic Heresies] in bibl]. R45, 1906, no. 2, pp.
80-88) and saw the regeneration of art to lie within a synthesist framework; hence
his interest in the theater and the ballet.
Although not a symbolist in the same sense as his associates in the World of Art—
Konstantin Balmont, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitrii Merezhkovsky, and later, Andrei
Bely—Benois shared certain of their basic ideas. His search for a cohesive’ style in
the face of his “‘spiritually tormented, hysterical time’’ [/storiya russkoi zhivopisi, p.
271], his aesthetic devotion to bygone cultures (particularly that of: seventeenth-
century France), his reaction against the sociopolitical tendencies of realist art, and
his very love of the theater and the ballet were elements central to the symbolist
world view within the framework both of the World of Art and, later, of the Golden
Fleece circles. In this respect, many of Benois’s early writings can be interpreted as
World of Art and even as symbolist declarations. Although Benois was quick to
sense the emergence of the ‘‘new art,’’ he was slow to accept it, as his censure of
cubofuturism demonstrated [see pp. 69-70 and 103 and bibl. R262]. Stylistically, this
piece demonstrates Benois’s articulate and lucid mode of critical presentation, an
ability not possessed by members of the avant-garde, such as David Burliuk and
Malevich.
Lev Bakst: Portrait of Aleksandr Benois, 1898. Pastel, watercolor, paper on cardboard,
64.5 x 100.3 cm. Collection Russian Museum, Leningrad.
to our future flowering, a kind of veiled presentiment that we will still utter
the great word within us.
[NIKOLAI RYABUSHINSKY]
Preface to
The Golden Fleece, 1906
Pseudonym: N. Shinsky. Born Moscow, 1876; died Céte d’Azur, 1951. Member of
a rich Moscow banking family and playboy of extravagant tastes; provided funds
for the Golden Fleece journal, of which he was editor; sponsored the **Blue Rose”
and ‘‘Golden Fleece”’ exhibitions; patron and friend of many of the early avant-garde
artists and a painter and poet in his own right; 1918: emigrated to Paris, where he
lived as an antique dealer.
The text of this piece appeared, untitled, in Zolotoe runo [The Golden Fleece], Mos-
cow, January 1906, no. 1, p. 4 [bibl. 99, R45]. The Golden Fleece was named after
the Greek legend and also in opposition to the Argonauts, another Moscow symbolist
group led by the writer Andrei Bely. Ryabushinsky was editor-in-chief of Zolotoe
runo, and he contributed occasional articles. This unsigned preface was probably by
him; it was printed in gold both in Russian and in French, but this practice of insert-
ing parallel translations ceased in 1908. The journal, the most luxurious of all the
Russian symbolist reviews, appeared regularly between 1906 and 1909, although the
last two issues for 1909 (no. 10 and no. 11/12) did not appear until January and April
IQIO, respectively, because of financial problems.
This preface, appearing just after the civil disorders of 1905 and the disastrous
Russo-Japanese War, expressed the general wish to escape the problems of social
and political reality and coincided with the cult of spiritualism that began to corrode
Moscow’s intellectual salons. Such terms as ‘‘whole’’ and ‘free impulse’’ were very
much part of the Russian symbolist aesthetic, especially among the so-called second
generation of symbolist writers and artists. In this respect, Zolotoe runo during 1906
and 1907 acted as the doctrinal platform for the Blue Rose artists, led by Pavel Kuz-
netsov, and this preface was in keeping with their essential ideas. [For details on the
formation of the Blue Rose and its relationship to Zolotoe runo see bibl. 87.]
Nikolai Ryabushinsky, ca. 1912. ‘‘Tall, fair-
haired, a picture of health, a stalwart, self-as-
sured figure dressed in a dinner jacket or suit
from a stylish tailor—his pink face bordered
by a red beard could always be seen at all the-
ater premieres, at every preview, everywhere
that Moscow’s elite congregated’ [bibl.
R109, p. 179].
Cover of Zolotoe runo [The Golden Fleece], Pavel Kuznetsov: The Blue Fountain, 1905.
(Moscow), No. 1, 1906. Designed by Evgenii Tempera, 127 x 131 cm. Collection Tre-
Lancéray. Zolotoe runo was the most luxuri- tyakov Gallery, Moscow. This canvas, with
ous and ambitious of all the Russian symbol- its fountain, embryonic figures, and subdued
ist journals and played a vital role in the colors, was one of Kuznetsov’s most compel-
propagation of modernist ideas in art and lit- ling symbolist works.
erature, especially for the Blue Rose group.
8 /{/ RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
DAVID BURLIUK
The Voice of an Impressionist:
In Defense of Painting
[Extract], 1908
Born Kharkov, 1882; died Long Island, New York, 1967. 1898-1904: studied at
various institutions—Kazan, Munich, Paris; : 1907: settled in Moscow; soon be-
friended by most members of the emergent avant-garde; 1911: entered the Moscow
Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture but was expelled in 1913; Ca. 1913:
illustrated futurist booklets; 1910-15: contributed to the ‘*Triangle,’’ ‘‘Knave of
Diamonds,’’ *‘Union of Youth,’’ ‘‘Exhibition of Painting. 1915, and other exhibi-
tions; 1915: moved to the Urals; 1918-22: via Siberia, Japan, and Canada, arrived in
the United States; active as a painter and critic until his death.
Nikolai Kulbin: Portrait of David Burliuk,
1913. Lithograph, 35 x 26 cm. From Kul-
bin’s Seriya litografii [Series of Lithographs]
(St. Petersburg, 1913) [bib]. R229]. David
Burliuk was closely associated with Kulbin
and contributed to two of his exhibitions,
““Contemporary Trends in Art’’ (St. Peters-
burg, 1908) and ‘‘The Triangle’’ (St. Peters-
burg, 1910).
The complete text of this piece, ‘‘Golos Impressionista—v zashchitu zhivopisi,’’ ap-
peared with the catalogue to the ‘‘Link’’ exhibition, organized by David Burliuk in
Kiev, November 2-30, 1908 [see bibl. R249 and also bibl. 58, pp. 285-87 for
French translation of the catalogue list]. Part of the text was reprinted in the journal
V mire iskusstv [In the World of Arts] (Kiev), no. 14/15, 1908, p. 20 [bibl. R43] and
in the newspaper Kievlyanin [The Kievan], no. 332, 1908; this translation is made
from these sources. The ‘‘Link,”’ the first leftist exhibition staged by David Burliuk,
included contributions by Aleksandr Bogomazov, Aleksandra Exter, Natalya Gon-
charova, and Mikhail Larionov.
The importance of Burliuk’s text lies in its abrupt dismissal of conventional artistic
norms, especially in the form espoused by the Wanderers, and in its enthusiastic sup-
port of the Blue Rose artists. Indicative of Burliuk’s tendency to judge rashly and un-
reasonably is his condemnation of Mikhail Vrubel, an artist who exerted a definite
influence on the Blue Rose and Golden Fleece artists. The Russian impressionists
Burliuk has in mind are such painters as Exter, Goncharova, Larionov, Aristarkh
Lentulov (also at the ‘‘Link’’), and of course, himself—all of whom were still under
the distinct influence of the French postimpressionists. At this time there was a group
of so-called Moscow impressionists, which included the painters Igor Grabar and
Konstantin Korovin, but Burliuk was hardly referring to these artists since by then he
considered them academic and outmoded. Earlier in 1908 Nikolai Kulbin had
founded a group called the Impressionists (see p. 12), but it had nothing to do with
the French movement of the same name; Burliuk contributed to its first exhibition,
1.e., Sovremennye techeniya v iskusstve [Contemporary Trends in Art], in St. Peters-
burg in May 1908, and it is probable that he was thinking of it here. The grammati-
cal mistakes and semantic obscurities are typical of Burliuk’s literary style.
_ The works of genius and mediocrity—the latter are justified because they
have historic interest.
The painting of those who have long since decayed (who they were is
forgotten, a riddle, 2 mystery}—how you upset the nineteenth century. Until
the 1830s, the age of Catherine was enticing, alluring, and delightful: pre-
cise and classical.
Savage vulgarization. The horrors of the Wanderers—general deterio-
ration—the vanishing aristocratic order—hooligans of the palette 4 la Ma-
kovsky ’ and Aivazovsky,” etc.
Slow development, new ideals—passions and terrible mistakes!
Since the first exhibition of the World of Art, in 1899, there has been a
new era. Artists look to the West. The fresh wind blows away Repin’s
chaffy spirit, the bast shoe of the Wanderers loses its apparent strength. But
it’s not Serov, not Levitan, not Vrubel’s * vain attempts at genius, not the
literary Diaghilevans, but the Blue Rose, those who have grouped around
The Golden Fleece and later the Russian impressionists nurtured on Western
models, those who trembled at the sight of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cézanne
(the synthesis of French trends in painting)—these are the hopes for the
rebirth of Russian painting... .
NIKOLAI KULBIN
Free Art as the Basis of Life:
Harmony and Dissonance
(On Life, Death, etc.)
[Extracts], 1908
Born St. Petersburg, 186%; died St. Petersburg, 1917. Professor at the St. Petersburg
Military Academy and doctor to the General Staff, taught himself painting; 1908:
organized the Impressionist group; lecturer and theoretician; 1909: group broke up,
dissident members contributing to the founding of the Union of Youth, opened for-
mally in February 1910; 1910 on: peripheral contact with the Union of Youth; close
to the Burliuks, Vladimir Markov, Olga Rozanova; ca. 1913: illustrated futurist
booklets and other publications; 1914: invited Filippo Marinetti to Russia.
12 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT
2Go eee
The present text echoes the intuitive, symbolist tone of Kulbin’s Impressionist group
(not to be confused with the French or Moscow impressionists) and of some
members of the Union of Youth, one that can be perceived in the art and writings of
Pavel Filonov, Markov, Rozanova, and Kazimir Malevich. Before publication, Kul-
bin had delivered the text as a lecture to the Society of People’s Universities in St.
Petersburg in 1908, and on February 12, 1912, he gave a similar talk under the title
“The New Art as the Basis of Life’’ at a debate organized by the Knave of Dia-
monds [see pp. 69-70 and 77-78}. Part of the text is reprinted in bibl. R14, pp. 15-22.
ae N \ ‘ \ ,
-
14 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
* Incidentally, from my own experience I advise painters to depict light with the help of discords. The results
are convincing.”
The Subjective Aesthetic: Symbolism and the Intuitive | 15
We, cells of the body of the living Earth, fulfill her desires, but not all of
us hear her voice.
It is difficult, very difficult, to read spontaneously the hieroglyphics of life
and of the structure of the crystal, the flower, and the beautiful animal.
Not everyone has the gift of reading the rudiments of the art created by
the most beautiful of animals—primitive man and our children—although it
is simpler.
There are few loving hearts capable of reading artistic ideas in the great
works of bygone art. While contrasting the old artists with the new, the mob
is still deaf to the ideas of the old artists. Those who love, think, and
desire—such are the flower of the Earth. They desire poetry and hear it in
the Good Book and in the thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare,
Goethe, and other literati great and small: these are the real theory of art.
This theory of artistic creation is the key to happiness because art is hap-
piness. It is the philosopher’s stone, the magic wand that turns life into a
fairy tale. It is poetry.
This poetry represents the principles of life. Knowledge of them inspires
the mood of art, sharpens vision.
He who knows these principles sees poetry in works of sincerity depicted
by an artist—persecuted and, invariably, a newcomer; works about which
the ignorant say: ‘‘Rubbish, daubing!’’
Roger Bacon asks: which is better, to be able to draw an absolutely
straight line by hand or to invent a ruler with the help of which anyone can
draw a straight line?
For the artist this ruler is the theory of artistic creation. Without it every
artist would have to remake our creative culture. All his strength would be
spent on this, and he would have no chance of speaking his own new word.
But why, then, do we see certified “‘artists’’ every day—artists who study
anatomy, perspective, and the history of painting in the official academies—
remaining bureaucrats of art? Conversely, street urchins and shepherds are
sometimes artists and poets. The theory of art provides us with the answer:
The theory of artistic creation is not taught there.
Well-behaved bureaucrats and exhausted artists teach and learn there.
They are nice people, but they have no wings, they cannot fly. If a real artist
turns up in such an academy, then he suffers the fate of an eaglet amid a
brood of hens. Either they will peck him to bits before his beak has devel-
oped, or he will hurt somebody himself.
The shepherd Giotto reads the theory of art freely in nature herself, stud-
ies color and line while driving his flock from one beautiful picture to
another. Moving to the town, he examines works of art and takes from them
16/ RUSSIAN ART OFT Hib PA VAIN ore
their own particular guidelines; he reads, converses about art, and thirstily
imbibes the juice of the fruits of art, throwing away the peel and the mold.
In his own creations Giotto puts into practice artistic truth, the truth of art.
The eagle’s wings function not irregularly but by strict laws that represent
the theory of eagles.
This is the theory of artistic creation. It is essential both for talent and for
genius.
Tolstoi is the sun. But in his erudition disregards the sciences of Mephis-
tofeles. And so, to the surprise of many, there are spots on the sun.
Chekhov to a lesser extent, but he studied the sciences of life. A doctor’s
knowledge * not only did not hinder him from creating, but also lent his
creation an extraordinary force, a humaneness almost evangelical.
Ruisdael manifested artistic ability at fourteen years of age, but he first
became a doctor and only later a painter; this helped him to establish a great
new sphere of painting—the landscape.
The theory of artistic creation has taught man how to compose a poem, to
discover colors, and to discover living harmony. This theory is inherent in
pictures themselves and in discourses about pictures. . . .
I. Theory
Ideology. Symbol of the universe. Delight. Beauty and good. Love is grav-
ity. Process of beauty. Art is the quest for gods. Creation is the myth and
the symbol. Freedom. The struggle of Titans and Olympus. Prometheus and
Hercules. Painting and servitude.
A single art—of the word, music, and the plastic arts.
Artist,
picture,
and Red. Mood. The sounds of colors. The colors of the word.
spectator. The
colors of sounds. Scales. Ornament.
The Subjective Aesthetic: Symbolism and the Intuitive | iy
Yellow. The plastic arts. Free creation. Illusion and form. The
psychology of depiction. Mutual creation of artist and spectator.
Cognition. Sight and blindness. The psychology of the spectator. Sympa-
thetic experience. Criticism.
Supplements. The life of the artist, of the picture, and of the spectator.
VASILII KANDINSKY
Content and Form, 1910
Born Moscow, 1866; died Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1944. 1896: arrived in Munich; 1909:
with Alexei von Jawlensky et al. founded the Neue Kinstlervereinigung [New Art-
ists’ Association]; began Jmprovisations; 1909-10: Munich correspondent for Apol-
lon [bibl. R41]; 1910: contributed to the first ‘“‘Knave of Diamonds’’ exhibition;
1910 onwards: began to explore an abstract mode of painting; 191 I-12: exhibitions
of Der Blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider]; 1914-21: back in Russia; 1920: participated in
the organization of Inkhuk; 1921: participated in the organization of the Russian
Academy of Artistic Sciences; 1921: emigrated; 1922-33: taught at the Bauhaus.
The text of this piece, ‘‘Soderzhanie i forma,’’ is from the catalogue for the second
Salon exhibition, organized by Vladimir Izdebsky in Odessa, December 1910-
LSe 0/) eRAURSTSU L aeAN Ras
AGN Onan liatiok: AVANT-GARDE
January 1911 [bibl. R133, pp. 14-16]. Apart from the list of exhibitors (French
translation in bibl. 58, pp. 309-13] and this text, the catalogue included articles by
Izdebsky, Nikolai Kulbin [bibl]. R225], a certain “‘Dr. phil. A. Grinbaum, Odessa’’
(perhaps the philosopher Anton Griinbaum), a discourse on ‘‘Harmony in Painting
and Music’’ by Henri Rovel, a long poem by Leonid Grossman (later to achieve
fame as a literary critic), and Kandinsky’s translation of Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘‘Par-
allels in Octaves and Fifths.’’ With such a synthetic composition and, moreover,
with a cover- designed after a Kandinsky woodcut, this catalogue might well have
formed the prototype for Der Blaue Reiter almanac itself. Although most contempo-
rary trends in Russian painting were represented at the exhibition—from neoprimi-
tivism (David and Vladimir Burliuk,; Mikhail Larionov, Vladimir Tatlin, etc.) to
symbolism (Petr Utkin), from the St. Petersburg Impressionists (Kulbin) to the
World of Art (Mstislav Dobuzhinsky)—the Munich artists (Jawlensky, Kandinsky,
Gabriele Minter, Marianne von Werefkin) constituted an impressive and compact
group. Indeed, the German contribution both to the exhibition and to the catalogue
was indicative of Izdebsky’s own interest in Kandinsky (he intended, for example,
The Subjective Aesthetic: Symbolism and the Intuitive / 19
to publish a monograph on him in 1911; see bibl. 97, pp. 186-89) and, generally, in
the Neue Kinstlervereiningung.
Kandinsky’s text shares certain affinities with his article ‘‘Kuda idet ‘novoe’ iskusst-
vo’’ [Where the ‘“‘New’’ Art Is Going; bibl. R223], which was published a few
weeks later (also in Odessa) and in which he went so far as to assert that ‘‘any kind
of content is unartistic and hostile to art. . . . Painting as such, i.e., as ‘pure paint-
ing’ affects the soul by means of its primordial resources: by paint (color), by form,
i.e., the distribution of planes and lines, their interrelation (movement). . . .’’ Of
course, both this article and the text below constituted previews of Kandinsky’s On
the Spiritual in Art, which was given as a lecture by Kulbin on Kandinsky’s behalf at
the All-Russian Convention of Artists in St. Petersburg on December 29 and 31,
1911 [see bibl. R222]. The present text reflects both Kandinsky’s highly subjective
interpretation of art and his quest for artistic synthesism, attitudes that were identifia-
ble with a number of Russian artists and critics at this time, not least Kulbin, Alek-
sandr Skryabin, and of course, the symbolists. Kandinsky’s attempts to chart the
“artist’s emotional vibration” and to think in comparative terms still evident in his
programs for the Moscow Inkhuk and for the Russian Academy of Artistic
Sciences (see pp. 196-98). Part of the text is reprinted in bibl. 45, pp. 281--82. The
whole text is translated into English in bibl. 101x, pp. 87-90.
Vasilii Kandinsky: Reproduction after a woodcut for the cover of the cat-
alogue of Vladimir Izdebsky’s second ‘‘Salon’’ (Odessa, 1910-11). Col-
lection The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In art, form is invariably determined by content. And only that form is the
right one which serves as the corresponding expression and materialization
of its content. Any accessory considerations, among them the primary one—
namely, the correspondence of form to so-called nature, i.e., outer nature—
are insubstantial and pernicious, because they distract attention from the
single task of art: the embodiment of its content. Form is the material
expression of abstract content. Hence the quality of an artistic work can be
appreciated in toto only by its author: content demands immediate embodi-
ment, and the author alone is permitted to see whether the form that he has
found corresponds to the content, and if so, to what extent. The greater or
The Subjective Aesthetic: Symbolism and the Intuitive / 21
VLADIMIR MARKOV
The Principles
of the New Art, 1912
Pseudonym of Waldemars Matvejs. Born Riga, 1877; died St. Petersburg, 1914.
Studied under Yan Tsionglinsky (who was also the tutor of the poet and painter
Elena Guro and of Mikhail Matyushin); traveled widely in Western Europe;
1906-1907: edited Vystavochnyi vestnik [Exhibition Messenger], St. Petersburg;
1908: contributed to the ‘‘Link’’ exhibition; 1910 and after: close to the Union of
Youth, contributing to its first exhibition and editing its first and second booklets
[bibl. R237]; expecially interested in the art of China, Black Africa and Easter
Island, researching this with his companion, the artist Varvara Bubnova; 1912:
contributed to the ““Donkey’s Tail.”
Markov’s essay, in fact, while touching on the idea of construction in Occidental and
Oriental art, reached conclusions quite contrary to those of Worringer and attempted
24 {> RUSS TAN OAR OBO oH EVAN VAD NG = GeAGROpeTE:
to establish the aesthetic value of primitive and Eastern art, where Worringer saw
”
little or none at all. ‘‘Intuition’’ and ‘‘fortuitousness’’ were key words of Markov’s
vocabulary and indicated his proximity to Kulbin, Olga Rozanova, and even Vasilli
Kandinsky, the more so since Markov was both a painter and a critic. His terminol-
ogy and metaphors, e.g., “‘boundless horizons,’’ recall the style of Kazimir Male-
vich, who undoubtedly was familiar with Markov’s writings. Markov’s recognition
of primitive and ‘‘nonconstructive’’ art was apparent in his other writings, particu-
larly in his book on Negro art [bibl]. R234] published posthumously.
Markov’s own art reflected a highly individualistic and apocalyptic vision, as indi-
The Subjective Aesthetic: Symbolism and the Intuitive / 25
cated by such titles as Golgotha (at the first ‘‘Union of Youth’’ exhibition), Morning
of Life (at Izdebsky’s second Salon), and Spiritual Point of View (at the ‘‘Donkey’s
Tail’’). In the history of modern Russian art, Markov’s link with the Baltic countries
is not an isolated case. The painter and musician Mikalojaus Ciurlionis, who
achieved a certain reputation in St. Petersburg in the late 1900s, had been a native of
Lithuania, and in the general context of the Union of Youth, many ties were es-
tablished with Riga and Vilnius: not only were the Union of Youth members Markov
and Vasilii Masyutin natives of Riga, but also Kulbin’s ‘‘Impressionist’’ exhibition
traveled from St. Petersburg to Vilnius in late 1909, Izdebsky’s first Odessa Salon
opened in Riga in the summer of 1910, and the first ‘“‘Union of Youth’’ show moved
there from St. Petersburg in June of that year. It is tempting to propose that the pres-
ence of a Baltic influence within the St. Petersburg avant-garde acted as an immedi-
ate link with German and Nordic expressionism—and indeed, the darker, more Teu-
tonic quality of Markov’s drawings, Masyutin’s etchings, or even Kulbin’s paintings
has certain affinities with Edvard Munch, or, more relevantly, with the Estonian
Eduard Viiralt. Markov’s advocacy of an art of chance, of ‘‘a world of unfathomed
mystery” is therefore a logical outcome of this aesthetic ambience. For a French
translation see bibl. 1451, pp. 53-57.
Where concrete reality, the tangible, ends, there begins another world—a
world of unfathomed mystery, a world of the Divine.
Even primitive man was given the chance of approaching this boundary,
whefe intuitively he would capture some feature of the Divine—and return
happy as a child.
And he sought to introduce it into the confines of the tangible and to
secure it there while finding forms to express it; at the same time he at-
tempted to find ways by which he would be able to encounter and sense
once again an analogous beauty.
The more of such features man captures, the more familiar becomes the
Divine; the closer becomes the realization of some kind of religion.
Worldly beauty, created from ancient times by different peoples of both
hemispheres, is a reflection and expression of the Divine insofar as it has
hitherto revealed itself to people.
But, obliged for its origin to the intuitive faculties of the spirit, it reveals
within itself the presence of those fundamentals that can be elevated into im-
mutable truths, into the principles on which it is based.
These principles, these canons, which substantiate our intuitive percep-
tion, become the guide to all our actions in the achievement of beauty.
The more deeply and broadly mankind penetrates the divine principle of
beauty, the richer and pithier become the religions of beauty, the more het-
erogeneous and numerous their principles and canons.
26 | RUSSIA NAR IT ORY TH E PARA Nele-iGrAGRaDee,
has made such major achievements in the field of science and technology, is
very poor in regard to the development of the plastic principles bequeathed
to us by the past.
It is quite striking that certain principles, especially the most worthless of
them, have been selected by many peoples. But despite the fact that they are
jejune in intrinsic content, they are being endlessly elaborated, they enclose
art—by their very nature—in a narrow, vicious circle. Other principles with
brilliant, infinite prospects, with inexhaustible potential, have appeared for a
moment, but not finding the soil necessary for development, they have
drooped and faded.
If we take a broad look at all the world’s art, there arise before us clearly
and vividly two diametrically opposed platforms, two basic trends hostile to
each other. These two worlds are constructiveness and nonconstructiveness.
The first of these is expressed most vividly in Greece and the second in
the East.
In Greek art and also in subsequent European art, everything is logical,
rational, and has a scientific basis; gradations and transitions subordinate to
the main factor are clearly expressed; in a word, everything is constructive.
And wherever Europe penetrates with its rigid doctrines, its orthodox real-
ism, it corrodes national art, evens it out, paralyzes its development.
China, Japan, Byzantium, and other countries lost their acuity a long time
ago and have been imbued to a greater or lesser extent with the ideals of the
Italian Renaissance. This caps the delight of the historians and archaeolo-
gists who see as the high-water mark of this art—alien though it be to them:
its assimilation of Hellenic canons and its analogous elaboration of them;
hence they are always glad to note the appearance in it of the first signs of
European constructiveness and its legitimated reality. .
The ancient peoples and the East did not know our scientific rationality.
These were children whose feelings and imagination dominated logic. These
were naive, uncorrupted children who intuitively penetrated the world of
beauty and who could not be bribed by realism or by scientific investigations
into nature.
As one German writer said, ‘‘Die Logik hat uns die Natur entgottert.”’ ?
And our prim nonchalance toward the ‘‘babble’’ of the East and our mis-
understanding of it are deeply offensive.
Modern Europe does not understand the beauty of the naive and the illogi-
cal. Our artistic taste, nurtured on severe rules, cannot reconcile itself to the
disintegration of our existing world view, cannot renounce ““this world,’’
surrender itself to the world of feeling, love, and dream, imbue itself with
28 -/ RIULSIS TAN “ACRT'O FT HOR AS Vy AUN De tGrAG ReaD TE
the anarchism that ridicules our elaborate rules, and escape into a noncon-
structive world.
There is rhythm in the constructive, and there is rhythm in the noncon-
structive, but which has more beauty is still to be investigated.
There is constructive ornament, and there is nonconstructive ornament;
which of them is the more beautiful we still have to find out.
There is a perspective that is scientific, mathematically verified and sub-
stantiated—constructive; and there is a perspective that is nonconstructive—
Chinese, Byzantine. But which of them displays more potential and more
beauty ts still a leading question.
The same can be said of lighting, relief, form, etc.
Europe’s scientific apparatus hampers the development of such principles
as the principle of weight, plane, dissonance, economy, symbols, dyna-
mism, the leitmotif, scales, etc., etc. .
Why is the hand of man not given, as a photograph is, the ability to trans-
mit forms and reproductions of ‘‘this world’’ precisely?
Why does man not possess an apparatus that, by desire or act of will,
could be aimed at creation that would reflect neither the fortuitous, external
conditions surrounding the artist nor the individual features of his own
psychology?
Why does the art of so many peoples bear the character of apparent absur-
dity, coarseness, vagueness, or feebleness?
Art is like a two-edged weapon; it is like the two-faced Janus. One face
is, aS it were, coarse, absurd, and feeble; the other is, as it were, radiant
with grace, refinement, and delicate, careful trimmings.
In which of these two faces is there more beauty? Which of them is capa-
ble of giving more enjoyment to man’s soul? Or perhaps they are both, in
equal degree, the custodians of the concept of beauty, and thereby justify
their existence.
I shall not take the liberty of asserting that the art of primitive peoples is
characterized by the first face of Janus.
Suffice it to remember even the misty lines of Chinese pictures, Turkistan
frescoes, Egyptian reliefs, the surviving monuments of Cretan and Polyne-
sian cultures to reject this. In no way can we establish elements of the coarse
or vulgar in their lines and depictions. On the contrary, in appearance they
are all very refined and delicate.
32 fi REWS°SOAUNI OA ReT FOUR Ty HOE Al Vos Nels sG eA ReD SE
and I asked him how he, a man who had grown up in a Russian environment
with a Russian way of thinking, could go into raptures over a purely German
depiction a la Hoffmann.?
And only when I had pointed out to him the inimitable, unique, age-old
charm of the antique, tasteful Russian depictions of Christ, and all the vul-
garity of this outwardly elegant depiction, did an element of doubt creep into
his rapture, and he laid his purchase aside.
Now one asks, was he expressing his own opinion when he flew into rap-
tures over his purchase? I am inclined to think not. In his rapture he was sin-
cere, but in that superficial, shallow sense applicable to all the followers of
fashion—that epidemic, that tyrant of men’s opinions and tastes. I say in a
superficial sense, because his raptures were not founded on the inward order
of his soul created by the presence of all impressions from reality; they were
founded merely on a simple order of feelings from the conception evoked, a
conception that conceals and gradually corrodes the peculiar depths of the
soul.
Only this can explain the fact that more and more depictions a la Hoff-
mann have begun to appear in our schools and churches alongside the ar-
tistic charm of the antique icons. These depictions are taken from German
originals, and pictures are executed by the disciples of the academy along
the same lines.
And wherever fashion appears, it drives deep down into the soul that
which has grown and stratified over thousands of years and in its place foists
on people its cheap, marketplace conception of beauty.
All this indicates that the free expression of our “‘I’’ has dangerous ene-
mies, because of which it is very difficult for man to be sincere in the sense
of freely expressing his inner essence and not some surrogate evoked by
chance.
Hence it is interesting to ask: which expression of the “‘I’’ has more
value? The expression of the ‘‘I’’ that bursts from us spontaneously or the
‘*T’’ that is passed through the filter of thought?
I shall concern myself only with free art, i.e., the art in which chasing or
processing is absent—elements that completely destroy the initial mirage
and in which the artist has already ceased to be a creator and becomes more
a critic of his own “‘I.”’
It sometimes happens, and not so rarely, that man feels within himself an
influx of ideas, of sensations in his psychology that seem to him somehow
alien, not his own, appearing, as it were, from without by some miracle,
something unexpected but desired.
34 | RUSS AGUNG AORSIy (ORO (ELBE ACN cA Nalae GrAgR abs r:
isted for three thousand years, and imitation and free copying are valued
very highly.
I would go so far as to say that there is no art without plagiarism, and
even the freest art is based on plagiarism in the above sense because beloved
forms of the past instilled in our soul unconsciously repeat themselves.
Hence the demands to be sincere and individual in any special sense of
the word are ridiculous.
It is not my task to analyze our ‘‘I’’ in all its diversity, in all its
nuances—that is the province of psychology; but I would like to distinguish
three characteristic stages in it that to a greater or lesser extent determine our
creative work.
First, the hidden, subconscious ‘‘I,’’ something that has appeared from
one knows not where, often completely alien and fortuitous but at the same
time, of course, individual, because in any case the right basis, whether
temporary or permanent, has appeared within it.
Second, the “‘I,’’ also hidden, but already mature, something that we are
aware of, which is organically inherent to the individuum and transmitted to
it atavistically: it is all those impulses, stimuli, that, like a ripe seed, de-
mand an outlet, torment and cramp it.
Third, the *‘I’’ that presents the outward manifestation of these two hid-
den, individual ‘‘I’’s mentioned above.
In free art, of course, it is the third ‘‘I’’ that interests us, but it does not
emerge as the direct echo of the two preceding ‘‘I’’s, it does not express the
aggregate of the impressions and mysteries that accumulated in them, be-
cause much is lost through the effect of many outside factors encountered in
the process of its manifestation that operate directly or indirectly.
Let us indicate just a few:
1. The outward function of the hands and, in general, of the body, which
transmit that rhythm of the soul that it experiences at the moment of cre-
ation.
2. The state of the will.
3. Wealth of fantasy and of memory, reflectiveness.
4. Associations.
5. Experience of life creeping into the process of creation, subordinating
it to its canons, laws, tastes, and habits and operating with a hand that finds
it so pleasant to reiterate stereotyped devices; this reduces art to the level of
handicraft, which has nowadays built itself such a warm and secure nest.
6. State of psychosis during creation; the interchange of feelings, joy,
hope, suffering, failure, etc.
7. Struggle with material.
36 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
their component part and is always giving rise to independent principles that
are wholly derived from it.
The principle of symbols is a vivid example. This supposedly weird non-
sense, this oppressive absurdity is life itself in its purest form, it is con-
densed life. The symbols that we find in Byzantine art, in the ubok, are
flashes of beauty and divinity.
The principle of rhythm, movement, grandiosity is possible only with free
creation, when the hand is held back in its impulse.
These examples will suffice.
And the opinion is quite without ground that people have sought and
demanded illusions at all times. No, many peoples have not been satisfied
with such cheap tricks as deceiving the poor spectator.
The aspiration to other worlds is inherent in man’s nature. Man does not
want to walk, he demands dancing; he does not want to speak, he demands
song; he does not want the earth but strains toward the sky. The surest path
to this sky is free creation.
From time immemorial, free creation has been an art for itself; the specta-
tor, the public has been for it a completely fortuitous phenomenon. In olden
times, music and singing were like this, and only subsequently did they
become a means of gathering and entertaining an audience.
If in his attitude to art the artist becomes like the savage, then, like him,
he will think only of himself.
He has the right to tell the public and critics: ‘“‘Excuse me, but don’t pes-
ter me with your demands; let me create according to my own inner im-
pulses and criteria.’’
And he will be right because as soon as an artist begins to listen to extrin-
sic doctrines, he will be forced to violate the rhythms concealed within, the
motive energy inherent in him; he will have to restrain himself, he will have
to turn into a cart horse, he will grow dull.
Now let us turn to a discussion of the principle of texture.*
Hi.
Neoprimitivism
and Cubofuturism
1910—1911 rr.
NEKABPb -AHBAPb.
reine
|a eee
KATANOMD BBIGTABRH
»DYBHOBLIN BaneTD".
Born Kharkov, 1882; died Moscow, 1948. 1898-1907: enrolled at the Stroganov
Art School, Moscow; 1905-06: studied in Paris; 1907-09: studied at the Moscow
Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; 1910-14: influenced by peasant
art; close to Larionov; contributed to the “Donkey’s Tail,” “Target,” ‘No. 4, and
other avant-garde exhibitions; 1914-18: military service; 1918—30: professor at
Svomas/Vkhutemas/Vkhutein; continued to paint and exhibit throughout the
1930s and 1940s.
Because of its comparatively late date, Shevchenko’s text shows considerable futurist
influence; it reads more like a futurist manifesto than a lucid apologia of the neoprim-
itivist movement. Shevchenko repeated many of his ideas on neoprimitivism in his
booklet on cubism, which included among its illustrations a child’s drawing.
Neoprimitivism was the only declaration as such of the neoprimitivists even though
the movement had been in existence since 1908. They were not, however, the first to
express interest in primitive art forms: at Abramtsevo and Talashkino professional
artists had already been assimilating certain devices from Russian peasant art, and
members of the World of Art, Lev Bakst and Aleksandr Benois among them, had
given attention to children’s drawings and to village crafts as art forms [see bibl.
R243, R244]. After 1908 Russian and primitive art forms began to enjoy a vogue
among Russian collectors and historians, and the year 1913, in fact, witnessed sev-
eral events that focused public attention on the Russian icon and folk art, e.g., the
“Second All-Russian Folk Art Exhibition’ in St. Petersburg, and the large exhibi-
tion of icons—including examples from the collections of Ilya Ostroukhov and Ste-
pan Ryabushinsky (brother of Nikolai)—organized by the Institute of Archaeology in
Moscow.
4I
ASIEKCAHJPS WEBYEHKO.
MOCK RA
1aLra
Throughout his life Shevchenko retained an interest in certain of the pictorial analy-
ses he made during the years 1912-13, particularly with regard to the composition
and effect of color. In 1918-19 he attempted to combine a scientific study of color
properties with the results of his own observations on the /ubok and the icon. To this
end he established the group Color Dynamics and Tectonic Primitivism together with
the painter Aleksei Grishchenko (who was particularly interested in icons and Byzan-
tine art); this group, which held one exhibition in Moscow in 1919, sought to uphold
its three principles of ‘*structure, knowledge of the laws of color, and knowledge of
the material with which we operate in creating the easel painting’ (bibl. R16, p.
119]. Shevchenko’s precise, logical analyses of color and other painterly elements
anticipated the laboratory techniques of the Moscow Inkhuk and its affiliates in the
1920s. Although Shevchenko was not a formal member of this organization, he did
establish direct contact with Aleksandr Rodchenko and the architects Vladimir
Krinsky and Nikolai Ladovsky within the framework of the short-lived Zhivskulp-
tarkh [Kollektiv zhivopisno-skulptumo-arkhitekturnogo sinteza—Collective of Paint-
ing-Sculpture-Architecture Synthesis] founded in Moscow in 1919/20 and repre-
sented as a group at the ‘‘Nineteenth State Exhibition’? in Moscow in 1920. Shev-
chenko was not alone in his endeavor to apply scientific analysis to primitive art—
Vasilii Kandinsky, for example, proposed the establishment of a subsection within
the Academy of Artistic Sciences that would deal precisely with this (see pp. 196ff.).
For a French translation see bibl. 145i, pp. 71-80.
To Art
Free and Eternal
The Earth and Nature no longer exist in their conventional sense. They
have been turned into building foundations, into asphalt for pavements and
roads. The Earth and Nature remain only a memory, like a fairy tale about
something beautiful and long past.
The factory town rules over everything.
The movement, the never-ending commotion, the obscure nightmares and
visions of the town are continually replacing each other. In the light of the
daytime sun darkened by houses, in the bright light of the electric suns of
night, life presents itself to us as quite different, replete with different forms
new to us.
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 45
The world has been transformed into a single monstrous, fantastic, perpet-
ually moving machine, into a single huge nonanimal, automatic organism,
into a single gigantic whole constructed with a strict correspondence and
balance of parts.
We and the whole world are the parts of this whole.
We, like some kind of ideally manufactured mechanical man, have grown
used to living—getting up, going to bed, eating and working according to
the clock—and the sense of rhythm and mechanical harmony, reflected in
the whole of our life, cannot but be reflected in our thinking, and in our spir-
itual life: in Art.
We can no longer be satisfied with a simple organic copy of nature.
We have grown used to seeing it around us altered and improved by the
hand of man the creator, and we cannot but demand the same of Art.
Such is our age.
Naturalistic painting does not exist for us either, just as nature does not
exist without roadways swept clean and sprinkled with sand or spread with
asphalt, without plumbing and electric light, without the telephone and the
trolley.
We are striving to seek new paths for our art, but we do not reject the old
completely, and of its previous forms we recognize above all—the primi-
tive, the magic fable of the old East.
The simple, unsophisticated beauty of the /ubok,’ the severity of the
primitive, the mechanical precision of construction, nobility of style, and
good color brought together by the creative hand of the artist-ruler—that is
our password and our slogan.
Life without movement is nothing—and therefore we always aspire not to
enslave the forms of objects on one plane, but to impart their movement to
them by means of the depiction of intermediate forms.
Beauty is only in the harmony of simple combinations of forms and col-
ors. Recherché beauty is very close to the tawdry affectation of the market—
the product of the mob’s corrupted tastes.
Primitive art forms—icons, lubki, trays, signboards, fabrics of the East,
etc.—these are specimens of genuine value and painterly beauty.”
The words Art, i.e., invention, and nature, i.e., reality, are at a
crossroads called the ‘‘Creative Will of the Artist,’’ and diverge along dif-
ferent paths; that is why we do not pursue a naturalistic resemblance to na-
ture in our pictures.
Nature is the raw material that merely excites in our soul this or that
emotion that we experience when we fulfill our conception of the picture’s
surface.
46 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
everything that we see on the surface of the picture and that is related to its
execution.
We demand good structure, i.e., a manner of execution that imparts a
good density to the paint and to its disposition.
We demand good style of a work of art, i.e., a style that expresses itself
in the composition of lines, masses, and colors.
Our art is free and electric—in this lies its contemporaneity.
We are not afraid of following the principles of this or that school of con-
temporaneity. They are inevitable in our scientific age.
The word neoprimitivism on the one hand testifies to our point of depar-
ture, and on the other—with its prefix, neo—reminds us also of its involve-
ment in the painterly traditions of our age.
But in saying this, we are not imposing on ourselves any obligations that
could bind us, or make us servile, to theory.
We are free, and in this lies our progress and our happiness.
Any attachment to a school, to a theory, already means stagnation, is al-
ready what in society is customarily designated by the word ‘‘academism.”’
The artist’s vitality is determined by his search, and in searching lies
perfection.
The mob says with reproach and even apparently with regret: ‘‘This artist
has not defined himself yet,’’ but in this lies his life, his authenticity. Of the
artist about whom people say, “‘He has defined himself, he has found him-
self,’’ one ought to say, ‘“‘He has died,’’ because ‘‘He has defined himself”’
means that he has no more experiences, that he is living by what, essen-
tially, he has already lived through, i.e., he is following a definite theory,
like a recipe. In this is stagnation, in this is death.
We are alive forever, young forever because we ignore the opinions of the
idle mob. We live and work not to please its stagnant, depraved tastes; we
work only in the name of Art—in this is our honor and our reward.
Cézanne said: ‘‘The artist’s labor, by means of which he achieves perfec-
tion, is adequate reward for fools’ misunderstanding of him.”’
We speak out harshly against the old school, the old academy, because it
did not know how to preserve the most precious (for the art of painting)
achievement of the ages—the traditions common to all genuine schools of
all times—and without realizing this, it now inculcates in their place crude
obviousness of manner and unnecessary, absurd ideological tendentious-
ness.
It forgets that subject is not the aim but merely a most insignificant
means, and that painting consists only of itself.
‘*Art is in form,’’ says Oscar Wilde, and in this he is right.
48 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
The very word neoprimitivism, as was said earlier, is a word that charac-
terizes the trend of painterly achievements, their point of departure from the
primitive, and also testifies to its relevance to our age.
There are, and can be, no phenomena that are born out of nothing.
There are no ideas that are born, only ones that are regenerated, and ev-
erything normal, of course, is successive and develops from preceding
forms.
Such is our school—taking its genesis from the primitive but developing
within contemporaneity.
Generally speaking, the word primitive is applied not only to the simplifi-
cation and unskillfulness of the ancients, but also to peasant art—for which
we have a specific name, the /ubok. The word primitive points directly to its
Eastern derivation, because today we understand by it a whole pleiad of
Eastern arts—Japanese art, Chinese, Korean, Indo-Persian, etc.
In our school this term points to the character of the painting (not the sub-
ject), to the means of execution, and to the employment of the painterly
traditions of the East.
But this does not involve simple imitation, i.e., something of which peo-
ple would normally say: ‘‘This was done in an Eastern style,’’ i.e., not
what, for example, is being done by Stelletsky,* whose works in no way
reveal old Russia, Byzantium, or icons. They are mere historicity—a resolu-
tion of high ideas by home-made, amateurish means, an imitation devoid of
perception—whereas icons are saturated with the East, with Byzantium, and
at the same time remain entirely original.
Neoprimitivism is a profoundly national phenomenon.
Russia and the East have been indissolubly linked from as early as the
Tatar invasions, and the spirit of the Tatars, of the East, has become so
rooted in our life that at times it is difficult to distinguish where a national
feature ends and where an Eastern influence begins.
The whole of man’s culture has, generally speaking, derived from Asia,
and not vice versa, aS some assert.
The whole of our culture is an Asiatic one, and foreign craftsmen, archi-
tects, weavers, artists, and people like them who came to our ‘‘barbaric’”’
country from the West bearing with them the spark of European civilization,
immediately fell under the influence of Tatar culture, of the East, of our
more distinctive, more temperamental spirit, and Western civilization crum-
bled to dust before the culture of the East. .
Let us take the painting of old Russia.
We have only to compare our grass writing * with Eastern carpets, our
‘‘spiritual-moral painting’’ and its direct continuation—folk pictures and
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 49
color tones. It lost its meaning, because in moving away from the meaning
of color, as paint, it changed into a meaningless reflection—at first, into
some sort of colored decorativeness and subsequently into mere coloration
of insignificant bits of air.
We also recognize running color, i.e., color passing beyond the contour
of an object (see Russian Old Believers’ /ubki *); but this is expressed not in
a chaotic flow of paint, but in the form of a color’s iridescence, which is
based not on the theory of rayonism ® and not on reflective iridescence, but
on the iridescence of the bodies themselves at their intersections.
We oppose complementary color tones and replace their diversity—which
because of the variegation has a torpid effect on the eye—by a more effec-
tive aggregate of uniform color tones.
In other words, we apply cclors in practice not, for example, as the reflex
of yellow on blue, but as an aggregate of greens of greater or lesser density,
while distinguishing black from blue by a separate area; not as orange on vi-
olet, but as an aggregate of browns and yellows, while distinguishing red
and black.
Finally, we change the color of objects in order to manifest their spiritual
essence: for example, no one would paint a glass of poison some sort of
frivolous color such as pink or blue, but obviously in such a case a color
would be employed that had a more profound psychological effect.
We tolerate symbolism—as long as it is expressed in the construction and
color of a work, in the depths of its content, and not in tawdry cabalism and
cheap accessories.
We demand good texture and, while avoiding unnecessary obviousness of
manner, we are not afraid to omit details subtly if, of course, this is neces-
sary; thereby we achieve a great nobility of execution and, together with our
demand for good composition, greater persuasiveness and monumentality.
We stand for complete freedom of Art and for the advantages of eclec-
ticism as a renovating principle.
These are the theses from which our art, our craft, derives, but we use
them as need and meaning dictate, as possibilities and not as ready-made
recipes.
otherwise either it or the subject it serves, the idea, will destroy both, and
they will lose their meaning and strength.
We consider philistine demands of art to be naive and ludicrous, just as
the praise and censure of small-time critics who judge painting only from the
standpoint of its similarity or dissimilarity to nature are ludicrous and
absurd.
We reject the significance of any criticism apart from self-criticism. Only
the artist himself, who loves his art and concerns himself consciously with
it, can precisely and correctly determine the merits, defects, and value of his
work. The outsider, the spectator—if he falls in love with a certain work—
can, biased as he is, neither elucidate nor evaluate it on its true merits; if he
regards it impassively, indifferently, he therefore does not feel it or under-
stand it and hence has no right to judge.
Art is the artist’s experiences, his spiritual life, and nobody has the right
to interfere with someone else’s life.
People, like all other animals, can be divided into classes and species.
Art is for Art’s sake. It is useless but at the same time it is capable of ex-
citing sensations of the highest order in those people to whose class the artist
himself belongs.
We are accused of imitating Western art. But this, in fact, is not true.
If Cézanne, Gauguin, Rousseau have played a-role of no small importance
in the development of our Russian art, and if we pay due homage to them,
then it is precisely because they are not the type of contemporary Western
artist whose work is exemplified by the pictures at conventional salons; on
the contrary, they are the exception. :
Indeed, what do they share in common? Nothing, of course!
The art of the salons is a typical leftover, the decadence of European art.
Cézanne partly, Gauguin, and especially Henri Rousseau represent the as-
piration toward the East, its traditions and its forms.
They, like us, are in revolt, are searching, and in their own age were per-
secuted everywhere, just as we are.
We are accused of unnecessary academism, but the search for a more per-
fect style is not that at all; it is simply the aspiration toward monumentality.
And in general, no free, meaningful search can be called that since acade-
mism, strictly speaking, is applicable to narrow, soulless work, to the em-
ployment of conventional canons, to enslavement, and to the use of old
forms deprived of the traditions of craftsmanship.
Our achievement lies in the fact that by working out just the general
54 AON) ACR T OuR
jf. (RAUKSTSLI ST HE Dae
ARV, AUN Te GeASRe
theses for our school and without enslaving theory, we shall always concern
ourselves with the renewal of traditions, both by way of logical succession
and by personal experience.
We do not canonize forms, and by favoring eclecticism we are able con-
stantly to extend our conception of them.
Our theses afford the opportunity of perpetual existence and endless self-
perfection, whereas all existing theories inevitably lead to an impasse.
We have eternal life, eternal youth, and eternal self-perfection—and in
this lie our honor and reward.
NATALYA GONCHAROVA
Preface to Catalogue
of One-Man Exhibition, 1913
Born near Tula, 1881; died Paris, 1962. 1898-1902: studied at the Moscow Institute
of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, attending sculpture classes under Paolo
Trubetskoi; thereafter turned to painting; 1910: one-man exhibition at the Society of
Free Aesthetics in Moscow resulting in a scandal—works called pornographic [see
M.L. (Mikhail Larionov?): ‘‘Gazetnye kritiki v roli politsii nravov’’ (Newspaper
Critics in the Role of Morality Police) in bibl. R45, no. 11/12, 1909 (=1910), pp.
97-98]; ca. 1913: illustrated futurist booklets; 1910-15: contributed to the ‘‘Knave of
Diamonds,’’ ‘‘Donkey’s Tail,’’ ‘‘Target, Sere No. 4,’ ‘‘Exhibition of Painting.
1915,’ and other exhibitions; 1914: went to Paris with Larionov; after outbreak of
war, returned to Moscow briefly; 1915 joined Sergei Diaghilev in Lausanne; 1917
settled in Paris with Lanonoy.
thf, :
132, pp. 41-44. The preface was dated August 1913, Moscow. For reviews of this
exhibition see bibl. R261, R337, R344, R345. For details of the public awareness of
Russian and Eastern primitive art forms at this time see p. 41.
Natalya Goncharova: The Laundry, 1912. Oil on canvas, 89 x 70 cm. Collection The Tate
Gallery, London. Goncharova’s concern with the machine aesthetic, derived to a large extent
from the Italian futurists, served as a brief point of transition between her neoprimitivist and
rayonist periods.
than anything that I know in the West (I have true art in mind, not that
which is harbored by our established schools and societies). I am opening up
the East again, and I am certain that many will follow me along this path.
We have learned much from Western artists, but from where do they draw
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 57
their inspiration, if not from the East? We have not learned the most impor-
tant thing: not to make stupid imitations and not to seek our individuality,
but to create, in the main, works of art and to realize that the source on
which the West draws is the East and us. May my example and my words be
a good lesson for those who can understand its real meaning.
I am convinced that modern Russian art is developing so rapidly and has
reached such heights that within the near future it will be playing a leading
role in international life. Contemporary Western ideas (mainly of France; it
is not worth talking of the others) can no longer be of any use to us. And the
time is not far off when the West will be learning openly from us.
If we examine art from the artistic monuments we have at our disposal
without bearing time in mind, then I see it in this order:
The Stone Age and the caveman’s art are the dawn of art. China, India,
and Egypt with all their ups and downs in art have, generally speaking,
always had a high art and strong artistic traditions. Arts proceeding from this
root are nevertheless independent: that of the Aztecs, Negroes, Australian
and Asiatic islands—the Sunda (Borneo), Japan, etc. These, generally
speaking, represent the rise and flowering of art.
Greece, beginning with the Cretan period (a transitional state), with its ar-
chaic character and all its flowering, Italy right up to the age of the Gothic,
represent decadence. Gothic is a transitional state. Our age is a flowering of
art in a new form—a painterly form. And in this second flowering it is again
the East that has played a leading role. At the present time Moscow is the
most important center of painting.
I shake off the dust of the West, and I consider all those people ridiculous
and backward who still imitate Western models in the hope of becoming
pure painters and who fear literariness more than death. Similarly, I find
those people ridiculous who advocate individuality and who assume there is
some value in their ‘‘I’’ even when it is extremely limited. Untalented indi-
viduality is as useless as bad imitation, let alone the old-fashionedness of
such an argument.
I express my deep gratitude to Western painters for all they have taught
me.
After carefully modifying everything that could be done along these lines
and after earning the honor of being placed alongside contemporary Western
artists—in the West itself '—I now prefer to investigate a new path.
And the objectives that I am carrying out and that I intend to carry out are
the following:
To set myself no confines or limitations in the sense of artistic achieve-
ments.
58 / RUSST AIN ART OF PTD A VIN TG eee
In the age of the flowering of individualism, I destroy this holy of holies and
refuge of the hidebound as being inappropriate to our contemporary and fu-
ture way of life.
For art, individual perception can play an auxiliary role—but for mankind, it
can play none at all.
If I clash with society, this occurs only because the latter fails to understand
the bases of art and not because of my individual peculiarities, which no-
body is obliged to understand.
To apprehend the world around us in all its brilliance and diversity and to
bear in mind both its inner and outer content.
To fear in painting neither literature, nor illustration, nor any other bug-
bears of contemporaneity; certain modern artists wish to create a painterly
interest absent in their work by rejecting them. To endeavor, on the con-
trary, to express them vividly and positively by painterly means.
I turn away from the West because for me personally it has dried up and
because my sympathies lie with the East.
The West has shown me one thing: everything it has is from the East.*
I consider of profound interest that which is now called philistine vulgarity,
* The impressionists from the Japanese. The synthetists, Gauguin from India spoiled by its early renaissance.
From the islands of Tahiti he apprehended nothing, apart from a tangible type of woman. Matisse—
Chinese painting. The cubists—Negroes (Madagascar), Aztecs. As for the past—certain historians are
sadly mistaken in deducing a Romanesque influence, even a German influence, on our icons. This is so
only in isolated cases; generally speaking, what is the Romanesque style but the last stage of Byzantine de-
velopment? Romanesque style is based on Grecianized, Eastern, Georgian, and Armenian models. If East-
ern influence reached us in a roundabout way, then this does not prove anything—its path was from the
East, and the West, as now, served merely as an intermediate point. Suffice it to consider Arabian and In-
dian depictions to establish the genesis of our icons and of the art that has hitherto existed among the com-
mon people. :
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 59
For me the East means the creation of new forms, an extending and
deepening of the problems of color.
This will help me to express contemporaneity—its living beauty—better
and more vividly.
I aspire toward nationality and the East, not to narrow the problems of art
but, on the contrary, to make it all-embracing and universal.
If I extol the art of my country, then it is because I think that it fully
deserves this and should occupy a more honorable place than it has done
hitherto.
IVAN AKSENOV
On the Problem
of the Contemporary State
of Russian Painting
[Knave of Diamonds], 1913
Born Putivl, Ukraine, 1884; died Moscow, 1935. 1905: finished Military Engineer-
ing Institute in Nikolaevo; 1910 and thereafter: close to the Knave of Diamonds
group, especially to Aleksandr Exter; 1912: began to publish poetry; soon became
known as a poet, critic, and translator; 1916: member of the Tsentrifuge group in
Moscow which included Sergei Bobrov and Boris Pasternak; interested in Robert
Delaunay and Pablo Picasso; 1921: rector of the State Higher Theater Workshop
under Vsevolod Meierkhold; 1923: member of the Moscow Parnassus group;
continued to publish until his death.
The text of this piece, “‘K voprosu 0 sovremennom sostoyanii russkoi zhivopisi,’’ is
from the collection of articles and reproductions Bubnovyi valet [Knave of Diamonds}
(Moscow, February 1913), pp. 3-36 [bibl]. R268]. Indicative of the Knave of
Diamonds’ orientation toward French cubism at this time was the fact that the collec-
tion also contained contributions by Henri Le Fauconnier and Guillaume Apollinaire.
Le Fauconnier’s essay, “‘Sovremennaya vospriimchivost i kartina’’ (pp. 41-51), was
a translation of his introduction to the catalogue of his one-man exhibition at the
Folkwang Museum, Hagen: Die Auffassung unserer Zeit und das Germdlde {Con-
temporary Perception and Painting] (Hagen, December 1912; Munich, 1913). Apol-
linaire’s essay, ‘‘Fernan Lezhe’’ (pp. 53-61), was a modified translation of his sec-
tion on Fernand Léger in Les Peintres Cubistes (Paris, 1913), pp. 64-68. The
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism / 61
art, and only the subject matter was changed. But anyone is free to argue
about the interest of the subject—without entering the realm of art; without
understanding anything about painting, you can find a moral satisfaction in a
visual interpretation of the problem of evil (a peasant being flogged) or of
the problem of good (a policeman being beaten), of the problem of theo-
machy (‘‘the demon is great and beautiful’’) or of the problem of eroticism
(‘‘women in the eighteenth century indulged in fornication’’). Literariness
forced artists to abandon painting. There have been exhibitions at which pic-
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism / 63
tures were absent, and articles have been written on the obsolescence and
uselessness of pictures.
All this increases the significance that the work of the young artists of
today holds for the contemporary state of Russian painting; they are not only
contemporary but also, in the main, painters. True, the painterly aims that
they have pursued have not prevented them from displaying their activities
in the field of drawing: they have had the honor of liberating drawing from
stylized lifelessness. Utamaro evoked the uniform density of line in the
kakemono by the purely technical qualities of wood, of engraving plates; in
their water colors the Japanese often diversified linear texture, and there is
no need to go back to Ogata Korin for an example of this; it is enough to
turn to the silk painting of the masters of that same eighteenth century. The
Japanese line of European graphic artists, revived by the genius of Beards-
ley, is appallingly inexpressive in the works of all the various Secession art-
ists. We are approaching the acute question of independence: if artists’ tech-
nique in the preceding period was created by the influence of German
prototypes, then how strong must be the influence of French prototypes on
the work of artists of the present generation. There is no need to dispute the
importance of this influence, but the whole evolution of the visual arts in
Russia points to the inevitable appearance of problems that our contempo-
rary artists must solve. The problems contain their own solution within
themselves; the success or failure of the plastic expression of the results of
the process depends on the personal gifts of him who solves them. And who
would deny that our artists are talented? The rapid and brilliant development
of the new movement in Russian painting has long since been confirmed by
the clarity of its tasks. This organicness is» expressed in the distinct folk
character of the art of certain representatives of the movement—not the kind
of folk character that requires a whole arsenal of ethnographic material to
become manifest, but that direct sensation of folk character that penetrates
the works of architects of the classical period of the nineteenth century and
that leads Palladian traditions to the erection of fagades in a profound folk
tradition; certain of their motifs become the bases of new forms, of domes-
tic, handicraft art.
It is difficult to deny the folk character in the wide-ranging, vivid temper-
ament of Ilya Mashkov.? This artist is regarded as a version of Matisse;
perhaps he himself thinks that, but at any rate, nobody would find any traces
of that economical restraint, that geometrical deliberation of rhythm in
painted planes that Matisse inherited from the creator of Carnival.* The
monumental synthesis of colored bases, which are mutually intensified in a
visual dissonance of colors, is possible only thanks to an extraordinary tem-
Ilya Mashkov: Self-Portrait, 1911. Oil on canvas, 137 X 107 cm.
Collection Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Aleksandr Kuprin: Still Life with a Blue Tray, 1914. Oil on can-
vas, 7I X 102.2 cm. Collection Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism / 65
perament and an innate (or cultivated?) art of controlling it. The intricate
curvature of Matisse’s lines is not to be found in Mashkov’s pictures—he
solves the problem of contour differentiation of colored groups with the aid
of soft, lightly curved linear construction and curved, very simple combina-
tions. The softness of contour in Mashkov’s compositions does not threaten
to fall into flabbiness—a danger that the popular Van Dongen has not
avoided. Sharpness of line allows Mashkov to concentrate perceptions of the
most varied forms within the confines of very simple, graphic combinations
without destroying the general character or force of the coloristic rhythm.
An analogous problem is solved by A. Kuprin. His works reveal a very
strong susceptibility to the characteristics of color perception, a strength,
however, that does not cause any tendency toward conglomeration of con-
trasts or play on the symmetry of cold and warm tones. This applies to his
very late works—his early ones were, evidently, not without the influence of
painterliness, a sad reminder of the Pont-Aven school. Probably Kuprin and,
moreover, Rozhdestvensky were attracted to Van Gogh by a natural delicacy
of object perception. With Rozhdestvensky this delicacy develops more and
more distinctly at the expense of force; with Kuprin there is a reverse pro-
cess, and his pictures only gain from the concentration of this property. Del-
icacy and subtlety form the subbasis of these works, just as the brightly
painted sublayer intensified the highlights of the old Dutch still-life painters.
We do not see this unified division of perception in Lentulov’s pictures.
One cannot say that this is connected with the painterly merits of his works,
which, undoubtedly, are always significant precisely by virtue of their paint-
erliness.
Lentulov’s talent has matured and strengthened perhaps earlier than that
of the other members of the group, and at first glance it would seem that it is
precisely an excess of talent that harms his pictures. Too great a talent can
sometimes be an artist’s misfortune: an example from literature is Barbey
d’Aurevilly. Aware of being quite able to work in different directions, justi-
fiably confident of his ability to set himself the most varied tasks, and con-
scious of being in complete command of the technique essential. for this—for
Lentulov all this resembles those mirrors that can create artificial labyrinths
of panopticons.
So it might seem; in practice, however, an analysis of the individual frag-
ments of Lentulov’s painting and, similarly, research into the composition of
his pictures are powerless to disclose the reason for the elusiveness of their
visual center. The reason is not to be found in his pictures—it is in the spec-
tator’s inability to extend the works into appropriate space, constricted as
they are by their position.
66) 2) ROUUS’S THAGN) AURTT Osho Heb sAn ANN Cla kGeAG Rep pe:
DAVID BURLIUK
Cubism (Surface—Plane), 1912
The text of this piece, ‘‘Kubizm,’’ is from an anthology of poems, prose pieces, and
articles, Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu [A Slap in the Face of Public
Taste] (Moscow, December 1912 [according to bibl. R350, p. 17, although January
1913, according to KL], pp. 95-101 [bibl. R275]. The collection was prefaced by
the famous declaration of the same name signed by David Burliuk, Velimir Khlebni-
kov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, and Vladimir Mayakovsky and dated December 1912.
The volume also contained a second essay by David Burliuk on texture [bibl. R269],
verse by Khlebnikov and Benedikt Livshits, and four prose sketches by Vasilii Kan-
dinsky [for further details see bibl. 133, pp. 45-50]. Both the essay on cubism and
the one on texture were signed by N. Burliuk, although it is obvious that both were
written by David and not by Nikolai (David’s youngest brother and a poet of some
merit). David Burliuk was deeply interested in the question of cubism and delivered
several lectures on the subject: on. February 12, 1912, he gave a talk ‘“‘On Cubism
and Other Directions in Painting’’ at a debate organized by the Knave of Diamonds
in Moscow [see pp. 12 and 77-78], and on the twenty-fourth of the same month, again
under the auspices of the Knave of Diamonds, he spoke:on the same subject under
the title ‘‘The Evolution of the Concept of Beauty in Painting’’; on November 20,
1912, he spoke on ‘‘What Is Cubism?’’ at a debate organized by the Union of Youth
in St. Petersburg, which occasioned a scornful response by Aleksandr Benois [see
70 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
bibl. R262], which, in turn, occasioned a reply by Olga Rozanova [see p. 103].
Burliuk’s references to the Knave of Diamonds members Vladimir Burliuk, Alek-
sandra Exter, Kandinsky, Petr Konchalovsky, and Ilya Mashkov, all of whom had
contributed to the first and second ‘‘Knave of Diamonds’’ exhibitions (and Mikhail
Larionov and Nikolai Kulbin, who had been at the first and second exhibitions, re-
spectively), would indicate that the text is an elaboration of the Knave of Diamonds
lecture; moreover, the Knave of Diamonds debate had been chaired by Koncha-
lovsky, and it had witnessed a heated confrontation between the Knave of Diamonds
group as such and Donkey’s Tail artists [see p. 77-78]. As usual with David Burliuk’s
literary endeavors of this time, the style is clumsy and does not make for clarity;in
addition, the text is interspersed somewhat arbitrarily with capital letters. For a
French translation see bibl. 1451, pp. 57-66.
It would perhaps not be a paradox to say that painting became art only in
the twentieth century.
Only in the twentieth century have we begun to have painting as art—
before there used to be the art of painting, but there was no painting Art.
This kind of painting (up to the twentieth century) is called conven-
tionally—from a certain sense of compassion toward the endless sums spent
on museums—Old Painting, as distinct from New Painting.
These definitions in themselves show that everyone, even the most Igno-
rant and those with no interest in the Spiritual, perceives the eternal gulf that
has arisen between the painting of yesterday and the painting of today. An
eternal gulf. Yesterday we did not have art.
Today we do have art. Yesterday it was the means, today it has become
the end. Painting has begun to pursue only Painterly objectives. It has begun
to live for itself. The fat bourgeois have shifted their shameful attention
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 71
Vladimir Burliuk: Portrait of David Burliuk, David Burliuk, ca. 1913. Photograph cour-
1911. Etching. Location unknown. Repro- tesy Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Burliuk, New
duced from B. Livshits: Polutoraglazyi stre- York. In his futurist campaigns David Burliuk
lets [The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer] (Len- used to wear a top hat, just as Malevich used
ingrad, 1933). David Burliuk was, in fact, to wear a wooden spoon and Mayakovsky a
blind in his left eye. yellow waistcoat.
from the artist, and now this magician and sorcerer has the chance of escap-
ing to the transcendental secrets of his art.
Joyous solitude. But woe unto him who scorns the pure springs of the
highest revelations of our day. Woe unto them who reject their eyes, for the
Artists of today are the prophetic eyes of mankind. Woe unto them who trust
in their own abilities—which do not excel those of reverend moles!
Darkness has descended upon their souls!
Having become an end in itself, painting has found within itself endless
horizons and aspirations. And before the astounded eyes of the casual spec-
tators roaring with laughter at contemporary exhibitions (but already with
caution and respect), Painting has developed such a large number of dif-
ferent trends that their enumeration alone would now be enough for a big
article.
It can be said with confidence that the confines of This art of Free Paint-
72 [> EREWSSIS) IVAGNGWAQR lam OlHan Dakar: AVANT-GARDE
David Burliuk: The Headless Barber, 1912. Oil on canvas, 53.5 X 61 cm. Collection Mr. and
Mrs. Max Granick, New York. Burliuk offers his own interpretation of Larionov’s “‘barber”’
theme in a more cubist, analytical fashion, while maintaining the spontaneity and illogicality
peculiar to Russian cubofuturism.
ing have been expanded during the first decade of the twentieth century, as
had never been imagined during all the years of its previous existence!
Amid these trends of the New Painting the one that Shocks the spectator’s
eye most is the Direction defined by the word Cubism.
The theoretical foundation of which I want to concentrate on now—
thereby Placing the erroneous judgment of the contemporary ‘‘admirer’’ of
art on a firm, more or less correct footing.
In analyzing the art of former painters, e.g., Holbein and Rembrandt, we
can infer the following tenets. These two artistic temperaments comprehend
Nature: the first chiefly as line.
The second as a certain complex of chiaroscuro. If for the first, color is
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 73
I. line
II. surface
(for its mathematical conception see epigraph)
II. color
IV. texture (the character of surface)
see article on texture '
the Artist and for painting, is Exclusively an object of visual Sensation. In-
deed, a visual sensation refined and broadened immeasurably (compared
with the past) by the associative capacity of the human spirit, but one that
avoids ideas of the coarse, irrelevant kind. Painting now operates within a
sphere of Painterly Ideas and Painterly Conceptions that is accessible only to
it; they ensue and arise from those Elements of visual Nature that can be
defined by the 4 points mentioned above.
The man deprived of a Painterly understanding of Nature will, when look-
ing at Cézanne’s landscape The House,” understand it purely narratively: (1)
‘‘house’’ (2) mountains (3) trees (4) sky. Whereas for the artist, there ex-
isted I linear construction II surface construction (not fully realized) and III
color orchestration. For the artist, there were certain lines going up and
down, right and left, but there wasn’t a house or trees. . . there were areas
of certain color strength, of certain character. And that’s all.
Painting of the past, too, seemed at times to be not far from conceiving
Nature as Line (of a certain character and of a certain intensity) and colors
(Nature as a number of colored areas—this applies Only to the Impres-
sionists at the end of the nineteenth century). But it never made up its mind
to analyze visual Nature from the viewpoint of the essence of its surface.
The conception of what we see as merely a number of certain definite sec-
tions of different surface Planes arose only in the twentieth century under the
general name of Cubism. Like everything else, Cubism has its history.
Briefly, we can indicate the sources of this remarkable movement.
I. If the Greeks and Holbein were, as it were, the first to whom /ine (in
itself) was accessible
II. If Chiaroscuro (as color), texture, and surface appeared fleetingly to
Rembrandt
III. then Cézanne is the first who can be credited with the conjecture that
Nature can be observed as a Plane, as a surface (surface construction). If
line, Chiaroscuro, and coloration were well known in the past, then Plane
and surface were discovered only by the new painting. Just as the whole im-
measurable significance of Texture in painting has only now been realized.
All these concepts follow from the examination of works of the New
painting. Point 3) I placed out of sequence, and it has already been exam-
ined above. Both Cubism and Rondism can be based on all these four basic
concepts of the Canon of Displaced Construction.
But Cubism and Rondism can also live and develop in the soil of the Aca-
demic Canon. .
Note. In the past there was also a counterbalance to the Academic Canon
living on (fluency) harmony, proportion, symmetry: all barbaric Folk arts
were based partly on the existence of this second canon (of displaced Con-
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 77
struction *). A definitive examination of our relation to these arts as raw ma-
terial for the modern artist’s creative soul would take us out of our depth.
* Note to above note. In contrast to the Academic Canon, which sees draw-
ing as a definite dimension, we can now establish the canon—of Free draw-
ing. (The fascination of children’s drawings lies precisely in the full exposi-
tion in such works of this principle.) The pictures and drawings of
V. V. Kandinsky. The drawings of V. Burliuk.
The portraits of P. Konchalovsky and I. Mashkov, the Soldier Pictures of
M. Larionov, are the best examples of Free drawing . . . (as also are the
latest works of N. Kulbin).
NATALYA GONCHAROVA
Cubism, 1912
The text of this piece, ‘‘Kubizm,”’ is part of an impromptu speech given by Gon-
charova at the Knave of Diamonds debate of February 12, 1912 [see pp. 12 and
69-70]. The text is from Benedikt Livshits, Polutoraglazyi strelets [The One-and-a-
Half-Eyed Archer] (Leningrad, 1933), pp. 80-81 [bibl. R310; French translation in
bibl. 131, p. 88]. Livshits mentions that Goncharova composed a letter on the basis
of this speech and sent it the day after the debate to various newspaper offices in
Moscow, but it was not published until the French translation in bibl. 132, pp.
18 {| RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANTGARDE
Larionov—Born Tiraspol, 1881; died Paris, 1964. 1898: entered the Moscow Insti-
tute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture; 1906: went to Paris at Sergei Diaghi-
lev’s invitation for the Salon d’Automne; 1910: mainly responsible for establishment
of the Knave of Diamonds, which he soon rejected; 1912-15: contributed to the
‘“‘Donkey’s Tail,’’ ‘*Target,’’ ‘‘Exhibition of Painting. 1915,’’ and other exhibitions;
ca. 1913: illustrated futurist booklets; 1914: went to Paris to work for Diaghilev; at
the outbreak of the war was forced to retum to Moscow; 1915: wounded on the East
Prussian front and hospitalized in Moscow; 1915: left Moscow to join Diaghilev in
Lausanne; 1918: settled in Paris with Natalya Goncharova.
Zdanevich— Born Tiflis, 1894; died Paris,'1975. Brother of the artist and critic
Kirill; 1911: entered the Law School of the University of St. Petersburg; 1912: with
Kirill and Mikhail Le-Dantiyu discovered the primitive artist Niko Pirosmanash-
vili; 1913: under the pseudonym of Eli Eganbyuri (the result of reading the Russian
handwritten form of Ilya Zdanevich as Roman characters) published a book on
Goncharova and Larionov [bibl. R356; for his own comments on this book, see
bibl. Rro1, p. 197]; 1914: met Marinetti in Moscow; 1917-18: with Kirill, Aleksei
Kruchenykh, and Igor Terentev organized the futurist group 41° in Tiflis; 1921:
settled in Paris. ‘
12
86. /) IDA LN) AV RUT
-ROULS'S Ouk® Hp Es VARY CARNE GFACRED EE
To the frenzied city of arc lamps, to the streets bespattered with bodies, to
the houses huddled together, we have brought our painted faces; we’re off
and the track awaits the runners.
Creators, we have not come to destroy construction, but to glorify and to
affirm it. The painting of our faces is neither an absurd piece of fiction, nor
a relapse—it is indissolubly linked to the character of our life and of our
trade.
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism / 81
The dawn’s hymn to man, like a bugler before the battle, calls to victories
over the earth, hiding itself beneath the wheels until the hour of vengeance;
the slumbering weapons have awoken and spit on the enemy.
The new life requires a new community and a new way of propagation.
Our self-painting is the first speech to have found unknown truths. And the
conflagrations caused by it show that the menials of the earth have not lost
hope of saving the old nests, have gathered all forces to the defense of the
gates, have crowded together knowing that with the first goal scored we are
the victors.
The course of art and a love of life have been our guides. Faithfulness to
our trade inspires us, the fighters. The steadfastness of the few presents
forces that cannot be overcome.
We have joined art to life. After the long isolation of artists, we have
loudly summoned life and life has invaded art, it is time for art to invade
life. The painting of our faces is the beginning of the invasion. That is why
our hearts are beating so.
We do not aspire to a single form of aesthetics. Art is not only a monarch,
but also a newsman and a decorator. We value both print and news. The
synthesis of decoration and illustration is the basis of our self-painting. We
decorate life and preach—that’s why we paint ourselves.
Self-painting is one of the new valuables that belong to the people as they
all do in our day and age. The old ones were incoherent and squashed flat by
money. Gold was valued as an ornament and became expensive. We throw
down gold and precious stones from their pedestal and declare them value-
less. Beware, you who collect them and horde them—you will soon be
beggars. y
It began in ’05. Mikhail Larionov painted a nude standing against a
background of a carpet and extended the design onto her. But there was no
proclamation. Now Parisians are doing the same by painting the legs of their
dancing girls, and ladies powder themselves with brown powder and like
Egyptians elongate their eyes. But that’s old age. We, however, join con-
templation with action and fling ourselves into the crowd.
To the frenzied city of arc lamps, to the streets bespattered with bodies, to
the houses huddled together, we have not brought the past: unexpected
flowers have bloomed in the hothouse and they excite us.
City dwellers have for a long time been varnishing their nails, using
eyeshadow, rouging their lips, cheeks, hair—but all they are doing is to imi-
tate the earth.
We, creators, have nothing to do with the earth; our lines and colors ap-
8970) ROUCSISNIUANie ACR TO (OFRieTeH eRe CACY AGN Gl caGeAmRoDEr,
6 APIYCh.
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WAPTYCA PYROBARUTALS Tomas METH. Aare
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FRAGT, OOpUAARALES Titun Sdancouys x tives Bymypacmons Muxouse Aspionoas, Pacxpacra euncaiena
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cf SUKb M xXpanuTord — BeKoph paros xopimanenot vympoll mno-erumerert
yaruaunors raaas. Ho aro — Boapacr
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BIOMTH ReOAATEA-
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Epacate ry6u, weit.
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meneanani, cmainssil AMAR AO BoMIH, CO
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AATGA RK KPRCRN BOI
Menceret pucynoxs den Apiyess M Tapionoes. Bum cb wane Eo-
Title page of ‘‘Why We Paint Ourselves,’ |Page from ‘‘Why We Paint Ourselves,” from
from the journal Argus (St. Petersburg), the journal Argus (St. Petersburg), December
Christmas issue, December 1913. It shows 1913. The photograph shows Ilya Zdanevich
rayonist designs for cosmetic application. and Mikhail Larionov with faces painted after
rayonist designs by Larionov.
peared with us. If we were given the plumage of parrots, we would pluck
out their feathers to use as brushes and crayons.
If we were given immortal beauty, we would daub over it and kill it—we
who know no half measures.
Tattooing doesn’t interest us. People tattoo themselves once and for al-
ways. We paint ourselves for an hour, and a change of experience calls for a
change of painting, just as picture devours picture, when on the other side of
a car windshield shopwindows flash by running into each other: that’s our
faces. Tattooing is beautiful but it says littkk—only about one’s tribe and
exploits. Our painting is the newsman.
Facial expressions don’t interest us. That’s because people have grown
accustomed to understanding them, too timid and ugly as they are. Our faces
are like the screech of the trolley warning the hurrying passers-by, like the
drunken sounds of the great tango. Mimicry is expressive but colorless. Our
painting is the decorator.
Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism | 83
Mutiny against the earth and transformation of faces into a projector of
experiences.
The telescope discerned constellations lost in space, painting will tell of
lost ideas.
We paint ourselves because a clean face is offensive, because we want to
herald the unknown, to rearrange life, and to bear man’s multiple soul to the
upper reaches of reality.
Gpa,
Hoop, uate &
4 yac, MHA fo 8 yac,
Bb fleHb SOE M Mpoule aH oeYj, 0 4. 1O
The text of this piece, ‘‘Luchisty 1 budushchniki. Manifest,’’ appeared in the miscel-
lany Oslinyi khvost i mishen [Donkey’s Tail and Target] (Moscow, July 1913), pp.
9-48 [bibl]. R319; it is reprinted in bibl. R14, pp. 175-78. It has been translated into
French in bibl. 132, pp. 29-32, and in part, into English in bibl. 45, pp. 124-26].
The declarations are similar to those advanced in the catalogue of the ‘‘Target’’
exhibition held in Moscow in March 1913 [bibl]. R315], and the concluding para-
graphs are virtually the same as those of Larionov’s ‘‘Rayonist Painting.’’ Although
the theory of rayonist painting was known already, the ‘‘Target’’ acted as the formal
demonstration of its practical achievements. Because of the various allusions to the
Knave of Diamonds, ‘‘A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,’’ and David Burliuk, this
manifesto acts as a polemical response to Larionov’s rivals. The use of the Russian
neologism budushchniki, and not the European borrowing futuristy, betrays
Larionov’s current rejection of the West and his orientation toward Russian and East-
er cultural traditions. In addition to Larionov and Goncharova, the signers of the
manifesto were Timofei Bogomazov (a sergeant-major and amateur painter whom
Larionov had befriended during his military service—no relative of the artist Alek-
sandr Bogomazoy) and the artists Morits Fabri, Ivan Larionov (brother of Mikhail),
Mikhail Le-Dantiyu, Vyacheslav Levkievsky, Vladimir Obolensky, Sergei Romano-
vich, Aleksandr Shevchenko, and Kirill Zdanevich (brother of Ilya). All except Fabri
and Obolensky took part in the ‘‘Target’’ exhibition, and Oslinyi khvost i mishen
carried reproductions of some of their exhibits. For a French translation see bibl.
145Xx, pp. 74-78.
We, rayonists and futurists, do not wish to speak about new or old art,
and even less about modern Western art.
We leave the old art to die and leave the ‘‘new’’ art to do battle with it;
and incidentally, apart from a battle and a very easy one, the ‘‘new”’ art
cannot advance anything of its own. It is useful to put manure on barren
ground, but this dirty work does not interest us.
People shout about enemies closing in on them, but in fact, these enemies
are, in any case, their closest friends. Their argument with old art long since
87
8800 / RWS SUA N) ACR? TOLBy Dea Aa VaAGIN Mla Gm sake nee
Muxauae Jlaplonos.
spite of all their mistakes, but express our utmost scorn for the so-called
egofuturists ' and neofuturists, ? talentless, banal people, the same as the
members of the Knave of Diamonds, Slap in the Face of Public Taste, and
Union of Youth groups.*
We let sleeping dogs lie, we don’t bring fools to their senses, we call triv-
ial people trivial to their faces, and we are ever ready to defend our interests
actively.
We despise and brand as artistic lackeys all those who move against a
background of old or new art and go about their trivial business. Simple, un-
corrupted people are closer to us than this artistic husk that clings to modern
art, like flies to honey.
To our way of thinking, mediocrity that proclaims new ideas of art is as
unnecessary and vulgar as if it were proclaiming old ideas.
This is a sharp stab in the heart for all who cling to so-called modern art,
making their names in speeches against renowned little old men—despite the
fact that between them and the latter there is essentially not much difference.
These are true brothers in spirit—the wretched rags of contemporaneity, for
who needs the peaceful renovating enterprises of those people who make a
hubbub about modern art, who haven’t advanced a single thesis of their
own, and who express long-familiar artistic truths in their own words!
We've had enough Knaves of Diamonds whose miserable art is screened
by this title, enough slaps in the face given by the hand of a baby suffering
from wretched old age, enough unions of old and young! We don’t need to
square vulgar accounts with public taste—let those indulge in this who on
paper give a slap in the face, but who, in fact, stretch out their hands for
alms. ;
We've had enough of this manure; now we need to sow.
We have no modesty—we declare this bluntly and frankly—we consider
ourselves to be the creators of modern art.
We have our own artistic honor, which we are prepared to defend to the
last with all the means at our disposal. We laugh at the words “‘old art’’ and
‘*new art’’—that’s nonsense invented by idle philistines.
We spare no strength to make the sacred tree of art grow to great heights,
and what does it matter to us that little parasites swarm in its shadow—let
them, they know of the tree’s existence from its shadow.
Art for life and even more—life for art!
We exclaim: the whole brilliant style of modern times—our trousers,
jackets, shoes, trolleys, cars, airplanes, railways, grandiose steamships—is
fascinating, is a great epoch, one that has known no equal in the entire his-
tory of the world.
90 J “ROU'S'S
TAGN PAIRED) O;E UT] HUE A aVeAg Nias GrAgkeDee
but that which is the essence of painting itself can be shown here best of
all—the combination of color, its saturation, the relation of colored masses,
depth, texture; anyone who is interested in painting can give his full atten-
tion to all these things.
The picture appears to be slippery; it imparts a sensation of the extratem-
poral, of the spatial. In it arises the sensation of what could be called the
fourth dimension, because its length, breadth, and density of the layer of
paint are the only signs of the outside world—all the sensations that arise
from the picture are of a different order; in this way painting becomes equal
to music while remaining itself. At this juncture a kind of painting emerges
that can be mastered by following precisely the laws of color and its trans-
ference onto the canvas.
Hence the creation of new forms whose meaning and expressiveness
depend exclusively on the degree of intensity of tone and the position that it
occupies in relation to other tones. Hence the natural downfall of all existing
styles and forms in all the art of the past—since they, like life, are merely
objects for better perception and pictorial construction.
With this begins the true liberation of painting and its life in accordance
only with its own laws, a self-sufficient painting, with its own forms, color,
and timbre.
MIKHAIL LARIONOV
Rayonist Painting, 1913
The text of this piece, ‘‘Luchistskaya zhivopis,’’ appeared in the miscellany Oslinyi
khvost i mishen [Donkey’s Tail and Target] (Moscow, July 1913), pp. 83-124 [bibl.
R319} and was signed and dated Moscow, June 1912. It has been translated into
French in bibl. 145x, pp. 65-73 (and without the Whitman quotations in bibl. 121,
pp. 110-12), and into German [ibid., German edition, pp. 111-13]. A similar text
had been published as a separate booklet in Moscow in April of the same year [bibl.
R361; reprinted in bibl. R7, pp. 477-83]; this alternate version lacked the Whitman
quotations and the short conclusion on pneumorayonism and omitted, inter al., the
G20] PA NGA RCO?
RUSS TIES AVANT-GARDE
Mikhail Larionov: Red Rayonism, 1913. Gouache on cardboard, 27 x 33 cm. Private collection,
Paris. Although to all intents and purposes this is a nonrepresentational work, it must not be
forgotten that Larionov’s rayonist theory retained a representational meaning: “‘in the space be-
tween them [objects] a certain form appears, and this is isolated by the artist’s will.”’
Larionov seems to have formulated rayonism in 1912, not before; no rayonist works,
for example, figured at his one-man exhibition at the Society of Free Aesthetics in
Moscow in December 1911, at least according to the catalogue and to contempo-
raneous reviews. According to bibl. 132, p. 28, Goncharova was the first to use the
term rayonism, although Larionov’s interest in science (manifested particularly while
he was at high school) had obviously stimulated his peculiarly refractive conception
of art. While rayonism had apparent cross-references with Franz Marc, the Italian fu-
turists, and later, with Lyonel Feininger, the upsurge of interest in photography and
cinematography in Russia at this time provided an undoubted stimulus to Larionov’s
concern with light and dynamics. It is of interest to note that in 1912/13 the Moscow
Nonobjective Art / 93
Painting is self-sufficient;
it has its own forms, color,
and timbre.
Rayonism is concerned with
spatial forms that can
arise from the intersection
.of the reflected rays of
different objects, forms
chosen by the artist’s
will.
How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals),
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,
How they inure to themselves as much as to any—what a paradox appears
their age,
How people respond to them, yet know them.not,
How there is something relentless in their fate all times,
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great
purchase.
—Walt Whitman
94°./ RUSSTAN ART OF THE AVANT} GARDE
Throughout what we call time various styles have emerged. A temporal dis-
placement of these styles would in no way have changed the artistic value
and significance of what was produced during their hegemony. We have
inherited Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Cretan, Byzantine, Romanesque,
Gothic, Japanese, Chinese, Indian styles, etc. There is a great deal of such
classification in art history, and in fact, there are infinitely more styles, not
to mention that style that is peculiar to each work outside the general style of
the time.
Style is that manner, that device by which a work of art has been created,
and if we were to examine all art objects throughout the world, then it would
transpire that they had all been created by some artistic device or other; not a
single work of art exists without this.
This applies not only to what we call art objects, but also to everything
that exists in a given age. People examine and perceive everything from the
point of view of the style of their age. But what is called art is examined
from the point of view of the perception of artistic truths; although these
truths pass through the style of their age, they are quite independent of it.
The fact that people perceive nature and their environment through the style
of their age is best seen in the comparison of various styles and various
ages. Let us take a Chinese picture, a picture from the time of Watteau, and
an impressionist picture—a gulf lies between them, they examine nature
from completely different points of view, but nevertheless the people who
witnessed their creation understood them, just as the artists themselves did,
and did not doubt for a moment that this was the same life and nature that
surrounded them (at this juncture I am not concerned with connoisseurs of
art as such). And often the artist Utamaro, whose age coincided with that of
Watteau, is spurned by those who reject the age of Watteau, but who cannot
surmount the difference of style between Japan and our eighteenth century.
There are ages that are completely rejected, and even those who are inter-
ested in art ignore them. These are eras that are very remote, for example,
the Stone Age. There are styles that are in the same position because of a
considerable difference between the cultures of the people who created them
and those who have to respond to them (Negro, Australasian, Aztec, Kolu-
Nonobjective Art / 95
shes, etc.)—despite the fact that whole nations have apprehended and em-
bodied life only in that way, age after age.
Any style, the moment it appears, especially if it is given immediate,
vivid expression, is always as incomprehensible as the style of a remote age.
A new Style is always first created in art, since all previous styles and life
are refracted through it.
Works of art are not examined from the point of view of time and are es-
sentially different because of the form in which they are perceived and in
which they were created. There is no such thing as a copy in our current
sense of the word, but there is such a thing as a work of art with the same
departure point-served either by another work of art or by nature.
In examining our contemporary art we see that about forty of fifty years
ago in the heyday of impressionism, a movement began to appear in art that
advocated the colored surface. Gradually this movement took hold of people
working in the sphere of art, and after a while there appeared the theory of
displaced colored surface and movement of surface. A parallel trend arose of
constructing according to the curve of the circle—rondism. The displace-
ment of surfaces and construction according to the curve made for more con-
structiveness within the confines of the picture’s surface. The doctrine of
surface painting gives rise naturally to the doctrine of figural construction
because the figure is in the surface’s movement. Cubism teaches one to ex-
pose the third dimension by means of form (but not aerial and linear per-
spective together with form) and to transfer forms onto the canvas the mo-
ment they are created. Of all techniques, chiaroscuro, in the main, is
adopted by cubism. For the most part this trend has decorative character-
istics, although all cubists are engaged in easel painting—but this is caused
by modern society’s lack of demand for purely decorative painting. A move-
ment parallel to cubism is spherism.
Cubism manifests itself in almost all existing forms—classical, academic
(Metzinger), romantic (Le Fauconnier, Braque), realist (Gleizes, Léger, Gon-
charova)—and in forms of an abstract kind (Picasso). Under the influence of
futurism on the cubists, there appeared a transitory cubism of futurist char-
acter (Delaunay, Lévy, the latest works of Picasso, Le Fauconnier).
Futurism was first promoted by the Italians: ? this doctrine aspires to
make reforms not merely in the sphere of painting—it is concerned also with
all kinds of art.
In painting, futurism promotes mainly the doctrine of movement—
dynamism.
Painting in its very essence is static—hence dynamics as a style. The fu-
96 {/ RUSSIAN ART OF THE Ripe
A WAN TGA
turist unfurls the picture—he places the artist in the center of the picture; he
examines the object from different points of view; he advocates the translu-
cency of objects, the painting of what the artist knows, not what he sees, the
transference of the sum total of impressions onto the canvas and the transfer-
ence of many aspects of one and the same object; he introduces narrative
and literature.
Futurism introduces a refreshing stream into modern art—which to a cer-
tain extent is linked to useless traditions—but for modern Italy it really
serves as a very good lesson. If the futurists had had the genuine painterly
traditions that the French have, then their doctrine would not have become
part of French painting, as it now has.
Of the movements engendered by this trend and dominant at present, the
following are in the forefront: postcubism, which is concerned with the syn-
thesis of forms as opposed to the analytical decomposition of forms; neofu-
turism, which has resolved completely to reject the picture as a surface cov-
ered with paint, replacing it by a screen—on which the static, essentially
colored surface is replaced by a light-colored, moving one; and orphism,
which advocates the musicality of objects—heralded by the artist
Apollinaire.
Neofuturism introduces painting to the problems posed by glass * and, in
addition, natural dynamics; this deprives painting of its symbolic origin and
it emerges as a new kind of art.
Orphism is concerned with painting based on this musical sonority of col-
ors, on color orchestration; it is inclined toward a literal correspondence of
musical to light waves, which stimulate color sensation—and it constructs
painting literally according to musical laws. In fact, painting must be con-
structed according to its own laws—just as music is constructed according to
its own musical laws; the laws germane only to painting are:
Colored line and texture.
Any picture consists of a colored surface and texture (the state of this col-
ored surface is its timbre) and of the sensation that arises from these two
things.
Nobody would begin to assert that the art connoisseur turns his primary
attention to the objects depicted in a picture—he is interested in how these
objects are depicted, which colors are put on the canvas, and how they are
put on. Therefore, he is interested in the one artist and appreciates him, and
not another, despite the fact that both paint the same objects. But the major-
ity of dilettanti would think it very strange if objects as such were to disap-
pear completely from a picture. Although all that they appreciate would still
remain—color, the painted surface, the structure of painted masses, texture.
Nonobjective Art / 97
arrives there in its correct form not thanks to our sight, but thanks to other
senses. A child sees objects for the first time upside down, and subsequently
this defect of sight is corrected by the other senses. However much he
desires to, an adult cannot see an object upside down.
Hence it is evident to what degree our inner conviction is important with
regard to things existing in the outside world. If with regard to certain
things, we know that they must be as they are because science reveals this to
us, we do remain certain that this is as it should be and not otherwise despite
the fact that we cannot apprehend this directly by our senses.
In purely official terms, rayonism proceeds from the following tenets:
Luminosity owes its existence to reflected light (between objects in space
this forms a kind of colored dust).
The doctrine of luminosity.
Radioactive rays. Ultraviolet rays. Reflectivity.
We do not sense the object with our eye, as it is depicted conventionally
in pictures and as a result of following this or that device; in fact, we do not
sense the object as such. We perceive a sum of rays proceeding from a
source of light; these are reflected from the object and enter our field of
vision.
Consequently, if we wish to paint literally what we see, then we must
paint the sum of rays reflected from the object. But in order to receive the
total sum of rays from the desired object, we must select them deliber-
ately—because together with the rays of the object being perceived, there
also fall into our range of vision reflected reflex rays belonging to other
nearby objects. Now, if we wish to depict an object exactly as we see it,
then we must depict also these reflex rays belonging to other objects—and
then we will depict literally what we see. I painted my first works of a
purely realistic kind in this way. In other words, this is the most complete
reality of an object—not as we know it, but as we see it. In all his works
Paul Cézanne was inclined toward this; that is why various objects in his
pictures appear displaced and look asquint. This arose partly from the fact
that he painted literally what he saw. But one can see an object as flat only
with one eye, and Cézanne painted as every man sees—with two eyes, i.e.,
the object slightly from the right and slightly from the left.
At the same time, Cézanne possessed such keenness of sight that he could
not help noticing the reflex rubbing, as it were, of a small part of one object
against the reflected rays of another. Hence there occurred not the exposure
of the object itself, but as it were, its displacement onto a different side and
a partial truncation of one of the object’s sides—which provided his pictures
with a realistic construction.
Nonobjective Art / 99
Picasso inherited this tradition from Cézanne, developed it, and thanks to
Negro and Aztec art, turned to monumental art; finally, he grasped how to
build a picture. out of the essentia! elements of an object so as to ensure a
greater sense of construction in the picture.
Now, if we concern ourselves not with the objects themselves but with the
sums of rays from them, we can build a picture in the following way:
The sum of rays from object A intersects the sum of rays from object B;
in the space between them a certain form appears, and this is isolated by the
artist’s will. This can be employed in relation to several objects, e.g., the
form constructed from a pair of scissors, a nose, and a bottle, etc. The pic-
ture’s coloration depends on the pressure intensity of dominant colors and
their reciprocal combinations.
The high point of color tension, density, and depth must be clearly
shown.
A picture painted in a cubist manner and a futurist picture provide a dif-
ferent kind of form (a rayonist one) when they radiate in space.
Perception, not of the object itself, but of the sum of rays from it, is, by
its very nature, much closer to the symbolic surface of the picture than is the
object itself. This is almost the same as the mirage that appears in the
scorching air of the desert and depicts distant towns, lakes, and oases in the
sky (in concrete instances). Rayonism erases the barriers that exist between
the picture’s surface and nature.
A ray is depicted provisionally on the surface by a colored line.
What has most value for every lover of painting is revealed in its most
complete form in a rayonist picture—the objects that we see in life play no
role here (except for realistic rayonisny, in which the object serves as a point
of departure); that which is the essence of painting itself can best be revealed
here—the combination of colors, their saturation, the interrelation of colored
masses, depth, texture; whoever is interested in painting can concentrate on
all these things to the full.
The picture appears to be slippery; it imparts a sensation of the extratem-
poral, of the spatial. In it arises the sensation of what could be called the
fourth dimension, because its length, breadth, and density of the layer of
paint are the only signs of the outside world—all the sensations that arise
from the picture are of a different order; in this way painting becomes equal
to music while remaining itself. At this juncture a kind of painting emerges
that can be mastered by following precisely the laws of color and its trans-
ference onto the canvas. Hence the creation of new forms whose signifi-
cance and expressiveness depend exclusively on the degree of intensity of
tone and the position that this occupies in relation to other tones. Hence the
100: / RWIS SMA NGA RD OR) THB yvA VA NG GaAS REDE
natural downfall of all existing styles and forms in all the art of the past—for
they, like life, are merely objects for the rayonist perception and pictorial
construction.
With this begins the true liberation of painting and its own life according
to its own rules.
The next stage in the development of rayonism is pneumorayonism, or
concentrated rayonism; this is concerned with joining elements together into
general masses between spatial forms present in a more sectional, rayonist
background.4
MIKHAIL LARIONOV
Pictorial Rayonism, 1914
The text of this piece, ‘‘Le Rayonisme Pictural,’’ appeared in French in Montjoie!
(Paris), no. 4/5/6, April/May/June, 1914, p. 15. This was Larionov’s first contribu-
tion to the French press and was printed just as the “*Exposition de Natalie Gont-
charowa et Michel Larionow’’ opened at the Galerie Paul Guillaume, Paris [see bibl.
119], at which rayonist works by both Goncharova and Larionov were presented. In
places the text is similar to that of Larionov’s ‘‘Rayonist Painting’’; however, the oc-
casional repetitions have been retained in order to preserve the original format of
this, the first elucidation of rayonism to be published in the West. For a French
reprint see bibl. 145x, pp. 83-85.
Every form exists objectively in space by reason of the rays from the
other forms that surround it; it is individualized by these rays, and they
alone determine its existence.
Nevertheless, between those forms that our eye objectivizes, there exists a
real and undeniable intersection of rays proceeding from various forms.
These intersections constitute new intangible forms that the painter’s eye can
see. Where the rays from different objects meet, new immaterial objects are
created in space. Rayonism is the painting of these intangible forms, of
these infinite products with which the whole of space is filled.
Rayonism is the painting of the collisions and couplings of rays between
Nonobjective Art / tot
objects, the dramatic representation of the struggle between the plastic ema-
nations radiating from all things around us; rayonism is the painting of space
revealed not by the contours of objects, not even by their formal coloring,
but by the ceaseless and intense drama of the rays that constitute the unity of
all things.
Rayonism might appear to be a form of spiritualist painting, even mys-
tical, but it is, on the contrary, essentially plastic. The painter sees new
forms created between tangible forms by their own radiation, and these are
the only ones that he places on the canvas. Hence he attains the pinnacle of
painting for painting’s sake inspired by these real forms, although he would
neither know how to, nor wish to, represent or even evoke them by their
linear existence.
Pictorial studies devoted to a formal representation by no matter what
kind of geometrical line—straight, curved, circular—still regard painting, in
my opinion, as a means of representing forms. Rayonism wishes to regard
painting as an end in itself and no longer as a means of expression.
This example is actually rather clumsy and serves only to elucidate the
question of color timbre, since in a rayonist canvas a street, a harvest scene,
a sky exist only through the relationships between their intervibrations.
In rayonist painting the intrinsic life and continuum of the colored masses
form a synthesis-image in the mind of the spectator, one that goes beyond
time and space. One glimpses the famous fourth dimension since the length,
breadth, and density of the superposition of the painted colors are the only
signs of the visible world; and all the other sensations, created by ‘mages,
are of another order—that superreal order that man must always seek, yet
never find, so that he would approach paths of representation more subtle
and more spiritualized.
We believe that rayonism marks a new stage in this development.
OLGA ROZANOVA
The Bases of the New Creation
and the Reasons
Why It Is Misunderstood, 1913
Born Vladimir Province, 1886; died Moscow, 1918. 1904-10: studied at the Bolsha-
kov Art College and Stroganov Art School in Moscow; 1911: in St. Petersburg; close
to the Union of Youth; 1911-17: contributed to the *‘Union of Youth,”’ ‘‘Tramway
V,”* “‘o.10,”" ‘“*Knave of Diamonds,”’ and other exhibitions; ca. 1913: illustrated fu-
turist booklets; married Aleksei Kruchenykh; 1918: member of IZO Narkompros and
of Proletkult.
The text of this piece, *‘Osnovy novogo tvorchestva i prichiny ego neponimaniya,”’
is from the third issue of Soyuz molodezhi (Union of Youth] (St. Petersburg), March
1913, pp. 14-22 [bibl. R339: part of the text is reprinted in the catalogue to the
“Tenth State Exhibition,’ 1919 (see pp. 138ff.), and in bibl. Rr4, pp. 168-72]. This
issue had been scheduled to appear in September 1912 (according to the back cover
of the second issue), which might indicate that'Rozanova wrote her essay earlier than
1913. As illustrations to Rozanova’s text, the issue contained six of her drawings (as
well as five by losif Shkolnik). Rozanova’s emphasis on the intuitive element of the
creative process was maintained by Mikhail Matyushin in his illuminating review
Nonobjective Art / 103
of Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger’s Du Cubisme [ibid., pp. 25-34, in which
he made frequent reference to Petr Uspensky’s Tertium Organum and hence to
the ‘‘fourth element and the highest—Intuition.’’ As a member of the St. Petersburg
avant-garde, Rozanova was a colleague of Nikolai Kulbin, Vladimir Markov, and
Matyushin, whose ideas undoubtedly influenced her; to a certain extent, her thesis
acted as an organic link between the somewhat nebulous ideas of the early Vasilii
Kandinsky and Kulbin and the more definite, more emphatic theories of Kazimir
Malevich. In fact, some of the ideas to be found in Malevich’s ‘‘From Cubism and
Futurism to Suprematism’’ (see pp. 116ff.)—e.g., the conventional artist as a pris-
oner of nature and intuitive reason—rely heavily on Rozanova’s essay. Rozanova’s
more disciplined and more cerebral approach to the question of nonrepresentation
was expressed above all in her own analytical painting, in which she reached a
suprematist conclusion, and in her poetical experiments [see bibl. R332]. The text
was written as a polemical response to Aleksandr Benois’s article ““Kubizm ili
kukishizm?” [Cubism or Ridiculism?]—see p. 69—70. For a French translation see
bibl. 1451, pp. 66-70.
Art develops; the intuitive impulse in the process of creation is the first psy-
chological stage in this development. How does the artist use the phenomena
of nature, and how does he transform the visible World on the basis of his
relationship with it?
A rearing horse, motionless cliffs, a delicate flower, are equally beautiful
if they can express themselves in equal degree.
But what can the artist express if he repeats them?
At best, an unconscious plagiarism of nature, for which the artist, not
knowing his own objectives, could be forgiven; at worst, a plagiarism in the
literal sense of the word, when people would refuse to reject it merely out of
creative impotence.
—Because the artist must be not a passive imitator of nature, but an active
spokesman of his relationship with her. Hence the question arises: to what
extent and to what degree should nature’s influence on the artist be
expressed?
A servile repetition of nature’s models can never express all her fullness.
It is time, at long last, to acknowledge this and to declare frankly, once
and for all, that other ways, other methods of expressing the World are
needed.
The photographer and the servile artist, in depicting nature’s images, will
repeat them.
The artist of artistic individuality, in depicting them, will reflect himself.
He will reveal the properties of the World and erect from them a New
World—thé World of the Picture, and by renouncing repetition of the visi-
ble, he will inevitably create different images; in turning to their practical re-
alization on the canvas, he will be forced to reckon with them.
The Intuitive Principle, as an extrinsic stimulus to creation, and individual
transformation—the second stage in the creative process—have played their
role in advancing the meaning of the abstract.
The abstract embraces the conception of creative Calculation, and of ex-
pedient relations to the painterly task. It has played an essential role in the
New Art by indissolubly combining the conception of artistic means and the
conception of artistic ends. Modern art is no longer a copy of concrete ob-
jects; it has set itself on a different plane, it has upturned completely the
conception of Art that existed hitherto.
The artist of the Past, riveted to nature, forgot about the picture as an im-
portant phenomenon, and.as a result, it became merely a pale reminder of
what he saw, a boring assemblage of ready-made, indivisible images of na-
ture, the fruit of logic with its immutable, nonaesthetic characteristics. Na-
ture enslaved the artist.
TOG. {2 RU SSH AUN BA RYT OFF ROE VARY (Au Neiin GaleLe:
depths of art history, we can cite examples of imitation from the not too dis-
tant past (it, too, has grown obsolete), namely, the exhibitions of the
‘‘World of Art’’ and especially the ‘‘Union of Russian Artists’’ ? as they
now stand: they give nothing to the treasure house of art and essentially are
merely the epigones of the Wanderers. The only difference is that the servile
imitation of nature with a smattering of Social-Populist ideology (the Wan-
derers) is replaced in this case by the imitation of an intimate aristocratic life
with its cult of antiquity and sentimentality of individual experience (the
cozy art of the ‘‘Worid of Art’’ exhibitions and their like).
I pointed out above that all previous art had touched on problems of a
purely painterly nature only by allusion and that it had confined itself gener-
ally to the repetition of the visible; we can say therefore that only the nine-
teenth century, thanks to the school of the impressionists, advanced theses
that had been unknown previously: the stipulation of a locale of air and light
in the picture and color analysis.
Then followed Van Gogh, who hinted at the principle of dynamism, and
Cézanne, who advanced the questions of construction, planar and surface
dimension.
But Van Gogh and Cézanne are only the estuaries of those broad and im-
petuous currents that are most well defined in our time: futurism and
cubism.
Proceeding from the possibilities to which I alluded (dynamism, planar
and surface dimension), each of these currents has enriched art with a series
of independent theses.
Moreover, although initially they were diametrically opposed to each
other (Dynamics, Statics), they were enriched subsequently with a series of
common theses. These have lent a common tone to all modern trends in
painting.
Only modern Art has advocated the full and serious importance of such
principles as pictorial dynamism, volume and equilibrium, weight and
weightlessness, linear and plane displacement, rhythm as a legitimate divi-
sion of space, design, planar and surface dimension, texture, color correla-
tion, and others. Suffice it to enumerate these principles that distinguish the
New Art from the Old to be convinced that they are the Qualitative—and not
just the quantitative—New Basis that proves the ‘‘self-sufficient”’ signifi-
cance of the New Art. They are principles hitherto unknown that signify the
rise of a new era in creation—an era of purely artistic achievements.
—The era of the final, absolute liberation of the Great Art of Painting
from the alien traits of Literature, Society, and everyday life. Our age is to
Nonobjective Art / 109
be credited with the cultivation of this valuable world view—an age that is
not affected by the question of how quickly the individual trends it has
created flash past.
After elucidating the essential values of the New Art, one cannot help not-
ing the extraordinary rise in the whole creative life of our day, the unprece-
dented diversity and quantity of artistic trends.
Messrs. art critics and veterans of the old art are being true to themselves
in their fatal fear of what is beautiful and continually renewing itself; they
are frightened and tremble for the little caskets of their meager artistic
achievements. In order to defend publicly this pitiful property and the posi-
tions they occupy, they spare no effort to slander the Young Art and to ar-
rest its triumphant procession. They reproach it further with frivolity and
instability.
It is high time that we realized that the future of Art will be assured only
when the thirst for eternal renewal in the artist’s soul becomes inexhaustible,
when wretched individual taste loses its power over him and frees him from
the necessity of continually rehashing.
Only the absence of honesty and of true love of art provides some artists
with the effrontery to live on stale tins of artistic economies stocked up for
several years, and year in, year out, until they are fifty, to mutter about what
they had first started to talk about when they were twenty.
Each moment of the present is dissimilar to a moment of the past, and
moments of the future will contain inexhaustible possibilities and new
revelations!
How can one explain the premature spiritual death of the artists of the Old
Art, if not by laziness? :
They end their days as innovators before they are barely thirty, and then
turn to rehashing.
There is nothing more awful in the World than repetition, uniformity.
Uniformity is the apotheosis of banality.
There is nothing more awful in the World than an artist’s immutable Face,
by which his friends and old buyers recognize him at exhibitions—this ac-
cursed mask that shuts off his view of the future, this contemptible hide in
which are arrayed all the ‘‘venerable’’ tradesmen of art clinging to their ma-
terial security!
There is nothing more terrible than this immutability when it is not the
imprint of the elemental force of individuality, but merely the tested guaran-
tee of a steady market!
It is high time that we put an end to the debauch of critics’ ribaldry and
TLO. Ue RIUNS ScIwAUNievAURTr (O) RadeEye An VivAUN eis Ge ons Dak
confessed honestly that only ‘‘Union of Youth’’ exhibitions are the pledges
of art’s renewal. Contempt should be cast on those who hold dear only
peaceful sleep and relapses of experience.
SUPREMATIST STATEMENTS,
T9I5
The texts that follow were published on the occasion of the opening of the ‘‘Last Fu-
turist Exhibition of Pictures 0.10’’ organized by Ivan Puni in Petrograd (December
19, 1915—January 19, 1916) [bibl. R364] and were distributed gratis as two separate
leaflets (Puni/Kseniya Boguslavskaya as one, Kazimir Malevich/Ivan Klyun/Mikhail
Menkov as the other) while the exhibition was in progress. [The texts are reprinted in
bibl. 33, pp. 52-53; French translation, ibid., pp. 153-54.] The written contribution
by Malevich was virtually the same as the first eight paragraphs of his book From
Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism (see p. 118-19), the first edition of which was
on sale at the exhibition.
The exhibition itself was the first public showing of suprematist works and judging
by the newspaper Obozrenie teatrov [Theater Observer] (Petrograd) for January 9,
1916, this was the first time that suprematism as an art movement had been heard of.
‘“*o.10°’ witnessed the debut of Malevich’s Black Square on a White Background
(called Square in the catalogue, no. 39) and also of his Red Square on a White
Background (called Painterly Realism of Red Masses in Two Dimensions in the cata-
logue, no. 47), a canvas that he contributed to many of his exhibitions. These, how-
ever, were not the only monochromatic paintings at the exhibition: according to one
review (in Vechernee vremya [Evening] [Petrograd], January 20, 1916), Puni also
submitted a “‘board . . . painted green’’ (no. 107 in the catalogue). Vladimir Tatlin
was also represented at the exhibition, and his own manifesto [bibl. R447] had been
published on the occasion of its opening, but in contrast to Malevich and Puni, he
received little critical attention.
Malevich and Puni expanded the ideas set forth in their manifestoes at a public
presentation that they organized at the Tenishev Institute, Petrograd, on January 12,
1916. Malevich expressed ideas similar to those in his book, illustrating his talk with
his own pictures and with an ‘‘experimental demonstration . . . of a sketch accord-
ing to the principle of cubofuturism’’ (from the poster advertising the event); Puni
delivered a lecture that encompassed ‘‘academic trends . . . cubofuturism .. .
Nonobjective Art / 111
suprematism, and the fall of futurism’’ (ibid.); and Boguslavskaya read some of her
own poetry. Both the manifestoes and the lectures underlined basic differences be-
tween Malevich and Puni: Malevich emerged as more individualistic, more irratio-
nal, yet more imaginative, whereas Puni tended toward a more impersonal, more ra-
tional, and more scientific conception. But whatever their differences, it was clear
that thanks to their “‘philosophy of savagery and bestiality’? (A[leksandr] Benois,
‘*Poslednyaya futuristicheskaya vystavka’’ [The Last Futurist Exhibition], in Rech
[Discourse] [Petrograd], January 9, 1916), they had indeed ‘‘conquered Raphael, Ti-
tian, and Michelangelo’’ (I[gor] Gr[abar]: ‘‘O skuchizme’’ [On Boringism] in Den
[Day] [Petrograd], January 14, 1916). Apart from the Benois, alt the above reviews
are reproduced in bibl. 33, pp. 68-85. For a German translation of the Puni/
Boguslavskaya, Kliun and Menkov texts see bibl. 209viii, pp. 73, 74.
Photograph taken at the exhibition ‘‘o.10,’’ 1915. Left to right: Olga Rozanova, Kseniya
Boguslavskaya, Kazimir Malevich. The paintings hanging behind them are part of Malevich’s
contribution. Photograph courtesy Mr. Herman Berninger, Zurich.
IVAN PUNI AND
KSENIYA BOGUSLAVSKAYA
Puni—Also known as Jean Pougny. Born Kuokkala, 1894; died Paris, 1956. Re-
ceived early education in St. Petersburg; 1909: first trip to Paris; 1912: back in St.
Petersburg; contact with the Burliuks, Kazimir Malevich, and other members of the
avant-garde; 1912-16; contributed to the ‘‘Union of Youth,’’ organized “‘Tramway
V’’ and ‘‘0.10’’; 1913: married Boguslavskaya; 1918: professor at Pegoskhuma/Svo-
mas; taught at Vitebsk; 1920: moved to Berlin; 1923: settled in Paris.
1) An object is the sum of real units, a sum that has a utilitarian purpose.
(Utility is the purpose of the sum of real elements to depict something.
Example: a certain sum of elements is a stone, another a man, etc.)
2) The substance of an object (reality) and the being of an object like a
chair, a samovar, a house, etc., are not the same thing.
A) Freedom of the object from meaning, the destruction of utility.
B) A picture is a new conception of abstracted real elements, deprived of
meaning.
3) 2 X2 is anything you like, but not four.
C) (The aesthetic thing in itself.)
An object (a world) freed from meaning disintegrates into real ele-
ments—the foundation of art.
B. 2) The correlation of elements discovered and revealed in a picture is a
new reality, the departure point of the new painting.
D2
Ivan Puni, 1918. Photo-
graph courtesy Mr. Her-
man Beringer, Zurich.
KAZIMIR MALEVICH
Also known as Klyunkov. Born Kiev, 1873; died Moscow, 1942. Studied in Kiev,
Moscow, and Warsaw; early rgoos: attended the private studios of Fedor Rerberg
and Ilya Mashkov in Mosocow; 1910: cofounded the exhibition society Moscow
Salon; close contact with Aleksei Kruchenykh, Kazimir Malevich, and Mikhail
Matyushin; 1913-14: contributed to the last exhibition of the Union of Youth in St.
Petersburg; 1915: supported Suprematism; 1916: joined the Knave of Diamonds;
1915-17: contributed to the “Tramway V,” “o.10,” “Shop,” “Knave of
Diamonds,” and other exhibitions; 1918-21: professor at Svomas/Vkhutemas;
1921: member of Inkhuk; 1925: member of Four Arts; continued to exhibit during
the 1930s.
MIKHAIL MENKOV
Also known ,as Minkov. Born Moscow, dates unknown. 1915-16: contributed to
**0.10"'; 1917: contributed to the ‘“*Knave of Diamonds”’; 1919: at the *‘Eighth State
Exhibition’ and *‘Tenth State Exhibition’’; after 1919: stopped exhibiting in Russia.
Every art that is valued by its ability to repeat the visible is a defective
art.
Color must live and speak for itself. Hitherto there was no such thing as
pure painting; there were just copies of nature and of ideas.
114
Ivan Klyun, mid-1920s.
Born near Kiev, 1878; died Leningrad, 1935. 1903: entered the Moscow Institute of
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture; ca. 1910: influenced by neoprimitivism; 1913:
took part in a futurist conference in Uusikirkko, Finland [see bibl. R306]; designed
decor for the Aleksei Kruchenykh—Mikhail Matyushin opera Victory over the Sun,
produced in December in St. Petersburg; illustrated futurist booklets; 1914: met
Filippo Marinetti on the latter’s arrival in Russia; 1915-16: first showing of
suprematist works at “‘o.10”; 1911-17: contributed to the “Union of Youth,”
“Donkey’s Tail,” “Target,” “Tramway V,” “Shop,” ““Knave of Diamonds,” and
other exhibitions; 1918: active on various levels within Narkompros; 1919-22: at
the Vitebsk Art School, where he replaced Marc Chagall as head; organized Unovis
(Uniya novogo iskusstva/Utverditeli novogo iskusstva— Union of the New Art/
Affirmers of the New Art]; 1920 to late 1920s: worked on his experimental
constructions—the so-called arkhitektony and planity; 1922: joined IKhK; 1927:
visited Warsaw and Berlin with a one-man exhibition; contact with the Bauhaus;
late 1920s: returned to a more representational kind of painting.
116
Kazimir Malevich: Suprematist Painting: Black and Red Square, 1915. Oil on can-
vas, 71.4 x 44.4 cm. Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This was
exhibited at ‘‘o.10.””
TIS 6/2 ROUIS
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K, MANEBAIS.
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MOCKBA.
1916.
Only when the conscious habit of seeing nature’s little nooks, Madonnas,
and Venuses in pictures disappears will we witness a purely painterly work
of art.
I have transformed myself in the zero of form and have fished myself out
of the rubbishy slough of academic art.
I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and got out of the circle of ob-
jects, the horizon ring that has imprisoned the artist and the forms of nature.
This accursed ring, by continually revealing novelty after novelty, leads
the artist away from the aim of destruction.
And only cowardly consciousness and insolvency of creative power in an
artist yield to this deception and establish their art on the forms of nature,
afraid of losing the foundation on which the savage and the academy have
based their art.
Nonobjective Art / 119
To produce favorite objects and little nooks of nature is just like a thief
being enraptured by his shackled legs.
Only dull and impotent artists veil their work with sincerity. Art requires
truth, not sincerity.
Objects have vanished like smoke; to attain the new artistic culture, art
advances toward creation as an end in itself and toward domination over the
forms of nature.
The hollow of the past cannot contain the gigantic constructions and
movement of our life.
As in our life of technology:
We cannot use the ships in which the Saracens sailed, and so in art we
should seek forms that correspond to modern life.
The technological side of our age advances further and further ahead, but
people try to push art further and further back.
Nonobjective Art / 121
This is why all those people who follow their age are superior, greater,
and worthier.
And the realism of the nineteenth century is much greater than the ideal
forms found in the aesthetic experience of the ages of the Renaissance and
Greece.
The masters of Rome and Greece, after they had attained a knowledge of
human anatomy and produced a depiction that was to a certain extent
realistic:
were overrun by aesthetic taste, and their realism was pomaded and pow-
dered with the taste of aestheticism.
Hence their perfect line and nice colors.
Aesthetic taste diverted them from the realism of the earth, and they
reached the impasse of idealism.
Their painting is a means of decorating a picture.
Their knowledge was taken away from nature into closed studios, where
pictures were manufactured for many centuries.
That is why their art stopped short.
They closed the doors behind them, thereby destroying their contact with
nature.
And that moment when they were gripped by the idealization of form
should be considered the collapse of real art.
Because art should not advance toward abbreviation or simplification, but
toward complexity.
The Venus de Milo is a graphic example of decline. It is not a real
woman, but a parody.
Similarly it should not be assumed that his gift of creative will was devel-
oped in the classical painters.
Because we see in their pictures only repetitions of the real forms of life
in settings richer than those of their ancestor, the savage.
The artist can be a creator only when the forms in his picture have nothing
in common with nature.
For art is the ability to create a construction that derives not from the in-
terrelation of form and color and not on the basis of aesthetic taste in a con-
Nonobjective Art / 123
struction’s compositional beauty, but on the basis of weight, speed, and di-
rection of movement.
Forms must be given life and the right to individual existence.
Nature is a living picture, and we can admire her. We are the living heart
of nature. We are the most valuable construction in this gigantic living
picture.
We are her living brain, which magnifies her life.
To reiterate her is theft, and he who reiterates her is a thief—a nonentity
who cannot give, but who likes to take things and claim them as his own.
(Counterfeiters. )
forms of content and meaning, but they enriched them with this burden.
They should have dumped this burden, but they tied it around the neck of
creative will.
The art of painting, the word, sculpture, was a kind of camel, loaded with
all the trash of odalisques, Salomes, princes, and princesses.
Painting was the tie on the gentleman’s starched shirt and the pink corset
drawing in the stomach.
Painting was the aesthetic side of the object.
But it was never an independent end in itself.
Artists were officials making an inventory of nature’s property, amateur
collectors of zoology, botany, and archaeology.
Nearer our time, young artists devoted themselves to pornography and
tured painting into lascivious trash.
There were no attempts at purely painterly tasks as such, without any ap-
purtenances of real life.
There was no realism of painterly form as an end in itself, and there was
no creation.
I tell you, you will not see the new beauty and the truth until you venture
to spit.
Before us, all arts were old blouses, which are changed just like your silk
petticoats.
After throwing them away, you acquire new ones.
Why do you not put on your grandmothers’ dresses, when you thrill to the
pictures of their powdered portraits?
This all confirms that your body is living in the modern age while your
soul is clothed in your grandmother’s old bodice.
This is why you find the Somovs, Kustodievs,2 and various such rag
merchants so pleasant.
We rejected futurism not because it was outdated, and its end had come.
No. The beauty of speed that it discovered is eternal, and the new will still
be revealed to many.
Since we run to our goal through the speed of futurism, our thought
moves more swiftly, and whoever lives in futurism is nearer to this aim and
further from the past.
And your lack of understanding is quite natural. Can a man who always
goes about in a cabriolet really understand the experiences and impressions
of one who travels in an express or flies through the air?
The academy is a moldy vault in which art is being flagellated.
Gigantic wars, great inventions, conquest of the air, speed of travel, tele-
phones, telegraphs, dreadnoughts are the realm of electricity.
But our young artists paint Neros and half-naked Roman warriors.
Honor to the futurists who forbade the painting of female hams,* the
painting of portraits and guitars in the moonlight.
They made a huge step forward: they abandoned meat and glorified the
machine.
But meat and the machine are the muscles of life.
Both are the bodies that give life movement.
It is here that two worlds have come together.
The world of meat and the world of iron.
126 / RUSS DA‘N: -A Ru OFT Hae Dee
eA RV AUN al GArRE
But they created their pictures not out of the subconscious forms of intu-
ition, but used the forms of utilitarian reason.
Consequently, only the discovery of the difference between the two lives
of the old and the new art will fall to the lot of intuitive feeling.
We do not see the subconscious in the actual construction of the picture.
Rather do we see the conscious calculation of construction.
In a futurist picture there is a mass of objects. They are scattered about
the surface in an order unnatural to life.
The conglomeration of objects is acquired not through intuitive sense, but
through a purely visual impression, while the building, the construction, of
the picture is done with the intention of achieving an impression.
And the sense of the subconscious falls away.
Consequently, we have nothing purely intuitive in the picture.
Beauty, too, if it is encountered, proceeds from aesthetic taste.
The intuitive, I think, should manifest itself when forms are unconscious
and have no response.
I consider that the intuitive in art had to be understood as the aim of our
sense of search for objects. And it followed a purely conscious path, blazing
its decisive trail through the artist.
(Its form is like two types of consciousness fighting between themselves.)
But the consciousness, accustomed to the training of utilitarian reason,
could not agree with the sense that led to the destruction of objectism.
The artist did not understand this aim and, submitting to this sense, be-
trayed reason and distorted form.
The art of utilitarian reason has a definite purpose.
But intuitive creation does not have a utilitarian purpose. Hitherto we
have had no such manifestation of intuition in art.
All pictures in art follow the creative forms of a utilitarian order. All the
naturalists’ pictures have the same form as in nature.
Intuitive form should arise out of nothing.
Just as reason, creating things for everyday life, extracts them from noth-
ing and perfects them.
Thus the forms of utilitarian reason are superior to any depictions in
pictures.
They are superior because they are alive and have proceeded from mate-
rial that has been given a new form for the new life.
Here is the Divine ordering crystals to assume another form of existence.
Here is a miracle.
There should be a miracle in the creation of art, as well.
Nonobjective Art / 129
But the realists, in transferring living things onto the canvas, deprive their
life of movement.
And our academies teach dead, not living, painting.
Hitherto intuitive feeling has been directed to drag newer and newer forms
into our world from some kind of bottomless void.
But there has been no proof of this in art, and there should be.
And | feel that it does already exist in a real form and quite consciously.
The artist should know what, and why, things happen in his pictures.
Previously he lived in some sort of mood. He waited for the moonrise and
twilight, put green shades on his lamps, and all this tuned him up like a
violin.
But if you asked him why the face on his canvas was crooked, or green,
he could not give an exact answer.
“*T want it like that, I like it like that.
>
Being a painter, I ought to say why people’s faces are painted green and
red in pictures.
Painting is paint and color; it lies within our organism. Its outbursts are
great and demanding.
My nervous system is colored by them.
My brain burns with their color. .
But color was oppressed by common sense, was enslaved by it. And the
spirit of color weakened and died out.
But when it conquered common sense, then its colors flowed onto the
repellent form of real things.
The colors matured, but their form did not mature in the consciousness.
This is why faces and bodies were red, green, and blue.
But this was the herald leading to the creation of painterly forms as ends
in themselves.
Now it is essential to shape the body and lend it a living form in real life.
And this will happen when forms emerge from painterly masses; that is,
they will arise just as utilitarian forms arose.
Such forms will not be repetitions of living things in life, but will them-
selves be a living thing.
130 / RUSSIAN- ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
Painting in Futurism
If we take any point in a futurist picture, we shall find either something that
is coming or going, or a confined space.
But we shall not find an independent, individual painterly surface.
Here the painting is nothing but the outer garment of things.
And each form of the object was painterly insofar as its form was neces-
sary to its existence, and not vice versa.
The futurists advocate the dynainics of painterly plasticity as the most im-
portant aspect of a painting.
But in failing to destroy objectivism; they achieve only the dynamics of
things.
Therefore futurist paintings and all those of past artists can be reduced
from twenty colors to one, without sacrificing their impression.
Repin’s picture of Ivan the Terrible could be deprived of color, and it will
still give us the same impressions of horror as it does in color.
The subject will always kill color, and we will not notice it.
Whereas faces painted green and red kill the subject to a certain extent,
and the color is more noticeable. And color is what a painter lives by, so it
is the most important thing.
And here I have arrived at pure color forms.
And suprematism is the purely painterly art of color whose independence
cannot be reduced to a single color.
The galloping of a horse can be transmitted with a single tone of pencil.
But it is impossible to transmit the movement of red, green, or blue
masses with a single pencil.
Painters should abandon subject matter and objects if they wish to be
pure painters.
Nonobjective Art / 131
But if the artist finds little tension in the picture, he is free to take them
from another object.
Consequently, in cubism the principle of transmitting objects does not
arise.
A picture is made, but the object is not transmitted.
Hence this conclusion:
Over the past millennia, the artist has striven to approach the depiction of
an object as closely as possible, to transmit its essence and meaning; then in
our era of cubism, the artist destroyed objects together with their meaning,
essence, and purpose.
A new picture has arisen from their fragments.
Objects have vanished like smoke, for the sake of the new culture of art.
Cubism, futurism, and the Wanderers differ in their aims, but are almost
equal in a painterly sense.
Cubism builds its pictures from the forms of lines and from a variety of
painterly textures, and in this case, words and letters are introduced as a
confrontation of various forms in the picture.
Its graphic meaning is important. It is all for the sake of achieving
dissonance.
And this proves that the aim of painting is the one least touched upon.
Because the construction of such forms is based more on actual superim-
position than on coloring, which can be obtained simply by black and white
paint or by drawing.
To sum up:
Any painted surface tured into a convex painterly relief is an artificial,
colored sculpture, and any relief turned into surface is painting.
The proof of intuitive creation in the art of painting was false, for distor-
tion is the result of the inner struggle of intuition in the form of the real.
Intuition is a new reason, consciously creating forms.
But the artist, enslaved by utilitarian reason, wages an unconscious
struggle, now submitting to an object, now distorting it.
Gauguin, fleeing from culture to the savages, and discovering more free-
dom in the primitives than in academism, found himself subject to intuitive
reason. :
He sought something simple, distorted, coarse.
This was the searching of his creative will.
At all costs. not to paint as the eye of his common sense saw.
He found colors but did not find form, and he did not find it because com-
Nonobjective Art / 133
mon sense showed him the absurdity of painting anything except nature.
And so he hung his great creative force on the bony skeleton of man,
where it shriveled up.
Many warriors and bearers of great talent have hung it up like washing on
a fence.
And all this was done out of love for nature’s little nooks.
And let the authorities not hinder us from warning our generation against
the clothes stands that they have become so fond of and that keep them so
warm.
The efforts of the art authorities to direct art along the path of common
sense annulled creation.
And with the most talented people, real form is distortion.
Distortion was driven by the most talented to the point of disappearance,
but it did not go outside the bounds of zero.
But I have transformed myself in the zero of form and through zero have
reached creation, that is, suprematism, the new painterly realism—nonob-
jective creation.
Suprematism is the beginning of a new culture: the savage is conquered
like the ape.
There is no longer love of little nooks, there is no longer love for which
the truth of art was betrayed.
The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive
reason.
The face of the new art.
The square is a living, regal infant.
The first step of pure creation in art.‘ Before it there were naive distortions
and copies of nature.
Our world of art has become new, nonobjective, pure.
Everything has disappeared; a mass of material is left from which a new
form will be built.
In the art of suprematism, forms will live, like all living forms of nature.
These forms announce that man has attained his equilibrium; he has left
the level of single reason and reached one of double reason.
(Utilitarian reason and intuitive reason.)
The new painterly realism is a painterly one precisely because it has no
realism of mountains, sky, water.
Hitherto there has been a realism of objects, but not of painterly, colored
units, which are constructed so that they depend neither on form, nor on
color, nor on their position vis-a-vis each other.
134 [VARIG SISM AON} RALRED 1OP |THE AL VaA ING a GrAaReDae,
I have arrived at the surface and can arrive at the dimension of the living
body.
But I shall use the dimension from which I shall create the new.
I have released all the birds from the eternal cage and flung open the gates
to the animals in the zoological gardens.
May they tear to bits and devour the leftovers of your art.
And may the freed bear bathe his body amid the flows of the frozen north
and not languish in the aquarium of distilled water in the academic garden.
You go into raptures over a picture’s composition, but in fact, composi-
tion is the death sentence for a figure condemned by the artist to an eternal
pose.
Your rapture is the confirmation of this sentence.
The group of suprematists—K. Malevich, I. Puni, M. Menkov, I. Klyun,
K. Boguslavskaya, and Rozanova *—has waged the struggle for the libera-
tion of objects from the obligations of art.
And appeals to the academy to renounce the inquisition of nature.
Idealism and the demands of aesthetic sense are are the instruments of torture.
The idealization of the human form is the mortification of the many lines
of living muscle.
Aestheticism is the garbage of intuitive feeling.
You all wish to see pieces of living nature on the hooks of your walls.
Just as Nero admired the torn bodies of people and animals from the zoo-
logical garden.
I say to all: Abandon love, abandon aestheticism, abandon the baggage of
wisdom, for in the new culture, your wisdom is ridiculous and insignificant.
I have untied the knots of wisdom and liberated the consciousness of
color!
Hurry up and shed the hardened skin of centuries, so that you can catch
up with us more easily.
I have overcome the impossible and made gulfs with my breath.
You are caught in the nets of the horizon, like fish!
We, suprematists, throw open the way to you.
Hurry!
For tomorrow you will not recognize us.
IVAN KLYUN
Primitives
of the Twentieth Century, 1915
The text of this piece, ‘‘Primitivy XX veka,’’ appeared in the collection of articles
Tainye poroki akademikov [Secret Vices of the Academicians] (Moscow, August
1915 but dated on the cover 1916), pp. 29-30; the volume was subtitled Sonnye svis-
tuny [Sleepy Whistlers; bibl. R304]. It also contained a forceful attack on symbolism
by Aleksei Kruchenykh and an untitled piece by Malevich [see bibl. 159, vol. 1,
17-18, for English translation] in which he rejected reason as an artistic ingredient—
an ideological parallel to his alogical paintings of the same time. Malevich’s ideas of
1914-15 exerted a considerable influence on Klyun, and he owed many of his theo-
retical and pictorial ideas to Malevich’s proximity. While containing an obvious and
pejorative reference to the neoprimitivists, the title of Klyun’s essay demonstrates the
realization by so many of the avant-garde at this time that art should “‘begin again.”’
Klyun’s advocacy of the ‘‘straight line as a point of departure’ betrayed his wish to
create a supremely logical and rational art form, a move whereby he very soon
clashed with Malevich. Yet despite Klyun’s scientific analyses of painting [e.g., bibl.
R289] and his condemnation of what he considered to be Malevich’s thematic
suprematism (see pp. 142 ff), he himself evolved toward ‘“‘cosmic abstraction” in the
1920s before returning to a more representational kind of painting after 1930.
136
Nonobjective art / 137
Ivan Klyun: Illustration for the booklet Tainye poroki akademikov [Secret
Vices of the Academicians] (Moscow, 1915).
take of all art revivals and restorers—we did not turn to the Old Masters and
to the principles of antiquity that, quickly and inevitably, have always led
art into an impasse. Neither did we wish to return to the /ubok,' to the
primitives of old, or to feign near illiteracy; before us in all its grandeur the
great task has arisen of creating a form out of nothing.
After accepting the straight line as a point of departure, we have arrived at
an ideally simple form: straight and circular planes (sounds and letters in
words). The depth and complexity of our tasks also dictates simplicity of
form.
Those who suppose that we are working (in our own way, of course)
within the artistic framework of a given period are profoundly mistaken. No,
we have left this framework behind and already stand on the threshold of a
new era, of new ideas; in our works you will no longer find a single familiar
feature. For you they are enigmatic pictures, but for us they are an entirely
real language for expressing our new sensations and ideas.
8° | RUSSTANTART OF SHE A VAIN Se
The texts of the pieces that follow are from the catalogue of “‘X Gosudarstvennaya
vystavka. Bespredmetnoe tvorchestvo i suprematizm’’ (Moscow, 1919) [bibl. R358;
the texts are reprinted in bibl. R16, pp. 110-17; extracts from Malevich’s statement
are translated into English in bibl. 45, pp. 282-84; the catalogue name list is re-
printed in bibl. R152, p. 43]. The ‘‘Tenth State Exhibition’’ opened in January 1919
in Moscow. The nine contributors, in addition to those mentioned here, included
Natalya Davydova who did not contribute a statement. Two hundred twenty works
were shown, all purporting to be abstract. Although this was one of the last major
collective avant-garde exhibitions, its influence was considerable, for example,
inspiring El Lissitzky to create his first Prouns (see p. 151-53). The tone of most of
the statements, with their emphasis on analysis rather than on synthesis,
demonstrated a fundamental deviation from Malevich’s more intuitive, individual-
istic conception of abstract art; moreover, the linear and architectonic qualities of
the works themselves pointed to the imminent concern with construction and
constructivism, at least on the part of Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova,
and Aleksandr Vesnin. The precise, mathematical formulation of the pictorial art,
favored especially by Lyubov Popova, was indicative of the general trend toward
formalism in literary and artistic evaluation— which was supported by such critics
Nonobjective Art / 139
as Nikolai Punin (see pp. 170ff.) and developed within the framework of Inkhuk
especially during 1920-22. All the texts have been translated into German in bibl.
209vill, pp. 75-82. The Malevich text has been translated into French in bibl.
176xvill, pp. 213-15, and into Italian in bibl. 176xix, pp. 191-93.
VARVARA STEPANOVA !
Concerning My Graphics
at the Exhibition
Born Kovno, 1894; died Moscow, 1958. Studied at the Kazan Art School, where she
met Aleksandr Rodchenko, whom she married subsequently; 1912: moved to Mos-
cow; studied under Konstantin Yuon; 1913-14: worked at the Stroganov Art School;
gave private lessons; 1914: contributed to the Moscow Salon; 1920-25: closely in-
volved with IZO Narkompros; member of Inkhuk; contributed to ‘‘5 x 5 =25’’; with
Lyubov Popova and Rodchenko entered the First State Textile Print Factory, Mos-
cow, as a designer; designed costumes for Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin’s Death of
Tarelkin, produced by Vsevolod Meierkhold; 1923-28: closely associated with Lef
and Novyi lef; 1924: professor in the Textile Faculty at Vkhutemas; late 1920s and
1930s: worked on typography, book design, posters.
The stage after cubofuturism in the world art movement was revealed by
nonobjective creation; this should be regarded as a world view—and not
simply as a painterly trend—that has embraced all aspects of art and life it-
self. This movement is the spirit’s protest against the materialism of modern
times. Painters apprehended it before others did. In passing, I would note
that in spite of all the ‘‘funeral dirges’’ with which ‘‘avowed critics’’ ac-
company painting, it is occupying an ever greater place in world culture.
The first slogans of nonobjective creation were proclaimed in 1913.°
From the yery beginning, nonobjective creation has proceeded along the
path of analysis and, a new movement, has not yet revealed its own synthe-
sis. In this lies its value at the present moment—a moment of terrible dis-
severance, when art having lost its old traditions, is ready to sink into
academism for the sake of providing a new synthesis. But it is not synthesis
that will open up the new path, but analysis and inventiveness.
If we investigate the process of nonobjective creation in painting, we will
discover two aspects: the first is a spiritual one—the struggle against subject
and ‘‘figurativeness’’ and for free creation and the proclamation of creativity
and invention; the second aspect is the deepening of the professional de-
mands of painting. After losing its literary subject matter, nonobjective
painting was obliged to raise the quality of its works, which, in those of its
predecessors, was often redeemed by the picture’s subject matter. The
painter came to be presented with high—and, I would say, scientific, profes-
sional—demands with regard to texture, craftsmanship, and technique. It is
141
142 /P PRAGUSVSA-ANS AUR)T ODE) THE. (AL VGA NG deoiGeAsRebae
IVAN KLYUN
Color Art !
The painterly art, which for centuries has delighted the spectator with
views of nature’s cozy nooks, with a repeat experience of passions already
experienced, has at long last died.
Nonobjective Art / 143
After beginning with the savage’s depictions of the deer, the lion, and the
fish, painting resolutely preserved the savage’s testament and, throughout a
whole series of continuously changing trends, aspired to express nature as
pictorially as possible (hence the name ‘‘picture’’); and the forms of this art
changed in accordance with the demands made of nature by the culture of a
given time.
After exhausting realism, naturalism, all kinds of stylization, various
syntheses, nature’s moods and artists’ experiences—painting reached a state
of decrepitude and found its end in suprematism.
The nature that was ornamented by the neorealists and neoimpressionists
was torn to pieces by futurism. Suprematism has carefully painted these
benumbed forms with different colors and presents them as new art (Boy
with Samovar *).
Now the corpse of painterly art, the art of daubed nature, has been laid in
its coffin, sealed with the Black Square of Suprematism, and its sarcophagus
is now exhibited for public view in the new cemetery of art—the Museum of
Painterly Culture.?
But if the art of painting, the art of expressing nature, has died, then
color, paint, as the basic elements of this art, have not died. Liberated from
the centuries-old bond of nature, they have begun to live their own life, to
develop freely, and to display themselves in the New Art of Color—and our
color compositions are subject only to the laws of color, and not to the laws
of nature.
In Color Art the colored area lives and moves, affording color the utmost
force of intensity.
And the congealed, motionless forms of suprematism do not display a
new art but reveal the face of a corpse with its eyes fixed and dead.
KAZIMIR MALEVICH
Suprematism
Suprematist philosophical color thought has demonstrated that the will can
manifest its creative system precisely when the object has been annulled as a
painterly framework in the artist; and while objects serve as the framework
and means, the artist’s will moves in a compositional circle of object forms.
Everything we can see has arisen from a colored mass that has been trans-
formed into plane and volume: any car, house, man, table—they are all
painterly volumetrical systems destined for definite objectives.
The artist should also transform painterly masses and form a creative sys-
tem, but he should not paint nice pictures of sweet-scented roses because
that would be a dead depiction reminiscent of the living.
And even if his depiction is constructed abstractly, but based on color in-
terrelations, his will will be locked up amid the walls of aesthetic planes, in-
stead of being able to penetrate philosophically.
I am free only when—by means of critical and philosophical substantia-
tion—my will can extract a substantiation of new phenomena from what al-
ready exists.
I have breached the blue lampshade of color limitations and have passed
into the white beyond: follow me, comrade aviators, sail on into the
depths—I have established the semaphores of suprematism.
I have conquered the lining of the colored sky, I have plucked the colors,
put them into the bag I have made, and tied it with a knot. Sail on! The
white, free depths, eternity, is before you.
MIKHAIL MENKOV
One should not look at a picture with the preconceived aim of gaining a
definite impression from it. Its painted surface gives us a visual sensation
that at first glance is hardly perceptible. One should not ask for more.
When you have cultivated your taste for the colored surface, then your en-
joyment of it will become more definite.
LYUBOV POPOVA
Bom near Moscow, 1889; died Moscow, 1924. 1907-1908: attended the studio of
Stanislav Zhukovsky in Moscow; 1912-13: worked in Paris in the studios of Henri
Le Fauconnier and Jean Metzinger; met Nadezhda Udaltsova there: 1913: returned to
Russia; close to Vladimir Tatlin, Udaltsova, and Aleksandr Vesnin; 1915-16: con-
tributed to ‘‘Tramway V,’’ ‘‘o.10,’’ and the ‘‘Shop’’; 1918: joined the faculty of
Svomas/Vkhutemas; 1921: member of Inkhuk; gave up easel painting; 1922: did the
set and costume designs for Vselovod Meierkhold’s production of Fernand Cromme-
lynck’s Magnanimous Cuckold; 1923-24: worked at the First State Textile Print Fac-
tory, Moscow.
(+) (=)
Painting Not painting but
the depiction of reality
I. Architectonics
(a) Painterly space
I. Aconstructiveness
(cubism)
(a) Illusionism
(b) Line
(c) Color (suprematism)
(b) Literariness
(d) Energetics (c) Emotions
(futurism) (d) Recognition
(e) Texture
146
Nonobjective Art | 147
fue
Lyubov Popova: Painterly Architectonics, 1917-18. Oil on canvas, 105.5
x go cm. Private collection, Moscows
Line as color and as the vestige of a transverse plane participates in, and
directs the forces of, construction.
Form is not of equal value throughout its whole sequence. The artistic con-
sciousness must select those elements indispensable to a painterly context, in
which case all that is superfluous and of no artistic value must be omitted.
148 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO
Rodchenko’s System
Born St. Petersburg,1891; died Moscow, 1956. 1910-14: attended the Kazan Art
School, where he met Varvara Stepanova, whom he married; 1916: contributed to
Nonobjective Art / 149
the *‘Shop’’; 1917: worked with Vladimir Tatlin and Georgii Yakulov on designs for
the Café Pittoresque, Moscow; 1918: occupied several positions within Narkompros;
1920: founding member of Inkhuk; 1921: gave up easel painting and turned to textile
and typographical design; 1923-28: closely associated with Lef [Levyi front is-
kusstv—Left Front of the Arts] and Novyi lef [New Lef], which published some of
his articles and photographs; 1925: designed a workers’ club for the Soviet Pavilion
at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Paris [bibl. 237]; 1930: professor and dean of
the Metalwork Faculty at Vkhutein; subsequent work concentrated on typography,
photography, and book design.
_ . I devour it the moment I advance the thesis, and I am the “‘I’’ only
when I devour it.
To the sound of the funeral bells of color painting, the last ‘‘ism’’ is ac-
companied on its way to eternal peace, the last love and hope collapse, and I
leave the house of dead truths.
The motive power is not synthesis but invention (analysis). Painting is the
body, creativity the spirit. My business is to create something new from
painting, so examine what I practice practically. Literature and philosophy
are for the specialists in these areas, but I am the inventor of new discover-
ies in painting.
Nonobjective Art / 151
EL LISSITZKY
Suprematism in
World Reconstruction, 1920
Real name Lazar M. Lisitsky. Born near Smolensk, 1890; died Moscow, 1941.
1909-14: at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt; also traveled in France and
Italy; 1914: returned to Russia; 1918-19: member of IZO Narkompros; professor at
the Vitebsk Art School; close contact with Kazimir Malevich; 1920: member of
Inkhuk; 1921: traveled to Germany; 1922: in Berlin, edited Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet
{Object] with Ilya Ehrenburg [bibl]. R61]; 1925: returned to Moscow; taught interior
design at Vkhutemas.
The text of this piece is from a typescript in the Lissitzky archives and, apart from
the notes, is reproduced from Sophie Lissitzky-Ktippers, E/ Lissitzky (London and
Greenwich, Conn., 1968), pp. 327-30 [bibl. 247], with kind permission of Thames
and Hudson and New York Graphic Society. Despite its title, this essay acts as a re-
trospective commentary on Malevich’s original formulation of suprematism and ad-
vances a far wider concept with its emphasis on such ideas as visual economy and
the universal application of suprematism (ideas also developed by Malevich in his O
novykh sistemakh v iskusstve [On New Systems in Art] [Vitebsk, 1919]; English
translation in bibl. 159, vol. 1, 83-119).
Both for Lissitzky and for Malevich, but more so for the former, the architectural
discipline presented itself as an obvious vehicle for the transference of basic suprem-
atist schemes into life itself. In this respect, Lissitzky’s so-called Prouns [proekty us-
tanovleniya (utverzhdeniya) novogo—projects for the establishment (affirmation) of
the new], which he designed between 1919 and 1924 were of vital significance since
they served as intermediate points between two- and three-dimensional forms or, as
Lissitzky himself said, ‘‘as a station on the way to constructing a new form’’ [bibl.
R450, p. 85].
1§2 / RAG Nee AGRe TO
PEREUESTS Hig lates AVANT-GARDE
In a wider context, the spatial graphics of Petr Miturich, the linear paintings of Alek-
sandr Vesnin, and the mono- and duochromatic paintings of Aleksandr Rodchenko, all
done about 1919, symbolized the general endeavor to project art into life, to give
painting a constructive dimension. More obviously, the suprematist constructions—
the so-called arkhitektony and planity—modeled as early as 1920 by Malevich
and the unovisovtsy (members of the Unovis group organized by Malevich in
Vitebsk) also supported this trend, thereby proving Ilya Ehrenburg’s assertion that
the ‘‘aim of the new art is to fuse with life’ [bibl. R450, p. 45]. Lissitzky’s descrip-
tion of the radio transmitting tower as the “‘centre of collective effort’’ is therefore in
keeping with this process and anticipates the emergence of constructivism and the
emphasis on industrial design a few months later. In this context, Lissitzky’s refer-
ences to the “‘plumbline of economy” and the “‘counterrelief’’ remind us of Naum
Gabo and Vladimir Tatlin, respectively (see their declarations, pp. 208ff. and 2o05ff.),
and of course, reflect the general concern with veshch [the object as such] on the one
Nonobjective Art / 153
hand, and the contrary call for its utilitarian justification on the other, manifested in
Inkhuk in the course of 1920.
EI Lissitzky: Proun Study, ca. 1920. Watercolor, 18.1 x 22.9 cm. Collection Grosvenor Gal-
lery, London. ‘‘Proun’’ is an abbreviation of ‘‘proekt ustanovleniya (utverzhdeniya) novogo (Vv
iskusstve)’’ [project for the establishment (affirmation) of the new (in Art)]. This was one of
Lissitzky’s earliest Prouns.
and amid the thunderous roar of a world in collision WE, ON THE LAST
STAGE OF THE PATH TO SUPREMATISM BLASTED ASIDE THE OLD WORK OF ART
LIKE A BEING OF FLESH AND BLOOD AND TURNED IT INTO A WORLD FLOAT-
ING IN SPACE. WE CARRIED BOTH PICTURE AND VIEWER OUT BEYOND THE
CONFINES OF THIS SPHERE AND IN ORDER TO COMPREHEND IT FULLY THE
VIEWER MUST CIRCLE LIKE A PLANET ROUND THE PICTURE WHICH REMAINS
IMMOBILE IN THE CENTRE.
the empty phrase ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ had already been wiped out and in
suprematism we have wiped out the phrase ‘‘painting for painting’s sake’’
and have ventured far beyond the frontiers of painting.
first of all the artist painted the natural scene which surrounded him. then
this was obscured by towns roads canals and all the products of man for this
reason the artist began to paint artificial nature—but involuntarily he referred
in his works to the method for depicting this new nature. suprematism itself
has followed the true path which defines the creative process consequently
our picture has become a creative symbol and the realization of this will be
our task in life.
when we have absorbed the total wealth of experience of painting when
we have left behind the uninhibited curves of cubism when we have grasped
the aim and system of suprematism—then we shall give a new face to this
globe. we shall reshape it so thoroughly that the sun will no longer recog-
nize its satellite. in architecture we are on the way to a completely new con-
cept. after the archaic horizontals the classical spheres and the gothic ver-
ticals of building styles which preceded our own we are now entering upon a
fourth stage as we achieve economy and spatial diagonals.
we left to the old world the idea of the individual house individual bar-
racks individual castle individual church. we have set ourselves the task of
creating the town. the centre of collective effort is the radio transmitting
mast ! which sends out bursts of creative energy into the world. by means of
it we are able to throw off the shackles that bind us to the earth and rise
above it. therein lies the answer to all questions concerning movement.
this dynamic architecture provides us with the new theatre of life and
because we are capable of grasping the idea of a whole town at any moment
with any plan the task of architecture—the rhythmic arrangement of space
and time—is perfectly and simply fulfilled for the new town will not be as
chaotically laid out as the modern towns of north and south america but
clearly and logically like a beehive. the new element of treatment which we
have brought to the fore in our painting will be applied to the whole of this
still-to-be-built world and will transform the roughness of concrete the
156 ‘/ RUSSIAN “ART OFCTHE AVANT
Gia De
smoothness of metal and the reflection of glass into the outer membrane of
the new life. the new light will give us new colour and the memory of the
solar spectrum will be preserved only in old manuals on physics.
this is the way in which the artist has set about the construction of the
world—an activity which affects every human being and carries work
beyond the frontiers of comprehension. we see how its creative path took it
by way of cubism to pure construction but there was still no outlet to be
found here. when the cubist had pressed forward and reached the very limits
of his canvas his old materials—the colours on his palette—proved to be too
pale and he put into his picture cement and concrete and home-made iron
constructions. not content with that he started to build a model of the struc-
ture he had depicted on canvas and then it was only a short step to transform
the abstract cubistic still-life into a contre-relief which was complete in itself.
the short step then required to complete the stride consists in recognition
of the fact that a contre-relief is an architectonic structure. but the slightest
deviation from the plumbline of economy leads into a blind alley. the same
fate must also overtake the architecture of cubist contre-relief. cubism was
the product of a world which already existed around us and contre-relief is
its mechanical offspring. it does however have a relative that took the
straight path of economy which led to a real life of its own. the reference is
to the narrow technical discoveries for example the submarine the aeroplane
the motors and dynamos of every kind of motive power in each part of a
battle-ship. contre-relief is instinctively aware of their legitimate origin their
economy of form and their realism of treatment.
by taking these elements FROM THEM for itself it wants to become equally
entitled to take its place alongside them as a new creation. it seeks to dem-
onstrate its modernity by surrounding itself with all the devices of modern
life although this is really nothing other than a decoration of its own self but
with intestines stomach heart and nerves on the outside.
in this fragment of TECHNICAL INVENTIVENESS we can see the construc-
tion of these pattern systems in the artist’s materials. there is iron and steel
copper tin and nickel glass and guttapercha straight and curved areas and
volumes of every description and colour nuance. it is being made by several
master-craftsmen who well know the work of their colleagues but not the
beauty of their materials. this complicated structure taken as a whole repre-
sents a UNIFIED Organism. is it not therefore for that very reason ‘‘artistic’’?
there is one element to which special importance attaches—scale. the
scale gives life to relationships in space. it is that which determines whether
every organism remains whole or is destroyed—it holds all the parts
together. the index for the growth of modern man is the ability to see and
Nonobjective Art / 157
appreciate the relative scales of everything that has been made. it is right
that this perceptivity shall pass judgment on man’s concept of space on the
way he reacts in time. cubism demonstrated in its constructions its moder-
nity in relation to scale. but in painting and contre-relief we have in front of
us an absolute scale which is this—forms in their natural size in the ratio
I : I. if however we wish to transform the contre-relief into an architectural
structure and therefore enlarge it by one hundred times, then the scale ceases
to be absolute and becomes relative in the ratio of 1 : 100. then we get the
american statue of liberty in whose head there is room for four men and
from whose hand the light streams out.
seven years ago suprematism ? raised aloft its black square but no one
sighted it for at that time a telescope for this new planet had not yet been in-
vented. the mighty force of its movement however caused a succession of
artists to focus on it and many more were influenced by it. yet neither the
former nor the latter possessed sufficient inner substance to be held fast by
its attractive power and to formulate a complete world system from the new
movement. they loosed their hold and plunged like meteorites into irrele-
vancy extinguishing themselves in its chaos. but the second much-improved
phase is already following and the planet will soon stand fully revealed.
those of us who have stepped out beyond the confines of the picture take
ruler and compasses—following the precept of economy—in our hands. for
the frayed point of the paintbrush is at variance with our concept of clarity
and if necessary we shall take machines in our hands as well because in
expressing our creative ability paintbrush and ruler and compasses and ma-
chine are only extensions of the finger which points the way.
this path into the future has nothing in common either with mathematics
and scientific studies or with raptures over sunset and moonlight—or indeed
with the decline of the subject with its plague-ridden aura of individ-
ualism—trather is it the path leading from creative intuition to the increased
growth of foodstuffs for which neither paintbrush nor ruler neither com-
passes nor machine were required.
we must take note of the fact that the artist nowadays is occupied with
painting flags posters pots and pans textiles and things like that. what is re-
ferred to as ‘‘artistic work’’ has on the vast majority of occasions nothing
whatever to do with creative effort: and the term ‘‘artistic work’’ is used in
order to demonstrate the ‘‘sacredness’’ of the work which the artist does at
his easel. the conception of ‘‘artistic work’’ presupposes a distinction be-
tween useful and useless work and as there are only a few artists buyers can
be found even for their useless products.
the artist’s work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless.
158 [| -ROUS'SIAN] ACR T 7OUR “THOR E@
= GyAGR
AG“APN ODT
Born Vinnitsa, 1889; died Leningrad, 1970. 1901-1907: studied painting and sculp-
ture at the Odessa Art School; 1910-12: in Paris; attended Vasileva’s Académie
Russe; 1912-16: contributed to the ‘‘Union of Youth,’’ ‘‘Exhibition of Painting.
1915,’ “‘o.10,’’ ‘‘Knave of Diamonds,’’ and other exhibitions; 1912-17: contrib-
uted to the satirical journal Ryab [Ripple] in St. Petersburg; 1918: professor at
Pegoskhuma/Svomas; member of IZO Narkompros; designed decoration for Uritsky
Square, Petrograd; 1919: leading member of Komfut; 1921: designed decor for
Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe; 1922: member of Inkhuk; 1929-35: lived in
Paris; 1935: returned to Russia; 1936: settled in Leningrad.
The text of this piece, ‘‘ ‘Futurizm’ i proletarskoe iskusstvo,’’ is from the journal
Iskusstvo kommuny [Art of the Commune] (Petrograd), no. 2, December 15, 1918,
p. 3 [bibl. R73]; the text is reprinted in bibl. R16, pp. 167-68. /skusstvo kommuny
was the weekly journal of IZO Narkompros [Visual Arts Section of Narkompros],
and during its short life (December 1918—April 1919) it published many radical ar-
ticles by such artists and critics as Altman, Osip Brik, Boris Kushner, and Nikolai
Punin [see bibl. R499, p. 509, for some bibliographical details]. The futurists—and,
as Altman indicates in his note to the title: ‘‘I am using ‘futurism’ in its everyday
meaning, i.e., all leftist tendencies in agt,’’ the term is a general one here—con-
sidered themselves to be at one with the revolutionary government. Like many other
avant-garde artists at this time, Altman believed, albeit briefly, that individual easel
painting was outmoded and that art should have a collective basis; essentially this
meant that the artist was to turn to mass art forms such as monuments and bas-reliefs,
to social and cultural heroes, street decoration, and book, postage-stamp, and stage
design. Apart from Altman’s futurist panels and his decorations for Uritsky Square,
perhaps the finest example of his mass art was his album of sketches of Lenin
published in Petrograd in 1920. For a German translation see bibl. 209viii, pp. 47,
48.
Certain art circles and private individuals who not so long ago abused us
in various ‘‘cultural publications’ for working with the Soviet government
and who knew no other name for us than ‘‘bureaucrats’’ and ‘‘perfunctory
artists’? would now rather like to take our place.
And so a campaign has begun against futurism, which, they say, is a mill-
161
162 | RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
stone around the worker’s neck and whose claims to ‘‘being the art of the
proletariat’’ are ‘‘ridiculous,”’ etc.
But are they so ridiculous?
Why did it need a whole year of proletarian government and a revolution
that encompassed half the world for the ‘‘silent to speak up’’?
Why did only revolutionary futurism march in step with the October Rev-
olution?
Is it just a question of outward revolutionary fervor, just a mutual aver-
sion to the old forms, that joins futurism with the proletariat?
The Revolution and Art / 163
Not even they deny that futurism is a revolutionary art that is breaking all
the old bonds and in this sense is bringing art closer to the proletariat.
We maintain that there is a deeper link between futurism and proletarian
creation.
People naive in matters of art are inclined to regard any sketch done by a
worker, any poster on which a worker is depicted, as a work of proletarian
art.
A worker’s figure in heroic pose with a red flag and an appropriate
slogan—how temptingly intelligible that is to a person unversed in art and
how terribly we need to fight against this pernicious intelligibility.
Art that depicts the proletariat is as much proletarian art as the Chernoso-
tenets ' who has gotten into the Party and can show his membership card is
a Communist.
Just like anything the proletariat creates, proletarian art will be collective:
The principle that distinguishes the proletariat as a class from all other
classes.
We understand this, not in the sense that one work of art will be made by
many artists, but in the sense that while executed by one creator, the work
itself will be constructed on collectivist bases.
Take any work of revolutionary, futurist art. People who are used to
seeing a depiction of individual objects or phenomena in a picture are bewil-
dered. You cannot make anything out. And indeed, if you take out any one
part from a futurist picture, it then represents an absurdity. Because each
part of a futurist picture acquires meaning only through the interaction of all
the other parts; only in conjunction with them does it acquire the meaning
with which the artist imbued it.
A futurist picture lives a collective life:
By the same principle on which the proletariat’s whole creation is con-
structed.
Try to distinguish an individual face in a proletarian procession.
Try to understand it as individual persons—absurd.
Only in conjunction do they acquire all their strength, all their meaning.
How is a work of the old art constructed—the art depicting reality around
us?
Does every object exist in its own right? They are united only by extrinsic
literary content or some other such content. And so cut out any part of an
old picture, and it won’t change at all as a result. A cup remains the same
cup, a figure will be dancing or sitting pensively, just as it was doing before
it was cut out.
164.:]/ RUSSIAN ART‘OF THE AVANT? GARDE
The link between the individual parts of a work of the old art is the same
as between people on Nevsky Prospekt. They have come together by
chance, prompted by an external cause, only to go their own ways as soon
as possible. Each one for himself, each one wants to be distinguished.
Like the old world, the capitalist world, works of the old art live an indi-
vidualistic life.
Only futurist art is constructed on collective bases.
Only futurist art is right now the art of the proletariat.
KOMFUT
Program Declaration, 1919
BORIS KUSHNER
‘*The Divine Work of Art’’
(Polemics), 1919
Born Minsk, 1888; died 1937. 1914: made his literary debut with a book of verse,
Semafory [Semaphores]; 1917-18: wrote several articles and futurist prose; 1919:
leading member of Komfut; 1923: on the editorial board of Lef; close to construc-
tivists and formalists; mid- and late 1920s: wrote a series of sketches on Western
Europe, America, and the northern Caucasus; died in a prison camp.
this time. Kushner’s rejection of the subjective and idealist interpretation of art was
shared by many critics and artists just after the Revolution and was an attitude iden-
tifiable particularly with Jskusstvo kommuny; moreover, Kushner’s conclusion (reiter-
ated in many articles in that journal) that the work of art was no more than an object
produced by a rational process prepared the ground for the formal advocacy of indus-
trial constructivism in 1921/22.
And an ulterior force was ascribed to all the things that were made by this
kind of duped artist.
They asserted and professed conscientiously:
‘The eternal harmony of the builder of the universe is reflected in the
eternal beauty of artistic forms. Works of art reflect the world, the outer,
material, inner, spiritual, and ideal nature of things, the essence and latent
meaning of things.”’ |
This splendid theory was elaborated beautifully by the great experts. The
ends were carefully concealed. All contradictions were hidden. It did not
occur to anybody that this was not the genuine product, but merely a surro-
gate, and a jolly good fake.
The highest goal of bourgeois aspirations had been attained.
The philosopher’s stone had been found.
The right of private property had been extended to the extreme limits of
eternity. It crawled all over the planets, all over the stars near and far. It
flowed throughout the Milky Way. Like sugar icing, it glossed all over the
belly of eternity.
An unprecedented, world-wide achievement had been wrought.
The bourgeoisie had colonized the “‘ulterior world.”’
The ecstatic triumph of world imperialism had been achieved. Henceforth
everyone who acquired a work of art prepared by the firm of the appropri-
ately patented artist would acknowledge and feel himself the happy and as-
sured possessor of a solid piece of the universe—moreover, in a pocket edi-
tion, very convenient and portable.
And the bourgeoisie coddled and warmed itself in the soft and gentle
pillows of its consciousness of total power.
Such, briefly, is the history of the prostitution of art, solicited to serve all
the incorporeal forces of religion and mythology.
Step by step we are depriving the imperialist bourgeoisie of its global an-
nexations. Only so far the proletariat has not lifted its hand against this most
wonderful annexation of the spirit.
Because the bourgeoisie had put this valuable and prosperous colony
under the lock and key of mysterious, mystical forces, and even the revolu-
tionary spirit of our time retreats before them.
It is time to shake off this shameful yoke.
Are we going to endure the interference of heavens and hells in our inter-
nal, earthly affairs?
I think it is time to tell the gods and devils:
Take your hands off what is ours, what belongs to mankind.
170 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
Socialism must destroy the black and white magic of the industrialists and
merchants.
Socialism will not examine things exclusively from the point of view of
the right to ownership.
It can afford the luxury of leaving nature and the world in peace, can be
content with them the way they are, and will not drag them by the scruff of
the neck into its storerooms and elevators.
To the socialist consciousness, a work of art is no more than an object, a
thing.
NIKOLAI PUNIN
Cycle of Lectures
[Extracts], 1919
Born St. Petersburg, 1888; died Leningrad, 1953. 1899-1907: attended the Classical
Gymnasium at Tsarskoe Selo; 1907: entered University of St. Petersburg to study
law, then history; 1913 onwards: close to the Apollon circle [see bibl. R41 for his
published contributions]; 1918: member of IZO Narkompros [Visual Arts Section
of Narkompros]; 1918-30: many lectures and articles on modern art; 1918-19:
coeditor of Iskusstvo kommuny [Art of the Commune, bibl. R73]; 1919: coeditor of
Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo [Visual Art, bibl. R66]; leading member of Komfut; 1921:
founder member of the Museum of Painterly Culture and of IKhK; 1919-25: taught
at Svomas/Academy of Arts; ca. 1925-38: married to the poetess Anna Akhmatova
[for a letter to her in translation see Russian Literature Triquarterly (Ann Arbor),
no. 2, 1972, pp. 453-57]; 1932: coorganized the exhibition “‘Artists of the RSFSR
over the Last XV Years” at the Russian Museum, Leningrad; 1935: arrested and
briefly detained; 1944: appointed head of the Department of Russian Art History at
the University of Leningrad; 1949: arrested and imprisoned for three years;
throughout the 1930s and 1940s he continued to write, concentrating on the work of
Aleksandr Ivanov and on his own memoirs.
The extracts ate part of the fifth and sixth lectures in a series that Punin gave in Pet-
rograd in the summer of 1919 at a crash course for student teachers of drawing. In
May of the following year the lectures were published in Petrograd in a booklet
called Pervyi tsikl lektsii [First Cycle of Lectures], with covers designed by Kazimir
Malevich [reproduced in bibl. 160, p. 154]. The extracts are from this booklet, pp.
44-46, 54, 57-58.
The Revolution and Art / 171
where S equals the sum of the principles (P), Y equals intuition, and T equals artistic
creation [Punin, op. cit., p. 51, and see bibl. 189 for some commentary]. In this re-
spect it is logical that Punin should have preferred the ‘‘engineer’’ Vladimir Tatlin to
the artist Malevich, concluding that Malevich was far too subjective to examine ma-
terial in a scientific and impartial manner [see bibl. R418]. Although perhaps the
most radical and innovative of the early Soviet art critics, Punin was not alone in his
analytical approach to art; similar methods can be found in the writings of Nikolai
Tarabukin and, to a much lesser extent, in those of Boris Arvatov and Osip Brik.
172 Sols AONERAPR GO) Ham leek:
[ES REWUS AUV ALN 7 = GAL RODIE
From Lecture 5
... to speak of an artist’s world view means either to speak all sorts of
subjective trash, to acquaint you with my various personal impressions, ex-
periences, emotions apropos of this or that work of art, or to speak of the
The Revolution and Art / 173
among our new men of art we see and often hear the most extraordinary and
biting attacks on art critics. Artists, of course, are not always right in this re-
spect. Their immediate task, their immediate interest, is to cleanse them-
selves of these literary critics, but artists would find it useful to have near
them professional art scholars, i.e., people who would approach works of
art not by virtue of their literary incentives, but from the point of view of
those theoretical data with which modern science has provided them. And
that is why modern art criticism must be, and probably will become, first
and foremost a scientific criticism. This will not consist of those popular
little articles with their various attacks and personal impressions with which
we are familiar in most of our art journals, but it will consist of very careful,
very objective studies of works of art, models for which we can find in our
so-called leftist literature.
From Lecture 6
First and foremost—we consider science to be a principle of culture. I have
already spoken of science: I said that modern art criticism in general and any
modern judgment on art must once and for all finish with those arbitrary, in-
dividual, and often capricious impressions that spectators get from a work of
art. If modern man wants to assimilate fully all the forces affecting the cre-
ation of this or that work of art, he must approach the work by studying and
analyzing it by means of scientific method. Science is not a symptom but
precisely a principle. There have been many brilliant civilizations, including
our European one of the last century, when the sciences prospered and de-
veloped. But the prosperity and development of the sciences is one thing,
and the construction of the whole social, communal, and cultural life on the
principles of science is another. We do not strive for science to develop and
prosper in our world; we strive primarily in order that our whole world
view, Our social structure, and our whole artistic, technological, and com-
munal culture should be formed and developed according to a scientific prin-
ciple. In this lies the characteristic difference between culture and civiliza-
tion. .
We should dwell on one other factor, namely, the principle of organiza-
tion. Understandably, as soon as we stop wanting to act individually and
take into consideration the whole latitude of mass sentiments, the whole lati-
tude of elemental movements from below, we must stop applying these or
those forces casually and organize them so that individual persons will not
be afforded the opportunity of caprice or arbitrary rule. We must create a
cohesion and reciprocity between the individual person and individual
The Revolution and Art / 175
artist’s content be limited if he has discovered and shown the whole wealth
of the painterly element? It is quite possible that many of you would like to
read something more in modern artists’ pictures than they can and should
give. That is understandable because there still dwells in you, and probably
will dwell for a long time yet, the desire to see in the artist a man of letters,
a philosopher, and a moralist. . . . And often, when critics are examining
modern works of art by the leftists artists, they begin to discover in them
mystical abysses that not one of these artists intended. I have quite often had
dealings with spectators of this kind. On the surface of a Picasso canvas,
which contains only what is put on to it, 1.e., pure painterly elements, they
look for goodness knows what kind of religious, mystical ideas. . . . We
are formal.” Yes, we are proud of this formalism because we are returning
mankind to those peerless models of cultural art that we knew in Greece.
Isn’t that sculptor of antiquity formal, doesn’t he repeat in countless, diverse
forms the same gods who ultimately for him are equally alien, equally
remote, inasmuch as he is an artist? And nonetheless, we love these antique
statues and delight in them—and we do not say they are formal. This for-
malism is that of a classical, sound organism rejoicing in all forms of reality
and aspiring only to one thing: to reveal all its wealth, all the tension of its
creative, elemental forces in order to realize them in works of art that would
contain only signs of great joy—of that great creative tension that is latent in
us and bestowed on each of us, each of those who are born to be, and must
be, artists.
ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV
The Proletarian and Art, 1918
ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV
The Paths of
Proletarian Creation, 1920
The text of this piece, ‘‘Puti proletarskogo tvorchestva,’’ is from Proletarskaya kul-
tura [Proletarian Culture] (Moscow), no. 15/16, 1920, pp. 50-52 [bibl. R80; it is
reprinted in bibl. R4, pp. 136-41]. This text demonstrates Bogdanov’s ability to
argue in terms both of art and of science and testifies to Proletkult’s fundamental as-
piration to conceive art as an industrial, organized process. The text also reveals
Bogdanov’s specific professional interest in neurology and psychology. He wrote
several similar essays.
The Revolution and Art / 179
ical effort to the machine: the worker is turning increasingly into a ‘‘master’’
of iron slaves, while his own labor is changing more and more into “‘spiri-
tual’? endeavor—concentration, calculation, control, and initiative; accord-
ingly, the role of muscular tension is decreasing.
The second characteristic depends on the concentration of working force
in mass collaboration and on the association between specialized types of
labor within mechanical production, an association that is transferring more
and more direct physical, specialist’s work to machines. The objective and
subjective uniformity of labor is increasing and is overcoming the divisions
between workers; thanks to this uniformity the practical compatibility of
labor is becoming the basis for comradely, i.e., consciously collective, rela-
tionships between them. These relationships and what they entail—mutual
understanding, mutual sympathy, and an aspiration to work together—are
extending beyond the confines of the factory, of the professions, and of
production to the working class on a national and, subsequently, a universal
scale. For the first time the collectivism of man’s struggle with nature is
being thought of as a conscious process.
4. In this way, methods of proletarian labor are developing toward mon-
ism and collectivism. Naturally, this tendency contains the methods of prole-
tarian creation.
5. These aspects have already managed to express themselves clearly in
the methods peculiar to those areas in which the proletariat has been most
creative—in the economic and political struggle and in scientific thought. In
the first two areas, this was expressed in the complete unity of structure in
the organizations that the proletariat created—party, professional, and coop-
erative organizations: one type, one principle—comradeship, i.e., conscious
collectivism; this was expressed also in the development of their programs,
which in all these organizations tended toward one ideal, namely, a socialist
one. In science and philosophy Marxism emerged as the embodiment of
monism of method and of a consciously collectivist tendency. Subsequent
development on the basis of these same methods must work out a universal
organizational science, uniting monistically the whole of man’s organiza-
tional experience in his social labor and struggle.
6. The proletariat’s domestic creation, inasmuch as it derives from the
framework of the economic and political struggle, has progressed intensely
and, moreover, in the same direction. This is proved by the development of
the proletarian family from the authoritarian structure of the peasant or
bourgeois family to comradely relationships and the universally established
form of courtesy—‘‘comrade.’’ Insofar as this creation will advance con-
sciously, it is quite obvious that its methods will be assimilated on the same
The Revolution and Art / 181
than hitherto, i.e., the direct collaboration of many people, even of the
masses.
11. In the art of the past, as in science, there are many concealed collec-
tivist elements. By disclosing them, the proletarian critics provide the oppor-
tunity for creatively assimilating the best works of the old culture in a new
light, thereby adding immensely to their value.
12. The basic difference between the old and the new creation is that
now, for the first time, creation understands itself and its role in life.
Lunacharsky—Born Poltava, 1875; died France, 1933. 1892: joined a Marxist group;
entered Zurich University; 1898: returned to Russia; joined the Social Democrats;
1899: arrested for political activities; 1904: in Geneva; met Lenin; joined the Bolshe-
viks; 1905: in St. Petersburg; 1906: arrested, again on political grounds; 1908: with
Maxim Gorky, on Capri; 1909: with Aleksandr Bogdanov and Gorky organized the
Vpered [Forward] group; 1911-15: in Paris; 1917: returned to Russia; 1917-29: Peo-
ple’s Commissar for Enlightenment; 1933: appointed Soviet ambassador to Spain but
died en route to the post.
Anatolii Lunacharsky, ca. 1925. Photograph courtesy Radio Times Hulton Picture Library,
London.
The text of this piece, ‘‘Tezisy khudozhestvennogo sektora NKP i TsK Rabis ob os-
novakh politiki v oblasti iskusstva,’’ is from Vestnik teatra [Theater Herald] (Mos-
cow), no. 75, November 30, 1920, p. 9. [The text appears also in bibl. R60, no. 2/3,
1920, pp. 65-66; R68, no. I, 1921, p. 20; and R16, pp. 57-58]. Rabis, founded in
May 1919, acted as a trade union for workers connected with the arts, concerning it-
self with such problems as social security, education courses, accessibility of li-
braries, etc. [for details see bibl. R60, especially no. 4/5, 1921]. The significance of
the ‘‘Theses’’ was twofold: on the one hand, they stated very clearly certain basic
principles of artistic policy, and on the other, they constituted an attempt to find
common agreement on such matters between the various organizations within the
cultural hierarchy, in this case between Narkompros and Rabis. The program ad-
vanced here shares certain ideas with Proletkult (e.g., the desire to create ‘‘purely
proletarian art forms’’ and to ‘‘open workers’ departments in all higher institu-
tions’’), of which Lunacharsky was an active member, although a dissident one,
especially after 1920. If anything, the text betrays Lunacharsky’s attempt to steer a
middle course between the extreme right and the extreme left, between, broadly
speaking, preservation and destruction—a course difficult to maintain in view of the
inordinate number of radicals in IZO Narkompros [the Visual Arts Section of Nar-
184° / RUSSIAN ART.OF THE AVANT? GARVE
this must be done in connection with both shock work demonstrated during
certain weeks, days, and campaigns, and normal, everyday work. Art is a
powerful means of infecting those around us with ideas, feelings, and
moods. Agitation and propaganda acquire particular acuity and effectiveness
when they are clothed in the attractive and mighty forms of art.
However, this political art, this artistic judgment on the ideal aspirations
of the revolution can emerge only when the artist himself is siricere in sur-
rendering his strength to this cause, only when he is really imbued with rev-
olutionary consciousness and is full of revolutionary feeling. Hence, Com-
munist propaganda among the actual votaries of art is also an urgent task
both of the Art Section and of the Union of Art Workers.
4. Art is divided up into a large number of directions. The proletariat is
only just working out its own artistic criteria, and therefore no state author-
ity or any professional union should regard any one of them as belonging to
the state; at the same time, however, they should render every assistance to
the new searches in art.
5. Institutions of art education must be proletarianized. One way of doing
this would be to open workers’ departments in all higher institutions con-
cerned with the plastic, musical, and theatrical arts.
At the same time particular attention must be given to the development of
mass taste and artistic creativity by introducing art into everyday life and
into industrial production at large, i.e., by assisting in the evolution of an ar-
tistic industry and in the extensive development of choral singing and mass
activities.
In basing themselves on these ‘principles—on the one hand, under the gen-
eral control of Glavpolitprosvet 7 and through it of the Communist Party
and, on the other, linked indissolubly with the professionally organized pro-
letariat and the All-Russian Soviet of Unions—the Art Section of Narkom-
pros and the All-Russian Union of Art Workers will carry out in sympathy
and in concord its work of art education and artistic industrialism throughout
the country.
DAVID SHTERENBERG
Our Task, 1920
Born Zhitomir, 1881; died Moscow, 1948. 1903: entered the Bundist Party; 1906:
went to Paris; 1912: began to exhibit regularly at the Salon d’Automne; contact with
Guillaume Apollinaire and many others of the French avant-garde, especially of the
Café Rotonde; 1917: returned to Russia; 1918-21: head of IZO Narkompros [Visual
Arts Section of Narkompros]; held special responsibility for the preservation and res-
toration of works of art in Moscow and Petrograd; 1919: leading member of Komfut;
1920: professor at Vkhutemas; 1921: head of the Art Department in Glavprofobr
[Glavnoe upravlenie professionalnogo obrazovaniya—Chief Administration for Pro-
fessional Education] within Narkompros; 1922: helped to organize the Russian art
exhibition in Berlin at the Van Diemen Gallery [see bibl. 197, 206]; 1925: founding
member of OST (see p. 279ff.); 1927: one-man show in Moscow [bibl. R434]; 1930
and after: active as a book illustrator, especially of children’s literature.
The text of this piece, ‘‘Nasha zadacha,’’ is from Khudozhestvennaya zhizn [Art
Life] (Moscow), no. 1/2, January/February 1920, pp. 5—6 [bibl. R86]. This journal
was published by the Art Section [Khudozhestvennaya sektsiya] of Narkompros.
Like many other expatriates who returned from Western Europe to Russia in 1917,
Shterenberg welcomed the Revolution enthusiastically and felt that, among other
things, it would make art education universally accessible. As an artist and an art
teacher in his own right, Shterenberg was particularly interested in the problems of
art instruction and was closely involved in the reorganization of the country’s art
schools. His conception of the ‘‘new art’’ was, however, a very indefinite one, and
like many of his colleagues, he failed to determine what a ‘‘proletarian art’’ should
stand for or even whether it should exist.
186
The Revolution and Art | 187
David Shterenberg: Composition, ca. 1918. Water color and India ink, 24 x 33 cm. Collection
Grosvenor Gallery, London. This piece has a formal and thematic rssemblance to Shterenberg’s
agit designs for Petrograd in 1918, and may have been: one of his projects for the facade of the
Hermitage.
art were valued abroad, whereas our museum workers recognized them only
after their death, living artists not being represented in museums.
New ideas in the field of schoolteaching also remained outside the official
academic schools and found refuge in the private schools of certain young
artists. Paris owes its extremely rich development in the arts mainly to such
schools, a development that made it the only city in Europe that virtually
dictates new laws to the whole of Europe and exerts an immense influence
on the art of all nations. England, Germany, and America, despite the high
standard of their material culture, hardly possess their own art in the broad
sense of the word. But Russia, thanks to the peculiar position it occupies in
relation to the East and thanks to ali the untapped resources of its culture, as
yet in an embryonic state, has its own definite path on which it has only just
embarked. That is why the new art schools, the State Free Studios and the
art institutes that draw most of their students from among the workers and
peasants, have developed with extraordinary speed. The new artistic forces
The Revolution and Art / 189
that introduced new methods of teaching into schools have yielded quite dis-
tinctive results that will now—at the end of the civil war and at the begin-
ning of our life of labor and Communist construction—provide us with new
instructors and new artists for our artistic-industry schools and enterprises.
Of the fifty schools in our section, almost half are working very well,
despite the cold and hunger and neediness of the students; if our transport
and Russia’s general economic situation can right themselves even just for a
while, then our schools will very shortly be in a splendid position. At the
same time the new body of Russian artists will differ significantly from the
old one because—and there is no use hiding it—nowhere is competition so
developed as among artists; there are substantial grounds to assume that the
State Free Studios will provide us with new artists linked together by greater
solidarity—which significantly lightens the task of the cultural construction
of the arts. The students’ trying position during the civil war cleared their
ranks of untalented groups. Only those remained who live for art and who
cannot exist without it, such as the students of the First and Second State
Free Studios in Moscow: during the present fuel crisis they used to go on
foot into the woods, chop down firewood, and bring it back themselves on
sledges so as to heat the studios where they could devote themselves to artis-
tic work. These hardened workers are already serving the provinces now—in
fact, the demands of various local Soviets and cultural organizations are
growing, and we are having to take the best students out of our schools in
order to send them to different places as instructors. At present the section’s
task consists mainly of putting the social security of our schools on a proper
footing. From towns everywhere we receive letters from young artists, al-
most always talented (judging by models and drawings), with requests to be
sent to our art schools, but not being able to provide for their subsistence,
the section has to advise them to wait a little longer. I think that our present
task is to give food allowances to all students, not only of art schools, but
also of all schools of higher education throughout the Republic. This is es-
sential, as essential as it was to create the Red Army. It must not be post-
poned because it will be the same Red Army—of Culture. Similarly, spe-
cialists who work with them in schools of higher education should be given
food allowances; only in this way will we rehabilitate our industry by
enriching it with the cultural element of the workers and peasants.
These new forces will give us the chance to carry out those mass art cre-
ations that the state now needs. Objectives of an agitational and decorative
nature (it is essential to transform the whole face of our cities and the fur-
nishings of our buildings) are creating that basis without which no art can
exist.
190 | S'S TLAGN
PRU “AURTD OCP ST CHEE GA VeAUN GDOE
1) GEAGRI
The old art (museum art) is dying. The new art is being born from the
new forms of our social reality.
We must create it and will create it.
ANATOLI] LUNACHARSKY
Revolution and Art, 1920-22
The first half of this text, ‘‘Revolyutsiya i iskusstvo,’’ was written in October 1920
and published in Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie [Communist Enlightenment]
(Moscow), 1920, no. I; the second half was the result of an interview given in Pet-
rograd on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution and was
published in Krasnaya gazeta [Red Newspaper] (Moscow), no. 252, November 5,
1922. Both pieces appeared in a collection of Lunacharsky’s articles on art, /skusstvo
i revolyutsiya [Art and Revolution] (Moscow, 1924), pp. 33-40, from which this
translation is made. [They are reprinted in bibl. R402, vol. 7, 294—99.] The text, of
course, reflects certain topical events, not least the enactment of Lenin’s plan of
monumental propaganda (based substantially on the measures of the revolutionary
government in France in the early 1790s—hence the reference to the French Revolu-
tion) and the renewal of the private art market in 1921. Lunacharsky’s personal artis-
tic tastes are also evident in the text, e.g., his love of music and the theater.
Wg
For a revolutionary state, such as the Soviet Union, the whole question of
art is this: can revolution give anything to art, and can art give anything to
revolution? It goes without saying that the state does not intend to impose
revolutionary ideas and tastes on artists. From’a coercive imposition of this
kind only counterfeit revolutionary art can emerge, because the prime qual-
ity of true art is the artist’s sincerity.
But there are other ways besides those of coercion: persuasion, encour-
agement, and appropriate education of new artists. All these measures
The Revolution and Art / 191
feelings of the audience and readers and has a direct influence on their will.
It, so to say, brings the whole content of propaganda t6 white heat and
makes it glow in all colors. Yes, propagators—we, of course, are all propa-
gators. Propaganda and agitation are simply the ceaseless propagation of a
new faith, a propagation springing from profound knowledge.
Can it be doubted that the more artistic such propagation, the more pow-
erful its effect? Don’t we know that the artistic public speaker or journalist
finds his way to the people’s hearts more quickly than those lacking in artis-
tic strength? But the collective propagandist is the collective propagator of
our age; the Communist Party, from this point of view, should arm itself
with all the organs of art, which in this way will prove itself to be of great
use to agitation. Not only the poster, but also the picture, the statue—in less
volatile forms and with more profound ideas, stronger feelings—can emerge
as graphic aids to the assimilation of Communist truth.
The theater has so often been called a great tribune, a great rostrum for
propagation, that it is not worth dwelling on this. Music has always played
an enormous role in mass movements: hymns, marches, form an indispens-
able attribute of them. We have only to unfurl this magic strength of music
above the hearts of the masses and to bring it to the utmost degree of defini-
tion and direction.
For the moment we are not in a position to make use of architecture on a
wide scale for propaganda purposes, but the creation of temples was, so to
say, an ultimate, maximum, and extremely powerful way of influencing the
social soul—and perhaps, in the near future, when creating the houses of our
great people, we will contrast them with the people’s houses of the past—
the churches of all denominations.
Those art forms that have arisen only recently as, for example, the cinema
or rhythmics, can be used with very great effect. It is ridiculous to enlarge
upon the propaganda and agitational strength of the cinema—it is obvious to
anyone. And just think what character our festive occasions will take on
when, by means of General Military Instruction,’ we create rhythmically
moving masses embracing thousands and tens of thousands of people—and
not just a crowd, but a strictly regulated, collective, peaceful army sincerely
possessed by one definite idea.
Against the background of the masses trained by General Military Instruc-
tion, other small groups of pupils from our rhythm schools will advance and
will restore the dance to its rightful place. The popular holiday will adorn it-
self with all the arts, it will resound with music and choirs and that will
express the sensations and ideas of the holiday by spectacles on several
The Revolution and Art / 193
Ze
VASILII KANDINSKY
Plan for the Physicopsychological
Department of the Russian Academy
of Artistic Sciences, 1923
The text of this piece, untitled on its original publication, is from /skusstvo. Zhurnal
Rossiiskoi Akademii khudozhestvennykh nauk [Art. Journal of the Russian Academy
of Artistic Sciences] (Moscow), no. 1, Summer 1923, pp. 415-16 [bibl. R69]. The
manuscript of this text is in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art,
Moscow (f. 941. op. I, ed. khr. 3). Kandinsky presented his plan for the
Physicopsychological Department of RAKhN [Russian Academy of Artistic
Sciences; later GAKhN or Gosudarstvennaya Akademiya khudozhestvennykh
nauk—State Academy of Artistic Sciences] in June of 1921, and it was accepted by
the academy commission on July 21 although the academy itself was not formally
established until October 7, under the presidency of Petr Kogan and the general
auspices of Narkompros. The academy was divided into three main sections: the
Physicomathematical and Physicopsychological Department, headed by Kandin-
sky; the Philosophical Department, headed by Gustav Shpet; and the Sociological
Department, headed by Vladimir Friche. Within these basic divisions functioned
The Revolution and Art / 197
subsections devoted to literature, music, the theatre, the visual arts (toward which
Kandinsky’s plan was oriented), architecture, etc. The broad basis of the academy
encouraged interest in extremely diverse topics, and between June 16, 1921, and
January I, 1923, for example, no less than forty-seven lectures were given at plenary
sessions—including such stimulating titles as ‘‘Style and Stylization as Socio-
organizational Phenomena” (Boris Arvatov), “The Organizational Role of Art”
(Aleksandr Bogdanov), and “The Basic Elements of Painting” (Kandinsky).
The department sets as its task to disclose the inner, positive laws on the
basis of which aesthetic works are formed within every sphere of art and, in
connection with the results obtained, to establish the principles of synthetic
artistic expression. This task can be reduced to a number of concrete objec-
tives: (1) the study of artistic elements as the material from which a work of
art is formed, (2) the study of construction in creation as a principle whereby
the artistic purpose is embodied, (3) the study of composition in art as a
principle whereby the idea of a work of art is constructed.
The work of the department must be carried out in two directions: (a) a
series of lectures based on the established program and (b) experimental
research. We have not managed to pursue this experimental research owing
to a lack of funds essential for the organization of laboratories:
The series of lectures ‘‘Elements of Art’’ has been given, and now certain
of their materials, observations, and ideas are being processed. The series of
198 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
The journal Lef [Levyi front iskusstv—Left Front of the Arts] existed from 1923 until
1925 and then resumed as Novyi lef [Novyi levyi front iskussty—New Left Front of
the Arts] in 1927 and continued as such until the end of 1928 [bibl. R76]. Among the
founders of Lef were Boris Arvatov, Osip Brik, Nilolai Chuzhak, Boris Kushner,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Sergei Tretyakov. Its editorial office was in Moscow. In
1929 the group changed its name to Ref [Revolyutsionnyi front—Revolutionary
Front]. In 1930 the group disintegrated with Mayakovsky’s entry into RAPP [Ros-
siiskaya assotsiatsiya proletarskikh pisatelei— Revolutionary Association of Pro-
letarian Writers; see p. 288] and with the general change in the political and cultural
atmosphere. Lef was especially active during its early years and had affiliates
throughout the country, including Yugolef [Yuzhnyi lef—South Lef] in the Ukraine.
As a revolutionary platform, Lef was particularly close to the constructivists and
formalists; Novyi lef devoted much space to aspects of photography and cinematogra-
phy, Aleksandr Rodchenko playing a leading part. [For comments and translations
see Form (Cambridge, Eng.), no. 10, 1969, pp. 27-36, and Screen (London), vol.
12, no. 4, 1971-72, 25—-100.]
The text of this piece, ‘‘Tovarishchi, formovshchiki zhizni!,’’ appeared in Lef (Mos-
cow), no. 2, April-May 1923, pp. 3-8, in Russian, German, and English [bibl.
R76]. This translation is based on the English version, pp. 7-8. This was the fourth
declaration by Lef, the first three appearing in the first number of the journal: ‘‘Za
chto boretsya Lef?’’ [What Is Lef Fighting for?,’’ pp. 1-7], ““V kogo vgryzaetsya
Lef?’’ [{‘‘What Is Lef Getting Its Teeth into?,’’ pp. 8-9] and ‘‘Kogo predosteregaet
Lef?’’ [‘‘Whom Is Lef Warning?,’’ pp. 10-11]. However, they were concerned
chiefly with literature and with history and had only limited relevance to the visual
arts. [The first and fourth declarations are reprinted in bibl. R16, pp. 291-95, and all
of them are translated into French in bibl. 139, pp. 61-78.] For a German
translation of this text see bibl. 209viii, pp. 213-18. This declaration sets forth the
utilitarian, organizational conception of art that Lef/Novyilefattempted to support
throughout its short but influential life.
Today, the First of May, the workers of the world will demonstrate in
their millions with song and festivity.
Five years of attainments, ever increasing.
Five years of slogans renewed and realized daily.
199
200 | RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
MY PHA
EBOTO PORTA
HCKYCCTB
No ANPEJIb }
- MAH
OTBETCTBEHHbIM PEDAHTOP
B. B. MAAKOBCHKHMKM
Fe
eae Te ea
rocyAAPCTBEHHOE K3SPATENLCTBO
MOCKBA 1923 NETPOrPAD
So-called Poets!
When will you throw away your sickly lyrics?
Will you ever understand that to sing praises of a tempest according to
newspaper information is not to sing praises about a tempest?
Give us a new Marseillaise and let the Internationale thunder the march
of the victorious Revolution!
So-called Artists!
Stop making patches of color on moth-eaten canvases.
Stop decorating the easy life of the bourgeoisie.
Exercise your artistic strength to engirdle cities until you are able to take
part in the whole of global construction!
Give the world new colors and outlines!
We know that the ‘‘priests of art’’ have neither strength nor desire to meet
these tasks: they keep to the aesthetic confines of their studios.
Comrades!
Split leftist art from rightist everywhere!
With leftist art prepare the European Revolution; in the U.S.S.R.
strengthen it.
Keep in contact with your staff in Moscow (Journal Lef, 8 Nikitsky
Boulevard, Moscow).
202 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
Not by accident did we choose the First of May as the day of our call.
Only in conjunction with the Workers’ Revolution can we see the dawn of
future art.
We, who have worked for five years in a land of revolution, know:
That only October has given us new, tremendous ideas that demand new
artistic organization.
That the October Revolution, which liberated art from bourgeois enslave-
ment, has given real freedom to art.
Down with the boundaries of countries and of studios!
Down with the monks of rightist art!
Long live the single front of the leftists!
Long live the art of the Proletarian Revolution!
V.
Constructivism and the
industrial Arts
e
Design for the cover of the catalogue of the exhibition “5 xX 5 =25’’ (Moscow, Sep-
tember 1921). Designed by Varvara Stepanova. Oil on canvas, 17.5 x 14 cm. Photo-
graph courtesy ofthe late Mr. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., New York. Since each catalogue of
“5 x § = 25” was handmade, with typed text, the cover varied: sometimes it was by
Aleksandr Rodchenko, sometimes by Stepanova. In addition, each of the participants
contributed an original work of art to the catalogue—Lyubov Popova, a collage;
Rodchenko, a drawing; etc.
VLADIMIR TATLIN
The Work Ahead of Us, 1920
Born Moscow, 1885; died Moscow, 1953; 1902-03: attended the Moscow Institute
of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; 1904-10: attended the Penza Art Institute;
1904-ca. 1908: made several voyages as a sailor through the Mediterranean
countries; 1909-10: again attended the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture; 1908-11: close to the Burliuk brothers, Mikhail Larionov and other
members of the nascent avant-garde; 1911: with Mikhail Le-Dantiyu et al.,
designed costumes for the play Emperor Maximilian and His Disobedient Son
Adolph; close to the Union of Youth; 1914: traveled to Berlin and Paris, where he
met Picasso; on his return to Russia began to work on his reliefs; at this time worked
closely with Aleksei Grischchenko, Lyubov Popova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and
Aleksandr Vesnin; 1912-16: contributed to the “Donkey’s Tail,” “Union of
Youth,” “Tramway V,” “‘o.10,” “Shop,” and other exhibitions; 1918: head of IZO
Narkompros [Visual Arts Section of Narkompros] in Moscow; 1919: head of the
Painting Department at Svomas, Moscow; then moved to Svomas, Petrograd;
1919-20: worked on the model of his Monument for the Third International; 1921:
close to Inkhuk; cofounder of IKhK; 1925-27: headed the Department of Theater
and Cinema at the Kiev Art Institute; 1929-32; designed and exhibited his Letatlin
glider; 1930s and 1940s: worked on theater decor and turned back to easel painting.
>
The text of this piece, ‘““Nasha predstoyashchaya rabota,” is from Ezhedneynyi
byulleten VIII-go sezda sovetov {Daily Bulletin of the Eighth Congress of Soviets]
(Moscow), no. 13, January I, 1921, p. 11. Cosignatories with Tatlin were Tevel
Shapiro, Iosif Meerzon, and P. Vinogradov, who assisted him on the project. The
text, which was dated December 31, 1920, has been translated into French in bibl.
145i, and English in the catalogue to the exhibition Vladimir Tatlin (Stockholm,
1968), p. 51 [bibl. 230], and except for the notes, which have been added, this
translation is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Modern Museet,
Stockholm. The text acts as a commentary on the model of Tatlin’s Monument for
the Third International, which had been transferred from Petrograd and erected in
Moscow on the occasion of the Eighth Congress of Soviets, in December 1920; in
general terms, the text provides an elucidation of, and justification for, the
construction of such an innovative and provocative project. Tatlin’s Monument (or
Tower), like Lissitzky’s Prouns (see p. 151), signalized a new constructive
conception by presenting an “organic synthesis of architectural, sculptural, and
painterly principles” [bibl. R444, p. 1] and, of course, provided an essential stimulus
205
206 [RUSS TAN ART OF CTIME AWis tereteDe
Vladimir Tatlin: Model for Letatlin (without sheathing fabric), 1932. Letatlin was a one-man
glider designed by Tatlin and so called from the combination of the verb lerar [to fly] and
Tatlin. Tatlin was not the only Soviet artist to think in terms of aerospace engineering; Petr Mi-
turich, for example, designed an ‘‘undulating dirigible’’ in 1931. Photograph courtesy_ private
collector, Moscow.
Pevsner—Real name Noton Pevzner. Born Orel, 1886; died Paris, 1962. Brother of
Naum. 1902-1909: attended the Kiev Art School; influence of Isaak Levitan and
Mikhail Vrubel; 1909-11: attended the St. Petersburg Academy; 1911-14: worked in
Paris; contact with Alexander Archipenko and Amedeo Modigliani; 1914-15: in
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 209
The text of this piece, Realisticheskii manifest, was published in August 1920 in
Moscow. An open-air exhibition of Gabo’s and Pevsner’s work was organized simul-
taneously. The term ‘‘realistic,’’ of course, does not imply a concern with realist,
representational depiction, but with the essential or absolute quality of reality—a
meaning that many Russian artists had favored (see, for example, the use of the term
by Larionov in his ‘‘Rayonist Painting’? or by Puni and Boguslavskaya in their
‘*Suprematist Manifesto’’). It might be argued, in fact, that the main function of
‘*The’ Realistic Manifesto’’ was to consolidate various ideas that had been supported
by the Russian avant-garde long before 1920, rather than to advance totally new
ones; furthermore, the manifesto itself exerted little influence on the actual develop-
ment of Russian constructivism or of Russian art in general and had much more sig-
nificance in the context of Western constructivisim. The text has been translated into
English by Gabo in Gabo (London: Lund Humphries; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1957), pp. 151-52 [bibl. 216]; except for the notes, which have
been added, this translation is reproduced here with kind permission of Naum Gabo,
who requested that I insert the following statement: ‘‘I am the sole author of this
Manifesto. The translation of it into English was also done by me. My brother, An-
toine Pevsner, asked permission to add his signature to it, to which I agreed.”’
Another English translation of the manifesto was published by Camilla Gray in The
Structurist (Saskatoon), no. 8, 1968, pp. 43-47. For a modern Soviet discussion of
this manifesto see V. Tasalov, Prometei ili Orfei [Prometheus or Orpheus] (Moscow,
1967), pp. 237-45.
ix
Antoine Pevsner: Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1926. High relief con-
struction, celluloid on copper (zinc), 65.4 x 94 cm. Yale University Art
Gallery, gift of Collection Société Anonyme.
What does Art carry into this unfolding epoch of human history?
Does it possess the means necessary for the construction of the new Great
Style?
Or does it suppose that the new epoch may not have a new style?
Or does it suppose that the new life can accept a new creation which is
constructed on the foundations of the old?
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 211
In spite of the demand of the renascent spirit of our time, Art is still
nourished by impression, external appearance, and wanders helplessly back
and forth from Naturalism to Symbolism, from Romanticism to Mysticism.
The attempts of the Cubists and the Futurists to lift the visual arts from
the bogs of the past have led only to new delusions.
Cubism, having started with simplification of the representative technique
ended with its analysis and stuck there.
The distracted world of the Cubists, broken in shreds by their logical
anarchy, cannot satisfy us who have already accomplished the Revolution or
who are already constructing and building up anew.
One could heed with interest the experiments of the Cubists, but one can-
not follow them, being convinced that their experiments are being made on
the surface of Art and do not touch on the bases of it seeing plainly that the
end result amounts to the same old graphic, to the same old volume and to
the same decorative surface as of old.
One could have hailed Futurism in its time for the refreshing sweep of its
announced Revolution in Art, for its devastating criticism of the past, as in
no other way could have assailed those artistic barricades of ‘‘good taste’’
. . powder was needed for that and a lot of it. . . but one cannot con-
struct a system of art on one revolutionary phrase alone.
One had to examine Futurism beneath its appearance to realize that one
faced a very ordinary chatterer, a very agile and prevaricating guy, clad in
the tatters of worn-out words like ‘‘patriotism,’’ 99
‘‘militarism,’’ ‘‘contempt
66
for the female,’’ and all the rest of such provincial tags.
In the domain of purely pictorial problems, Futurism has not gone further
than the renovated effort to fix on the canvas a purely optical reflex which
has already shown its bankruptcy with the Impressionists. It is obvious now
to every one of us that by the simple graphic registration of a row of
momentarily arrested movements, one cannot re-create movement itself. It
makes one think of the pulse of a dead body.
The pompous slogan of ‘‘Speed’’ was played from the hands of the Fu-
turists as a great trump. We concede the sonority of that slogan and we quite
see how it can sweep the strongest of the provincials off their feet. But ask
any Futurist how does he imagine ‘‘speed’’ and there will emerge a whole
arsenal of frenzied automobiles, rattling railway depots, snarled wires, the
clank and the noise and the clang of carouselling streets . . . does one re-
ally need to convince them that all that is not necessary for speed and for its
rhythms?
Look at a ray of sun. . . the stillest of the still forces, it speeds more
than 300 kilometres in a second. . . behold our starry firmament. . . who
212) / RUSSTAIN ART: OF THE AVANTGARDE
hears it. . . and yet what are our depots to those depots of the Universe?
What are our earthly trains to those hurrying trains of the galaxies?
Indeed, the whole Futurist noise about speed is too obvious an anecdote,
and from the moment that Futurism proclaimed that ‘‘Space and Time are
yesterday’s dead,’’ it sunk into the obscurity of abstractions.
Neither Futurism nor Cubism has brought us what our time has expected
of them.
Besides those two artistic schools our recent past has had nothing of im-
portance or deserving attention.
But Life does not wait and the growth of generations does not stop and we
go to relieve those who have passed into history, having in our hands the
results of their experiments, with their mistakes and their achievements,
after years of experience equal to centuries. . . we Say .
No new artistic system will withstand the pressure of a growing new cul-
ture until the very foundation of Art will be erected on the real laws of
Life.
Until all artists will say with us .
All is a fiction. . . only life and its laws are authentic and in life only the
active is beautiful and wise and strong and right, for life does not know
beauty as an aesthetic measure . . . efficacious existence is the highest
beauty.
Life knows neither good nor bad nor justice as a measure of morals .
need is the highest and most just of all morals.
Life does not know rationally abstracted truths as a measure of cog-
nizance, deed is the highest. and surest of truths.
Those are the laws of life. Can art withstand these laws if it is built on ab-
straction, on mirage, and fiction?.
We say .
Space and time are re-born to us today.
Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art
must be constructed.
States, political and economic systems perish, ideas crumble, under the
strain of ages . . . but life is strong and grows and time goes on in its real
continuity.
Who will show us forms more efficacious than this . . . who is the great
one who will give us foundations stronger than this?
Who is the genius who will tell us a legend more ravishing than this
prosaic tale which is called life?
The realization of our perceptions of the world in the forms of space and
time is the only aim ofour pictorial and plastic art.
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 213
In them we do not measure our works with the yardstick ' of beauty, we
do not weigh them with pounds of tenderness and sentiments.
The plumb-line in our hand, eyes as precise as a ruler, in a spirit as taut
as a compass . . . we construct our work as the universe constructs its
own, as the engineer constructs his bridges, as the mathematician his for-
mula of the orbits.
We know that everything has its own essential image; chair, table lamp,
telephone, book, house, man . . . they are all entire worlds with their own
rhythms, their own orbits.
That is why we in creating things take away from them the labels of their
owners . . . all accidental and local, leaving only the reality of the constant
rhythm of the forces in them.
1. Thence in painting we renounce colour as a pictorial element, colour is
the idealized optical surface of objects; an exterior and superficial impres-
sion of them; colour is accidental and has nothing in common with the in-
nermost essence of a thing.
We affirm that the tone of a substance, i.e. its light-absorbing material
body is its only pictorial reality.
2. We renounce in a line, its descriptive value; in real life there-are no
descriptive lines, description is an accidental trace of a man on things, it is
not bound up with the essential life and constant structure of the body.
Descriptiveness is an element of graphic illustration and decoration.
We affirm the line only as a direction of the static forces and their rhythm
in objects.
3. We renounce volume as a pictorial and plastic form of space; one cannot
measure space in volumes as one cannot measure liquid in yards: look at
our space . . . what is it if not one continuous depth?
We affirm depth as the only pictorial and plastic form of space.
4. We renounce in sculpture, the mass as a sculptural element.
It is known to every engineer that the static forces of a solid body and its
material strength do not depend on the quantity of the mass . . . example a
rail, a T-beam etc.
But you sculptors of all shades and directions, you still adhere to the age-
old prejudice that you cannot free the volume of mass. Here (in this exhibi-
tion) we take four planes and we construct with them the same volume as of
four tons ® of mass.
Thus we bring back to sculpture the line as a direction and in it we affirm
depth as the one form of space.
5. We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in art that held the static
rhythms as the only elements of the plastic and pictorial arts.
214 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE “AVANT
~G AR Die
We affirm in these arts a new element the kinetic rhythms as the basic
forms of our perception of real time.
These are the five fundamental principles of our work and our construc-
tive technique.
Today we proclaim our words to you people. In the squares and on the
streets we are placing our work convinced that art must not remain a sanctu-
ary for the idle, a consolation for the weary, and a justification for the lazy.
Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts. . . at the bench,
at the table, at work, at rest, at play; on working days and holidays. . . at
home and on the road . . . in order that the flame to live should not extin-
guish in mankind.
We do not look for justification, neither in the past nor in the future.
Nobody can tell us what the future is and what utensils does one eat it
with.
Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will.
We assert that the shouts about the future are for us the same as the tears
about the past: a renovated day-dream of the romantics.
A monkish delirium of the heavenly kingdom of the old attired in contem-
porary clothes.
He who is busy today with the morrow is busy doing nothing.
And he who tomorrow will bring us nothing of what he has done today is
of no use for the future.
Today is the deed.
We will account for it tomorrow.
The past we are leaving behind as carrion.
The future we leave to the fortune-tellers.
We take the present day.
ALEKSEI GAN
Constructivism [Extracts], 1922
Born 1893; died 1942. 1918-20: attached to TEO Narkompros [Teatralnyi otdel Nar-
komprosa—Theater Section of Narkompros] as head of the Section of Mass Presenta-
tions and Spectacles; end of 1920: dismissed from Narkompros by Anatolii Luna-
Construction and the Industrial Arts / 215
charsky because of his extreme ideological position; close association with Inkhuk;
cofounder of the First Working Group of Constructivists; early 1920s: turned to
designing architectural and typographical projects, movie posters, bookplates;
1922-23 editor of the journal Kino-fot [Cine-Photo]; 1926-30: member of OSA
[Obedinenie sovremennykh arkhitektorov—Association of Contemporary Archi-
tects] and artistic director of its journal, Sovremennaya arkhitektura [SA—
Contemporary Architecture; bibl. R84]; 1928: member of October group; during
1920s: wrote articles on art and architecture; died in a prison camp.
uei
a.nbHO MaTep
premmekTy
bTY PE KOMMY
‘anbHott KYHusMa.
was a member, had been founded in 1920 (see p. 241ff). However, the book, like
Gan himself, was disdained by many contemporary constructivists, and the signifi-
cance of the book within the context of Russian constructivism has, perhaps, been
overrated by modern observers.
In keeping with its tenets, the book’s textual organization and imagery are highly
“‘industrial’’: the elaborate typographical layout designed by Gan and the book’s
cover (desigred allegedly by Gan but suggested probably by Rodchenko [cf. the
definitive cover with the project by Rodchenko illustrated in bibl. R76, no. 1, 1923,
p. 106]) were intended, of course, to support the basic ideas of the text itself. Such
terms as tektonika [tectonics], faktura [texture], and konstruktsiya [construction]
were vogue words during the later avant-garde period, especially just after the Revo-
lution, and implied rather more than their direct English translations. The concepts of
texture and construction had been widely discussed as early as 1912-14, stimulating
David Burliuk and Vladimir Markov, for example, to devote separate essays to the
question of texture [see bibl. R269, R233]; and the concept of construction was, of
course, fundamental to Markov’s ‘‘The Principles of the New Art’’ (see pp. 23ff.).
The term ‘‘texture’’ was also used by futurist poets, and Aleksei Kruchenykh pub-
lished a booklet entitled Faktura slova [Texture of the Word] in 1923 [see bibl. 133,
p. 341, for details]. The term ‘‘tectonics’’ was, however, favored particularly by the
constructivists and, as the so-called ‘‘Productivist’’ manifesto explained, ‘‘is derived
from the structure of communism and the effective exploitation of industrial matter’’
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 217
{bibl. 216, p. 153]. But nonconstructivists also used the term; to Aleksandr Shev-
chenko, for example, a tectonic composition meant the ‘‘continual displacement and
modification of tangible forms of objects until the attainment of total equilibrium on
the picture’s surface’ [bibl. R16, p. 119]. To confuse matters further, Gan’s own
explanation of tectonics, texture, and construction was not at all clear: ‘‘Tectonics is
synonymous with the organicness of thrust from the intrinsic substance. . . . Tex-
ture is the organic state of the processed material. . . . Construction should be un-
derstood as the collective function of constructivism . . .”’ (Konstruktivizm, pp.
61-62). Nevertheless, despite Gan’s rhetoric and obscurity, the value of his book lies
in the fact that it crystallized, as it were, certain potential ideas in evidence since at
least 1920 and presented them as what can be regarded as the first attempt to formu-
late the constructivist ideology. The inconsistencies and pretentiousness of Gan’s
style of writing leave much to be desired. For extracts in French translation see bibl.
1451, pp. 205-II.
And under the auspices of the quasi Marxists work the black
thousands of votaries of art, and in our revolutionary age the
‘‘spiritual’’ culture of the past still stands firmly on the stilts of
reactionary idealism.
, ial
ctual-materla
of the inte communist
a
The proletariat and the proletarianized peasantry take absolutely no part in.
art.
220 | RUSSTAN ART OF THE AVANTGARDE
The character and forms in which art was expressed and the “‘social’’
meaning that it possessed affected them in no way whatsoever.
The proletariat developed and cultivated itself independently as a class
within the concrete conditions of the struggle. Its ideology was formulated
precisely and clearly. It tightened the lower ranks of its class not by play-
acting, not by the artificial means of abstraction, not by abstruse fetishism,
but by the concrete means of revolutionary action, by thematic propaganda
and factual agitation.
Art did not consolidate the fighting qualities of the proletarian revolu-
tionary class; rather it decomposed the individual members of its vanguard.
On the whole it was alien and useless to a class that had its own and
only its own cultural perspective.
During the whole time of the proletarian revolution, neither the depart-
ment in charge of art affairs, nor organizations, nor groups have justified
their promises in practice.
From the broadcast of revolutionary calls to the future, they turned off
into the reactionary bosom of the past and built their practice on the theory
of ‘‘spiritual’’ continuity.
But practice showed that ‘‘spiritual’’ continuity is hostile to the tasks of a
proletarian revolution by which we advance toward Communism.
is indissolubly linked:
with theology,
metaphysics,
and mysticism.
It arose naturally
developed naturally
And the more distinctly the motive forces of social reality confront our
consciousness, the more saliently its sociopolitical forms take shape—the
more the masters of artistic labor are confronted with the task of:
Breaking with their speculative activity (of art) and
of finding the paths to concrete action by employing
their knowledge and skill for the sake of true living and
purposeful labor.
Intellectual-material production establishes labor interrelations and a
productional link with science and technology by arising in the place of
art—art, which by its very nature cannot break with religion and phi-
losophy and which is powerless to leap from the exclusive circle of ab-
stract, speculative activity.
Tectonics
Texture EES
ii
and Construction es
—these are the disciplines through whose help we can emerge from
the dead end of traditional art’s aestheticizing professionalism onto the
path of purposeful realization of the new tasks of artistic activity in the
field of the emergent Communist culture.
WITHOUT ART, BY MEANS OF INTELLECTUAL-MATERIAL PRODUCTION, THE
CONSTRUCTIVIST JOINS THE PROLETARIAN ORDER FOR THE STRUGGLE WITH
THE PAST, FOR THE CONQUEST OF THE FUTURE.
BORIS ARVATOV .
The Proletariat
and Leftist Art, 1922
Bom Kiev, 1896; died Moscow, 1940. Ca. 1908: attended high school in Riga;
1911: member of the Union of Social Democratic Youth; ca. 1915: attended Pet-
rograd University, studying physics and mathematics; 1918: member of Proletkult;
1920: member of theCommunist Party; 1921: commissar on the Polish front; early
1920s: member of Proletkult; member of Inkhuk and the Russian Academy of
Artistic Sciences; closely associated with Lef [Levyi front iskusstv—Left Front of
the Arts], with the constructivists and formalists; author of books and many articles
on modern art and literature; died in a prison camp.
The text of this piece, ‘‘Proletariat i levoe iskusstvo,”’ is from Vestnik iskusstv [Art
Herald] (Moscow), no. 1, January 1922, pp. 10-11 [bibl. R59]; no. 2, pp. 3-5,
B26 1/1 UROU SISTIPAUNE NR age
AU Rudi ©, Beanie vee ACy aAUN lie
BECTHHR.
HCRYCCTB
a |
WEATP, AY3UIKA, RHBONHCL » AKTEPATYPA
ea
RE Ae
’
Cover of Vestnik iskusstv [Art Herald] (Moscow), no. 1, 1922. Artist un-
known.
It is shouted that the working class does not understand the leftist artists. I
should think so! . . . If you have been brought up on the vulgar, cheap, bad
taste of oleographs and postcards, you will not find it very easy to cross over
to the latest achievements of a superior culture. Anyway, is this really an
argument? Did the Marxists not at one time fight for their own ideas while
the proletariat firmly supported different ones?
All these objections stem entirely from a subjective nonacceptance of left-
ist art by our ‘‘ideologists’’ and their disciples, contaminated as they are by
old forms. Fetishists to the marrow of their bones, they behave toward in-
228 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
condition: that the artist knows how to make free use of those materials that
go to make up the poster as an expressive and actively organizational form;
and moreover, not to use them—as was done previously—in one definite di-
rection (in such and such a ‘‘style’’), but in any way, as a given concrete oc-
casion dictates. Inevitably this command of material presupposes an abstract
laboratory or, in other words, a laboratory in which the apprentice would
learn to experiment with raw materials in all sorts of ways by applying them
to any kind of direction and solving all kinds of problems with their help.
This laboratory would become the focal point where the paths of art,
science, practice, and theory would come together. And in this is to be
found the cardinal difference between contemporary abstraction and prole-
tarian abstraction (still to come). While the problems resolved by the former
are posed quite subjectively, are planned haphazardly, and depend ulti-
mately on the personal desires of the individual artist, the comradely collab-
oration of artists and theoreticians in the proletarian laboratory will create an
atmosphere in which each problem will emerge indispensably and objec-
tively from practical and conscious premises.
However, the significance of abstraction is in no way confined to this.
There is no need to explain that it is a direct step toward industrial art. A
decisive dissociation from applied art, from the invention of ‘‘nice motifs’’
for objects, from the ‘‘application’’ of art to technology is possible only
through an organic fusion of the industrial process with the process of artis-
tic design. But there are three points in the industrial process: the raw mate-
rial, the method of processing, and the purpose of the product. That is why
it is quite inconceivable for any artist who is incapable of mastering the raw
material, i.e., material used abstractly, to be in a factory. If he does happen
to turn up there, then the only results of his ‘‘creativity’’ will be fabrics ‘‘a
la impressionism,’’ cubist glasses, and futurist plates; ' that’s, at best—at
best, because all these articles will be original, albeit senseless; at worst
(and this is the predominant case in a bourgeois society), the artist will
devote himself to imitations of Egypt, the Renaissance, etc. Because where
can he get his originality from, if this ‘‘originality’’ has to be not his own
but simply expedient—and if expediency excludes preconceived form (i.e.,
‘‘originality’’)? . . . Hence only abstractionists are suitable for industry.
But if our contemporary artists and intellectuals arrive at the factory from
the polytechnic, i.e., become engineers, this will be the first historic ad-
vance—but only the first. The organizer and producer would, as before,
remain severed; the design of articles would, to a great extent, be fortuitous
and fragmented. And only the proletariat will overcome this—the proletar-
iat, which is destined by history to make the second advance: to fuse the
230 1 ROS SeVAUNGWAGRG IL (Oph ein GENE AVANT-GARDE
VIKTOR PERTSOV
At the Junction
of Art and Production, 1922
Born 1898; died Moscow, i980. Ca. 1920: worked in Ukrainian Narkompros;
moved to Moscow, where hejoined TsIT (see p. 307, n. 4, to “First Discussional’”’);
member of Moscow Proletkult; 1927-29: active in Novyi lef [New Left Front of the
Arts]; author of books and many articles dealing with Russian literature, especially
poetry; known for his studies of Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as for his own verse.
The text of this piece, ‘‘Na styke iskusstva i proizvodstva,’’ is from Vestnik iskusstv
[Art Herald] (Moscow), no. 5, May 1922, pp. 22-25 [bibl. R59; for details on the
journal see pp. 225-26]. It is one of Pertsov’s few articles on art, the bulk of his criti-
cal writing being devoted to literature, but it demonstrates his immediate awareness of
the central problems of productional art. Amid the general enthusiasm for construc-
tivism and industrial design shared by his colleagues, Pertsov was one of the first of
the new critics to indicate the dangers of such an attitude, and his obvious concern
for the continued independence of art as an activity outside industry (although not
necessarily alien to it) distinguishes his position from that of such figures as Osip
Brik and Aleksandr Rodchenko. Indeed, Pertsov is clearly resisting El Lissitzky’s
contemporaneous formulations, e.g., of “‘composition’’ and ‘‘construction’’ (cf.
bibl. 246 and bibl. 247, p. 36), and Aleksei Gan’s “‘algebraic’’ terminology (see pp.
214ff.), as well as the authoritarian attitudes of Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir
Tatlin. Pertsov’s maxim ‘‘Not Ideas but People’’ anticipates Yakov Chernikhov’s
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 231
later call for a more human, more “‘artistic’’ interpretation of constructivism (see pp.
254ff.).
The productional view of art has come to occupy our artistic conscious-
ness as a broad but obtuse issue. From this has arisen a sensation of mental
noise—an echo, undoubtedly, of the commotion that ensued after theore-
ticians and artists everywhere had felt a certain guilt before contempo-
raneity, technology, and other weighty pheonomena. Although all the opin-
ions of artists on production share the tone of an apology to somebody and
even of some sort of historical repentance, they do have one good conse-
quence: no longer will anyone be surprised that art can be linked in some
way with production and no longer is there any mention of stupid conversa-
tions about art and craft.
Productional Art
However, certain artists grew despondent and rejected art as the inevitable
result of this abnormal perception. The straightforward naiveté of these peo-
ple incited in their hearts a candid envy of the industrial proletariat. An ob-
ject’s direct usefulness and its technological value appeared to them the im-
mediate ideal and legitimate measure of artistic work. As in industry, one
must present objects that are obviously practical, and then the artist’s efforts
will be socially justified and utilized. This diminutive philosophy of art had,
willy-nilly, to confine the sphere of its bold activities to a consistent, evolu-
tionary transformation of, so to say, the subsidiary parts of our everyday re-
ality, its appurtenances. Apparently, all this was sparked off by the fact that
the windows and doors of our homes, the tables and chairs of our rooms, are
quite wietched, and the utensils we use every day, our clothes, etc., in no
way gladden the eye. i
History and technology have brought all this into the world without asking
the artist’s permission, but now ‘‘productional art’’ has been called upon to
improve these objects or to remake them afresh.
This is what the rejection of art came to mean, and essentially, this admi-
rable enthusiasm should not have encountered anything but obvious sympa-
thy.
Constructivism
Efficiently and smoothly—quite incomprehensible considering the discontent
that everyone had retained—a new conception of these problems was formu-
lated in Moscow under the name ‘‘constructivism.’’ This is what has hap-
pened. The scale of work that art-productional workers have set themselves
has been extended. If the latter are prepared to help in the production of
small articles, then the constructivists are ready to act as counselors to the
234 [i ORYU-S°S ISAUN OAURUT) (OLR DE
TPE EB AGY AUN GeALRE
secure market for the products of their labor—which, as a rule, sell badly—
would come true if productional art became ‘‘a reality.’’ Not everyone will
buy a book or picture, but everyone needs a convenient and elegant table or
chair. While people are uncultured enough to prefer an ax to its symbol in
the abstract world, and a pot of geraniums to a Cézanne still life, it is impos-
sible to talk of aesthetic needs as a mass fact, the more so since the ““good
taste’ of modern aesthetics forbids this.
Against this background the problem of the interrelations of art and pro-
duction could not be solved, but merely be dissected. This is what has hap-
pened to the now dominant views quoted above, not counting the vast flow
of words that have given spice to their little practical content.
Before the very eyes of those thinkers who had attempted to overcome the
above problem, objects of art and objects of industry stood in isolation—in
the forms that the uninitiated had perceived and distinguished most easily.
From these two sorts of lumber dumped together in one pile, common fea-
tures were abstracted; in this way, a fusion was produced all along the line.
The drawback lies in the fact that the methodology of orienting art to
production was sought for in an outdated, isolated, and mechanically sealed
inventory—with regard both to art an. to production.
EErOdHA M EMEQHEBHO
POCUMBKE
vv
OB cies
HEF AO-ONEBETTA
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg: Poster advertising a ‘‘Negro
Operetta’” in the second State Circus, 1928. One of many
posters the Stenberg brothers designed for the circus, the the-
ater, and the cinema in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
= HA TPSBHOM
Grigorii Borisov and Nikolai Prusakov: Poster for the movie The House on Trubnaya Street,
produced by Boris Barnet in 1928.
Despite their specific titles, there was little difference between the Concretists and
the Projectionists, both of whom favored easel painting and not, as their declarations
would imply, applied art. The canvases that they presented were, however, highly
imaginative and subjective, betraying the influence of German expressionism and
even surrealistic tendencies—particularly in the work of Goncharov, Sergei Luchish-
kin, Aleksandr Tyshler, and Vilyams. Most members of the seventh section, the
First Working Organization of Artists, shortly disappeared from the art scene, al-
though Nikolai Prusakov (formerly a member of Obmokhu—Society of Young Art-
ists) later achieved a reputation as a book and poster designer.
The First Working Group of Constructivists was founded in December, 1920 (judg-
ing by Gan’s Konstruktivizm, p. 3, by an announcement in Ermitazh, [Moscow],
1922, No. 13, p. 3, and by the group’s own statement in the catalogue to this
exhibition, p. 14), and its declaration quoted here repeated some of the ideas in its
initial so-called *‘Productivist’’ manifesto [see bibl. 216, p. 153] and in Gan’s book.
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 239
According to one source [bibl. R21,.p. 196], Lissitzky took the program of the First
Working Group with him when he went to Germany in 1921, thus disseminating
constructivist ideas in the West; some Western observers, including Hans Richter,
even acknowledged that constructivism had first arisen in Russia [ibid.]. The First
Working Group was not fully represented at this exhibition, which did not include
the group’s productional cell Mass Action and the Kinophot [Cinematography and
Photography] cell. Of the First Working Group represented at this exhibition, the
Chichagova sisters, Grigorii Miller, and Aleksandra Mirolyubova achieved some rec-
ognition in later years, contributing bookplate and other small graphic designs to
exhibitions.
Essentially, the exhibition acted as a junction of artistic interests: easel art versus in-
dustrial art. The exhibition’s title indicated also the quandary in which many artists
were finding themselves: the word ‘‘discussional’’ [diskussionyi] has the meaning in
Russian not only of “‘concerned with discussion or debate,’’ but also of ‘‘open to
question, debatable.”’
The texts of these pieces are from the catalogue of ‘‘l-ya Diskussionaya vystavka
obedinenii aktivnogo revolyutsionnogo iskusstva’’ (Moscow, 1924). The whole cata-
logue is reprinted in Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let [Soviet Art of the Last Fifteen
Years], ed. Ivan Matsa et al. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), pp. 313-18 [bibl. R16],
from which this translation 1s made. The catalogue name list is reprinted in bibl.
R152, p. 132, and extracts from the Constructivist declaration together with some
comments are in bibl. R22, p. 66. A detailed review of the exhibition is in bibl. R79,
1924, no. 4, pp. 120-29. Parts of the texts have been translated into German in bibl.
20QVill, pp. 143-45.
i lee
H.f CMAPHOE.
TAAWHA 4ANATOBA.
DABTA “HMA OBA.
AT
Galina and Olga Chichagova and Nikolai Smirnov: Page design for Smir-
nov’s book Kak lyudi ezdyat [How People Travel] (Moscow, 1925).
Concretists
240
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 241
materialist world view, the so-called ‘‘spiritual’’ life of society, the emo-
tional qualities of people can no longer be cemented by abstract categories
of metaphysical beauty and by the mystical intrigues of a spirit soaring
above society.
The Constructivists assert that all art makers without exception are
engaged in these intrigues, and no matter what vestments of realistic or natu-
ralistic art they are invested in, they cannot escape essentially from the
magic circle of aesthetic conjuring tricks.
But by applying conscious reason to life, our new young proletarian soci-
ety lives also by the only concrete values of social construction and by clear
objectives.
While constructing, while pursuing these aims not only for itself, but also
through itself, our society can advance only by concretizing, only by realiz-
ing the vital acts of our modern day.
And this is our reality, our life. Ideologically, as it were, consciously, we
have extirpated yesterday, but in practical and formal terms we have not yet
mastered today’s reality.
We do not sentimentalize objects; that is why we do not sing about ob-
jects in poetry. But we have the will to construct objects; that is why we are
developing and training our ability to make objects.
3. At the ‘*First Discussional Exhibition of Associations of New Groups
of Artistic Labor,’’ the Constructivists are showing only certain aspects of
their production:
I. Typographical construction of the printed surface
II. Volumetrical objects (the construction of an armature for everyday
life)
III. Industrial and special clothing
IV. Children’s books
The First Working Group of Constructivists consists of a number of pro-
ductional cells.
Of those not represented, mention should be made of the productional cell
Kinophot (cinematography and photography), the productional cell of mate-
rial constructions, and the productional cell Mass Action.
The First Working Group of Constructivists states that all other groups
that call themselves constructivists, such as the ‘‘Constructivist Poets,’’ }
the ‘‘Constructivists of the Chamber Theater,’’ 2 the ‘‘Constructivists of the
Meierkhold Theater,’’ 3 the ‘‘Lef Constructivists,’’ the ‘‘TsIT Construc-
tivists,’’ * etc., are, from this group’s point of view, pseudo constructivists
and are engaged in merely making art.
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 243
Basic Tenets
Workers of the World, Unite!
1. The First Working Organization of Artists is striving to make the artist
a socially indispensable element of modern life.
2. By organizing our personal and professional qualities, we organize the
production of artistic values as part of the normal relationship between the
artist and life.
3. By personal qualities we mean that spiritual, cultural level of con-
sciousness that is oriented toward the development of new social forms.
4. By professional qualities we mean that level of artistic culture and ar-
tistic consciousness that, while being closely bound up with contempo-
raneity, is oriented toward the development of new forms in art.
5. Through our practical and cultural activity we are organizing our psy-
chology in accordance with the basic principles of our organization.
Participants in the group: G. Aleksandrov, Petruzhkov, A. Vanetsian,
M. Sapegin, I. Korolev, K. Loginov, N. Menshutin, I. Yakovlev, N.
Prusakov (models, maquettes of architectural constructions and monu-
ments, montages, and paintings)
OSIP BRIK
From Pictures
to Textile Prints, 1924
Born St. Petersburg, 1888; died 1945. Ca. 1910: attended law school in St. Peters-
burg; 1916: member of Opoyaz [Obshchestvo poeticheskogo yazyka—Society of Po-
etical Language] in Petrograd; husband of Lilya Brik, famous for her association
with Vladimir Mayakovsky; 1918: member of IZO Narkompros [Visual Arts Section
of Narkompros]; 1919: leading member of Komfut, 1921: member of Inkhuk; 1923:
member of Lef [Levyi front iskusstv—Left Front of the Arts] and close to the con-
structivists and formalists; 1927: cofounder of Novyi lef [New Lef]; interested in
photography and film; 1929: wrote scenario for Wsevolod Pudovkin’s Heir of
Genghis Khan; late 1920s: contributed to many literary miscellanies, e.g., Literatura
fakta: pervyi sbornik materialov rabotnikov Lefa (Literature of Fact: First Collection
of Materials by Lef Workers] (Moscow, 1929).
The text of this piece, ‘‘Ot kartiny k sitsu,’’ is from Lef (Moscow), no. 2, 1924, pp.
27-34 [bibl]. R76; for details of the journal see pp. 199ff.]. The same number con-
tained an obituary of Lyubov Popova, who had been one of the first of the avant-
garde to concentrate on textile design [see bibl. R475, pp. 82-102; the text is
reprinted in bibl. R16, pp. 301-15]. Brik wrote mainly on questions of literature, but
his proximity to such artists as Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova during
the 1920s stimulated his interest in applied art. Many others wrote about art in
production, but Brik was among the first to indicate the necessity for special training
in this area: of the many avant-garde artists who turned from easel work to applied
art in the early 1920s, only Stepanova had had professional instruction as a designer
(in her case as a clothing designer). Brik’s statement can be taken as an expression of
Lef policy, and it amplified the statements on textiles and design issued a few months
before by Aleksandra Exter and Stepanova [bibl. R449, R463).
2d
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 245
it is indissolubly linked with the forms of the capitalist regime, with its cul-
tural ideology, that the textile print is now becoming the center of creative
attention, and that the textile print and work on it are the apex of artistic
labor. ’
And in fact, our cultural creation is founded wholly on a specific purpose.
We do not conceive of a cultural and educational work unless it pursues
some kind of definite, practical aim. The concepts of “‘pure science,’’ “‘pure
art,’’ ‘‘independent truth and beauty’’ are alien to us. We are practitioners—
and in this lies the distinctive feature of our cultural consciousness.
There is no place for the easel picture in this consciousness. Its force and
meaning lie in its extrautilitarianism, in the fact that it serves no other aim
than delighting, ‘‘caressing,’’ the eye.
All attempts to turn the easel picture into an agitational picture have been
fruitless. And this was not because there was no talented artist around, but
because this is essentially inconceivable.
The easel picture is calculated to exist a long time, for years and even
centuries. But what agitational subject would last that long? What agit-pic-
ture doesn’t grow old within a month? And if the subject of the agit-picture
grows old, then what remains?
246 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
Hence the conclusion: if you want to make good textile prints, learn to
paint landscapes.
The easel painters say: the artist, no matter where he works or what he
does, must master artistic culture, must be artistically educated. And it is
easel painting that gives him this artistic culture, this artistic education.
After mastering the ‘“‘secrets’’ of easel painting, he thereby masters the
“‘secrets’’ of any painterly work, whether it is a textile print, a book cover,
a poster, or theatrical decor.
And in this the easel painters are deeply mistaken.
A picture is the product of a specific kind of artistic labor. In order to
make a picture, a certain number of technical devices and skills have to be
employed. Precisely those devices and skills with which a picture can be
made. So how does it follow that these devices and skills are universal?
How can it suddenly transpire that devices and skills suitable for one craft
are also suitable for another?
Let us assume that partial coincidences are possible, that some of the
devices can prove to be general; why should one craft prove to be fun-
damental vis-a-vis another? Why should the making of a still life be more
‘‘fundamental’’ than that of a textile print? Why should one first of all learn
how to do a still life and then undertake textile prints, and not vice versa?
The easel painters love to compare pure easel painting with pure mathe-
matics. They say that both provide general principles, general tenets that are
then applied in practice.
But the easel painters forget that the picture is not science, but practice,
and that it establishes no ‘‘general’’ tenets. The experience of the easel
painter is not that of the artist in general, but is only the experience of a
single, individual case of painterly labor.
The easel painters want to uphold their right to exist.
If easel painting has died as a kind of socially necessary art craft, then let
it be revived as a universal artistic method, as the high school of every artis-
tic practice.
That is how the zealots of classical antiquity advocated the necessity of
Greek and Latin in secondary schools.
However, the pedagogical universality of easel painting is overthrown not
only by theoretical reasoning but also by everyday practical experience.
We know well the sad fate of artists who finish the easel-painting school
and try to apply their knowledge and skill in industry. Nothing comes of
their endeavors.
Anyway, easel painters in the main do not care a damn for industry. Rec-
ognition of industrial art is an empty phrase on their lips.
248 / RUSSIAN. ART OF THE VAVANT=GARDE
&
&
Lyubov Popova: Textile design,
{ ‘4 -ca. 1923. Gouache on paper.
Private collection, Moscow.
Some of Popova’s designs, in-
Varvara Stepanova, photographed by Aleksandr Rod- cluding this one, were applied to
chenko, 1924. She is wearing a dress of her own design. women’s dresses.
All the same, work in industry will always be inferior for the easel
painter. That is why it is not the easel painters who will discover the
methods of this work, and not from easel painting that the solution of
productional art problems will ensue.
Only those artists who once and for all have broken with easel craft, who
have recognized productional work in practice, not only as an equal form of
artistic labor, but also as the only one possible—only such artists can grap-
ple successfully and productively with the solution to the problems of con-
temporary artistic culture.
Among these artists, still not very numerous, are the Inkhuk members—
Rodchenko, Lavinsky, Vesnin, Stepanova, Ioganson, Senkin, Klutsis, and
Lyubov Popova (recently deceased).!
There is one very serious objection that easel painters make to the produc-
tional workers. They say: “‘In no way does your work differ from the most
primitive kind of applied art; you are doing what applied art workers always
did when ‘applying’ easel sketches to objects of factory production. And
what would you do if there weren’t any easel works? What would you
supply?”’
Indeed, artistic labor and factory work are still disunited. The artist is still
an alien in the factory. People treat him with suspicion. They do not let him
come too close. They do not believe him. They cannot understand why he
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 249
250
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 251
I was once obliged to dispute with an artist the fact that photography can-
not replace painting in a portrait. He spoke very soundly about the fact that a
photograph is a chance moment, whereas a painted portrait is the sum total
of moments observed, which, moreover, are the most characteristic of the
man being portrayed. The artist has never added an objective synthesis of a
given man to the factual world, but has always individualized and idealized
him, and has presented what he himself imagined about him—as it were, a
personal summary. But I am not going to dispute this; let us assume that he
presented a sum total, while the photograph does not. ;
The photograph presents a precise moment documentarily.
It is essential to clarify the question of the synthetic portrait; otherwise the
present confusion will continue. Some say that a portrait should only be
painted; others, in searching for the possibility of rendering this synthesis by
photography, follow a very false path: they imitate painting and make faces
hazy by generalizing and slurring over details, which results in a portrait
having no outward resemblance to any particular person—as in pictures of
Rembrandt and Carriere.
Any intelligent man will tell you about the photograph’s shortcomings in
comparison to the painted portrait; everyone will tell you about the character
of the Mona Lisa, and everyone forgets that portraits were painted when
there was no photography and that they were painted not of all the intelligent
people but of the rich and powerful. Even men of science were not painted.
You need not wait around, intelligentsia; even now AKhRR artists will
not paint you. True—they can’t even depict the sum total, let alone .oo1 of
a moment.
Now compare eternity in science and technology. In olden times a savant
would discover a truth, and this truth would remain law for about twenty
years. And this was learned and learned as something indusputable and im-
mutable.
Encyclopedias were compiled that supplied whole generations with their
eternal truths.
Does anything of the kind exist now? . . . No.
Now people do not live by encyclopedias but by newspapers, magazines,
card catalogues, prospectuses, and directionaries.
Modern science and technology are not searching for truths, but are open-
ing up new areas of work and with every day change what has been attained.
252 | RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
I maintain that there is no synthésis of Lenin, and there cannot be one and
the same synthesis of Lenin for each and everyone. . . . But there is a syn-
thesis of him. This is a representation based on photographs, books, and
notes.
It should be stated firmly that with the appearance of photographs, there
can be no question of a single, immutable portrait. Moreover, a man is not
just one sum total; he is many, and sometimes they are quite opposed.
By means of a photograph or other documents, we can debunk any artistic
synthesis produced by one man of another.
So we refuse to let Lenin be falsified by art.
Art has failed miserably in its struggle against photography for Lenin.
There is nothing left for it but to enlarge photographs and make them
worse.
The less authentic the facts about a man, the more romantic and interest-
ing he becomes.
So that is why modern artists are often so fond of depicting events long
past and not of today. That is why artists have enjoyed less popularity when
they have depicted contemporaneity—they are criticized, it is difficult to lie
to their faces. . . and they are acknowledged afterward when their contem-
poraries have died off.
Tell me frankly, what ought to remain of Lenin:
an art bronze,
oil portraits,
etchings, 3
water colors,
his secretary’s diary, his friends’ memoirs—
or
YAKOV CHERNIKHOV
The Construction of
Architectural and Machine
Forms [Extracts], 1931
Born Pavlograd, 1889; died Moscow, 1951. 1906: moved to Odessa, where he en-
tered the Odessa Art School; 1914: entered the St. Petersburg Academy, where he
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 255
studied painting and architecture; 1922-33: contributed graphics and designs to many
exhibitions in Moscow, Leningrad, and other towns; 1925: finished his academy
course with the title of architect-artist; 1926-36: taught in various Leningrad insti-
tutes; designed many buildings, especially industrial complexes; 1932:- appointed
professor at the Leningrad Institute of Railroad Transport Engineers and Academy of
Transport; 1935: received the degree of Candidate in Architectural Sciences; moved
to Moscow, where he headed the Department of Descriptive Geometry and Graphics
at the Institute of Engineering Economy; appointed head of the Department of Archi-
tecture of the Mossovet Building Institute.
Chernikhov’s text betrays the close tie among painting, sculpture, and architecture
maintained during the 1920s and, more specifically, the debt of constructivist archi-
tecture to Kazimir Malevich’s suprematism, to Lyubov Popova’s, Aleksandr Rod-
chenko’s, and Aleksandr Vesnin’s last paintings and drawings, and of course, to El
Lissitzky’s Prouns. Chernikhov’s own pedagogical and aesthetic theories owe a great
deal to the early researches carried out by the Zhivskulptarkh group (see p. 43), in
Inkhuk, and in Vkhutemas/Vkhutein. Chernikhov’s attribution of certain emotive
qualities to certain architectural forms, for example, derived its ultimate inspiration
from Vesnin’s initial endeavors to create color compositions that would produce in-
variable, predetermined psychological effects or from Nikolai Ladovsky’s categories
of ‘‘(a) Power and weakness; (b) Grandeur and abasement; (c) Finitude and infinity”’
256 | RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
Yakov Chernikhov (second row from bottom, second from right) and a
group of students in the early 1920s. Because of his dark, ominous ap-
pearance, Chernikhov was nicknamed Mephistopheles by students. Pho-
tograph courtesy Mr. Vsevolod Dobujinsky, New York.
164
Saas
Bewaunen apzavenry
pe (auvasua). Npe
OCTPaHOTeeNnNe- nen
OTpyHTeeHan Hemnese
una msernyytux ane
0S) er Seraa
it ae
168
Boemonnan epunveary
pe (dan oa) Bor
asnense yAepmacae
mon younndé, e6zusarTe
2 A2emenon apomase
B4 ‘
Yakov Chernikhov: Illustration from his Konstruktsiya ark-
hitekturnykh i mashinnykh form [The Construction of Archi-
tectural and Mechanical Forms] (Leningrad, 1931). All the
illustrations in this book were devoted to specific problems
of structural composition and design, although the subjects
themselves were often fanciful and rhetorical. The theme here
is ‘‘machine architecture.’’
Third law: When elements are grouped together on a basis of harmonic cor-
relation with each other, a complete constructive combination is ob-
tained.
Fourth law: Elements unified in a new whole form a construction when they
penetrate each other, clasp, are coupled, press against each other,
1.e., display an active part in the movement of the unification.
Sixth law: Every new construction is the result of man’s investigations and
of his inventive and creative needs.
2
Ninth law: Every constructive resolution must have a motive on the basis of
which the construction is made.
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts | 259
slow are now being simplified and speeded up. Hence the principles of
simplification, acceleration, and purposefulness emerge as the constant at-
tributes of a constructivist world view.
It is characteristic of constructivism that it forms a new understanding of
the object and a new approach to the creative process; namely, without
denying the value of such forces as inspiration, intuition, fantasy, etc., it
places the materialistic point of view in the foreground. This point of view
unites phenomena that were previously considered quite separate and dis-
parate: the phenomena of engineering and technology and the phenomena of
artistic creation. It is true, we know, that in former times these phenomena
sometimes came into contact with each other and appeared together in a har-
monic synthesis, as, for example, in the best works of architecture, which
satisfy both constructive requirements and the demands of good taste, our
aesthetic sense. However, the durable, firm, and logical link between these
phenomena envisaged by constructivism was lacking. Only by the absence
of this link can we explain the widespread development of decorative motifs
devoid of any functional justification (especially in baroque and art nouveau
architecture).
In former times machinery was considered something profoundly inartis-
tic, and mechanical forms were excluded from the province of beauty as
such; people did not talk about them as forms of artistic creation. But now
we know and see, thanks to the development of the constructivist world
view, that machinery not only lies within the confines of artistic conception
but also has its own indubitable and convincing aesthetic norms and canons.
These norms and canons are to be found in the fundamentals of construc-
tivism, which—for the first time in the history of man—has been able to
unite the principles of mechanical production and the stimuli of artistic cre-
ation. One must not consider constructivism something absolutely new, un-
precedented, and unheard of. It could be said that in its elementary princi-
ples constructivism is as ancient as the building art, as man’s creative
abilities. Primordial man, in building his dolmens, triliths, crypts, and other
edifices was unconsciously a constructivist. These initially primitive trends
of constructivism gradually become complex and crystallized in the course
of man’s centuries-long cultural development. The forms of constructivism
differentiated in proportion to the differentiation of culture.
The disunity of artistic and technological forms of which we spoke earlier
is gradually taking the shape of a common, integral aspiration toward ratio-
nal construction, or one could say that we are gradually uniting artistic con-
struction and machine construction; the boundary dividing them is being
erased. A new conception of the beautiful, a new beauty, is being born—the
Constructivism and the Industrial Arts / 261
7 ; r, 7 t at ‘
With
’ eG) (a ie b al Whe : ve '
Awe” & Ont adn ais na raph gt ay pew
mn 7 mrt
i *
—e 1 4 os 7 1 Peeves a
Vi.
Toward Socialist
Realism
_ACKYCCIBO
A X.— Poe
iL i A A
ss
Shortly after the forty-seventh exhibition of the Wanderers, in January 1922, a group
of artists, among them Aleksandr Grigorev, Evgenii Katsman, Sergei Malyutin, and
Pavel Radimov, organized the Assotsiatsiya khudozhnikov, izuchayushchikh revo-
lyutsionnyi byt [Association of Artists Studying Revolutionary Life], which was
shortly rechristened Obshchestvo khudozhnikov revolyutsionnoi Rossii [Society of
Artists of Revolutionary Russia]. After their first group show, ‘‘Exhibition of Pic-
tures by Artists of the Realist Direction in Aid of the Starving,’’ in Moscow (opened
May 1), the Society was renamed Assotsiatsiya khudozhnikov revolyutsionnoi Ros-
sii [AKhRR—Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia]. The primary aim of
its members was to present Revolutionary Russia in a realistic manner by depicting
the everyday life of the proletariat, the peasantry, the Red Army, etc. In restoring
tendentious theme to the picture, they returned to the traditions of the nineteenth-cen-
tury realists and declared their opposition to the leftists. In addition to older realists,
such as Abram Arkhipov, Nikolai Kasatkin, and Konstantin Yuon, AKhRR attracted
many young artists, such as Isaak Brodsky, Aleksandr Gerasimov, and Boris logan-
son. In order to acquaint themselves with proletarian reality, many of the AKhRR
members visited factories, iron foundries, railroad depots, shipyards, etc. By the
mid-1920s AKhRR was the most influential single body of artists in Russia, having
affiliates throughout the country, including a special young artists’ section called
OMAKhR [Obedinenie molodezhi AKhR—Association of AKhR youth], its own
publishing house [see bibl. R513], and of course, enjoying direct government sup-
port. In 1928 AKhRR changed its name to Assotsiatsiya khudozhnikov revolyutsil
{AKhR—Association of Artists of the Revolution], and in 1929 it established its own
journal /skusstvo v massy [Art to the Masses] [bibl. R70]. In 1932, together with all
other formal art and literary groups, AKhR was dissolved by the decree ‘‘On the
Reconstruction’ (see pp. 288ff.).
265
2OOm | RAUUSTS leAy NesAGRaT Our amlgrise AVANT-GARDE
The Great October Revolution, in liberating the creative forces of the peo-
ple, has aroused the consciousness of the masses and the artists—the spokes-
men of the people’s spiritual life.
Our civic duty before mankind is to set down, artistically and documen-
tarily, the revolutionary impulse of this great moment of history.
We will depict the present day: the life of the Red Army, the workers, the
peasants, the revolutionaries, and the heroes of labor.
We will provide a true picture of events and not abstract concoctions
discrediting our Revolution in the face of the international proletariat.
The old art groups existing before the Revolution have lost their meaning,
the boundaries between them have been erased in regard to both ideology
and form—and they continue to exist merely as circles of people linked
together by personal connections but devoid of any ideological basis or
content. :
It is this content in art that we consider a sign of truth in a work of art,
and the desire to express this content induces us, the artists of Revolutionary
Russia, to join forces; the tasks before us are strictly defined.
Toward Socialist Realism / 267
Isaak Brodsky: Lenin Giving a Farewell Speech to Detachments of the Red Army about to
Leave for the Polish Front on May 5, 1920, 1933. Oil on canvas, 280 x 422 cm. Collection
Central Lenin Museum, Moscow.
The text of this piece, ‘“Ocherednye zadachi AKhRRRa,”’ was issued as a circular
letter in May 1924, after the February exhibition ‘‘Revolution, Life, and Labor,”’
and was then published in a collection of articles edited by an AKhRR member,
Aleksandr Grigorev, Chetyre goda AKhRRa [Four Years of AKhRR] (Moscow,
1926), pp. 10-13. The text is reprinted in Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let [Soviet Art of
the Last Fifteen Years], ed. Ivan Matsa et al. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), pp.
345-48 [bibl. R16], from which this translation is made, and in bibl. R493, pp.
300-302.
268
Toward Socialist Realism | 269
In no way does this signify that we should ignore all the formal achieve-
ments of French art in the second half of the nineteenth century and to a cer-
tain extent in the first quarter of the twentieth within the general treasury of
world art (the careful, serious study and assimilation of the painterly and
formal achievements of modern art is an essential obligation of every serious
artist who aspires to become a master). AKhRR objects only to the aspira-
tion to reduce the whole development of art to the imitation and repetition of
models of the French school, a school that is nurtured, in turn, on the
sources of old traditions in art.
After their two years of work in factories and plants, after the many
exhibitions they organized—which laid the foundation for the Museum of
the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and for the Red Army and
Navy Museum—the main group of AKhRR members felt convinced that
subject matter, thematic method in the study and conversion of reality, was
the main element in organizing form.
It became clear to the AKhRR aartists that the factory, the plant, the
production worker, electrification, the heroes of labor, the leaders of the
Revolution, the new life of the peasants, the Red Army, the Komsomol and
Pioneers, the death and funeral of the Revolution’s leader—all this con-
tained a new color of unprecedented power and severe fascination, a new in-
terpretation of synthetic form, a new compositional structure; in a word,
contained the aggregate of those conditions whose execution would regener-
ate easel and monumental painting.
For the expression of these new forms created by the Revolution, the
frayed, lost forms and lacerated color hired from the masters of the French
school are absolutely useless.
For the expression of these new forms created by the Revolution a new
style is essential, a strong, precise, invigorating style that organizes thought
and feeling, the style that in our short declaration is called heroic realism.
The difficulty of solving and realizing the above tasks lies in the fact that,
while aspiring toward content in art, it is very easy to lapse into feeble,
simple imitation of a host of outdated art schools and trends.
Those artists, those young artists who wish first and foremost to be sin-
cere, who wish to shake off the yoke of vacuous philosophizing and inver-
sion of the bases of visual art decomposed through the process of analysis,
fully realize the necessity to regenerate the unity of form and content in art;
and they direct all their strength, all their creative potential, to the ceaseless
scientific and completely professional study of the new model, giving it the
acutely realistic treatment that our epoch dictates.
The so-called indifference to politics of certain contemporary groups of
270 1 OREUISTS AGN) AUR UD SO0Rn, THE WAG VaAG Nie tGnAckeDits
heights form will fuse with content. And the presidium of AKhRR and its
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) faction appeal to all artists who hold
near and dear the behests and aims set before AKhRR to rally around the as-
sociation in a powerful, united, artistic, and revolutionary organization.
AKhR
Declaration
of the Association of Artists
of the Revolution, 1928
October was founded in 1928, but its one exhibition did not open until June 1930, in
Moscow. October encompassed various artistic activities, although it concentrated on
the industrial and applied arts—and this, together with its emphasis on the proletariat
and on contemporaneity, recalled the ideas of Proletkult and constructivism. This is
confirmed by the association’s list of members and by the cosignatories of this decla-
ration, who included: representing poster art and book design—Aleksandr Alekseev,
Mecheslav Dobrokovsky, Vasilii Elkin, Paula Freiberg, Paul Irbit, Gustav Klutsis,
Alois Kreichik, Nikolai Lapin, El Lissitzky, Dmitrii Moor, Diego Rivera (in Mos-
coW 1927-28), Nikolai Sedelnikov, Sergei Senkin, Solomon Telingater, Béla Uitz,
Vikor Toot and, temporarily, Aleksandr Deineka; representing architecture—Aleksei
Gan, Moisei Ginzburg, Pavel Novitsky, and two of the Vesnin brothers, Aleksandr
and Viktor; representing film and photography—Sergei Eisenstein, Aleksandr Rod-
chenko, and Esfir Shub; and Alfred Kurella, Ivan Matsa, and Aleksei Mikhailov—
theorists of the group.
Deineka, Klutsis, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Senkin, and Varvara Stepanova were repre-
sented at its sole exhibition [for review see bibl. R70, no. 7, 1930, pp. 9-16]. A
collection of October declarations and articles by members entitled /zofront. Klas-
sovaya borba na fronte prostranstvennykh iskusstv [Visual Arts Front. The Class
Struggle on the Spatial Arts Front; bibl. R500] was scheduled to appear at the same
time as the exhibition, but the adverse political and artistic climate dictated a number
of prepublication changes. When the collection finally appeared in late 1931, the
publishers were careful to emphasize in their separate insert and apologetic preface
that the collection was being published as ‘‘material for creative discussion’’ despite
its numerous ‘‘vulgar, materialistic mistakes.’’ In 1932 October was accused of
‘‘abolishing art’’[see responses of RAPKh (Rossiiskaya assotsiatsiya proletarskikh
khudozhnikov—Russian Association of Proletarian Artists) to the decree ‘‘On the
Reconstruction’’ (pp. 288ff.) in Za proletarskoe iskusstvo [For Proletarian Art] (Mo-
scow), no. 9/10, 1932; reprinted in bibl. R16, p. 650]; in the same year October
was, in any case, dissolved as a result of the above decree.
273
274 | RUSSIAN ART -OF THEYAVAN ToGAR DE
iskusstv [The Struggle for Proletarian Class Positions on the Spatial Arts Front], was
published as a separate pamphlet in Moscow. Apart from this, there were three other
specific declarations: one by the National Sector of October (dated 1929), which
rejected the idealization of pre-Revolutionary art forms and cultures, thereby oppos-
ing AKhR’s support of nineteenth-century realist traditions; the Program of the Photo
Section of October (dated 1930), which rejected the ‘‘abstract’’ photography of such
artists as Laszl6 Moholy-Nagy and saw the value of photography to lie in its ‘‘actual-
ity,’ stipulating, moreover, that all members should be linked with industrial pro-
duction or with collective farms; and an Open Letter (dated 1930) from the young
artists’ section of October—Molodoi Oktyabr [Young October]—to the central presi-
dium of OMAKRhR (see p. 265) criticizing the latter’s passive, documentary interpre-
tation of proletarian reality. [These three declarations, together with the first, were
published in. bibl. R500, pp. 135-60, and are reprinted in bibl. R16, pp. 608-16,
619-23; the first declaration and that of the National Sector are reprinted in bibl.
R22, pp. 117-18, 121-22]. For a German translation see bibl. 209viii, pp. 180-83.
At the present time all art forms must define their positions at the front of
the Socialist cultural revolution. ;
We are profoundly convinced that the spatial arts (architecture, painting,
sculpture, graphics, the industrial arts, photography, cinematography, etc.)
can escape their current crisis only when they are subordinated to the task of
Toward Socialist Realism | 275
usta ¥KPRCHOU HABM” nogctons BO, ae Konysi Opnc, pyc asa aKoacua Hovas xy aosocmna nero Pasepa,
2 AL SSRN L ANAS OY tas Bagh ia,
Cover of the journal Krasnaya niva [Red Field] (Moscow), no. 12, 1928.
Designed by Diego Rivera. Rivera was in Moscow in 1927 and 1928 and
was a member of the October group. Photograph courtesy of the late
Mr. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., New York.
serving the concrete needs of the proletariat, the leaders of the peasantry,
and the backward national groups.
In participating consciously in the proletariat’s ideological class struggle
against hostile forces and in supporting the rapprochement of the peasantry
and the nationalities with the proletariat, the spatial arts must serve the pro-
letariat and the working masses in two interconnected fields:
in the field of ideological propaganda (by means of pictures, frescoes,
printing, sculpture, photography, cinematography, etc.);
276 | RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
The text of this piece, ‘‘Platforma OSTa’’ (part of the society’s code), was formu-
lated in 1929 but not published until 1933 in Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let [Soviet Art
of the Last Fifteen Years], ed. Ivan Matsa et al. (Moscow-Leningrad), p. 575 [bibl.
R16}, from which this translation is made. It was based probably on Shterenberg’s
lecture at the Communist Academy in Moscow in May 1928, entitled ‘‘Teore-
ticheskaya platforma i khudozhestvennaya praktika OSTa’’ [The Theoretical Plat-
form and Artistic Practice of OST]. OST contributed a great deal to the renewal of
easel activity and achieved very interesting results, particularly in the initial work of
Pimenov, Aleksandr Tyshler, and Vilyams. In some cases, as in Pimenov’s war pic-
tures, the influence of German expressionists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz
Cover of the exhibition catalogue of OST Aleksandr Deineka: Defense of Petrograd, 1927.
[Society of Easel Artists] (Moscow, 1927). Oil on canvas, 218 x 359 cm. Collection Central
Artist unknown. Museum of the Soviet Army, Moscow. Although
regarded as an important precusor of Socialist Real-
ist painting, this picture derives its subject and
CS AVS BOSH eh Ape Ree Heataelt
XYAOMECTBEHHDAOTAEA composition directly from Ferdinand Hodler’s The
Departure of the Volunteers in 1813, 1908, Fried-
rich Schiller University, Jena.
was especially noticeable, although this angular, skeletal quality was also effective in the
young Soviet artists’ depictions of industrial and mechanical scenes. OST members displayed
a technical competence and an intellectual energy lacking in the ‘“‘sketchy” studies of Four
Arts or the academic work of AKhRR. For a German translation see bibl. 209viii, pp. 342,
343.
On the basis of the following program, the Society of Easel Artists aims
to unite artists who are doing practical work in the field of the visual arts:
1. In the epoch of Socialist construction the active forces of art must be
participants in this construction; in addition, they must be one of the factors
in the cultural revolution affecting the reconstruction and design of our new
way of life and the creation of the new Socialist culture.
2. Bearing in mind that only art of high quality can envisage such tasks,
we consider it essential, within the conditions of the contemporary develop-
ment of art, to advocate the basic lines along which our work in the visual
arts must advance. These lines are:
a) The rejection of abstraction and peredvizhnichestvo ! in subject
matter
b) The rejection of sketchiness as a phenomenon of latent dilettantism
c) The rejection of pseudo Cézannism as a disintegrating force in the
discipline of form, drawing, and color
d) Revolutionary contemporaneity and clarity of subject matter
e) Aspiration to absolute technical mastery in the field of thematic
easel painting, drawing, and sculpture as the formal attainments of
the last few years are developed further
f) Aspiration to make the picture a finished article
g) Orientation toward young artists
The Four Arts Society was founded in Moscow in 1924 by, among others, Lev
Bruni, Vladimir Favorsky, Pavel Kuznetsov, Vladimir Lebedev, Petr Miturich,
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and as these names would indicate, the society was espe-
282), fo WA NVA
RUSS RUD» OUP T HOE RDA
ARV VAIN a -GeAS
cially interested in the decorative and lyrical aspects of art. Four Arts, however, was
eclectic and, apart from the above artists, represented at its four exhibitions
(1925, 1926, 1929, in Moscow; 1928, in Leningrad) such diverse artists as Ivan
Klyun (1926), El Lissitzky (1926), and unexpectedly, Ivan Puni (1928), and it even
numbered architects among its members. A history of Soviet architecture published
in 1970 [bibl. R22, p. 115] refers to five state exhibitions and one foreign one, but a
1965 Soviet publication on exhibitions of the visual arts [bibl. R152] does not sup-
port this. According to Ivan Matsa’s 1933 volume [bibl. R16, p. 338] and Troels An-
dersen’s catalogue of the Malevich collection in Amsterdam [bibl. 160, p. 163], Kazi-
mir Malevich was also represented at one of the Four Arts exhibitions, but the 1965
Soviet book [bib]. R152] does not corroborate this. Already in a state of decline in
1930, Four Arts underwent further disruption when some of its members left to join
AKhRR [see bibl. R16, pp. 581-82]; it was, in any case, dissolved by the decree
“On the Reconstruction’’ (see pp. 288ff.).
What the artist shows the spectator above all is the artistic quality of his
work.
Only in this quality does the artist express his attitude to the surrounding
world. -
The development of art and of artistic culture has reached the stage when
the most profound characteristic of its specific element is to be found in its
simplicity and closeness to human feeling.
Within the conventions of the Russian tradition, we consider painterly re-
alism to be most appropriate to the artistic culture of our time. We consider
Toward Socialist Realism | 283
the French school, a school that is most fully and most universally develop-
ing the basic qualities of the painterly art, to be of the greatest value to our-
selves.
in the transference undergone by visible forms, when the artist takes their
painterly meaning from life and constructs a new form—the picture. This
new form is important not because of its similarity to the living form, but
because of its harmony with the material out of which it is constructed. This
material—the picture’s surface and its color—consists of paint, canvas, etc.
The effect of an artistic form on the spectator derives from the nature of a
given medium, from its qualities and basic elements (music has its own,
painting its own, literature its own). The organization of these qualities and
the mastery of material for the attainment of this goal comprise artistic
creation.
PAVEL FILONOV
Ideology of Analytical Art
[Extract], 1930
Born Moscow, 1883; died Leningrad, 1941. 1897: moved to St. Petersburg;
1897-I901: engaged in house painting, decorating, and restoration work;
1903-1908; at the private studio of the academician Lev Dmitriev-Kavkazsky;
1908-10: attended the St. Petersburg Academy; 1910 and thereafter: close to the
Union of Youth, contributing to three of its exhibitions; 1912: traveled to Italy and
France; 1913: with Iosif Shkolnik designed decor for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s trag-
edy Vladimir Mayakovsky; 1914-15: illustrated futurist booklets and published a
long, neologistic poem with his own illustrations [bibl]. R347]; propounded the first
ideas of his theory of analytical art and his system called ‘“‘Mirovoi rastsvet’’ [Uni-
versal Flowering]; published his first manifesto, Sdelannye kartiny [Made Paint-
ings]; 1916-18: military service; 1923: briefly associated with the Petrograd Institute
of Artistic Culture (IKhK); 1925: established the Collective of Masters of
Analytical Art (the Filonov School); 1929-30: one-man exhibition planned at the
Russian Museum, Leningrad; 1930s: continued to paint according to his theories.
Pavel Filonov: Self-Portrait, 1909-10. India ink, 6.8 x 10.5 cm. Collec-
tion Russian Museum, Leningrad.
the exhibition reached their final stage, it was not opened ultimately for political
reasons and because of pressure from the AKhR artists. The catalogue contained a
preface by the critic Sergei Isakov (pp. 3-28), who criticized Filonov for his visual
distortion of workers and for his individualism. Filonov wrote the first draft of his
theory of analytical art in 1914-15, a second in 1923 (published as *‘The Declaration
of Universal Flowering’’ [bibl]. R508]), and thereafter several versions, but as such it
did not appear under the specific title ‘‘Ideology of Analytical Art’’ until the publica-
tion of this catalogue (which, in any case, carried only the short extract translated
here). The tension between the concepts of the intellect and the psyche, analysis and
intuition, central to Filonov’s theory was nowhere more evident than in his frequent
recourse to scientific terminology, paralleled in pictorial terms by his application of
concrete titles to highly subjective and abstract themes. Both the biological and intui-
tional concepts favored by Filonov betrayed the influence of Nikolai Kulbin on the
one hand, and of Vladimir Markov and perhaps even of Olga Rozanova on the
other—all of whom Filonov had known in St. Petersburg. Filonov’s theory had a cer-
tain following during the mid- and late 1920s, through his students, such as Yuliya
Arapova and Alisa Poret, and the Filonov School continued to exist during the early
1930s, contributing, inter al., to the remarkable edition of the Finnish Kalevala in
1933 [bibl]. R512]. Filonov’s proposed exhibition, his unflinching belief in his own
system, and the activity of his students constituted a last open stand against the of-
ficial and exclusive imposition of realism and socialist realism after about 1930. It
was a tragic paradox that Filonov, so deeply concerned with the formulation of a pro-
286. | RUS'SIAN-ART OF THEVA AN TGA
R DE
letarian art, should have been censured during his last decade as a ‘‘monstrous hybrid
of metaphysics and vulgar materialism . . . manifesting complete confusion in the
face of reality” [bibl. R491, p. 60]. For an English translation of similar texts see
bibl. 272111.
A work of art is any piece of work made with the maximum tension of an-
alytical madeness. !
The only professional criterion for evaluating a piece of work is its
madeness.
In their profession the artist and his disciple must love all that is ‘“made
well’’ and hate all that is ‘‘not made.’’
In analytical thought the process of study becomes an integral part of the
creative process for the piece being made.
The more consciously and forcefully the artist works on his intellect, the
stronger the effect the finished work has on the spectator.
Each brushstroke, each contact with the picture, is a precise recording
through the material and in the material of the inner psychical process taking
place in the artist, and the whole work is the entire recording of the intellect
of the person who made it.
Art is the reflection through material or the record in material of the
struggle for the formation of man’s higher intellectual condition and of the
struggle for existence by this higher psychological condition. Art’s efficacity
vis-a-vis the spectator is equal to this; i.e., it both makes him superior and
summons him to become superior.
The artist-proletarian’s obligation is not only to create works that answer
the demands of today, but also to open the way to intellect into the distant
future.
The artist-proletarian must act on the intellect of his comrade proletarians
not only through what they can understand at their present stage of develop-
ment.
Work on content is work on form and vice versa.
The more forcefully form is expressed, the more forcefully content is
expressed.
Form is made by persistent line. Every line must be made.
Every atom must be made; the whole work must be made and adapted.
Think persistently and accurately over every atom of the work you are
doing. Make every atom persistently and accurately.
Introduce persistently and accurately into every atom the color you have
Toward Socialist Realism | 287
a,
Ne sa
ye
studied—-so that it enters the atom just as heat enters the body or so that it is
linked organically with the form, just as in nature a flower’s cellulose is
linked with its color.
Painting is the colored conclusion of drawing.
Central Committee of the
All-Union Communist Party
(Bolsheviks)
Decree on the Reconstruction
of Literary and
Artistic Organizations, 1932
This decree, passed April 23, 1932, marked the culmination of a series of measures
that had been curtailing the artist’s independence (e.g., the decrees ‘‘On the Party’s
Policy in the Field of Artistic Literature,’’ 1925, and ‘‘On the Production of Poster
Pictures,’’ 1931). Before the 1932 decree there had been attempts to consolidate ar-
tistic forces by establishing umbrella societies, such as Vsekokhudozhnik [Vseros-
siiskii kooperativ khudozhnikov—All-Russian Cooperative of Artists] in 1929,
FOSKh in 1930 [see n. 1 to the October ‘*Declaration,’’ p. 308], and RAPKh in
1931 [see ibid.], but such organizations had retained a certain independence of the
political machine. The direct result of the 1932 decree was to dissolve all official art
groups immediately; and although the proposed single Union of Soviet Artists (i.e.,
Soyuz khudozhnikov SSSR [Union of Artists of the U.S.S.R.]) was not convoked until
1957, a special committee was organized in 1936 to take charge of all art affairs ex-
cept those involving architecture and the cinema—Komitet po delam iskusstv pri
Sovete ministrov SSSR [Committee for Art Affairs Attached to the Council of
U.S.S.R. Ministers]; in turn, the decree prepared the ground for the conclusive ad-
vocacy of socialist realism at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934
(see pp. 290ff.). For reactions to the decree see bibl. R16, pp. 645-51.
The Central Committee states that over recent years literature and art have
made considerable advances, both quantitative and qualitative, on the basis
of the significant progress of Socialist construction.
A few years ago the influence of alien elements, especially those revived
by the first years of NEP,’ was still apparent and marked. At this time,
when the cadres of proletarian literature were still weak, the Party helped in
288
Toward Socialist Realism | 289
every possible way to create and consolidate special proletarian organs in the
field of literature and art in order to maintain the position of proletarian
_ writers and art workers.
At the present time the cadres of proletarian literature and art have man-
aged to expand, new writers’ and artists have come forward from the facto-
ries, plants, and collective farms, but the confines of the existing proletarian
literature and art organizations (VOAPP, RAPP, RAPM,? etc.) are becom-
ing too narrow and are hampering the serious development of artistic crea-
tion. This factor creates a danger: these organizations might change from
being an instrument for the maximum mobilization of Soviet writers and art-
ists for the tasks of Socialist construction to being an instrument for cultivat-
ing elitist withdrawal and loss of contact with the political tasks of contem-
poraneity and with the important groups of writers and artists who
sympathize with Socialist construction.
Hence the need for the appropriate reconstruction of literary and artistic
organizations and the extension of the basis of their activity.
Following from this, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist
Party (Bolsheviks) decrees:
1. Liquidation of the Association of Proletarian Writers (VOAPP,
RAPP).
290 J REWIS'ST AUNSSACRD SOnb eT UH ENCAsV ASNi te Gran Reber
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE
FIRST ALL-UNION
CONGRESS OF SOVIET
WRITERS [EXTRACTS], 1934
The Union of Soviet Writers, founded in 1932, held its first congress in Moscow
August 17 to September 2, 1934. The minutes were published as Pervyi Vsesoyuznyi
sezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934. Stenograficheskii otchet [First All-Union Congress of
Soviet Writers 1934. Stenographic Report] (Moscow, November 1934) [bibl. R498;
English version bibl. 272]. This congress, under the chairmanship of Maxim Gorky,
played a major role in the history of Soviet culture not only because it constituted an
impressive symbol of solidarity (almost six hundred delegates from almost fifty So-
viet nationalities were present), but also because it advocated socialist realism as the
only viable artistic medium for Soviet literature and art. Throughout the 1920s, the
ideas of realism and, more specifically, heroic realism had been supported by Party
officials as well as by a number of Soviet writers and artists (the latter especially in
the context of AKhRR). Although the term socialist realism was coined in the
spring of 1932, its meaning remained imprecise as Lunacharsky, for example, in-
dicated: ‘‘Socialist realism is an extensive program; it includes many different
methods—those we already possess and those we are still acquiring’ [from ‘‘Sot-
sialisticheskii realizm’’—Socialist Realism—in bibl. R402, vol. 8, 501]. The 1934
congress, particularly in the persons of Gorky and Andrei Zhdanov, attempted to
explain the concept of socialist realism and to advance principles such as typicality,
optimism, “‘revolutionary romanticism,” “‘reality in its revolutionary development,’’
as fundamental to the understanding the new doctrine. In literature, in fact, Gorky
was regarded as the founder of socialist realism since these qualities could be iden-
tified with much of his work, particularly with his plays and with his famous novel
Mat [Mother] (1906). Within the framework of the visual arts, there was no precur-
sor of Gorky’s stature, although the very strong realist movement of the second half
of the nineteenth century provided a firm traditional basis, and later realists such as
Toward Socialist Realism / 291
Abram Arkhipoy and Nikolai Kasatkin acted as vital links between the pre-and post-
Revolutionary periods. While the emphasis of the congress was, of course, on litera-
ture, its general tenets were applicable to all the Soviet arts, especially to the visual
arts. Igor Grabar, once a peripheral member of the World of Art but never a radical
artist, made this quite clear in his speech: not only did he accept the Party’s jurisdic-
tion in matters of art, but also his description of the ‘‘distant past’’ as ‘‘dismal’’
echoed Gorky’s condemnation of the period 1907-17 as the ‘‘most disgraceful and
shameful decade in the history of the Russian intelligentsia’’ [bibl. R498, p. 12].
Grabar, already an Honored Art Worker and famous for his several pictures of
Lenin, was the only professional artist who spoke at the congress. However, some of
the literary speakers had been in contact with the more progressive forces of Russian
and Soviet art. Viktor Shklovsky and Sergei Tretyakov, for example, once associated
with Lef and with the constructivists, made substantial contributions to the congress,
although Shklovsky was quick to criticize his former artistic sympathies: ‘‘we,
former members of Lef, took what was useful from life, thinking that this was aes-
thetic; we constructivists created a construction that proved to be nonconstructive
... fibid., p. 155]. Such artists as Filonov, Malevich, and Tatlin were not, of
course, present at the congress. What became patently clear there was the degree to
which artistic policy in the Soviet Union relied on the political machine, a fact
expressed explicitly and implicitly in one of the opening speeches, by Andrei
Zhdanov, then secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. Although Stalin
himself did not speak at the congress, the numerous references to his leadership
strewed throughout the speeches, and the formal addrésses to Stalin and Marshal
Voroshilov that concluded the congress, indicated the power that the governmental
hierarchy already exerted in the field of art and literature. The effect of the congress
on the evolution of Soviet art was decisive. The ratification of socialist realism as the
only artistic style acceptable toxa Socialist society and, hence, as an international
style, together with the several subsequent decrees that attempted to abolish *‘forma-
lism’’ in the arts, led directly to its exclusive application in the U.S.S.R.; and al-
though this led, in turn, to a standardization of form and content, there is no doubt
that the portraits of official celebrities, the industrial and collective farm landscapes,
the scenes of the Red Army and Navy were immediately intelligible and achieved a
lasting popularity among the masses. A parallel is drawn sometimes between Soviet
socialist realism and American social realism of the 1930s and 1940s. While there
are similarities in method, it should be remembered that the city scenes of Philip
Evergood or Louis Lozowick, for example, were much more ‘‘actual’’ than their So-
viet counterparts, i.e., they were concerned with a given scene at a given time and
not with the potential of reality, with what Zhdanov called ‘“‘revolutionary roman-
ticism.’’ It was precisely this quality that lent a certain vigor and imaginativeness to
the Soviet work of the 1930s, evident, for example, in the scenes of factories under
construction, of harvesting, of shipyards, i.e., optimistic scenes that contained a
‘glimpse of tomorrow’’ (Zhdanov). Unfortunately, the postwar period has witnessed
an adulteration of the original socialist realist principles—revolutionary romanticism
292 | RUSSTANCART 0. THE fy AN Ge kp
There were twenty-six separate sessions at the congress, dedicated to various areas of
interest, and there were almost three hundred spoken contributions. Among the So-
viet speakers, many famous names figured, such as Isaak Babel, Demyan Bednyi,
Kornei Chukovsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Konstantin Fedin, Fedor Gladkov, Vera Inber,
Boris Pasternak, Marietta Shaginyan, and Aleksandr Tairov. In addition, there were
also forty-one non-Soviet participants, including Louis Aragon, Robert Gessner,
André Malraux, Klaus Mann, Karl Radek, Ernst Toller, and Amabel Williams-Ellis.
The full texts of the above pieces were published in the collection of reports,
speeches, and resolutions entitled Pervyi Vsesoyuznyi sezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934.
Stenograficheskii otchet [First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers 1934. Steno-
graphic Report], ed. Ivan Luppol et al. (Moscow, November 1934) [bibl. R498], and
the translations are from pp. 2-5, 13-14, 545-46, and 716 respectively. A version of
the proceedings appeared in an English translation as Problems of Soviet Literature
(New York, 1935) [bibl. 272]; although much abridged it contains the full texts of
the Zhdanov and Gorky speeches as well as of Karl Radek’s ‘‘Contemporary World
Literature and the Tasks of Proletarian Art’? and Nikolai Bukharin’s ‘‘Poetry, Poetics
and the Problems of Poetry in the USSR.’’ For details on the general artistic climate
of the 1930s, including commentary on the congress, see bibl. 256, 265, R494,
R497, R503.
prospects. Our Party has always derived its strength from the fact that it
united—and continues to unite—particular activity and practicality with
grand prospects, with a ceaseless aspiration onward, with the struggle for
the construction of a Communist society. Soviet literature must be able to
show our heroes, must be able to catch a glimpse of our tomorrow. This will
not be a utopia, because our tomorrow is being prepared today by our sys-
tematic and conscious work.
Create works with a high level of craftsmanship, with high ideological
and artistic content!
Be as active as you can in organizing the transformation of the human
consciousness in the spirit of Socialism!
Be in the vanguard of the fighters for a classless Socialist society! [Loud
applause}.
of knowledge and transposes them into very precise, vivid, and intelligible
words. Our young literature cannot boast of this quality. Our writers’ re-
serves of impressions, their depths of knowledge are not great, and one
does not feel that they care much about expanding and deepening their
reserves.
Comrades, we, visual arts workers, have come here to give the congress our
warmest proletarian greetings in the name of the entire army of the visual
arts front.
Comrades, there are no realms more closely linked than those of Soviet
literature and Soviet art. Comrade writers, you depict life as you see it, un-
derstand it, and feel it, and we depict it in the same way. You use the
method of socialist realism, and we too use this well-tested method—the
best of all existing ones.
I don’t have to remind you that we are not merely the illustrators of your
books; we are also your comrades in arms. We together have fought, are
fighting, and will fight our common class enemy [Applause]. We both have
the same class aspiration. We both have a common past, a common present,
and a common future.
It is not worth dwelling on the distant past. It is dismal enough. In those
days there did not exist the Socialist direction that emerged only with the
Revolution and that alone rouses us to perform real, heroic deeds.
But even in the recent past, in the first years of the Revolution, not every-
thing went smoothly from the start. Our ranks were thin. Slowly but surely
they began to expand as decisive progress was made on the front of Socialist
construction, and with this gradual expansion these ranks came to assume an
impressive force.
Comrade writers, we share with you one very important date—April 23,
1932—the day when the fact of our inclusion in the great edifice erected by
the Party was recognized, an inclusion unconditional and unreserved. In this
the Party displayed its trust in us and rendered us a great honor.
Comrades, hitherto we have not fully justified this trust and honor, but we
296 / RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE
have come here to take a solemn oath that we will justify this trust and
honor in the very near future.
Comrades, we have paid great heed to everything that has gone on within
these walls over the past weeks. We have listened to so many of you state
that this congress has taught you much. Comrades, this congress has taught
us a great deal too. We hope to make good use of your experience and of the
ideas that you have expressed here at our own congress, which will take
place in the near future—a congress of visual arts workers [Applause].”
For the moment, allow me to state that your congress has already redou-
bled our belief in the proximity of the final victory of Socialism, that this
congress has trebled our conviction and our will to give over our pencil and
our chisel to the great creator of Socialism and a classless society—to the
mighty Party of Lenin and to its leader, Comrade Stalin [Applause].
Comrades, as a sign of our strength of will, allow me to present this
congress with a portrait of our leader—done by one of the representatives of
our younger generation, Comrade Malkov [Long applause}.°
The great victories of the working class in the struggle for Socialism have
assured literature, art, science, and cultural growth as a whole of exceptional
prospects for their development.
The fact that non-Party writers have turned toward the Soviet regime and
that proletarian artistic literature has achieved gigantic growth has, with
urgent insistence, demonstrated the need to unite writers’ forces—both Party
and non-Party—in a single writers’ organization.
The historic resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Com-
munist Party (Bolsheviks) on April 23, 1932, indicated that the organiza-
tional form of this unification would be the creation of a single Union of So:
viet Writers. At the same time, it pointed to the ideological and creative
paths along which Soviet artistic literature would advance.
Toward Socialist Realism / 297
A decisive condition for literary growth, for its artistic craftsmanship, its
ideological and political saturation, is the close and direct link of the literary
movement with the topical issues of the Party’s policies and the Soviet
regime, the inclusion of writers in active Socialist construction, and their
careful and profound study of concrete reality.
During the years of proletarian dictatorship, Soviet artistic literature and
Soviet literary criticism, hand in hand with the working class and guided by
the Communist Party, have worked out their own new creative principles.
These creative principles have been formulated on the one hand as a result
of critical assimilation of the literary heritage of the past and, on the other,
on the basis of a study of the experience gained from the triumphant con-
struction of Socialism and the development of Socialist culture. These cre-
ative bases have found their chief expression in the principles of socialist re-
alism.
Socialist realism, as the basic method of Soviet artistic literature and liter-
ary criticism, requires of the artist a true, historically concrete depiction of
reality in its Revolutionary development. In this respect, truth and historical
concreteness of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the
task of the ideological transformation and education of the workers in the
spirit of Socialism.
Socialist realism assures artistic creation of exceptional prospects for man-
ifesting creative initiative, of a choice of diverse forms, styles, and genres.
The victory of Socialism, the intense growth of production forces unprece-
dented in the history of mankind, the growing process of class liquidation,
the abolition of any possibility of man exploiting man and the abolition of
the opposition between town and country, and finally the unprecedented
progress in the growth of science, technology, and culture—all these factors
create limitless opportunities for the qualitative and quantitative growth of
creative forces and the flowering of all species of art and literature.
Netes
NOTES TO THE
INTRODUCTION
298
Notes / 299
tions between the color spectrum and the conventional seven-tone scale. The second article
in Studio of the Impressionists was, in fact, a piece by Kulbin on ‘‘Free Music: The Results
of Applying a Theory of Artistic Creation to Music’’ [bibl. R227]; the main ideas of this ar-
ticle had already appeared in Kulbin’s booklet Free Music [bibl. R226}, and later appeared
in German as ‘‘Die freie Musik’’ [bibl. 96].
3. By profession both Chekhov and Kulbin were doctors.
MARKQYV, pp. 23-38
Le “Logic has deprived Nature of the divine.’’ Reference not traced. Probably a quotation from
Novalis or the early Hegel.
PE For explanation of lubok see n. 4 to Introduction, p. 298.
3; Presumably a reference to the writer, composer, and painter E. T. A. Hoffmann. Like
Novalis and other German romantics, Hoffmann enjoyed a vogue in Russia in the 1900s.
4. Markov’s ideas on “‘texture’’ [faktura] were scheduled to appear in a subsequent issue of
Soyuz molodezhi (Union of Youth], but since the journal ceased publication after the third
issue (March 1913), Markov’s essay was published separately (bibl. R233]. At the end of
his text Markov also indicated that lhe would be writing on other principles, such as gravity,
surface, dynamism, and consonance, but these essays were never published.
Aksenov means, presumably, Cézanne’s Mardi Gras of 1888, which was in the Sergei
Shchukin collection. It is now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
Anton Rubinstein’s opera The Merchant of Kalashnikov was staged by Sergei Zimin’s com-
pany in Moscow in the winter of 1912/13.
In 1909 Petr Konchalovsky was commissioned by the merchant Markushev to execute
panels and ceiling decorations for his Moscow villa. The Moscow Salon was the name of an
important exhibiting society that held regular shows between 1910 and 1918. Koncha-
lovsky’s contribution to the first show in the winter of 1910/11, included his designs for the
Markushev villa—Gathering Olives, Gathering Grapes, Harvest, and The Park.
In November 1911 Konchalovsky, together with Georgii Yakulov, designed the decor for a
charity ball called ‘‘A Night in Spain’’ at the Merchants’ Club, Moscow.
. The portrait of the artist Yakulov was executed in 1910 and at present is in the Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow. For Konchalovsky’s own description of the work see bibl. R103, vol. 2,
pp. 434ff.
Italian patriot and revolutionary. The reference, presumably, is to Mazzini’s almost constant
exile from Italy, during which he never ceased to believe in his dogmatic and utopian princi-
ples of Italian nationalism and working-class solidarity—despite the fact that for much of his
life he was out of touch with the real moods of the Italian populus.
9. A reference to the prehistoric ivory figures of Brassempouy in southern France.
3. The actual word Larionov uses is vitro; this, presumably, is a corruption of the French word
vitraux (plural of vitrail), meaning leaded- or stained-glass windows.
4. Larionov did not, in fact, develop this theory, although a booklet devoted to the subject of
pneumorayonism was scheduled for publication, according to an advertisement in the mis-
cellany Oslinyi khvost i mishen [Donkey’s Tail and Target]; among Larionov’s contributions
to his exhibition “‘No. 4,’’ in 1914, one work, Sunny Day, was subtitled ‘‘Pneumorayonist
Color Structure” [bibl. R318]. A further development was ‘‘plastic rayonism,’’ which ap-
peared as a subtitle to two still lifes shown by Larionov at the ‘Exhibition of Painting.
1915’ [bibl. R277]; one review of this exhibition also referred to it [bibl. 230, Das
3. In 1918 IZO Narkompros established a Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund with the aim
of acquiring works of art and theoretical materials for a complex of diverse museums,
among them five so-called Museums of Painterly (sometimes called Artistic or Plastic) Cul-
ture in Moscow, Petrograd, Nizhnii-Novgorod, Vitebsk, and Kostroma. Aleksandr Rod-
chenko was head of the Museum Bureau and by mid-1920 the Bureau had acquired 1,200
paintings and drawings and 106 sculptures, which it dispersed among the museums men-
tioned above and other provincial museums. The Museums of Painterly Culture were ‘‘col-
lections of works of painting, sculpture, applied art, popular art, spontaneous art, and works
done by experimental painterly and plastic techniques. These Museums are constructed on
the principle of the evolution of purely painterly and plastic forms of expression. . .”
(bibl. R420, p. 80]. The largest was the one in Moscow—housed in the same building as
Svomas/Vkhutemas. It contained examples of most of the avant-garde, including Aleksandr
Drevin (three works), Vasilii Kandinsky (six), Kazimir Malevich (nine), Lyubov Popova
(two), Rodchenko (five), Olga Rozanova (six), Vladimir Tatlin (one), and Nadezhda Udalt-
sova (four); Klyun was represented by two canvases and by a small collection of his research
writings and tabulations on color. Although initially the Museum Bureau included Derain
and Picasso on its list of wants and stipulated that acquisitions should cover all periods, it
concerned itself almost exclusively with Russian art of the early twentieth century. Each mu-
seum was divided into four sections—(1) experimental technique, (2) industrial art, (3)
drawings and graphics, (4) synthetic art. The museums worked in close conjunction with the
local Svomas and, in the case of Moscow, Petrograd, and Vitebsk, with Inkhuk. For further
details see bibl. R16, R66, R420. The artist Aleksei Grishchenko presented a list of pro-
posals concerning the museums in February 1919—see bibl. R16, p. 83.
MALEVICH, Pp. 143-45
I. I.e., From Cubism to Suprematism. See pp. 116ff.
2. Malevich saw the genesis of suprematism in his 1913 decor for the futurist opera Victory
Over the Sun (see p. 116), one backdrop of which was an apparently abstract composition
{reproduced in bibl. 45, pl. 99; bibl. 83, p. 383].
3. Le., at ‘‘o.10,’’ December 19, 1915—January 19, 1916.
ROZANOVA, Pp. 148
i An extract from Rozanova’s ‘‘The Bases of the New Creation’’ (pp. 102ff.) was also in-
cluded in this section of the catalogue. Rozanova had died a few months before, and the
“First State Exhibition’ had been devoted to a posthumous showing of her works; works at
the ‘‘Tenth State Exhibition’’ by Ivan Klyun, Aleksandr Vesnin, and others were dedicated
to her.
. The journal Supremus never actually appeared, although it was prepared for publication in
Moscow early in 1917 under the editorship of Kazimir Malevich. Apart from Rozanova’s
piece, a contribution by Malevich [bibl. 160, p. 148] and an essay on music by Mikhail Ma-
tyushin and the composer Nikolai Roslavets were scheduled.
RODCHENKO, pp. 148-51
If This is the title of the first section, and the closing line, of Max Stirner’s Die Einzige und
sein Eigenthum [The Ego and His Own], first published in Leipzig in 1845. Max Stirner
(pseudonym of Joseph Kaspar Schmidt) had achieved a certain popularity in Russia in the
1900s because of the more general interest in individualism and intuition generated by such
varied influences as Bergson, Nietzsche, and Steiner. Stirner’s philosophy of extreme indi-
vidualism had appealed in particular to the symbolists; a Russian translation of Die Einzige
und sein Eigenthum appeared in St. Petersburg in 1910 under the title Edinstvennyi i ego
dostoyanie. Just after the Revolution, there was a renewal of interest in Stirner, albeit from a
highly critical standpoint, mainly because Marx and Engels had treated him in some detail
[see their “‘Sankt Max,’’ in Dokumente des Sozialismus, ed. Eduard Bernstein (Berlin:
Verlag der Sozialistischen Monatshefte, 1905), vol. 3, 17ff.].
Notes | 305
. The reference is from a play by the futurist Aleksei Kruchenykh called Gly-Gly (a transra-
tional title). Part of the text was published in Kruchenykh’s book Ozhirenie roz [Obesity of
Roses]; this book carries no publication details, although it dates probably from 1918 and
was printed in Tiflis. Among the play’s motifs are those of painting and the color black, and
among the dramatis personae Kazimir Malevich and Kruchenykh figure.
. The Whitman extract is from Part Four of ‘‘Song of the Broad-Axe’’ (Leaves of Grass). For
the significance of Whitman in Russia, see n. I to Larionov’s ‘‘Rayonist Painting,’’ p. 302.
. This is from Otto Weininger’s ‘‘Aphoristisch Gebliebenes, ” in Uber die letzten Dinge
”
(‘Remaining Aphoristic,’’ in On the Latest Things], first published in Vienna in 1907 (the
present quotation can be found on p. 56 of the sixth edition, Vienna, 1920). Like Max Stir-
ner, Weininger was known in Russia especially during the 1900s, and his famous treatise
Geschlecht und Charakter [Sex and Character] had been translated into Russian in 1909, ac-
companied by several articles in the Russian press [see, for example, Boris Bugaev, ‘‘Na
perevale. Veininger o pole i kharaktere,’’ in bibl. R44, no. 2, 1909, pp. 77-81].
Quotation not traced. Possibly a paraphrase of a passage from Stirner’s Die Einzige und sein
Eigenthum. See n. 1 above.
. The Whitman extract is from ‘‘Gliding O’er All,’’ from ‘‘By the Roadside’ (Leaves of
Grass). See n. 1 to Larionov’s ‘‘Rayonist Painting,’’ p. 302.
1919; on February 2, 1921, the academy was reinstated. See Introduction for other details.
3 . In 1918, both collections were nationalized and became the First and Second Museums of
New Western Painting; in 1923 both were amalgamated into a single Museum of New West-
ern Painting; in the early 1930s many of the museum’s works were transferred to the Her-
mitage in Leningrad, and in 1948 all the holdings were distributed between the Hermitage
and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The idea of establishing a museum of modern painting
was not new in Russia: as early as 1909, a group of artists and critics including Ivan Bilibin,
Nikolai Rerikh, and Vselovod Meierkhold had favored such a proposal. See Filippov,
‘“‘Gallereya sovremennykh russkikh khudozhnikov’’ [A Gallery of Modern Russian Artists]
in bibl. R43, no. 4/6, 1909, p. 45; the Union of Youth had also supported the idea—see
Shkolnik, ‘‘Muzei sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi’? [A Museum of Modern Russian Paint-
ing] in bibl. R339, no. 1, 1912, pp. 18-20.
The Bibliography contains only published items and makes no reference to the many
archives relevant to modern Russian art that are in public and private hands. Al-
though the Bibliography is not exhaustive, particular attention has been paid to recent
Western and Soviet publications concerned with subjects under discussion. Where
sources contain comprehensive bibliographies, this is indicated, and therefore, many
titles already listed in these bibliographies, as well as all the texts translated in the
main part of the book, are omitted below.
The Bibliography is divided into two sections: A, works in languages other than
Russian, and B, works in Russian. Bibliographical information on each contributor
will be found in the appropriate division of section A, unless indicated otherwise.
For obvious reasons the many minor references to contributors are not given, but for
further information on a given artist, critic, or movement, the reader is urged to con-
sult listings within the corresponding theoretical or chronological framework—
especially the periodicals.
Asa general rule, 1972 was set as the final date for bibliographical entries.
Since the publication of the American edition of this book in 1976, a very large
amount of literature, both Western, Japanese and Soviet, has appeared pertaining
to the Russian avant-garde. A selection of the more important titles from these
many monographs, exhibition catalogues and collections of articles has been added
to the original Bibliography below in the form of supplements identified by lower
case Roman numerals, e.g. 26i, R23i, etc. As a general rule, 1985 was set as the final
date for these supplements.
309
310 / Bibliography
. Alpatov, Mikhail. Russian Impact on Art. Edited and with a Preface by Martin
L. Wolf. Translated from the Russian by Ivy Litvinov. New York: Philosophical
Library; Toronto: McLeod, 1950.
. L’Art russe des Scythes a nos jours. Paris: Grand Palais, 1967-68. Exhibition
catalogue.
. Benois, Alexandre. The Russian School of Painting. Translated by Abraham
Yarmolinsky. New York: Knopf, 1916; London: Laurie [1919].
. Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian
Culture. New York: Knopf; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966.
. Braikevitch, Tatiana. An Outline of Russian Art Leading to the Period Known as
“Mir Iskusstva.’’ London: Woman’s Printing Society, 1950.
. Bunt, Cyril. Russian Art. From Scyths to Soviets. London and New York: Stu-
dio, 1946.
. Chamot, Mary. Russian Painting and Sculpture. London: Pergamon, 1969.
. Eliasberg, Alexander. Russische Kunst. Munich: Piper, 1915.
\o
on . Fiala, Vladimir. Russian Painting of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Prague: Artia,
1955.
. Froncek, Thomas, ed. The Horizon Book of the Arts of Russia. Introductory
essay by James H. Billington. New York: American Heritage, 1970.
. Gibellino Krasceninnicowa, Maria. L’ Arte russa moderna e contemporanea: pit-
tura e scultura. Rome: Palombi, 1960.
. Gibellino Krasceninnicowa, Maria. Storia dell’arte russa. Rome: Maglione,
1935-37.
. Grabar, Igor, ed. Geschichte der russischen Kunst. Translated from Russian by
Kurt Kuppers. Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1957-65. Bibl.
. Hamilton, George Heard. The Art and Architecture of Russia. Baltimore:
Penguin, 1954. Bibl.
. Hare, Richard. The Art and Artists of Russia. London: Methuen, 1965.
. Matthey, Werner von. Russische Kunst. Zurich-Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1948.
. Muther, Richard (in collaboration with Alexander Benois). ‘‘Russia.’’ In
Muther, Richard. The History of Modern Painting. Vol. 4. London: Dent; New
York: Dutton, 1907, pp. 236-85.
. Nemitz, Fritz. Die Kunst Russlands. Baukunst. Malerei. Plastik. Vom 11 bis 19
Jahrhundert. Berlin: Hugo, 1940.
. Newmarch, Rosa. The Russian Arts. London: Jenkins; New York: Dutton, 1916.
. Réau, Louis. L’Art russe des origines a Pierre te Grand. Paris: Laurens, 1921.
Bibl.
. Réau, Louis. L’Art russe de Pierre le Grand a nos jours. Paris: Laurens, 1922.
Bibl.
Bibl. 20 and 21 updated and reprinted as: L’Art russe. 3 vols. Paris: Mara-
bout Université, 1968. Bibl.
Bibliography / 311
22. Rice, Tamara Talbot. A Concise History of Russian Art. London: Thames and
Hudson; New York: Praeger, 1963. Bibl.
23. Rubissow, Helen. The Art of Russia. New York: Philosophical Library; London:
Crowther, 1946.
24. A Survey of Russian Painting. 15th Century to the Present. New York: Gallery
of Modern Art Including the Huntington Hartford Collection, 1967. Exhibition
catalogue.
25. Woinow, Igor. Meister der russischen Malerei. Berlin: Diakow, 1924.
26. Wulff, Oskar. Die neurussische Kunst im Rahmen der Kulturentwicklung Russ-
lands von Peter dem Grossen bis zur Revolution. Augsburg: Filser, 1932.
26i. Alpatov, Michail. Uber Westeuropdische und russische Kunst. Dresden: VEB,
1982.
2611. Auty, R. and Obolensky, D., eds. Companion to Russian Studies. 3. An
Introduction to Russian Art and Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1980, Bibl.
26111. Bowlt, John E. Russian Art 1875-1975. A Collection of Essays. New York:
MSS, 1976.
26iv. Jernakoff, Nadja and Bowlt, John E., eds. Transactions of the Association of
Russian-American Scholars in USA. New York, 1982,. vol. 15. Special issue
devoted to Russian art.
26v. Kemenoy, Vasilii. The USSR Academy of Arts. Leningrad: Aurora, 1982.
-26vi. Massie, Susan. Land of the Firebird. The Beauty of Old Russia. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1980.
26vii. Russian and Soviet Painting. New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1977.
Exhibition catalogue.
26viii. Williams, Robert: Russian Art and American Money. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University, 1980.
ao Benois, Alexandre. Memoirs. Translated from the Russian [R92] by Moura Bud-
berg. London: Chatto and Windus; Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1960.
33- Berninger, Herman, and Cartier, Jean. Jean Pougny (Ivan Puni). Catalogue de
l’oeuvre. Tubingen: Wasmuth, 1972. Vol. 1, Les années d’ avant-garde. Russie-
Berlin, 1910-1923. Bibl.
34. Besangon, Alain. ‘‘La dissidence de la peinture russe (1860-1922).’’ Annales
(Paris), vol. 2, March/April 1962, 252-82.
Reprinted in English as ‘‘The Dissidence of Russian Painting.’’ In The
Structure of Russian History, ed. by Michael Cherniavsky, pp. 381-411.
New York: Random House, 1970.
Bojko, Szymon. See 65.
35. Bowlt, John E. ‘‘The Failed Utopia. Russian Art 1917-32.’’ Art in America
(New York), vol. 59, no. 4 (July/August 1971), 40-51.
Bowlt, John E. See 40, 67.
Brinton, Christian. See 66.
36. Carter, Huntly. ‘‘Russian Art Movements Since 1917.’’ Drawing and Design
(London), vol. 4, February 1928, 37-42.
Cartier, Jean. See 33.
37. Chatwin, Bruce. ‘‘Moscow’s Unofficial Art.’’ The Sunday Times Magazine
(London), May 6, 1973, pp. 36-54.
38. Cimaise (Paris), vol. 15, no. 85/86 (February/April 1968).
Whole issue devoted to the Russian avant-garde.
39. Il Contributo russo alle avanguardie plastiche. Milan and Rome: Galleria del
Levante, 1964. Exhibition catalogue.
40. Diaghilev and Russian Stage Designers: A Loan Exhibition of Stage and Cos-
tume Designs from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. N. Lobanov-Rostovsky. In-
troduction by John E. Bowlt. Washington, D.C.: International Exhibitions Foun-
dation, 1972. Exhibition catalogue.
Circulated by the International Exhibitions Foundation, 1972-74.
4. Dreier, Katherine S., and Duchamp, Marcel, comps. Collection of the Société
Anonyme: Museum of Modern Art, 1920. New Haven: Yale University Art
Gallery, 1950. Exhibition catalogue.
Duchamp, Marcel. See 41.
42. Fueloep-Miller, René. The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of
Cultural Life in Soviet Russia. London and New York: Putnam, 1928. Rev. ed.:
New York: Harper, 1965. Bibl.
43. Gray, Camilla. “‘The Genesis of Socialist Realist Painting: Futurism, Suprema-
tism, Constructivism.’’ Soviet Survey (London), no. 27 (January/March 1959),
Pp. 32-39.
44. Gray, Camilla. “‘The Russian Contribution to Modern Painting.’’ The Burling-
ton Magazine (London), vol. 102, no. 686 (May 1960), 205-11.
45. Gray, Camilla. The Great Experiment. Russian Art 1863-1922. London:
Thames and Hudson; New York: Abrams, 1962. Reissued as: The Russian Ex-
Bibliography / 313
periment in Art: 1863-1922. London: Thames and Hudson; New York: Abrams,
1970. Bibl.
46. Grohmann, Will. Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work. New York: Abrams,
[1958]. Bibl.
47. Guercio, Antonio del. Le Avanguardie russe e sovietiche. Milan: Fabbri, 1970.
48. Guercio, Antonio del. ‘‘Pour une histoire qui reste a écrire: |’avant-garde
russe.’’ Opus International (Paris), no. 24/25, May 1971, pp. 20-25.
49. Haskell, Larissa. ‘“‘Russian Paintings and Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum
Oxford.’’ Oxford Slavonic Papers (Oxford), n.s. vol. 2 (1969), 1-38.
50. Haskell, Larissa. “‘Russian Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum.”’ Ox-
ford Slavonic Papers (Oxford), n.s. vol. 5 (1972), I-51.
51. Hilton, Alison. ‘‘When the Renaissance Came to Russia.’’ Art News (New
York), vol. 70, no. 8 (December 1971), 34-39, 56-62.
52. Jar-Ptitza (Firebird) (Berlin), 1921-26.
This was an émigré journal devoted mainly to the Russian arts. Summaries
of the Russian text appeared variously in English, French, and German.
53. Karpfen, Fritz. Gegenwartkunst: 1. Russland. Vienna: Verlag Literaria, 1921.
54. Leyda, Jay. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. London: Allen and
Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1960.
55. Loukomski, George. History of Modern Russian Painting (1840-1940). London:
Hutchinson; Toronto, Ryerson, 1945.
56. Lozowick, Louis. Modern Russian Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art—
Société Anonyme, 1925.
57. Lwoff, Lolly. L’Art russe a Paris. Paris: La Russie et le Monde Slave, 1931.
Text in French and Russian.
58. Marcadé, Valentine. Le Renouveau de l'art pictural russe. Lausanne: L’ Age
d’Homme, 1971. Bibl.
59. Meyer, Franz. Marc Chagall. New York: Abrams; London: Thames and Hud-
son, 1964. Bibl.”
60. Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich. Outlines of Russian Culture. Edited by Michael
Karpovich. Translated from the Russian by Valentine Ughet and Eleanor Davis.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania; Oxford: Oxford University, 1942.
Vol. 3, 59-100. Translation of R116.
61. Nakov, Andrei. Alexandra Exter. Booklet issued for the Exter exhibition at
Galerie Jean Chauvelin, Paris, 1972.
62. Osteuropdische Avantgarde (bis 1930). Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska-Bargera,
1971. Exhibition catalogue.
63. Pleynet, Marcelin. ‘‘L’ Avant-garde russe.’’ Art /nternational (Lugano), vol. 14,
no. I (January 20, 1970), 39-44.
64. Pougny, Jean. L’Art contemporain. Berlin: Frenkel-Verlag, 1922. Published
also in Russian: R172.
65. Progressive russische Kunst. Preface by Szymon Bojko. Cologne: Galerie
Gmurzynska, 1973. Exhibition catalogue.
314 / Bibliography
66. The Russian Art Exhibition. Introduction by Christian Brinton. New York:
Grand Central Palace, 1924. Exhibition catalogue.
67. Russian Avant-Garde 1908-1922. New York: Leonard Hutton Galleries, 1971.
Exhibition catalogue. Essays by S. Frederick Starr and John E. Bowlt.
68. Russian Stage and Costume Designs for the Ballet, Opera and Theatre: A Loan
Exhibition from the Lobanov-Rostovsky, Oenslager, and Riabov Collections. In-
troduction by Georges Annenkov. Washington, D.C.: International Exhibitions
Foundation, 1967. Exhibition catalogue.
Circulated by the International Exhibitions Foundation, 1967-69.
69. Russische Kiinstler aus dem 20 Jahrhundert. Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska-
Bargera, 1968. Exhibition catalogue.
70. Salmon, André. L’Art russe moderne. Paris: Laville, 1928.
71. Schmidt, Werner. Russische Graphik des XIX und XX Jahrhunderts. Leipzig:
VEB Seemann, 1967.
This is an enlarged version of 150 Jahre russische Graphik 1813-1963.
Katalog einer Berliner Privatsammlung. Prepared by Winifried Dierske,
Glaubrecht Friedrich, and Werner Schmidt. Dresden: Staatliche Kunst-
sammlungen, 1964.
72 Seuphor, Michel. *‘Au temps de |’avant-garde.’’ L’Oeil (Paris), no. 11, Novem-
ber 1955, Pp. 24-39.
73- Sjeklocha, Paul, and Mead, Igor. Unofficial Art in the Soviet Union. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California, 1967; London: Cambridge Univer-
sity, 1968.
74. Sotheby and Co. Catalogue of 20th Century Russian Paintings, Drawings and
Watercolours. Sold July 1, 1970, London.
75 Sotheby and Co. Catalogue of 20th Century Russian Paintings, Drawings and
Watercolours. Sold April 12, 1972. London.
76. Sotheby and Co. Catalogue of 20th Century Russian Paintings, Drawings and
Watercolours 1900-1930. Sold March 29, 1972, London.
Starrs, Frederick. see.67:
17: Steneberg, Eberhard. *‘Die Ungeduldigen. Zum Verstandnis der Ecole Russe.”’
Das Kunstwerk (Baden-Baden), vol. 13, no. 2/3 (August/September 1959),
3-26.
78. Steneberg, Eberhard, ed. Beitrag der Russen zur modernen Kunst. Diisseldort:
Wintersheidt, 1959.
79. Steneberg, Eberhard. Russische Kunst, Berlin 1919-1932. Berlin: Mann, 1969.
Bibl.
80. Tugendhold, Jakob. Alexandra Exter. Translated from the Russian [bibl]. R181]
by Count Petrovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo. Berlin: Sarja, 1922.
81. Two Decades of Experiment in Russian Art (1902-1922). London: Grosvenor -
Gallery, 1962. Exhibition catalogue.
82. Umanskij, Konstantin. Neue Kunst in Russland, 1914-1919. Potsdam/Munich:
Kiepenheuer/Goltz, 1920.
Bibliography / 315
84xx. Omuka, Toshiharu, ed. Art Vivant. Tokyo, 1982, No. 7-8. Special issue
devoted to Russian art 1900-1930 (in Japanese).
84xxi. Paris-Moscou. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1979. Exhibition
catalogue.
84xxii. Pasternak, Josephine (introd). The Memoirs of Leonid Pasternak. London:
Quartet, 1982.
84xxiii. Rudenstine, Angelica et al. Russian Avant-Garde: The George Costakis
Collection, New York: Abrams; London: Thames and Hudson, 1981.
84xxiv. Russische Kunst des 20 Jahrhunderts. Sammlung Semjonow, Esslingen am
Neclear: Galerie der Stadt, 1984. Exhibition catalogue.
84xxv. Russische Malerei 1890-1917. Frankfurt: Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, 1976.
Exhibition catalogue.
84xxvi. Russische und sowjetischer Kunst. Tradition-Gegenwart. Disseldorf: Stadt-
ische Kunsthalle, and other cities, 1984. Exhibition catalogue.
84xxvil. Russisk malerei fra slutten av det 19. og begynnelsen av det 20 arhundre.
Oslo: Munch-Museet, 1983. Exhibition catalogue.
84xxvill. Sammlung Costakis. Dusseldorf: Kunstmuseum, 1977. Exhibition
catalogue.
84xxix. Sieben moskauer Kuinstler/Seven Moscow Artists 1910-1930. Cologne:
Galeria Gmurzynska, 1984. Exhibition catalogue.
84xxx. Vom Klang der Bilder. Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie, 1985. Exhibition catalogue.
84xxxi. Zelinsky, Bodo. Russische Avantgarde, 1907-1921. Bonn: Grundmann,
1983.
89. Guenther, Johannes von. Ein Leben im Ostwind. Zwischen Petersburg und Mun-
chen. Erinnerungen. Munich: Biederstein, 1969.
go. Hahl-Koch, Jelena. Marianne Werefkin und der russische Symbolismus. Munich
Sagner, 1967. Bibl.
QI. Jullian, Philippe. Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890's.
Translated by Robert Baldick. New York: Praeger, 1971.
92. Kalmakoff. Paris: Galerie Motte, 1965. Exhibition catalogue.
93. Kalmakoff. London: Hartnoll and Eyre, 1970. Exhibition catalogue.
94. Kandinsky, Wassily. Uber das Geistige in der Kunst. Munich: Piper, 1912.
First English translation: The Art of Spiritual Harmony. London: Constable;
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914. Several subsequent editions, under vary-
ing titles, e.g., On the Spiritual in Art, Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
95: Kandinsky, Wassily. ‘‘Uber die Formfrage.’’ In Der Blaue Reiter, edited by
Kandinsky and Franz Marc, pp. 74-100. Munich: Piper, 1912.
Several subsequent editions.
English translation: *‘On the Question of Form.’’ In The ‘“‘Blaue Reiter’
Almanac, edited and with an Introduction by Klaus Lankheit. Translated by
Henning Falkenstein with the assistance of Manug Terzian and Gertrude
Hinderlie, pp. 147-87. The Documents of 2oth-Century Art. London:
Thames and Hudson; New York: Viking, 1974.
Kandinsky, Vasilii. Works by: 94, 95, R222, R223, R392-94.
Biography: 46.
Other works on: 97, 100.
Bibl. information: 46.
Kandinsky, Vasilii, Works by: 94, 95, I0IVv, IOIX, IOIXxili, 101xiv, R217IVv,
R222, R223, R392-94.
Biography: 46 «
Other works on: 84xxiii, 97, 100, IOIVi, IOIVii, IOI Vili, IOIXi, IOIxi,
IOIXV, IOIXVi, IOIXVil.
96. Kulbin, Nikolai. ‘‘Die freie Musik.’’ In Der Blaue Reiter, edited by Wassily
Kandinsky and Franz Marc, pp. 69-73. Munich: Piper, 1912.
Apart from the Russian versions of this essay [R226-27], it had also ap-
peared in French: Nicolas Koulbine. La musique libre. Application a la
musique de la nouvelle théorie de la création. St. Petersburg: Voennaya
tipografiya, 1910. Several subsequent editions.
English translation: ‘Free Music.’’ In The ‘‘Blaue Reiter’’ Almanac, pp.
141-46. See under bibl. 95.
Kulbin, Nikolai. Works by: 96, R224-31, R307.
Biography: R240.
Other works on: R102, R217iv, R218, R220, R239.
Some bibl. information: 133, R240.
Book illustrations: R219, R229, R291, R292, R340.
Marc, Franz. See 95.
318 / Bibliography
114. Chamot, Mary. Gontcharova. Paris: La Bibliotheque des arts, 1972. Bibl.
Chamot, Mary. See 102.
115. Cooper, Douglas. The Cubist Epoch. London: Phaidon, 1971.
Exhibition catalogue: Los Angeles County Museum and Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, 1971.
116. Davies, Ivor. ‘‘Primitivism in the First Wave of the Twentieth-Century Avant-
Garde in Russia.’’ Studio International (London), vol. 186, no. 958 (Sep-
tember 1973), 80-84.
ite Dreier, Katherine S. Burliuk. New York: Museum of Modern Art—Société
Anonyme, 1944.
118. Erster deutscher Herbstsalon. Berlin: Galerie Der Sturm, 1913. Exhibition cat-
alogue.
119. Exposition de N. Gontcharova et M. Larionov. Compiled by Guillaume Apol-
linaire. Paris: Galerie Paul Guillaume, 1914. Exhibition catalogue.
Fry, Roger. See 142.
120. Gambillo, Maria Drudi, and Fiori, Teresa, eds. Archivi del futurismo. Rome:
De Luca, 1958.
Selected translations in: Apollonio, Umbro, ed. Futurist Manifestos.
Translated from the Italian by Robert Brain, R. W. Flint, J. C. Higgitt,
Caroline Tisdall. The Documents of 20th-Century Art. London: Thames
and Hudson; New York: Viking, 1973. ‘‘Futurist Painting: Technical
Manifesto”’ appears on pp. 27-31.
121. George, Waldemar. Larionov. Paris: La Bibliotheque des arts, 1966. Bibl.
German edition: Lucerne and Frankfurt: Bucher, 1968.
122.The Goncharova-Larionov Exhibition. Introduction by Christian Brinton. New
York: Kingore Gallery, 1922. Exhibition catalogue.
133 Gonjarova-Larjonov-Mansourov. Bergamo: Galleria Lorenzelli, 1966. Exhibi-
tion catalogue.
Goncharova, Natalya. Works by: 149, R252.
Biography: 114.
Other works on: 84xxili, 102, 103, 113, 119, 122, 123, 127, 132, 137, 145ill,
145Xi, 145xii, 146, 148, 150, 1761x, 176xvii, R264, R335, R349, R354,
R356, R357.
Bibl. information: 114, 132.
Book illustrations: 1451v, R272, R279, R292, R296, R299, R306, R319.
Gray, Camilla. See 102.
124. Jensen, Kjeld Bjornager. ‘‘Marinetti in Russia—1g10, 1912, 1914?’’ Scando-
Slavica (Copenhagen), vol. 15 (1969), 21-26.
125. Khérumian, Raphaél, et al. Notes et Documents. Paris: Société des amis de
Georges Yakoulov, no. 1, 2, 3 (1967, 1969, 1972). Bibl.
126. Kriz, Jan. ‘‘Pawel Nikolajewitsch Filonow. Mitbegriinder und Kritiker der rus-
sischen kiinstlerischen Avantgarde.’’ Alte und Moderne Kunst (Vienna), vol.
96 (1968), 32-39.
Bibliography | 321
RAYONISM
SUPREMATISM
(Note: entries in this section are highly selective; the reader is referred to 33,
159, and 160 in particular for comprehensive bibliographies. )
ISI. Andersen, Troels. ‘‘Malevich on ‘New Art.’ ’’ Studio International (London),
vol. 174, no. 892 (September 1967), 100-105.
Andersen, Troels. See 27, 159, 160.
Boguslavskaya, Kseniya. Some biographical information: 33
Work by: R382.
Book illustration: R406.
152. Bowlt, John E. ‘‘Malevich’s Joumey into the Non-Objective World.”’ Art
News (New York), vol. 72,.no. 10 (December 1973), 16-22.
Gray, Camilla. See 43, 44, 45, 161.
153. Habasque, Guy. ‘‘Documents inédits sur les débuts du Suprématisme.’’ Art
d’aujourd hui (Paris), no. 4, September 1955, pp. 14-16.
Klyun, Ivan. Works by: R289, R290.
Book illustrations: R304
Works on: 84xx, I76iv.
154. Koudriachov. Paris:. Galerie Jean Chauvelin, 1970. Exhibition catalogue.
SS: Kovtun, E. ‘‘Malevi¢ova myslenka plastické beztize.’’ Vytvarné pracé
(Prague), no. 2, 1967, p. 10.
156. Lamaé, Miroslav. ‘*‘Malevié a jeho okruh.’’ Vytvarné uméni (Prague), no. 8/9,
1967, pp. 365ff. See also 83.
Lissitzky, El. For bibl. references see V.
157. Malevich, Kazimir. Die gegenstandslose Welt. Bauhausbicher no. 11. Munich:
Langen, 1927.
English edition: The Non-Objective World. Translated by Howard Dear-
styne. Chicago: Theobald, 1959.
158. Malevich, Kazimir. ‘‘Autobiographical Fragment.’ Studio International (Lon-
don), vol. 176, no. 905 (October 1968), 129-33.
159. Malevich, K. S. Essays on Art 1915-1928. Edited by Troels Andersen. Trans-
lated by Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Amold McMillin. 2 vols. Copenhagen:
Borgen, 1968; London, Rapp and Whiting, 1969; et al.
160. Malevich. Compiled by Troels Andersen. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum,
1970. Catalogue. Bibl.
324 / Bibliography
PROLETKULT
177. Bogdanow, Alexander. Die. Kunst und das Proletariat. Leipzig: ‘‘Der Ken-
taur,’’ 1919.
Bogdanoy, Aleksandr. Works by: 177, 180, 209x, R367.
Biography: 179.
Bibl. information: 179. =
178. Eastman, Max. Education and Art in Soviet Russia in the Light of Official
Decrees and Documents. New. York: Socialist Publication Society, 1919.
179. Grille, Dietrich. Lenins Rivale. Bogdanov und seine Philosophie. Cologne:
Wissenschaft und Politik, 1966. Bibl.
180. Lorenz, Richard, ed. Proletarische Kulturrevolution in Sowjetrussland
Bibliography | 327
GENERAL ASPECTS
Lettres frangaises (Paris), no. 1207 (November 8-14, 1967), pp. 22-26.
197. Erste Russische Kunstausstellung. Introduction by David Shterenberg. Berlin:
Galerie van Diemen, 1922. Exhibition catalogue.
198. Esposizione internazionale d’arte. XIV biennale internazionale d’arte della citta
di Venezia. Catalogue of the Russian section. Text by Boris Ternovetz. Ven-
ice, 1924.
See also 183.
199. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of
Education and the Arts Under Lunacharsky, October, 1917-1921. Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1971. Bibl.
Gray-Prokofieva, Camilla. See 43, 44, 45, 182.
200. Gregor, Joseph, and Fueloep-Miller, René. Das Russische Theater. Mit beson-
derer Berticksichtigung der Revolutionsperiode. Vienna: Amalthea, 1927.
English edition: The Russian Theatre. Translated by Paul England. Lon-
don: Harrap; Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1930.
201. Higgens, Andrew. ‘‘Art and Politics in the Russian Revolution.’’ Studio Inter-
national (London), vol. 180: no. 927 (November 1970), 164-67; no. 929
(December 1970), 224-27.
202. Jelenski, K. A. ‘‘Avant-garde and the Revolution.’’ Arts (New York), vol.
35, no. 1 (October 1960), 36-41.
Komfut. Works by: consult R73 and references to Osip Brik, Boris Kushner,
and Nikolai Punin.
Works on: R497, R499.
Kushner, Boris. Works by: R395-97, R470, and consult R73, R76.
Some bibl. information: 133.
Lef. Works by: R76.
Works on: consult 84, 133, R16, R341.
203) Lunacharski, Anatoli Vasilievich. Las Artes plasticas y la politica artistica de
la Rusia revolucionaria. Translated by José M. Giiell. Barcelona: Editorial
Seix y Barral, 1969.
Russian texts in R402-403.
204. Lunatscharski, Anatoli. Die Revolution und die Kunst: Essays, Reden, Notizen.
Selected and translated by Franz Leschnitzer. Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst,
1962.
Russian texts in R402—403.
Lunacharsky, Anatolii. Works by: 203-204, R402-403, R434i, R471.
Biography: 199, 209xv:
Bibl. information: 199, R402-403.
Pertsov, Viktor. Work by: R434xi.
Punin, Nikolai. Works by: R253, R410, R413-19, R444—45, and consult R66,
R73, R82, R434Vvi.
Some biographical information: 230ix, R435:
205. Russian Art of the Revolution. Compiled by Sarah Bodine. Cornell: Andrew
Bibliography / 329
(Note: in addition to the specific titles listed below and in the Russian section
of the Bibliography, the reader is advised to consult the journals R61, R71,
R76, and R84.)
CONSTRUCTIVISM
218. Kallai, Ernst. ‘‘Konstruktivismus.’’ Jahrbuch der Jungen Kunst (Leipzig), vol.
5, 1924, 374-84.
219. Massat, René. Antoine Pevsner et le Constructivisme. Paris: Caractéres,
1956.
220. Matsa, Ivan. *‘Constructivism: an Historical and Artistic Appraisal.’’ Studio
International (London), vol. 183, no. 943 (April 1972), 142-44.
Shortened translation of R442.
ae ke Olson, Ruth, and Chanin, Abraham. Naum Gabo—Antoine Pevsner. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1948.
222: Pevsner, Alexei. Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner: A Biographical Sketch of
My Brothers. Amsterdam: Augustin and Schoonman, 1964.
Pevsner, Antoine. Biography: 222.
Other works on: 219, 221.
Bibl information: 226.
223 Quilici, Vieri. L’Architettura del construttivismo. Bari: Laterza, 1969.
224. Rathke, Ewald. Konstruktive Malerei, 1915-1930. Hanau: Peters, 1967.
Reprint of catalogue for exhibition at Frankfurter Kunstverein, November
1966—January 1967. With introduction by Eckhard Neumann.
22S. Rathke, Ewald, and Neumann, Eckhard. ‘‘Constructivism 1914-1922.’’ Art
and Artists (London), vol. 5, no. 4 (July 1970), 12-15.
226. Rickey, George. Constructivism: Origins and Evolution. New York: Braziller;
London: Studio Vista, 1967. Bibl.
DOG Rodtchenko, Alexandre. ‘‘ Vladimir Tatlin.’’ Opus International (Paris), no. 4,
December 1967, pp. 15-18.
228; Sharp, Dennis, ed. ‘‘Constructivism.’’ RIBA Journal (London), vol. 78, no. 9
(September 1971), 382-92.
229. Sprague, Arthur. «‘Chernikov and Constructivism.’’ Survey (London and New
York), no. 39, December 1961, pp. 69-77.
230. Vladimir Tatlin. Compiled by Troels Andersen. Stockholm: Moderna Museet,
1968. Exhibition catalogue. Bibl.
Tatlin, ‘Vladimir. Works by: 211, R447.
Biography: 230.
Works on: 213, 227, 230, 230ii, 230X, 230xiii, R184, R444, R445, R4501.
Bibl. information: 230.
Book illustrations; R296, R312.
230i. Bowlt, John E., ed. Soviet Union. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1976,
vol. 3, part 2. Special issue devoted to Constructivism.
23011 . Bowlt, John E. “Un voyage dans l’espace: l’oeuvre de Vladimir Tatlin,”
Cahiers du Musée d’Art Moderne. Paris, 1979, no. 2, pp. 216-27.
230iii. Gabo. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1985. Exhibition catalogue. Bibl.
230iv. Goheen, Ellen, ed. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Bulletin. Kansas City:
Nelson-Atkins Museum, 1982. Special issue devoted to Constructivism and
the geometric tradition.
332 | Bibliography
Arvatov, Boris. Works by: 211, R259, R373-77, R455—-58, R490, and consult
R76, R79.
Some biographical details: 2301x, R435.
231. Badovici, Jean, et al. L’Architecture russe en URSS. 1ere et 2me séries. Paris:
Albert Morancé, n.d.
232. Birnholz, Alan. ‘*‘E] Lissitzky.’ Artforum (New York), vol. 11, no. 1 (Sep-
tember 1972), 70-76.
233. Birnholz, Alan. “‘Lissitzky’s Writings on Art.’’ Studio International (London),
vol. 183, no. 942 (March 1972), 90-92.
234. Bojko, Szymon. ‘“‘Collages et. photomontages oubliés de A. Rodtchenko.”’
Opus International (Paris), Fall 1970, pp. 30-35.
Brik, Osip. Works by: R383, R460, R461, and consult R73, R76.
Biography: 252v.
Chernikhov, Yakob. Works by: 235, R483-85.
Work on: 229.
235. Conrads, Ulrich, and Sperlich, H., eds. The Architecture of Fantasy. Trans-
lated from the German by Christiane Crasemann Collins and George R. Col-
lins. New York: Praeger, 1962; London: Architectural Press, 1963.
German edition: Phantastische Architektur. Stuttgart: Hatje, 1960.
236. dal Co, Francesco, et al. ‘‘L’Architecture et l’avant-garde artistique en URSS
de 1917 4 1934.’ VH ror (Paris), no. 7/8, Spring 1972.
Whole issue devoted to early Soviet architecture.
237. Exposition Internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes: Section
Bibliography | 333
(Note: for detailed references to the development of socialist realism in the vi-
sual arts, the reader is advised to consult the Soviet art publications of the
1930s, 1940s, and 1950s that deal specifically with the history and interpreta-
tion of Russian and Soviet painting and sculpture, particularly the journals
Iskusstvo [Art] (Moscow), 1933- and Tvorchestvo [Creation] (Moscow),
1934-. For an interesting perspective on the formation and advocacy of social-
ist realism, the reader is advised further to consult the catalogues of Soviet art
exhibitions not only in the U.S.S.R., but also in Western Europe and the
United States, of which there were many during the late 1920s and early 1930s;
references to such exhibitions can be found in bibl. R152, vols. 1, 2, and 3.)
AKhRR. Works on: R493, R496, and consult 264, R16, R58, R70.
Bibl. Information: R493.
253. Alpetin, M., ed. ‘‘Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Art in the USSR.”’ VOKS.
Bulletin of the USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries
(Moscow), vol. 9/10, 1934.
Whole issue devoted to the subject.
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356 / Bibliography: Works in Russian
359
360 / Index
é yee San
a RUSSIAN ART
E aera eri!
AVANT GARDE®
THEORY AND CRITICISM 1902-1934
During the first third of the twentieth century, Russian art went through a
series of dramatic changes, reflecting the political and social upheavals of the
country and producing — for a brief, exciting period — a body of avant-garde
work whose influence would eventually be felt throughout the rest of the
world. A new generation of young artists arose. Eagerly breaking with the past
and absorbing the innovations of Europe — Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism —
they developed a host of fresh ideas and original styles, such as Neo-
primitivism, Rayonism, Suprematism and Constructivism.
Although the revolutionary years saw much support of the new art and its
application to graphic and industrial design, many artists felt the increasingly
oppressive attitudes of political officials and left for Western Europe, taking
their ideas with them. Kandinsky, Malevich, Gabo, Pevsner and others are well
known for their important contribution to the history of modern Western art,
but there were many lesser-known artists whose individual and group state-
ments have never been read outside their own country.
This stimulating anthology will be indispensable for everyone interested in
contemporary Russian art. John Bowlt has collected and translated manifes-
tos, articles and declarations by the principal artists and critics of the Russian
avant-garde— including Kandinsky, Lissitsky, Malevich, Goncharova and Rod-
chenko, to name only a few. Illustrated with more than 100 rare photographs
and facsimiles and supplemented by clear introductory essays, up-to-date
bibliographical information and copious notes, this is the essential source-
book for a clear understanding of the motivations and struggles that produced
an extraordinary, seminal epoch in Russian art.
John Bowlt is internationally renowned for his extensive publications on
Russian art and culture ofthis period. He is Professor of Russian Language and
Literature and Director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at the Uni-
versity of Southern California, Los Angeles.