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 Similar essay on Russian Avant-Garde art, May 25th, 2004
Evaluator: Bukharin from United States | Have you seen this:
http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/3995/RusRevArt.doc
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"The question of the relationship of art to social life has always played a very important
part...[and] has reached a certain level of development. More often than not the question has
been resolved in two ways which are directly contradictory to each other... Art must promote the
development of human consciousness and the improvement of the social order. Others
decisively reject this viewpoint in their opinion, art is an end in itself, and to turn it into a means
of achieving some other end, however noble, is to lower the dignity of a work of art"
-Georgi Plekhanov
"Art for art's sake---such an idea is strange now-a-days as 'wealth for wealth's sake,' 'science
for science's sake,' and so on. All human activities should serve a useful purpose for man, if they
are not to be empty, frivolous occupations. Wealth exists so man may use it, science so that she
may be man's guide, and art also must serve some essential purpose and not be an idle
amusement." -Nikolai Chernyshevsky
"Art does not ornament, does not agitate, does not delight, does not relieve depression and
does not serve as a means of enrichment---art arguments human experience, deepens and
broadens knowledge of the world, of man, and of their mutual relationships"
-Nikolai Punin
"Art belongs to the people. It must let its roots go down deep into the very thick of the labouring
masses. It should be understood and loved by these masses. It must unite and elevate their
feelings, thoughts and will. It must awaken and develop the artistic instinct within them. Must we
serve sweet cakes to a small minority while the workers and peasants are in need of black
bread?" -Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
It has often been debated whether art is a reflection of life or if life is a reflection of art. The
years that preceded the Russian Revolution and the ones that established the Soviet State are
a great example of life reflecting art. Rarely in history does one find a revolutionary spirit
predicted and documented in art as well as a whole new culture defined by the artists. The
establishment of the Soviet State and the utopian goal in the new society could not have been
visualised without the cooperation of the artist and the government in this time period. The new
Russian Federation is flanked by the possibility of revolutions within the next few years and art
could once again play an important part determining how stable Russia will be.
The Russian cultural past is often filled with the contradictions of a revolutionary spirit under
constant oppression and attempts to westernize and modernize but still remain behind Europe
and keep its Slavic traditions. One movement that was popular in the end of the Nineteenth
Century was Primitivism. The difference in the European version and the Russian version was
that Europe had been industrializing and needed to use the African colonies to rejuvenate its
artistic minds, whereas Russia, had no access to Africa but was only in the beginning stages of
industrialization. Russian artists used the peasants for inspiration thus following a contemporary
trend in European art, but converting it into an original Russian style (Berger, pp.30-31).
Revolutionary art movements seem to follow a pattern. First there is a breakdown of the artist
as a specialist or elite. Art becomes more primitive and rejects the "High Art" that precedes it.
The revolutionary Paris Commune during the Franco-Prussian War saw a violent reaction
against the Baroque and Rococo styles for cruder works. World War One saw the birth of many
such movements: Suprematism, Dadaism, Expressionism, and others collectively called the
Avant-Garde. Second, art tries to be more relevant to the masses. Between the World Wars, art
trends like Productivism sprang up in groups like the Bauhaus in Germany, De Stijl in Holland,
and the Constructivists in Russia. Third, art is harnessed by the new order after the revolutionary
movement. The Italian Fascists worked with the Futurists and the Russian Communists worked
with the Constructivists. And fourth, when that order becomes established, art returns to its
elitist or "High" form, such as National-Socialist art in Germany or Socialist Realism in Russia.
Russia is the best singular example because it contains all of these components. The Paris
Commune was crushed before a new government could be established. And the revolutionary
Weimar Period in Germany ended not in revolution, but usurpation by the Nazis so the Third part
of the pattern is skipped*. But a comparison between the Russian and German movements
would provide the best example overall because of their near identical time frame and similar
results.
Art movements have in history originated in the west and been mimicked in Russia, but at the
beginning of the Twentieth Century Russia became ultra-modern with both its experimental new
art and its never before established Communist government. Two western movements had
composed the basis for the experimental Avant-Garde art. One was the French Cubism,
sometimes used to define the beginning of modern art. It analyzed structure and space as well as
provided a new way for the artist to view the world. The other was Italian Futurism, which
promoted progress and action in a time just prior to World War One. The Futurists called for war
and revolution to speed up the future. The Futurists produced manifestos and gave
demonstrations that were as important as the artwork they made. The Russian artists fused
these two concepts into Cubo-Futurism.
The term Cubo-Futurism was first used by Kasimir Malevich in the Target exhibition of Moscow
in 1913. Later Malevich would reflect: "Cubism and Futurism were the revolutionary forms of art,
foreshadowing the revolution in political and economic life in 1917." (Berger, p.31) The
movement lasted only a little over a year until December of 1915. In Petrograd an exhibition of
Malevich's latest works were about to change the face of Russian art for the next thirty years. He
revealed his Suprematist Compositions that reduced painting to total abstraction, and rid the
pictures to any reference of the visual world. He was the first artist to do this, forsaking the visual
world for a world of pure feeling and sensation. This movement was the first original Russian
movement in art and the birth of the Avant-Garde movements (Atkins, p.202).
The most famous piece from this exhibition is the composition referred to as the "Black Square"
but it's real name is Suprematist Composition. The "Black Square" is a black square centered on
a slightly larger white square that forms a border against the edge of the canvas. The canvas
was 41 11/16 inches square and was hung in the top corner of the exhibition as if it were an icon
hanging in the sacred corner of a peasant home. All the other paintings hung on the walls, but
close together in a non-linear erratic fashion, from floor to ceiling. This series rejected all
conventional culture and religion as well as traditional art presentation. Malevich states that
Suprematism represents "...A great yearning for space, an impulse to 'break free from the globe
of earth" (D'Andrea, p.167). It was saturated with a new spirituality that went beyond the vision of
the Futurists or the Cubists, and this new non-objective trend spread from other artists into other
countries. Among his students and close contemporaries were El Lissitzsky, Aleksandr
Rodchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin.
In 1913 Tatlin had returned from his studies in Paris. Picasso placed his sculptures on the floor
flat against gallery walls rather that being freestanding in the center of the room. Influenced by
Picasso's Cubist sculptures that were built up from sheets of metal rather than traditionally carved
from stone or casted from bronze, Tatlin began to copy this in his sculptures, or Painterly Relives
as he called them, except he framed his and hung them on the wall. He used found materials
like glass, plaster, wood, asphalt, and iron. While traditional relief sculptures created a recessed
space, or depth, in the picture plane similar to paintings, Tatlin's new forms extended outward at
the viewer violating the distance between him or her (Milner2, pp.92-93) Eventually Tatlin began
to hang his "Counter-Relives" in the corners of the rooms. Tatlin was trained primarily as a
painter which is the probable cause for his framed hanging format of his sculptures. He paintings
had a preoccupation with geometry, to the point where he used a compass to paint his Sailor of
1911-12. Painted on a square canvas, like Malevich's "Black Square". The edge between the
sailors shirt and coat follows a perfect arc from the top left corner to the bottom right. In fact, all
the shapes are formed by perfectly circular curves (Milner2, pp.40-41). Tatlin formed a new style
called Constructivism. Tatlin as well as Malevich began influencing the western art trends when
the German Dadaists proclaimed "Die kunst ist tot. Es lebe die neue maschinekunst Tatlins!" Art
is dead. Long live the new machineart of Tatlin! (Milner1, p25)
Once friends, Tatlin and Malevich's relationship began to strain under competition. Their
relationship, which later would come to blows at an exhibition, is allegorical to the Russian
Revolutions of 1917. The February Revolution, called a capitalist revolt by the bourgeoisie, and
how it would later give way to the Bolshevik Revolution of October that established the
proletarian dictatorship is remarkably similar to Malevich's Suprematist's success and fame in
1912 and how it would later give way to Tatlin's Constructivist's. Also, the later movements of
Constructivism and Bolshevism could never have come to be with out the establishment of
Suprematism and the Duma overthrowing the Tsar. In both, the process of change would end in
competition and violence.
After the First World War, both Tatlin and Malevich opened up art schools. Malevich's
Supremetist school was similar to De Stijl, The Style, a school in Holland and Tatlin's
Constructivist school was linked to the German Bauhaus. Artists are an elite group and elites
rarely survive a proletarian based Communist government. Both schools had to prove their worth
to the establishment of Russian Communism as well as revolution abroad. The artists looked to
the newly formed Russian Soviet government for support. Rodchenko declared in 1917, "We, the
leftist artists, are the first to come to work with the Bolsheviks." (Milner2, p.139) and a
Constructivist Manifesto in 1922 stated that they were trying to "Build the intellectual-material
production of communist culture." (Margolin, 58)
Many members of the Avant-Garde were embracing the Revolution. Tatlin would write about it,
stating: "To accept or not accept the October Revolution. There was no such question for me. I
organically merged into active creative, social and pedagogical life." (Lodder, pp. 47-48)
Rodchenko remembered "bec[oming] utterly engrossed in it with all [his] will." (Lodder, p.48)
And a composer, Artur Lur'e captured the joining of the Avant-Garde artists and Bolshevik
Government in his statement: "Like my friends-young Avant-Garde artists and poets-I believed in
the October Revolution and immediately sided with it. Thanks to the support shown to us by the
October Revolution, all of us, young artists-innovators and experimentalists-were taken
seriously. At first a boyish visionaries talked about being able to realise their dreams... but in
general neither politics nor power really intruded into pure art. We were given complete freedom
in our field to do everything we wanted; it was the first time in history that there had been such
an opportunity.' (Lodder, p.48) Malevich's school was creating a new vision, a new world,
breaking all tradition and culture. Tatlin's school rejected easel painting as bourgeoisie. The
Constructivists were mathematical and utilitarian. Artists aspiring to be engineers and building
functional and efficient equipment (Berger, p.37). The Soviet leaders were in a dilemma and had
much debate about how the new world would be shaped, how it would look, and what would be
the official proletarian art.
Trotsky, Bukharin, Lunacharsky, and many other politicians were against party control of the
arts, but the new revolutionary art needed to be harnessed for the propaganda campaign that the
newly formed Soviet government was waging**. Trotsky wrote: "The field of art is not one in which
the party is called on to command." (Solomon, p.189) The government needed to turn the
working-class into a conscious collective both politically and technologically. Posters were
central to the development of this mass communication system because the population was
mostly unable to read a political pamphlet. Pravda announced on October 6, 1918 "the poster
must become a new powerful weapon of socialist propaganda, with the objective of influencing
the broadest masses..." (Dickerman, p.14). During the Civil War, posters had mostly been
designed by unschooled artists using conventional styles. Vicktor Deni drew crude newspaper
editorial style cartoons of white generals, capitalists, and clergymen unflatteringly fat, smoking
cigars and oppressing the workers. And Dmitri Moor drew posters like his famous Have you
volunteered? in 1920, a confrontational recruiting poster extremely similar to Montgomery
Flagg's I want you for U.S.Army, the 1917 "Uncle Sam" American equal.
It wasn't until the 1920's that the posters fused with the fine art successfully and the
Constructivist movement became dominant. It is not safe to say that Suprematism was avoided,
on the contrary, a few posters in this abstract style were printed like El Lissitzsky's Beat the
Whites with the Red Wedge in 1919, but they were too abstract to be effectively understood by
the common individual, and Malevich saturated his movement with a spirituality that the atheist
stance of the Soviet government could not tolerate. Lenin stated "It is beyond me to consider the
products of Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, and other 'isms' the highest manifestations of
artistic genius. I do not understand them. I experience no joy from them." (Solomon, p116)
Tatlin's Constructivists were also abstract, but functional. Tatlin succeeded by eliminating personal
taste and using a rational approach with industrial designs. (Bowlt, p18) Lenin demanded that
monumental works of art be built for the Soviet Revolution. (Solomon, p.236) Many buildings
were erected for the Soviet government, although there tended to be more Constructivist
buildings put up that Suprematist ones. Lenin, in fact, was for some government control of the
arts, but his comment: "Every artist, everyone who considers himself an artist, has a right to
create freely according to his ideals, regardless of anything. But then, we Communists cannot
stand by and give chaos free rein to develop." (Solomon, p.116) Stalin would later take this to
mean extreme and total control.
Tatlin had been designing the elements of a new society and by 1920 had achieved the eye of
the government. He built a stove that consumed minimum fuel and radiated maximum heat, and
designed "functional" new clothing for the workers of Russia. (Grey, p.261) He was asked by the
Department for Artistic Work of the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment to erect a
monument for the Third International. The monument, sometimes called Tatlin's Tower, was to
be one third of a mile in height steel girder structure similar to the Eiffel Tower but more massive
and dynamic. A double concentric spiral form launching at an angle into the sky like
communism's reaching for the utopian goal. Tatlin's tower was the complete inverse of Eiffel's.
Eiffel was a engineer. He built a stable structure with four lines of symmetry. The four arches that
are at the base of the Eiffel tower are an afterthought for decoration, put in after the structure
was designed. Tatlin was an artist designing a work of art first and then adding the necessary
components for stability. His tower was to be asymmetrical and look like it was about to leap out of
the Earth and topple over any second. While the Eiffel Tower was to symbolize capitalism in the
nineteenth century, Tatlin's was to symbolize communism in the twentieth century, but larger and
overtaking the western structure. Sadly enough, the project was too costly to build. (Milner2,
pp.151-170)
El Lissitzky and Rodchenko started as Suprematists, but later followed Constructivist
movements. Lissitzky wrote: "With our work, the revolution has achieved a colossal labour of
propaganda and enlightenment... The innovation of easel painting made great works of art
possible but it has now lost its power." (Dickerman, p14) Their photography and collage, or
photomontage graphic design works made a major impact in the western arts, notably the
German Bauhaus in Weimar, the Dadaists in Dusseldorf, and also with De Stijl. Litssitzky and
Rodchenko would later work for the "USSR in Construction" the Five-Year-Plan magazine for
foreigners. (Dickerman, pp172-176) Rodchenko's Project of 1920 is a drawing of an elevated
tower, a plan for the Soviet Chamber of Representatives. It too was never built, but is another
example of the artist turned engineer working side by side with the Soviet Government.(Milner1,
p.50) Lissitzky too, designed the unexecuted Lenin Podium, a photomontage in 1920 where he
actually used a photograph of Lenin to show the scale of his tower. (Milner1, p.19)
By 1921 the Russian Avant-Garde had reached it's climax and was slowly on the decline. It
seems suiting that the term" Avant-Garde" is military lingo and the artists reached their heyday
during World War One, the Russian Revolution, and the Civil War. (Bowlt, p.20) But this does
mean it lost all or even most of it's popularity. It did however, change it's focus from monuments
and war propaganda to posters promoting the New Economic Policy and the growing Soviet
cinema. The revolutionary function of Russian art was obsolete, so art became more functional in
the civil sector. The Stenberg Brothers, Georgi and Vladimir, were Constructivists who gained
mass recognition during this period. They designed NEP posters similar to Rodchenko and
Lissitzky, but it was the film poster designs that brought the Seinbergs fame. With new
experimental approaches being taken in filmmaking by Vertov and Eisenstein, echoed by Brecht's
new theater in Germany, it seems only fitting that the film poster also be radically different than
before.
Between 1917 and 1922 the Seinbergs worked for theaters designing stage sets, costumes,
and posters as well as building tower constructions while studying with the Constructivists. Their
posters differ from others because they did not use photographs but rather projected the picture
and drew the image by hand, exaggerating where it need be, and thus being less literal than
Rodchenko or Litssitzky.(Mount, pp. 12-13) This way they could bend the projection to suit the
compositional needs by angling and stretching the projection. This new process did not restrict
the composition to be designed around an unmaniplatable photograph. One stylistic innovation
that has since spread into world culture is the extreme close-up, pioneered by the Stenbergs that
had little precedent in twentieth century advertising. The extreme close-up could not have been
accomplished without the projection technique. (Mount, pp16-18)
One of the unique concepts of the Seinberg Brothers was to not use a still frame of film, as
most other worldwide film poster's used, but instead use unrelated pictures to show the mood of
the film. For an example I will use the poster for Miss Mend 1927, a spy movie about a girl
caught in the middle of an international conspiracy. The basic composition is a circle centered in
a square, obviously influenced by Malevich's basic Suprematist compositions. Flanking the circle
on the top, bottom left, and bottom right sides are three men with their feet up reading the news
paper. In the top left corner extending into the left half of the circle, three men chase another
man down a fire excape. Behind the fleeing man in the left half of the circle in a man posed to
strike with a cain. A man located at the bottom of the poster a man is portrayed from behind
pointing in an accusing manner at a fearful woman bound by ropes positioned in the right half of
the circle. Behind the woman are two figures lurking suspiciously in ski masks. These unrelated
parts fit together to hint at the plot, and the reason this mixture of different subjects, in conflicting
sizes and colours, work together is the fact that they are drawings, not photographs, but with
near photographic qualities.
The 1930's had disastrous results for the Avant-Garde art in Eastern Europe and Russia. The
first Five-Year-Plan promoted industry and agriculture, but nearly destroyed the film market and
"by 1932, [the films] had for all practical purposes disappeared" (Mount, p.29) In 1932 Stalin put
the Union of Artists in control of painting and sculpture and eliminated independent artists. The
Union of Artists was headed by Isaak Brodsky, a reactionary artist trained in pre-Revolutionary
academies and violently opposed to all works from impressionism onward. (Berger, p.47) In the
beginning of 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany and disbanded the Bauhaus and forced exile
on Avant-Garde artists, thus cutting off the pipeline for world revolution. And in October of 1933,
Georgii Stenberg was killed in Moscow while riding his motorcycle. (Mount, p19) 1934, Stalin
required art to be "Socialist-Realistic", rather than being abstract it had to deal with the figure as
well as have a propagandic message. Stalin would later be backed by powerful critics like
Zhdanov, who stated in 1934, "The decadence and disintegration of bourgeois literature [or art],
resulting from the collapse and decay of the capitalist system... Now everything is degenerating--
- Themes, talents, authors [or artists], and heroes." (Solomon, p.237) and "The demand of Soviet
culture that all coarseness and wildness be abolished from every corner of Soviet life." (Solomon,
p.240) In other words, the Avant-Garde was just the old capitalist art in a dying stage, tearing
itself apart, and must be liquidated. It was. And in 1935, Malevich died in his Leningrad
apartment of an illness, killing the man who was responsible for giving the Avant-Garde
movement life.
In the Soviet Union, Germany, and even the U.S., revolutionary art was seen as dangerous
during the depression of the 1930's. The U.S. had the Federal Arts Project. The U.S
Government's funding of artists helped prevent poor living conditions, and thus revolution among
the artists. Germany and the U.S.S.R. both eliminated the artistic revolution and installed
National Socialist-Realism and Socialist-Realism respectively. Both art movements are complex
and hard to describe. The definition of Socialist-Realism changed periodically, depending on the
whims of the political elite. Both movements can roughly be described as Norman Rockwell with
an ideological twist. The art was an idealized slice of everyday Nazi or Soviet life. The Nazi's art
emphasized the nude to show superiority through race. The Soviet art also concentrated on the
human figure, but the society was more puritanical and the popular thought of the political elite
was that without clothing the viewer would not know to what social-economical class the
represented figure belonged.
Although it was the Soviet State that crushed the Avant-Garde, without the State's early
support, the ideas from Malevich's easel could not have been adapted for the public through the
Millions of posters. The Revolutionary new design showed the new Soviet culture what shape to
take in search of utopia. Suprematism destroyed the old and Tatlin Constructed the new. But
revolutionary art, by definition, is to bring about revolution of any existing structure. In the 1930's
the Soviet Union was the establishment in Russia, and the hopes for revolution on an
international level were crushed by Hitler coming to power in Germany. Almost three decades
of an artistic movement was cut short, but the historical and political impact of the movement
could not be hidden.
Progressively throughout the Soviet Union's history after Stalin's death, the controls on the
artists were loosened. Gorbachev's program of "Glastnost" virtually allowed artists to be free in
their statements. Now, nearly seven years after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Russia is again
in a period that could be described as revolutionary. The Russian situation has been said to
have elements in common with the 1917 Revolution and Weimar Germany, but both
comparisons are fundamentally different. That does not mean that revolution will happen, but
that the situation is politically and economically right for the possibility of revolution. The
Executive and Legislative branches of the government are extremely hostile to each other. The
country is experiencing a massive depression. And there is an extreme famine predicted for the
coming winter. Although it is nearly impossible to estimate the future accurately, I suggest
watching the relations between the artists and the government in power (or a revolutionary
contender for power) as a gauge of the stability and/or severity of the coming regime(s).
* -In the beginning there was debate on what exactly the Nazis were looking for in art. It is well known that the Third Reich
was extremely hostile to Avant-Garde artists, but before the Nazis came to power, Joseph Goebbels took to the opinion that
some German Expressionists were compatible with National Socialist ideas. These artists include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Barlach, and Emil Nolde. Nolde was even a Nazi party member, but these artists
could hardly be called "Nazi artists". They declared nationalism and were very anti-capitalist. The Expressionists promoted
sensation and passion over rational logic and were heavily into primitive German culture. Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, and
other senior Nazis attacked these modern artists as incompatible with the Nazi ideal because of there strong opposition to
authoritarianism and the individualism expressed within their work. (Clark, pp62-63) Albert Speer, commissioned to decorate
Goebbels home would later write: "I borrowed a few watercolours from ... the director of the Berlin Nationalgalerie. Goebbels
and his wife were delighted with the paintings---until Hitler came to inspect, and expressed his severe disapproval. Then the
minister summoned me immediately. 'The pictures will have to go at once; they're simply impossible'." (Nicholas,pp10-11)
Apon the assumption of power, almost all modern art was attacked and artists of all sorts fled the country as work was
confiscated and art schools were closed.
** -Although the Bolshevik Government did not have control over the arts, they had a very strong influence. Mrs. Trotsky
supervised a museum purchasing committee, Mrs. Kamenev (Trotsky's sister) initially headed a theater section, and
Krupskaya (Lenin's wife) was in control of film and deputy to Lunacharsky, Commissar of Enlightenment (education).(Willett,
p. 36)
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