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Avant-Gardes & Totalitarianism Tzvetan Todorov Avant-gardes & totalitarianism Translated by Arthur Goldhammer The history of modernity is character- Those who did not wish to turn back ized by an immense transformation: the the clock but were still dissatis½ed with transition from a world structured by re- the present then sought a second way, ligion to a world organized exclusively in that of an absolute accessible to the au- terms of human beings and worldly val- tonomous individual. The search for this ues. This process of emancipation and second way itself took several forms; humanization, which has been going on the most influential of these identi½ed for several centuries, has taken two main the individual absolute with beauty and forms. First came the project of replac- favored what Friedrich Schiller would ing the divine absolute with a collective call the aesthetic education of man. human absolute, what revolutionaries This doctrine was Romanticism, adopt- in France called ‘the Nation.’ Initial en- ed ½rst in Germany and then through- thusiasm for this project began to wane, out Europe; it glori½ed the poet in place however, from the moment the Revolu- of the prophet and the work of art in tion engendered the Terror. The struggle place of prayer. “Beauty in its absolute for liberty had ended in the suppression essence is God,” declared a spokesman of liberty: was this not proof that the for the movement. project itself had been ill-conceived The fact that Romanticism reserved from the beginning? such a role for art and poetry, exempla- ry incarnations of the beautiful, did not mean that it neglected other human ac- Tzvetan Todorov is Directeur de Recherche hono- tivities: for Schiller and his successors, raire at the Centre National de la Recherche Sci- aesthetic education and political vision enti½que in Paris. He is the author of numerous went hand in hand. One of the best ex- publications, including “The Conquest of Amer- amples we have of the desire to improve ica” (1984), “On Human Diversity” (1993), the human condition by action in both “Facing the Extreme” (1996), “Imperfect Gar- spheres is that of the German composer den: The Legacy of Humanism” (2002), “Hope Richard Wagner. Influenced by the rev- and Memory” (2004), and “The New World olutionary ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, Disorder” (2005). Wagner took part in political agitation in Dresden in 1848–1849. Forced into exile © 2007 by the American Academy of Arts by the ensuing repression, he sought ref- & Sciences uge in Switzerland, where he produced Dædalus Winter 2007 51 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan two texts setting forth his ideas about art rather the culmination of life. ‘Artistic Todorov and its relation to society: Art and Revolu- humanity’ was synonymous with ‘free on nonviolence tion and The Art Work of the Future, both human dignity.’ Craft was to become & violence written in 1849. art; the proletarian was to transform These texts make clear that Wagner himself into an artist; the industrial aspired to the absolute but did not seek slave was to metamorphose into a pro- it in traditional religion. Art seemed to ducer of beauty. The society of the fu- him the absolute’s best incarnation: it ture would no longer exist to serve art, was “living religion represented.”1 On as Wagner demanded for the present, this basis, he suggested, a two-way rela- because all life would have become artis- tionship between artistic activity and so- tic. Here art became the ideal model of cial life is established. If art was to flour- society. There would no longer be any ish, society must have the most favorable need to celebrate artists because every- conditions for it. Now, Wagner’s world, one would be an artist. To be more pre- as de½ned by the Germanic states of his cise, the community as a whole would day, was far from satisfying those condi- freely decide how it was to live, thus tions. Hence, that world had to be trans- adopting the attitude of the creator. “But formed; revolution was essential. Wag- who will be the artist of the future? The ner was interested in politics only to the poet? The actor? The musician? The extent that politics enabled art to flour- sculptor? Let us put it in a nutshell: the ish. For him, social revolution was not people.”2 Because this could be achieved an end in itself but a means to artistic only by a common effort, Wagner opted revolution, the foundation of a new edi- for the opposite of egoism, namely, com- ½ce of the arts. munism–whose Manifesto had been pub- Why bestow such honor on artists? lished the year before by Karl Marx and This is where the second part of the Frederick Engels. relationship between art and society The failure of the revolutions of 1848 comes in: “The supreme goal of man throughout Europe would sound the is the artistic goal,” Wagner declared, death knell of such dreams. Thereafter and “art is the highest activity of man,” began a second major period in the his- that which crowns his earthly existence. tory of the worldly absolute, from 1848 “Genuine art is the highest form of to World War I, during which the two freedom.” Wagner shared the dream paths, the collective and the individual, of the Saint-Simonians, who believed the political and the aesthetic, diverged. that machines would soon take over Baudelaire, though an enthusiastic com- man’s most arduous labors. Freed from mentator on Wagner, saw the hope that exhausting chores, all would turn their art might influence the world as an illu- attention to artistic creation in freedom sion. Meanwhile, Marx showed little and joy. concern for the aesthetic education of Art was not opposed to life, as another the individual. The two proudly ignored version of Romantic doctrine held, but each other, though neither dreamed of renouncing the absolute. Things changed again between the two 1 Richard Wagner, Œuvres en prose, vol. 3 (Par- world wars–the period to which I now is: Éditions d’Aujourd’hui, 1976), 91; English translation by William Ashton Ellis, Richard turn. Two trends can be discerned, but Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 1 (New York: Broude Bros., 1966). 2 Ibid., 19, 16, 243. 52 Dædalus Winter 2007 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 each can be described as an actualiza- The new turn took the name ‘Con- Avant- tion of the Wagnerian project of a total structivism’ because its adherents es- gardes & totalitar- work of art, one that would be coexten- chewed artistic creation in favor of ianism sive with life itself and with the world constructing objects and artifacts in- as a whole. On one hand, avant-garde tended to become part of the environ- groups, such as the Futurists and Con- ment. Their ½rst group show was held structivists, differentiated themselves in 1921, but the ½rst manifestations of from the modernist movement in gener- the movement date from 1915, when al by attempting to expand the limits of Vladimir Tatlin presented his “Coun- the work of art so as to act on society at ter-Reliefs” at the same time that Kaz- large. On the other hand, extremist po- imir Malevich unveiled his “Black litical movements modeled their plans Square.” The “Counter-Reliefs” were for transforming society and humanity assembled from a variety of materials; on the creative activity of the artist. This and the artist’s goal was not to reveal to was true of Communism, Fascism, and the world the existence of a ‘work’ but Nazism. rather to bring out the intrinsic qualities Both avant-garde artists and political of the materials used in the construc- extremists saw violence as a legitimate tion. means of achieving their ends more rap- The difference between Construc- idly. They knew they were promoting tivism and earlier avant-garde move- revolution, which might well provoke ments was not political: all enthusias- resistance. That resistance had to be ov- tically supported the ongoing revolu- ercome–if necessary, by force. We see tion. It was rather in the relation be- signs of this rapprochement of the two tween the work of art and its social major forms of the worldly absolute– context. According to one Construc- the political and the artistic–in Russia, tivist theoretician, Boris Arvatov, even Italy, and Germany. The convergence when earlier artists took nothing from persisted until the end of World War II. life but its spiritual content or other es- sential elements, as in the case of Wassi- Avant-garde movements appeared in ly Kandinsky and Malevich, they still Russia around 1910 with the ½rst glim- “placed art above life and sought to ren- merings of abstraction in painting and der life in the form of art.” By contrast, Futurist experimentation in poetry. Ini- Constructivism “placed life above art” tially, however, the gulf between art and and gave primacy to function at the ex- society widened rather than narrowed. pense of form. “Not the creation of Painters were exhorted to forget the ma- forms of great ‘aesthetic’ value but utili- terial world and to obey no laws other tarian construction from basic materi- than the intrinsic laws of their art. Later, als,” he wrote. “Not autonomy of the however, people began to question this thing as such, but richness of content.”3 divorce of art from the visible world of In concrete terms, Constructivism objects and the intelligible world of the transformed all forms of expression.
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