Books: 1. Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny and the Role of The

cow. I visited him there with a Rus Books sian friend when I was in Moscow some vears ago, shortly after his dispute with the Artists’ Union. The place was cluttered with carvings, plaster casts and models; at the back was a small furnace in which he made his bronze castings, the bigger ones in many parts. There is a second and even more ART AND REVOLUTION: poignant irony about Neizvestny’s Ernst Neizvestny and the Role name. In 1942, at the age of 16, he of the Artist in the USSR, volunteered for the army and became lieutenant of a commando platoon by John Berger. which was dropped behind German Penguin, 191pp., $2.10, lines. He was gravely wounded by a illustrated. bullet which exploded in his back EVEN in his surname there is an irony and was left on the battlefield for of particular aptness for such a man dead. Twenty years later he was award as Ernst Neizvestny: its literal mean ed the order of the Red Star for his ing is “unknown". part in the battle. As John Berger says, in this first account and analysis of Today, this sculptor who might in Neizvestny and his work for the Eng all modesty claim a front-line place in lish-speaking public, “In the interven the ranks of Soviet art is virtually ing years no one had made the con “unknown” in his own country. One of nexion between Lieutenant Neizvestny the few artists to have stood up defi — missing patriot, presumed dead — antly to a Soviet Premier to his face and a notorious, officially condemned, and got away with it, he has been decadent and ‘unpatriotic’ sculptor of reduced almost to anonymity through the same name.” Andrei Vosnesensky, his suspension from the Artists' Un a close friend of Neizvestny, seized ion. Membership of that Union is upon the significance of the incident essential for any professional artist in his poem The Unknown Soldier a in the USSR, perhaps more so for a couple of years ago. sculptor than a painter. Through the Union he obtains a studio, official com Many stories embellish the circum missions and, most importantly, mat stances of Neizvestny’s confrontation erials. A painter can buy most of his with Khrushchev over the famous “ab requirements in a shop, but if a sculp stract” art exhibition at the end of tor cannot get his stone or bronze 1962. Berger gives a full and authentic through official channels, then he will account of this extraordinary episode, have to obtain it illicitly — even on which could have happened only in the black market — as Neizvestny has the Soviet Union. A group of young been forced to do. In addition, the experimental artists had arranged an Union is the only avenue through exhibition of their work, containing which exhibitions can be arranged. by Western standards nothing particu Without membership of the Union, larly daring, under the auspices of the then, an artist is virtually unable to Moscow City Soviet. After a few days communicate with a mass public. the exhibition was closed by the Artists' Union and moved to a small annex Lacking the facilities and privileges in the huge Manege building near Red endowed upon members of the Artists' Square, where a vast and comprehen Union, Neizvestny uses as a studio a sive retrospective display of the work tiny disused shop in a back street off of Moscow artists over the previous 30 Marx Avenue in the centre of Mos years was on show. 68 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW December, 196!) Khrushchev and other government Russian and Soviet art, culminating in and party leaders came to “inspect” the the emergence in the late 20’s and early “abstract” exhibition at the invitation 30 s of an artistic orthodoxy which des of conservatives in the Artists’ Union, troyed completely the revolutionary who led the Soviet leader and his en dynamism and experimentalism which tourage around the hall, pointing out put early Soviet art in the forefront ol what they considered to be the most world art. The establishment of the offensive items. The artists were lined Soviet Academy of Fine Arts — an up beside their works and Khrushchev elite body of some 30 members — and abused them in the most insulting per later of the Artists’ Union itself in sonal terms, most of them cringing be the early 30’s enshrined this orthodoxy fore the lash of his tongue. W'hen he in the mystique of “Socialist Realism" got to Neizvestny, who was branded as — which Berger regards as little the ringleader of the project, the sculp more than an extension of the tradi tor stood his ground, telling the burly tional Russian naturalism of the 19th statesman: “You may be Premier and Century Chairman but not here in front of my works. Here I am Premier and we shall In effect, what Berger is challenging discuss as equals”. A minister with is the whole system of patronage ol Khrushchev threatened to send Neiz the arts and literature in the Soviet vestny “to the uranium mines” and Union and other socialist countries. two security men seized his arms. The This system has indeed brought the sculptor then announced: “You are arts down from their ivory tqwer, has talking to a man who is perfectly cap made culture the property of the peo able of killing himself.” As Berger ple and has created a vast new literate says, “the formality of the statement and, in varying degrees, educated pub made it entirely convincing”: Neizvest lic brought up to regard art and the ny was released and he and the Soviet artist with hitherto unknown respect Premier engaged in a reasonably dis and even veneration. passionate and rational discussion. The material security which social Why has Soviet art officialdom adopt ism has provided for practitioners in ed such a hostile attitude to Neizvest the arts has not yet solved the question ny? According to Berger, it is not be of artistic freedom; in many respects cause he counterposes “private” and it has obscured and complicated it. “public” art. In fact, he does not: he And until socialism can guarantee the believes profoundly in sculpture as writer or artist not only the freedom “monumental” art, being intended for to write or paint what he likes but also wide, open spaces and constant public the opportunity to publish or display perusal. Rather, says Berger, they see his product, the tensions and conflicts a threat to themselves in both the which have plagued the arts under nature of his work and the way in socialism for the last 30 years will re which he goes about it. It is his gen main and we can only unhappily ex eral refusal (there are exceptions) to pect more examples of the tragic Pas adopt a conventionally declamatory ternak, Kuznetsov and Neizvestny kind. and rhetorical style and his pursuit of his own individual themes — as well as The most interesting and certainly his indifference to the bureaucratic sys the most controversial sections of Ber tem of the official art world — which ger’s book are those in which he as irritate the powers-that-be. sesses Neizvestny's work and its signi ficance. By contemporary western Berger traces the roots of this official standards, he writes, and even by those attitude through the development of of Soviet sculpture in the 1920’s, there 69 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW December, 1969 is nothing innovatory or way-out in mination necessary to overcome it, that Neizvestny's style (this in itself makes Ernst Neizvestny, unknown and un the hostility of the Soviet art estab sung, records and celebrates. lishment to him even more incompre hensible). Rodin is obviously one of R o c e r M il lis s his major influences, and the nearest western parallel Berger can draw is with Henry Moore. In fact, he con NEO-CAPITALISM IN siders that, historically, Neizvestny’s AUSTRALIA, by John style could be placsd in the period of Playford. Area Publications, 1915-25. He thinks, too, that there is a 55 pp., 85c. considerable unevenness in the sculp tor's work and that often it is unsuc THIS EXCELLENT empirical survey cessful and unsatisfactory. But Neiz reads as if it were written with two vestny’s peculiar significance he sees wellknown injunctions of Lenin in as lying in his attitude to death. Berger mind: “politics is the concentrated ex contends that his hair’s-breadth escape pression of economics . politics can from its clutches made Neizvestny see not but have precedence over econom death as not an end but a “starting- ics” (“Once again on the Trade Un point’’ — in other words, that life is ions,” .S'.ir. New York Vol. 9, p. 54), and to be measured not by its proximity “few questions have been so confused to death, but its distance from it. In deliberately and undeliberately, by rep the bulk of his work, exemplified by resentatives of bourgeois science, phil the torments and conflicts wracking osophy, jurisprudence, political eco the bodies of his figures, Neizvestny is nomy and journalism as the question basically concerned with the struggle to of the State” (A Lecture on the State). stay alive, to survive: his theme “is Indeed after reading Playford one is the theme of endurance”, says Berger, tempted to conclude that members of and again: “Today the hero is the man Australia's power elite work on the who resists being killed”. principle enunciated by Mao Tse-tung that “political work is the lifeblood of Berger concludes from this that Neiz economic work, this is particularly true vestny’s sculpture represents “a phase at a time when the social and economic in the struggle against imperialism”.

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