WHAT IS ARTISTIC FORM? MUNICH- 1900-1925

LUKA SKANSI

Munich was, at that time, the embankment that contained in Eastern Europe the influence of French painting with its barbaric ‘pontaventism’.1 Science is the materialization of the reality for the reason, art is the materialization of the reality for the eye.2

For a large part of Russian artistic culture at the turn of the century, Munich represented not only one of the most important centres of innova- tion in the artistic production in Europe, but rather an alternative to artistic events, subsequent to , that spread slowly from all over the continent. On closer inspection there is a fully-fledged pilgrimage towards the schools, the ateliers and the institutions of the Bavarian capital, starting from the 1880s and continuing until the outbreak of the First World War. The reasons for this migration are only partially cultural or scientific: it was a common practice for Russian middle and upper class families to send children to study in Germany, especially for Jewish families, due to constraints imposed by the Czarist regime on their access to higher education.3 In the winter semester between 1912 and 1913 there were about 5000 Russian students registered at German universities, while in Munich alone there were 552 of them.4

Il’ya Repin, one of the greatest painters of Russian realism, called Munich the “greenhouse of German art”, or the “German Athens”. Together with Pavel Chistyakov, the master of an entire generation of Russian painters at the turn of the century (such as Polenov, Vrubel’ and Surikov), he recom- mended their students from the St. Petersburg Academy attend painting schools in Munich, in particular, the private school of the Slovenian artist Ažbe Anton (1862-1905), considered in those years to be one of the most important pedagogues in Central Europe.5 Ažbe’s school was at the time the largest private academy in the city and one of the most popular destinations for young painters, together with the atelier of the Hungarian painter Simon Hollóssy,6 attended by Vladimir Favorsky, the future dean of the . Since 1891, the year the school was founded, to 1905, the year of Ažbe’s death, a consistent number of Russian artists from different generations spent a formative period here. The most renowned among them were , Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Ivan Bilibin, Vasily Kandinsky, Aleksey Javlensky, Igor’ Grabar (who would be Ažbe’s first assistant for some years)7, Vladimir and David Burlyuk, Kuz’ma Petrov-Vodkin, and Mikhail Matyushin. Some of these artists, once back in , would join the Moscow faculty of arts (MUZhVZ), or would operate within their own private schools; others, such as the Burlyuk brothers, Kandinsky or Matyushin, would organise exhibitions, events and publications that would have a decisive role in promoting the avant-garde movements on the national and international art scene.

Not all Munich art scene is linked obviously to Ažbe’s school. Munich was a complex cultural universe at that time, where various artistic trends coexisted, starting from the emerging languages of Secession, the birth of expressionist movement, the neoclassical review promoted by figures linked to the Werkbund and to the first hints of abstract art in the work of the artist-architect August Endell, and the painting circle of the Neu Dachau-Gruppe.8 In general, some of the crucial figures of the future Moscow avant-garde art scene spent a formative period in Germany. Lissitsky, for example, attended the Technische Universität in Darmstadt, and his entire career would be characterized by a strong relationship with German and Swiss contexts.9 The sculptor and author of the Realist Manifesto Naum Gabo studied in Munich starting from 1910. His education interests ranged from physics and theoretical physics – he atten- ded courses given by Wilhelm Röntgen and Arnold Sommerfeld – to art history and art theory: he was an assiduous student of Theodor Lipps’s and Heinrich Wölfflin’s lessons.10

Furthermore, Germany represented an attractive pole for the young Russian students of history and the theory of art and architecture. The main Russian art historians of the first half of the 20th century shared a formation experience in Germany, and particularly in Munich in the departments of Art History, Aesthetics and Philosophy, where they be- came acquainted with the theories of Konrad Fiedler, Theodor Lipps, August Schmarsow, Cornelius Gurlitt, Adolf Hildebrand, Heinrich Wölff- lin and Paul Frankl. The aesthetic theories of the German “formalist school”, the treatises on Raumkunst, the Einfühlungstheorie, as shall be explained later in the essay, would be quickly absorbed and endorsed by Aleksandr Gabrichevsky, Aleksey Sidorov, Vladimir Favorsky, Igor’ Grabar, Mikhail Alpatov, art historians, Munich students and Germano- philes: in the years following the Revolution, these scholars have been particularly active in disseminating German texts and theories in Russia, and their scientific and cultural activity in the twenties and thirties is considered as a fundamental scientific endeavor in establishing a modern iskusstvovedenie [the discipline of art history] in the Soviet Union.

In this context, it is important to note that some of the renowned and influential German essays in art and architectural history have been available in Russian in the first two decades of the 20th century: Heinrich Wölfflin’s Die Klassische Kunst, Renaissance und Barock and Kunstge- schichtliche Grundbegriffe, Adolf Hildebrand’s Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst, Albert Brinckmann’s Plastik und Raum.11

The aim of this text is not to enumerate all the experiences that Russian scholars had in relation to the German prewar context, but rather to demonstrate how rooted the German theoretical studies were in the formation of the Russian artistic, architectural and in a wider sense aesthetical culture, between the 1910s and 1930s: a repercussion that has often been neglected but, as will be made clear in the following analysis, was simply latent. There is no specific stylistic influence, no migration of “taste” for a specific trend or for specific artistic or architectural stylemes. On the contrary, this influence can be better traced by following a broader theoretical discourse that affects the same foundations of artistic produc- tion in a paradigmatic way. This is the reason why it is found in different fields of artistic expression, in aesthetic theories, manifestoes, teaching methods, often in seemingly incompatible environments, or in figures that apparently could not be assimilated to the same cultural milieu. It derives from one crucial epistemological problem that, in fact, arose in Germany starting from the last decades of the 19th century: the notion of space in figurative arts, or better, the problem of the spatiality of the artistic form [Raumkunst, prostranstvennost’ formy]. This notion represented an almost exclusive object of reflection and research for artists, architects, art historians, philosophers of this period; it was faced as a cultural “problem”, as an epistemological shift that helped to redefine the instru- ments for understanding reality and the relations that artistic and intellect- tual production establishes with reality. In other words, these intellectuals redefined the “coordinates” of the artistic object, its actual status: it was no longer solely observed, measured and judged by its material and linguistic component, but it was conceived as the result of both its volumetric and its spatial component. The spatial aspect took such a decisive role that it became the basis upon which to build a new definition of the aesthetic value of the artistic and architectural works.

But what exactly is the spatial component of form, and why did this abstract concept become the object of reflection of such an important in- tellectual community between the end of the 19th century and the 1920s? And to which extent can an influence on Russian artistic, architectural or urbanistic practice really be discussed?

The new critical category – Raum – introduced a key component into the sphere of artistic and architectural thought: a sensory, empathic relation between a human being and a work of art, or, speaking in architectural and urbanistic terms between man and his physical environment. Without going too deeply into the development of German aesthetic thought of the late 19th century, and trying to avoid in this discourse the complex nuances that differentiate the single theoreticians, we may assume that the notion of space is nothing but a way of defining the “irrational” aspects of the works of art and architecture. These aspects have been identified as essential in the distinction between an artifact and a work with artistic value. For German theorists, the artistic component of a form and the phenomenological quality of form cannot meet its physical, volumetric or utilitarian component: the analysis requires a different focus in order to comprehend the reasons behind its aesthetic “status”. Different theorists have proposed their own answers concerning this question: for example Vischer, with his definition of empathy (Einfühlung) – a process by which the mind tends to find its self-representation in art –, Lipps with his Raumästhetik – the idea that the psychology of the forms should convey a more general syntax of art forms –, Wölfflin with his interest in the visual aspect of architecture – the psychologising as a true criterion of aesthetic evaluation of architecture.12

We can assume that, in general, the German aesthetic debate on this topic recognised two fundamental processes that affect the relationship between the subject (the human mind) and the object (the work of art). The first one is related to the conviction of the centrality of perception: our sensory apparatus (mainly visual and tactile senses) is the fundamental filter for our comprehension of the material reality. The process of perception offers us information on external objects and ideas on the representation of reality (of an object, a physical phenomenon): this idea of reality is directly related to the relationship established between our perception and our mental elaboration of that data. This process, which affected the artistic and theoretical debate on the arts, was recognised initially by the scientist Hermann Helmholtz as intuitive and innate, as it belongs to our natural and innate perceptual features, and therefore is autonomous from reality.13 Spatial perception was seen as the basis of all our awareness of reality. Wölfflin would later argue that through the psychology of perception – which is the process by which we try to gain all of our understanding of the world – in a certain sense we bring order to reality.14

The second generally accepted concept is the recognition of the process of abstraction: for German theorists the human mind founds artistic satisfaction only in the transition from one “lower” level – in which the form is an expression of its material, physical quality – to a “higher” level, in which the form is solely a product of the mind, where the material elements have been used by the means of the expression of form. The process of abstraction is what makes a composition of colours a work of art, a carved volume a sculptural work, or a building a work of architecture. The critique of the centrality of the technical and functional component in architecture is evident: art is definitely autonomous from reality, and space synthesises and conceptualises the different aspects of its aesthetic values.

In this sense, Schmarsow’s definition of architecture, contained in his famous essay Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung (1894), is extremely clarifying.

Psychologically, the intuited form of three dimensional space arises through the experiences of our sense of sight, whether or not assisted by other physiological factors. All our visual perceptions and ideas are arranged, are ordered, and unfold in accordance with this intuited form; and this fact is the mother lode of art whose origin we seek. (…) Our sense of space [Raumgefühl] and spatial imagination [Raumphantasie] press toward spatial creation [Raumgestaltung]; they seek their satisfaction in art. We call this art architecture; in plain words, it is the creatress of space [Raumgestalterin].15

The intellectual that absorbed German aesthetic theories in a wider sense, and in particular the chapters concerning the issues of spatiality in architecture, was the art historian and art theorist Aleksandr Georgievich Gabrichevsky (1891-1968), a crucial figure, not only for the artistic and architectural culture in the Soviet Union, but for the entire legacy of Soviet culture of the twentieth century. Almost unknown to Western historio- graphy, his importance has only recently been reconsidered in Russia – though still in a very fragmentary way – after a period of almost total amnesia and “forced” removal from disciplinary environments. 16 His production was extraordinarily rich and included heterogeneous theoretical aspects of artistic creation, music, philosophy and architecture, with competences and interests ranging from classical to contemporary subjects.17

Gabrichevsky studied Art History at the Moscow University. During his studies, in 1914, he attended the Munich University and in particular Paul Frankl’s seminar on the analysis of architectural monuments.18 In the same year, Frankl, one of the most famous of Wölfflin’s pupils, published his famous treatise Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst,19 where he analysed the evolution of the architectural space in religious and civil buildings from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, and discussed the analytical methods of Wölfflin, Riegl and Schmarsow. This book seems to have had a great influence on Gabrichevsky, although his texts are in general imbued with references to the aforementioned German aesthetic culture.

In 1923, Gabrichevsky wrote two fundamental essays: Arkhitektura and Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture [Space and Volume in Architecture].20 His aim was to define the epistemological nature of the artistic component of architecture and its relationships with the utilitarian aspects of the discipline:

In a more strict sense architecture indicates: 1) a special kind of spatial arts, creating buildings, that manifests itself not in the utilitarian aspects, but is contemplated as an artistic creation, as a visual artistic unity of spatial relations. 2) a particular aesthetic category […], that expresses the nature of the aesthetic object as a structure, as a construction, as a result or an image of a rational utilitarian building.21

The art of architecture, i.e. its aesthetic value is to be found within its spatial quality, a characteristic that architecture shares with all other forms of art. Gabrichevsky promptly defines the differences between the different aesthetic categories of painting, sculpture and architecture:

[…] in painting, every quality of spatial relations is reduced to the expressive gesture on the material surface, in sculpture this quality is given by the organic metamorphosis of a solid substance, while in architecture, we always have a juxtaposition or opposition of space and volume, between the spatial nucleus and a materic envelope.22

Architecture, unlike the compositional strategies with surfaces and volumes operated in painting and sculpture, is formed by two indivisible components, that are facing each other and that collaborate to form the aesthetic quality of architecture – the volume and the space –, and each one is defined by its own composition rules and characteristics. Regarding the spatial component, for Gabrichevsky architecture must be experienced in the dynamic sense, observed all around, perambulated. He reported how art historians have already produced a classification of basic types of spatial and architectural volumes, according to the principles of movement and orientation: the differentiation of form can actually be based on a centripetal (Zentralraum), longitudinal (Langraum) or transversal orien- tation (Breitraum), between forms made for a “moving man” (Gehraum) or a “standing, motionless man” (Verweilraum). “Architectural space” – continues Gabrichevsky – “can not only be perceived as an adequate ex- pression of human functions, but also as an adequate expression of some irrational elements, not amenable to anthropomorphic control (mastery)”.23 In other words, the extent of the aesthetic value of architecture is measured by the degree of its incisiveness on man’s sensitive apparatus, on the irrational component of his mind. These sensations are provoked, accor- ding to Gabrichevsky, by two different formal phenomena: architecture is a synthesis of the expressive qualities of the caves – quarry buildings made of amorphous volumes – and of monumental buildings, made of volumes and masses. The architectural form is therefore defined – following Hegel’s definitions of the individual arts, in the third part of his Aesthetics24 – as the synthesis of negative architecture [otritsatel’noe zodchestvo] and infinite sculpture [neogranichennaya skul’ptura].25

The volumetric component of architecture is better defined in his essay Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture: architecture is “a contrast and synthesis of spatial dynamics and material tectonics”. 26 Volume is expressed through the materialisation of the complex relationship between structure and architectural language. It is interesting to note that by introducing the definition of the tectonic meaning in architecture, Gabri- chevsky declares his position within the contemporary architectural debate:

In recent times, thanks to the development of technology and to the emergence of a new architectural style, theorists are inclined to once again reject any boundary between utilitarian practice and artistic value, and are ready to recognise the beauty in any functional tool to the extent of its usefulness.27

The reasons that caused the German “formalist” school to criticise the type of architecture that identifies its essence in purely structural and functional components can clearly be found in Gabrichevsky’s essays. But, considering the period in which these essays were written (1923), another criticism manifests through these texts – a critique towards the functionalist slogans promoted by the emerging constructivist movement: the utilitarian component was simply not accepted in an aesthetic discourse on architecture. Gabrichevsky avoids any direct reference to the constructivist manifestoes of Aleksej Gan (Konstruktivizm, 1922) and Aleksandr Vesnin (Credo, O zadachakh khudozhnika, 1922), but it seems clear that his position diverges from the contemporary constructivist instances, that instead focus the priorities of architecture on the degree of its efficiency, rationalisation, function.

Gabrichevsky draws from different theoretical sources. There are referen- ces to Wölfflin, Schmarsow in his writings; the tectonic aspects of archi- tectural form are probably derived from Semper or Bötticher; but the union of two different theories (Raumkunst and Tektonik) into the same discourse is quite rare and can be probably referred to Frankls Das Ent- wicklungsprinzip.28

Gabrichevsky’s knowledge of German aesthetic literature becomes even more evident in the list of encyclopaedic entries he edited for the dictionary of the Russian Bibliographic Institute. 29 Besides the monographic entries on “Tietze”, “Schmarsow”, “Riegl”, “Schnaase” and “Worringer”, he edited the entry Formal’nyj metod [the formal method]. Here he identifies the main historiographical contribution of the German school, not so much in the general formal approach in studies on art, but above all in having institutionalised the contemporary iskusstvovedenie as an autonomous scientific discipline.

During his Munich years, Gabrichevsky met Kandinsky, with whom he developed a close friendship and had intense intellectual debates, although he was already acquainted with avant-garde environments in Moscow, in particular with Larionov, Goncharova, the Burlyuk brothers, Popova and Falk. With the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Moscow where he graduated in 1915; in 1917 he achieved the academic quailfi- cations he needed to begin his academic activity with a thesis entitled Space and composition in the Art of Tintoretto.30

Gabrichevsky’s pedagogical activity began in the early postwar years and was divided between different cultural institutions and universities in Moscow. Between 1917 and 1925 he taught in the Department of “Theory and History of Art” at the Moscow State University, at the MIKhIM [Moskovsky institut istoriko-khudozhestvennykh izyskaniy i muzeevede- niya], but the most interesting aspect of his work from this period is represented by his active participation in the founding of the RAKhN – Rossiyskaya akademiya khudozhestvennykh nauk [Russian academy of artistic sciences].31 The institute was officially founded in October 1921, under the auspices of the Minister for culture and education Anatoly Lunacharsky, and was initially composed by three departments: the psycho-physiological (directed by Kandinsky), the philosophical,32 and the sociological department. Gabrichevsky worked actively with Kandinsky on structuring – in both theoretical and practical sense – the psycho- physiological department, and he was at the same time directly responsible for the creation of a section for spatial arts [sektsiya prostranstvennykh iskusstv] that assembled sculpture, painting and architecture into one single analytical framework. He held several seminars in the institute33 and collaborated in producing the Slovar’ khudozhestvennoy terminologii [Art Terms Dictionary], a scientific project within the RAKhN, where he himself edited the entries “abstraction”, “grotesque”, “representation”, “archeology” and “architecture”: the content of the latter merged into the aformentioned essays Arkhitektura and Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitek- ture, as discussed previously.

Within this institution, between its different departments and activities, he was in contact with eminent members of the Russian pre-and post- revolutionary culture: philosophers, poets and writers (Bely, Bryusov, Voloshin, Shervinsky, Akhmatova, Pasternak), musicians and choreo- graphers (Neygauz, Rikhter, Rumnev), artists (Kandinsky, Falk, Natan Al’tman), art theorists and art historians (Florensky, Favorsky, Sidorov, Nekrasov, Tsvetaev) and architects (Ivan Zholtovsky and Moisey Ginzburg).34

The project for the creation of the psycho-physiological laboratory had already been discussed in a working group formed within the Inkhuk, starting from 1920, inspired by Kandinskij and composed by artists and art theorists (Falk, Favorsky and Gabrichevsky).35 The instances that bound the group in this brief experience was the common interest in the definition of the relationship between art and the cognitive sciences, with the aim to found a science of arts based on the relationship between art and human sensations. 36 After leaving the Inkhuk, Kandinsky and his associates moved the entire work program to the emerging psycho- physiological department at RAKhN with the aim “to discover the internal laws on which the creation of art is based, in each of his different forms of expression, and on these bases to found the principles of the creation of the total work of art [sinteticheskogo khudozhestvennogo vyrazheniya].37

The department began working in August 1921 with seminars held by the physicians Uspensky (“The role of science in the study of art work”) and Lazarev (“Colours and their physico-chemical analysis”),38 and it con- tinued during the winter semester with conferences held by the originators of the department: Bakushinsky, Kandinsky, Gabrichevsky, Mashkovets.39 The academic year 1922–23 was entirely dedicated to specific topics of artistic production such as rhythm, space and time. A specific commission was formed for each topic, with the aim of organising and promoting lectures and discussions that ranged from broader aesthetic and philosophical aspects to the specific relationships between these topics and the different forms of artistic expression: painting, sculpture and architec- ture. In that year Konstantin Malevich, among others, lectured “On principles of art: on color, light, on pointilizm in space and time”,40 and Konstantin Yuon, an important pedagogue from the late Imperial Russia, painting teacher to Vladimir Favorsky and of the avant-garde artists Tatlin and Aleksandr Vesnin.

In the protocol of the Commission we find the requirement to include psychology in art analysis and art history, as a science that provides the main tools for the study of spatial forms. Adolf Hildebrand’s essay Das Problem der Form is quoted as a seminal book for understanding the relationship between human perception, artistic form and composition methods.41 The aim of the Commission is to investigate the analysis of the perception of spatial forms and the content of their dynamic elements, the perception of parallels, proportions and symmetry, the criteria of the perception of depth, and space perception.42

In the winter between 1923 and 1924, the “Commission for the Experi- mental Study of Rhythm” organised a series of lectures on rhythm in sculpture (Nedovich), painting (“Rhythm and composition in the ancient Russian painting”, Tarabukin), nature (Vul’f), a report on the “Congress On Rhythm” held in Geneva (Chetverikov), and a conference on the psychology of rhythm according to Theodor Lipps (Rumer). One of the founders of the constructivist movement in architecture, Moisey Ginzburg, held a seminar here about the rhythmic element in architecture, in four sessions between December 1923 and February 1924, which Ginzburg published in his two renowned books (Ritm v arkhitekture and Stil’ i epokha).43

Perception, rhythm, space, time, sensation, the physiological analysis of colour, the relationship between art and the sciences: following these general – but revealing – pieces of information that document the work inside the RAKhN, and in particular inside its psycho-physiological laboratory, we can conclude that topics which characterised the research of a considerable part of the German scientific community entered Russia not only through single and isolated “transmission channels” but even became the study subject of a multidisciplinary research centre. The theory of art and architecture and analysis of physiological and perceptive systems started to collaborate in the structuring of seminars regarding the study of specific artistic and architectural devices such as rhythm and space. The paradigms that emerged from the German art and architectural historio- graphy of the last decades of the nineteenth century, such as the autonomy of art and the definition of the aesthetic value of artistic forms, were proposed inside the RAKhN, and reconnected to the activity of distin- guished scientists like Hermann Helmholtz, Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Wundt. Their handbooks, the foundational studies in the field of psycho- physiology – many of them already available in Russian before the First World War – were widely known, including their far from limited observations on the general problems of contemporary aesthetics.44

However, regardless of the short existence of the RAKhN,45 and despite it being impossible to measure its effective importance for the development of art and architecture in Soviet Russia, it seems interesting, if not necessary, to think about its scientific project, and about the number of figures, so crucial in those years that initially subscribed it. This multidisciplinary institution – in the still unexamined panorama of the research institutes active in Moscow after the First World War – collected historians, artists, musicians, choreographers, physiologists, physicians, biologists, and psychologists. The generation of art historians grouped in the RAKHN (Sidorov, Nekrasov, Bakushinsky, Favorsky and Gabrichev- sky) were all students of the Moscow University chair of Art History before the revolution, and they all shared a strong intellectual link with Germany. At this time there was also a small number of artists (Kandin- sky, Favorsky and Falk) and architects (Zholtovsky and Ginzburg) inside the RAKhN, the latter present in the activity of the institute, but not in the design of programs of work.46 Apart from Kandinsky, Bakushinsky and Nekrasov, all these figures taught more or less simultaneously within the Vkhutemas, while Favorsky became its rector between 1923 and 1926. It was during Favorsky’s direction that Gabrichevsky held three courses within the Vkhutemas (“Renaissance”, “History of modern painting” and “Theory of spatial arts”), parallel to Pavel Florensky’s course “Theory of perspective” which was also developed inside the RAKhN, according to some studies.47

The relation and the parallelism between the topics that run through the RAKHN project and some of the Vkhutemas preliminary courses are issues yet to be explored and demonstrated. What should be emphasised is that the landscape of cultural institutions in Moscow after the First World War is increasingly complex, entwined and rich. Furthermore, the more one penetrates the structure of the faculty of the main architectural and artistic school of the USSR – the Vkhutemas, the Soviet Bauhaus – the more the historiographical “mystification” – and narrowness – in which it was confined becomes evident. A wide range of theoretical teaching, which appeared in the school from 1921 onwards, and together with the contribution of Favorsky, Gabrichevsky, Florensky and Ginzburg, consti- tuted a real critical counterpart to the generally known productivism, con- structivism, the appeals for the organisation of production, the activism architects acting as producers of the new socialist reality. Moreover, some of the topics that circulated within the RAKhN (space, rhythm ...) were already present in the architectural environments in the early months after the Revolution. The world of production of the form, and in particular the so-called “rationalist” wing of the Soviet debate (referring to the researches of Ladovsky, Dokuchaev, Krinsky, and partially Mel’nikov and Golosov)48 is parallel to many of the themes of the world that theorises and historicises the genesis of architectural form: these connections are still to be investigated.

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Notes

1 This statement was pronounced by Kuz’ma Petrov-Vodkin, and quoted by Sternin 1994: 127. 2 “наука есть оформление действительности для разума, искусство – оформление действительности для глаза”, Aleksandr G. Gabrichevsky, Pro- blema arkhitekturnogo sinteza kak vzaimnoy organizatsii massy i prostranstva, originally published in Zhurnal Gakhn, n. 3, 1927, now in Gabrichevsky 1993. 3 The statistics reveal that Jewish students attended mainly medicine, chemistry, engineering and law universities, while Russian upper class students chose Germany mainly for philosophical studies. At the time, the neo-Kantian depart- ment in Marburg, held by Hermann Cohen and Friedrich Lange, was one of the most popular among Russian students: and Nikolai Berdyaev were formed here, among others. Williams 1972.

4 The most substantial presence was recorded in Berlin (1.174) and Leipzig (758), the other main destinations were Königsberg, Heidelberg and Halle. In almost all universities Russians accounted for half of the foreign students, and often the majority of them were Jewish. Ibid. p. 25. 5 Katarina Ambrožič, Ažbetova šola 1891-1905, in Ambrožič 1988. 6 Simon Hollósy (1857-1918), Hungarian painter and teacher, founded his painting academy in Munich in 1886. His school was attended by many Russian painters. 7 Igor’ Emmanuilovich Grabar (1871-1960) was an important figure for the Rus- sian artistic culture of the twenties. He was active as a painter but above all as an art historian, being the author of the monumental History of Russian art: Istoriya russkogo iskusstva, Izdanie I. Knebel, Moscow (1909-1914). Supervisor of the Galeriya Tret’yakov in 1913, Grabar was officially named its director in 1918, and remained so until 1925. From early 1918 he was active in the Narkompros section for the conservation of works of art; he would also head the museums section of Narkompros. Grabar 2001. 8 The group was formed by Adolf Hölzel, Ludwig Dill and Arthur Langhammer. Hölzel was Oskar Schlemmer’s and Johannes Itten’s painting teacher. According to Peg Weiss, Kandinsky only became aware of Hölzel’s work in the Bauhaus years. Weiss 1979. 9 On Lisitzky’s postwar activity see Lissitzky-Küppers 1968; Manfredo Tafuri, Urss-Berlino 1922: dal populismo all’“internazionale costruttivista”, in Tafuri 1980. 10 Gabo took a study trip to Italy during 1913, based on an itinerary prepared by the same Wölfflin, before permanently leaving Germany because of the impending war. Hammer, Lodder 2000: 21. 11 Heinrich Wölfflin, Klassicheskoe iskusstvo. Vvedenie v izuchenie ital’yanskogo vozrozhdeniya, Brokgauz-Efron, S. Petersburg (1912); Renessans i barokko, Grya- dushchy den’, S. Petersburg (1913); Osnovnye ponyatiya istorii iskusstv. Problema evolyutsii stilya v novom iskusstve, Del’fin, Moscow (1922). Adolf Hildebrand, Problema formy v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve i sobranie statey, Musagaet, Moscow (1914), translated and edited by Vladimir Favorsky, together with eight other essays that the German sculptor published in the first decade of the 20th century. Albert Erich Brinckmann, Plastika i prostranstvo, Izdatel’stvo Akademii Arkhitek- tury, Moscow (1935), translated by E. A. Nekrasov, edited and introduced by Alpatov. There are also translations of other Munich-based historians such as Wilhelm Hausenstein and Oskar Wulff. But the list could be continued, especially if we extend the boundaries to outside of the strict discipline of art history: many books by Oswald Spengler were already available before the war, while some of the seminal studies on physiology and optics, extremely important for the psycho- physiological aspects of the formalist reading of art and architecture – written by Hermann Helmholtz, Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Wundt – soon became the object of an important epistemological debate regarding the relationships between science, politics and art, having a strong impact upon all of Marxist culture in the period between the two revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Skansi 2007.

12 I refer to Robert Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl. Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik, Credner, Leipzig 1873, translated as Sul senso ottico della forma. Un con- tributo all’estetica, in Vischer 2003; Theodor Lipps, Ästhethik. Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst, partially translated in De Rosa 1990; Heinrich Wölfflin, Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, translated in Wölfflin 1985. 13 I refer to Hermann Helmholtz’s treatises Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (1856) and Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (1863) translated as Trattato di ottica fisiologica, Sull’analisi dei suoni mediante l’orecchio and I fatti nella per- cezione in Helmholtz 1967. 14 “La nostra organizzazione dei corpi fisici è la forma con cui comprendiamo tutto ciò che è fisico.” Wölfflin 1985: 37. [Our organisation of the physical bodies is the structure through which we understand all that is physical] (My translation). 15 August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung, translated as The Essence of Architectural Creation, in Mallgrave, Ikonomou, 1994: 286-287. 16 Gabrichevsky was inscribed in the “black lists” in 1931 and arrested several times. The definitive exclusion occurred in 1941 when, accused of “cosmopoli- tanism”, he was first expelled from the Akademiya Arkhitektury, jailed in Lubyanka prison and later sentenced to confinement in the city of Kamensk- Ural’sky. He was saved thanks to a direct intervention by his friend, the renowned architect Ivan Zholtovsky, and enabled to return to Moscow, but he could no longer teach. From then on, he dedicated himself entirely to translations. The biographical information is taken from Markuzon, 1976; Gabrichevsky 1992; Gabrichevsky 1993; Severzeva, Pogodin 1997; Gabrichevsky 2002; Pogodin 2004. 17 In addition to his teaching activity, Gabrichevsky translated many classical architectural books (from German and Italian): Daniele Barbaro’s I Commentari ai Dieci Libri di Vitruvio, Vignola’s La Regola dei cinque ordini, Vasari’s Le Vite, Michelangelo’s Le Lettere, Ascanio Condivi’s La vita di Michelangelo Buonarrot- ti, Benvenuto Cellini’s Trattato di scultura, Filippo Baldinucci’s Vita di Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Macchiavelli’s Mandragora, Benedetto Croce’s La poesia di Dante, Georg Simmel’s essay Goethe. He also edited and annotated Bryusov’s translation of Goethe’s Faust, and the complete works of Goethe published in 1933. 18 Gabrichevsky 2002: 846. 19 Paul Frankl, Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst, Teubner, Leipzig- Berlin 1914. English translation: Frankl 1968. The book is actually dedicated to Wölfflin. Frankl studied with the master during the preparation of Die Klassische Kunst and Grundbegriffe. A short but acute biography of Frankl was written by Nikolaus Pevsner in Frankl 1962. 20 Arkhitektura was written as an encyclopedic entry for the Art Terms Dictionary, a scientific project developed inside the RAKhN; Prostranstvo i massa v arkhi- tekture was originally published in Zhurnal RAKhN, n.1, 1923, pp. 292-390; the third important essay relating to these topics is Problema arkhitekturnogo sinteza kak vzaimnoy organizatsii massy i prostranstva, Gabrichevsky 1993. 21 Italics mine. “В более узком своем значении архитектура обозначает: 1) осо- бый вид пространственных искусств, создающих постройки, которая являет-

ся не только полезной вещью, но и созерцается как художественное произведение, как наглядное художественное единство пространственных от- ношений. 2) особую эстетическую категорию, выражающую природу эстети- ческого объекта как структуру, как конструкцию, как результат или подобие разумного целесообразного построения”. Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 1. 22Italics mine. “[…] в живописи все богатство пространственных отношений сведено к выразительному начертанию на материальной поверхности, а скульптура дает органическое претворение массивной материи как самоцен- ности, а в архитектуры мы всегда имеем сопоставление или противопо- ставление пространства и массы, пространственного ядра и материальной оболочки”. Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 3. 23 “…архитектурное пространство может восприниматься не только как аде- кватное выражение функций человека, но и как адекватное выражение не- коей иррациональной стихии, не поддающейся антропоморфному овладе- нию.” Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 2. 24 Hegel 1963. 25 Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture, in Gabrichevsky 1993: 7. 26 “…противопоставление и синтезирование пространственной динамики и материальной тектоники.” Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture, Gabrichevsky 1993: 6. 27 “В новейшее время, в связи с развитием техники и зарождением нового архитектурного стиля, теоретики склонны вновь отрицать всякую разницу между целесообразностью практики и художенственностью, и готовы при- знать всякое целесообразное орудие прекрасным в мере его полезности”. Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 2. 28 The great debate by Semper and Bötticher on the notion of Tektonik that characterises the German architectural culture of the second half of the 19th cen- tury, was practically ignored by the Russians until the early years following the revolution. The same can be said about the other major issue discussed here – the interpretation of architecture as Raumkunst. There have not been any references to these two notions in Russian treatises since the 1850s. Apolony K. Krasovsky, Grazhdanskaya arkhitektura, St.Peterburg, 1851; N. G. Chernyshevsky, Estetiche- skie otnosheniya iskusstva k deystvitel’nosti, 1855; Vladimir O. Shervud, Opyt issledovaniya zakonov iskusstva. Zhivopis’, skul’ptura, arkhitektura i ornament, Moscow 1895; Vladimir Apyshkov, Ratsional’noe v noveyshey arkhitekture, St. Peterburg 1905; Boris N. Nikolaev, Fizicheskie nachala arkhitekturnykh form, St. Peterburg 1905; Pavel Strakhov, Esteticheskie zadachi tekhniki, Moscow 1906; P. P. Sokolov, Krasota arkhitekturnykh form – osnovnye printsipy, St. Peterburg, 1912. Even in the urbanistic area, Sitte’s ideas about an urban design based on the dimensioning of squares for the adequate perception of buildings were not assimi- lated by Vladimir Semenov (Blagoustroystvo gorodov. Moscow, 1912), Mikhail Dikansky (Postroyka gorodov, ikh plan i krasota, Petrograd, 1915). The Russian handbooks on the history of the 19th century do not discuss these questions: Borisova, Kazhdan 1971; Kirichenko 1979; Kirichenko, 1982.

29 Entsiklopedichesky slovar’ Russkogo bibliograficheskogo instituta Granat, Moscow, 1926-1927. Now in Gabrichevsky, 1993. 30 Prostranstvo i kompozitsiya v iskusstve Tintoretta, published in Gabrichevsky, 2002. 31 In 1925, the Akademiya was known as GAKhN (Gosudarstvennaya akademiya khudožestvennykh nauk – State Academy of Artistic Sciences); in the early months of 1929 the institute was transferred to Leningrad. 32 The other departments were directed by G. G. Shpet and V.M. Friche, respect- tively. 33 Priroda plastiki [The nature of plastic volume, 1922], Problema vremeni v iskusstve Rembrandt’a [The problem of time in the art of Rembrandt, 1922], Struktura khudozhestvennoy formy [The structure of artistic form, 1923], Nauchnoe i khudozhestvennoe mirosozertsanie Gete [Goethe’s scientific and artistic visions], Vremya v prostranstvennykh iskusstvakh [Time in spatial arts], Prostranstvo i kompozitsiya Tintoretto [Space and composition in the art of Tin- toretto], Odezhda i zdanie [Covering and construction], Markuzon 1976. 34 Within the Akademiya Arkhitektury, Gabrichevsky worked with Ginzburg on a History of architecture, starting from 1939. On Gabrichevsky and Ginzburg’s friendship see: Markuzon 1975. 35 Khan-Magomedov 1979; Khan-Magomedov 1994; Senkevitch jr. 1983. 36 Programma dei lavori dell’Inkhuk secondo un piano di Kandinskij, in Quilici, 1969. Senkevitch jr. 1983. 37 “Раскрыть внутренние законы, по которым строятся художественные произведения в сфере каждого отдельного искусства, и на этой базе устано- вить принципы синтетического художественного выражения”. Otchet o deyatel’nosti fiziko-psikhologicheskogo otdeleniya. [Summary of the activities of the psycho-physiological department]. RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 1, l. 26. 38 Letopisi deyatel’nosti fiziko-psikhologicheskogo otdeleniya [Chronicles of the psycho physiological department], RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 17, l. 1. 39 The conferences were held by Bakushinsky (“Pryamaya i obratnaya perspektiva” [The direct and inverse perspective] and “Vospriyatie i perezhivanie proizvedeniy iskusstva” [Perception and sensation of artistic creation]), Kandinsky (“Osnovnye elementy v zhivopisi” [The basic elements of painting]), Gabrichevsky (“Uchenie o khudozhestvennoy forme” [Studies on the aesthetics of form]), Mashkovets (“Problema prostranstva v zhivopisi” [The problem of space in painting]). 40 “O khudožestvennom nachale: o tsvete, svete, puantilizme v prostranstve i vremeni”, in Protokol zasedaniya gruppy po izucheniyu prostranstvennogo iskusstva. [Protocol of the meeting of the study group of spatial art] RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 8, l. 11. 41 RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 8, l. 1. The role this book played in the avant- garde movements in Russia is still unexplored. Its importance for the Inkhuk group and for Dokuchaev was analysed in the brilliant essay written by Senkevitch jr. 1983. 42 RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 17, l. 1.

43 Ginzburg 1923; Ginzburg 1924. The conferences “Stil’ i epokha” (7 and 23 December 1923), “Puti sovremennoy arkhitektury” [The directions of contemporary architecture] (6. 2. 1924) and “Skhema prostranstvennykh myshleniy” [An outline of spatial thinking] (8. 2. 1924) are named in Plan rabot fiziko-psikhologicheskogo otdeleniya RAKhN na 1923 g., [Work plan of the RAKhN psycho-physiological department for 1923], RGALI f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 1, l. 3. 44 Ernst Mach, Analiz oshchushcheniy, Moscow, 1907; from the different trans- lations of Wundt texts starting from the 1890s we recall Max Wundt, Ocherki psikhologii, Moscow, 1912, Problemy psikhologii narodov [Völkerpsychologie] and Vvedenie v psikhologiyu, both Kosmos, Moscow 1912, Fantaziya kak osnova iskusstva, St. Peterburg 1914. To understand the extent of the influence of these books in Russia, it is interesting to recall Lenin and his book Materializm i empiriokrititsizm, , Moscow 1909 (translated into English as Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1952) with the subtitle Kriticheskie zametki ob odnoy reakcionnoy filosofii [Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy]. Lenin harshly attacked the epistemolo- gical positions rooted in Mach’s theories and Mach’s followers in Russia. Skansi 2007. 45 In 1929 RAKhN/Gakhn was transferred to Leningrad, but in 1926 its activity was already drastically reduced. 46 The friendship between Zholtovsky and Gabrichevsky is documented in Gabrichevsky 2002. Gabrichevsky wrote one of the most important essays on the work of Zholtovsky, published posthumously, A. G. Gabrichevsky, I.V. Zholtovsky kak teoretik. Opyt kharakteristiki, in Arkhitektura SSSR, n. 3-4, 1983. 47 Pertseva 1979. 48 For the teaching methods applied at the Vkhutemas basic courses see the journal Izvestiya Asnova (1926); Arkhitektura Vkhutemasa, Moscow, 1927; Elementi arkhitekturno-prostranstvennoy kompozitsii, (ed. by B. F. Krinsky, I.V. Lamtsov, M. A. Turkus) Gosstroyizdat, Moskva, 1934; Konstantin Mel’nikov, Mir khudozh- nika, Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1985.