Borovikovsky and Levitsky, Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin
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LAY_Books_JAN17.qxp_Layout 1 14/12/2016 12:37 Page 50 BOOKS heroes emerge: Borovikovsky and Levitsky, Club of 1926 was the first truly Suprematist All this is documented in this superbly illus- Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin, Fedo- architectural design. The story of how it came trated and informative volume, which makes tov, Repin, the Empress Maria Fedorovna to be produced makes fascinating reading. full use of material preserved in the family and many others. Portraiture fares particularly Khidekel was a fifteen-year-old student archive. It is the first major monograph on well – perhaps due in part to Blakesley’s when he first came into contact with Kazimir Khidekel in English and provides a riveting exhibition of Russian portraits, Russia and the Malevich, soon after the artist arrived in discussion of the architect’s creative theory Arts: The Age of Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy, at the Vitebsk in November 1919 to teach at the and practice. The 115 large colour plates pro- National Portrait Gallery, London, last year – city’s art school. Subsequently, Khidekel vide a visual history of his development from although one can easily imagine landscapes, became one of Malevich’s most steadfast Cubo-Futurism and Suprematism (e.g. Yellow history painting or genre painting claiming followers and a leading member of UNOVIS cross; 1923) to projects such as his design for the top spot in another version.1 (Utverditeli novogo iskusstva, ‘Champions of the stage at the Red Putilov Workers’ Club in Blakesley concludes her book with the the New Art’), the group that Malevich set up Petrograd/Leningrad (1924) and later works. ninth exhibition of the Peredvizhniki in 1881, in early 1920. It was dedicated to promoting The book also includes a chronology of the which featured a breathtaking display of the Suprematism, introducing its language of architect’s life and various documents and Russian school’s greatest works: Repin’s por- coloured geometric forms against white theoretical statements that he produced dur- trait of Modest Mussorgsky (State Tretyakov grounds into all aspects of the everyday ing the 1920s. Gallery, Moscow), Vasily Surikov’s ominous environment, and incorporating its features The essays act as an illuminating comple- Morning of the execution of the Streltsy (Fig.45) – into all areas of design, from ration cards to ment to this visual material. Regina Khidekel seeming to anticipate the events surrounding posters, from textiles to buildings. The group provides a general introduction, while Tatiana the assassination of Tsar Alexander II – and shared Malevich’s aspiration to reconfigure Goriacheva discusses Khidekel’s work at Arkhip Kuindzhi’s haunting, shimmery vision the world as a Suprematist utopia and create a UNOVIS, and Charlotte Douglas explores the of the Dnieper river (State Tretyakov Suprematist architecture. cosmic dimension of Suprematist architecture. Gallery). Again, Blakesley’s choice is unex- Khidekel rapidly became one of Malevich’s Alla Rosenfeld, Boris Kirikov and Margarita pected. Just as Russian painting seems to start most valued disciples and assistants, a member Shtiglits examine Khidekel’s architectural truly hitting its stride, producing works that of UNOVIS’s creative committee and work of the 1920s and 1930s, including the would hold their own in any survey of Euro- responsible for running the architectural and Club for the Red Sportsman’s Stadium (1927) pean art, she ends. Many readers will want to technical department after El Lissitzky left and designs for the socialist town of Dubrovka know what comes next, and what all this Vitebsk in late 1920. From 1923 Khidekel (1931–33) – sadly destroyed during the Second meant for Mikhail Vrubel and Natalia Gon- worked with Malevich at the State Institute of World War – in which Suprematist formal charova, Kandinsky and Malevich. In her final Artistic Culture (Gosudarstvenny Institut concerns were combined with a Constructivist line, Blakesley offers only the most minimal of Khudozhestvennoy Kultury, or GINKhUK) approach to material and function. Finally, answers, writing that later artists ‘stood on the in Petrograd, while studying architecture at Constantin Boym and Magdalena Dabrowski shoulders of their predecessors’. In her refusal the city’s Institute of Civil Engineering. discuss Khidekel within international artistic to say more, Blakesley makes, perhaps, the Khidekel’s design for the Workers’ Club of and architectural contexts. This book is essen- strongest argument for the school of Russian 1926 fused a Suprematist approach to form tial reading for anyone wishing to gain a fuller painting, declaring that its turn to Modernism and space with pragmatic concerns for func- understanding of Malevich, UNOVIS, Su- is not the most interesting part of the story, tion, materials and construction methods. prematist architecture and the achievements of that it is merely the next chapter in a much While its asymmetrical massing and use of the Russian avant-garde. longer history. It is in this bold claim that cantilevering were reminiscent of Malevich’s Blakesley enacts a remarkable expansion of own experiments with architectural form – the field, making available to a wide audience his planits and architectons – Khidekel’s design a pantheon of previously little-known artists, could actually be built. Yet Khidekel also fresh historical perspectives and a national tra- explored architecture’s spatial potential in Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’: Energy Made dition with global implications. sketches for dramatically cantilevered, inter- Visible. By David Anfam. 146 pp. incl. 67 secting and asymmetrically articulated recti- 1 col. + 39 b. & w. ills. (Thames & Hudson, It was reviewed in the June issue of this Magazine, linear structures, which were intended to be London, 2015), £24.95. ISBN 978–0–500– 158 (2016), pp.470–71. raised above the ground on supports, or to 23934–6. inhabit cosmic space, such as his designs for a city on piers (1926–28) and an ‘Aero-city’ Reviewed by PATRICIA SMITHEN (1928). These visions remained firmly con- fined to the drawing board, especially after Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism. Edited Khidekel was forced publicly to recant his READING THROUGH David Anfam’s book on by Regina Khidekel. With contributions by previous attachment to Suprematism in 1934 Jackson Pollock’s Mural (1943; University of Constantin Boym, Magdalena Dabrowski, and comply with the stylistic dictates of Sta- Iowa Museum of Art) can be compared to the Charlotte Douglas, Tatiana Goriacheva, Irina linism. From then on his architecture con- experience of looking at the painting itself: Karasik, Boris Kirikov, Margarita Shtiglits formed to official demands, although echoes there is a structure steering you through, but and Alla Rosenfeld. 224 pp. incl. 180 col. ills. of Suprematism sometimes remained. The it is easy to get lost in the pleasure of its dense (Prestel, Munich, London and New York, school on Gorokhovaya Street in what was thickets and layers of meaning.1 Just when you 2014), £55. ISBN 978–3–7913–4968–88. then Leningrad (1938), for instance, is in a think you understand where he is leading you, Neo-classical idiom, although the site plan up pops an unexpected reference or Reviewed by CHRISTINA LODDER recalls a Suprematist composition with geo- antecedent to Mural, which Anfam swiftly metrical elements distributed along a single corroborates with convincing evidence. It is AS THE FIRST scholarly study of the innovative axis. During the thaw in East–West relations an erudite, immensely engaging and illumi- work of the architect Lazar Markovich under Krushchev, Khidekel was encouraged nating display. Khidekel (1904–86), this book is a most to revisit his earlier experiments, producing Although organised into three chapters with welcome addition to the literature on the numerous spatial paintings and innovative a structure loosely based on ‘before’, ‘during’ Russian avant-garde. Khidekel is not well designs, including a project for a museum and ‘after’ the painting was made, the book is known, but he played a vital role in applying dedicated to the rocket scientist Konstantin anything but linear in its approach, opening the spatial and formal principles of Suprem- Tsiolkovsky, who had been an inspiration for with Pollock’s death in 1956 when the fateful atism to architecture. Indeed, his Workers’ UNOVIS’s cosmic aspirations. car crash left Clyfford Still waiting in vain for 50 january 2017 • cliX • the burlington magazine.