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THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE in the 1920S by Sarah Gates

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THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE in the 1920S by Sarah Gates ENGINEERS OF THE HUMAN SOUL: THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE IN THE 1920s by Sarah Gates Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History Acadia University April, 2010 © Copyright by Sarah Gates, 2010 This thesis by Sarah Gates is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours Approved by the Thesis Supervisor __________________________ ____________________ Dr. David F. Duke Date Approved by the Head of the Department __________________________ ____________________ Dr. Paul Doerr Date Approved by the Honours Committee __________________________ ____________________ Dr. Sonia Hewitt Date ii I, SARAH GATES, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I however, retain the copyright in my thesis. _________________________________ Signature of Author _________________________________ Date iii ABSTRACT The 1920s were a remarkable decade for the USSR. After emerging from the October Revolution and the horrors of the Civil War, the tasks of socialist construction lay ahead. The artistic avant-garde produced art which was meant to inspire the masses and guide them towards the fulfillment of socialism. Realizing the didactic power of the artistic avant-garde, the Party began courting various groups of artists and commissioned them to produce “agitational art”- posters, plays, and easel art containing revolutionary messages. The artists saw themselves as the ultimate Marxists, spare in their art and implacable in their didactic leadership of the masses. Beginning in 1923, a shift in avant-garde thought occurred: agitational art remained important, but it was carried in new directions in order to change the material basis of life inside the young USSR. By entering the field of production, the Constructivist avant-garde produced items for mass distribution with the intent of changing the proletariat’s attitude toward material goods. After Lenin’s death and the ascendancy of Stalin, the role of the artist gradually changed: the artist-constructor of the 1920s was replaced by the artist-advertiser. Easel art and installation art were replaced by the photomontage. This return to realism was cemented into official policy by 1932: the non-objective art of the 1920s was no longer acceptable to the Party. Henceforth the Soviet artistic community could only represent the idealized vision of Stalinist progress, and could only do so via the sterile genre of socialist realism. v Chapter 1: Artists and the State in the Young USSR From the time of the October Revolution, the newly-formed Soviet Union was in a constant state of flux. A new day seemed to be dawning for the peoples of the Russian empire: their centuries-old monarchical system had been swept away, replaced by an ineffectual provisional government and soon after by the Bolsheviks. Soviet citizens knew they were at an important historical crossroads: the dramatic shift of political dynamics brought with it a re-evaluation of cultural and societal attitudes. Indeed, in the USSR’s infancy there no longer seemed any restrictions on either the form or the function of their new society, beyond the utopianist vision laid down in the writings of Karl Marx. In this new environment, the people who thought themselves most able to take the reins of social leadership were the artistic avant-garde. In their opinion, the role of an artist was didactic: they would lead their fellow citizens, by example, into the glowing future promised by full Communism. As a result of their activities and by the superior example set by their new society, Communism would consequently spread across the globe. Through art1 they hoped to guide public opinion toward the revolutionary utopian future. The nineteenth-century propagandist and democrat Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote, “Reality is superior to its imitation in art. Let us tear ourselves away from our speculative activity and find a way to real work!”2 In seeking to serve the new Soviet state, and to direct its development, through their art the artistic avant- 1 “Art” is a term which includes easel painting, posters, videos, photomontage, sculpture, textiles, and architecture. 2 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, as quoted in Camilla Gray, introduction, The Russian Experiment in Art (1962, London: Thames and Hudson, 1986) 280. 1 garde hoped to go further than Chernyshevsky imagined: the artistic endeavour would not be abandoned in favour of “real work”; it would become the real work itself. From this utopian vanguard emerged the new artistic movements of Suprematism, created by Kasimir Malevich and Constructivism, created by Vladimir Tatlin. These two movements dominated the modern artistic scene in the postrevolutionary period and were at the forefront of the struggle to create a utopian society in the 1920s and early 1930s. While Suprematism focused on creating a new artistic style based on the square and circle, Constructivism, as its name suggested, was intended to facilitate the growth and development of socialism through the application of artistic media. Constructivists were fascinated by utility and strove to create usable art; members of the movement were urged to put their skills to use in the factory, not the studio. However, a split soon formed not only between the Suprematists and Constructivists, but also between the Constructivists and their sub-genre, the Productivists. After Lenin’s death and Stalin’s ascent to power, the respective art movements struggled with the challenge of appeasing Stalin (and subsequently Andrei Zhdanov, the Politburo’s cultural supremo) or staying true to their ideals despite the growing, and likely fatal, possibility of being labelled an ‘enemy of the people’. The history of this challenge, the various strategies adopted by artists to meet it, and the ways in which the artistic communities were affected by their changing relationship to the political elite, form the investigative core of this thesis. Subjective questions will be examined such as if an artist is producing art simply to appease/flatter a dictator, can their work truly be seen as having any artistic credibility? Have they simply sold out their 2 original vision? These questions will be investigated, along with objective analyses dealing with elite views of art, particularly those emanating from Stalin and his closest Politburo associates. Was Stalin, like Lenin, interested in using art for a didactic purpose, or was he simply content to watch the artists tear each other apart for his political ends? With so many ambiguities present in this period of time, the main challenge is attempting to find out someone’s true attitude, especially when one adds Stalin, the supreme masker of true emotions, to the equation. The artistic avant-garde which emerged in early 20th century Russia was dynamic and iconoclastic. Foreign investment flooded into the country from Western Europe, bringing the old empire into the fold of rapidly expanding and culturally progressive European countries.3 The relationship between France and Russia also bloomed during this time since France was the main investor promoting Russia’s rapid industrialization. The two countries had been culturally entwined, although occasionally bitter enemies, since the time of Czar Alexander I and the defeat of Napoleon: French was the spoken language of the Russian court, and St. Petersburg was commonly referred to as the “Paris of the North.” French culture was seen as an ideal for which to strive and it is no surprise that when fledgling Russian artists began emulating Europe’s avant-garde, they paid closest attention to the French masters. As a result of the rapprochement between Russia and the rest of Europe, Russia came to be acquainted with the artistic movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The works of the post- Impressionists, and of Matisse in particular, were tremendously inspirational, causing 3 Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922 (1962, London: Thames and Hudson, 1986) 65. 3 the establishment of the ‘World of Art’ (Mir iskusstva) magazine and subsequently an art movement in itself in 1905 as Russians sought to emulate their idols. The World of Art movement was made up of such artists as Alexandre Benois and Sergei Diaghilev and was responsible for exhibits which showcased the most cutting-edge work from Russia and abroad. These exhibits played an influential role in shaping the talent of Vladimir Tatlin and Kasimir Malevich. The World of Art movement also contributed to the development of a “buyer class”, a section of the middle class which accumulated paintings by Matisse, Cézanne, and Gauguin. As these collections were exhibited contemporary directions in artistic culture were further assimilated into the Russian art world. From there the current shifted from Symbolism and toward Cubo-Futurism. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto” of 1908, which urged a break from the stagnant avant-garde and a move to embrace speed, violence and the world of the machine,4 produced a revolution in Russian artistic thought and practice. Russian artists very quickly adapted to these ideals and those presented by the emerging Cubist movement. The fusion of Cubism and Futurism was a uniquely Russian phenomenon, combining the best of what they had seen exhibited by Matisse and Picasso, with a fusion of the work of Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni. The hallmarks of this remarkable Russian movement were the fractured appearance of the subject as well as the impression of movement and the use of bright colours. The movement reached its zenith with Kasimir Malevich’s “The Knife Grinder” in 1912, but immediately thereafter, indeed within a year, Malevich himself would lead 4 Flaminio Gualdoni, Art: The Twentieth Century (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2008) 79. 4 the Russian art world away from Cubo-Futurism, and away from objective art altogether.
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