Experiment/3KcnepHMeHT, 1 (1995}, 201-09. EKATERINA YUDINA MIKHAIL LE-DANTIU The painting and theoretical output of Mikhail Vasilievich le-Dantiu {1891-1917) (Fig. 66) is still unfamiliar to scholars of modern art. But in the pantheon the Russian avant-garde, Le-Dantiu is one of many •mute" characters that, nevertheless, were prime movers of verbal and pictorial experiment. These include, for example, Le-Dantiu's colleagues within the "Donkey's Tail" exhibition of 1912-Morits Fabbri, Viacheslav levkievsky, Vladimir Obolensky, Nikolai Rogovin, Evgenii Sagaidachny, and Ivan Skuie. Le-Dantiu's discovery of the Georgian primitive painter Niko Pirosmanashvili, Mikhail Larionov's letters addressed to Le-Dantiu as com­ rade-in-arms, and Varsonofii Parkin's high estimation of him in the miscel­ lany Oslinyi khvost i mishen [The Donkey's Tail and TargetP indicate that he deserves more than mere relegation to the rank of ancillary player. An associate of the Union of Youth. and Donkey's Tail groups, le-Dantiu was an active participant in many of the key events in the development of the Russian avant-garde during the 191 Os. His own Rayonist and Cubist style of painting was distinctive and, while interacting with the art of Larionov, Alexander Shevchenko, and Vladimir Tatin, his oeuvre is characterized by a reserved and studious quality-one that is not generally identified with the scandals and provocations perpetrated by the early Russian avant­ garde. Moreover, in the disputy undertaken by the leftist artists, Le-Dantiu, unlike other Futurists (budushchniki), declaimed his position not as a noisy ideologue, but as a serious theoretician, and this was especially true of the cultural system that he called Everythingness or Everythingism (vsechestvo) (Fig. 67). Announced in 1913, Everythingism united the artists and theoreticians of the Donkey's Tail and the Target groups, i.e., Natalia Goncharova, Larionov, Shevchenko, Ilia Zdanevich, and Le-Dantiu himself (Figs. 68, 69), and its basic tenets were promulgated in the mani­ festo "Rayonists and Futurists'~ the same year: 1. V. Parkin, "Oslinyi khvost i mishen," in V. Parkin et a/., Oslinyi khvost i mishen (Moscow: Miunster, 1913), pp. 70-71. ,. -202 Experiment/3KcnepHMeHT We reject individuality as having no meaning for the examination of a work of art. One has to appeal only to a work of art, and one can examine it only by proceding from the laws according to which it was created ... · ' We declare that there has never been such a thing as a copy and recommend painting from pictures painted before the present day. We maintain that art cannot be examined from the point of view of time. ' We acknowledge all styles as suitable for the expression of our art, styles existing both yesterday and today ... We demand a .knowledge of painterly craftsmanship ... We believe that the whole world can be expressed fully in n, ·painterly forms: ... ·.. · Life, poetry, music, philosophy.2 '. ' .... ; ~ :; · .. : · • .. · Everythingism lay at the center of Le-Dantiu's artistic worldview, and ·, ·he presented its canon in several key statements, particularly in his decla­ :c • . ration, "The Painting of Everythingness."3 Here he explicates the ma.in ideas ·' of his system such as the rejection of the artist's individuality in terms of time, place and artistic movement, and the justification of copying or · imitaton. Le-Dantiu almost assumes the role of a "Proto-Post-Modernist" when he writes that "a more or less exact copy of a work is merely a · reflection of the influence of the original on the copy, and that the latter, therefore, must be considered an independent work of art. After all, the various elements of the copy produce a work of art quite different to those that were intended in the original." Fundamental to the Everythingists was the thesis that art is essentially free from the constraints · of time and space. Le-Dantiu understood this to mean that however vari­ able the concept underlying a. particular work, the laws of art remain un­ changed, eternal, and timeless. Therefor.e, the main enterprise of an artist is ~o study and employ the laws of painterly craftsmanship. Copying, .!, once an end, in itself (as in eclecticism) becomes a means of analytical study, enabling the ar~ist to. attain a higher level of technical and formal 2. Quoted in j. Bowlt, ed,, Russian Art of the Avant·garde: Theory and Criticism 1902· 1934 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988),.p. 90. 3. Within the textual legacy of the Donkey's Tail group, le-Dantiu's contribution is distinguished by its 'scriptural' nature in the sense that none of the essays was published during his lifetime. Practically all his writings are preserved in RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art) in Moscow (Call Nos.: f. 972, op. 1, ed. khr. 1, 3; op. 3, ed. khr. 10). Two of his articles have since been published in Russian, i.e., M. le-Dantiu, "Zhivopis vsekov," Minuvshee (Paris), No. 5 (1988), pp. 183-202; and "Rukopis· statio zhivopisi,' Jskusstvo (Moscow), No. 1 (1993), pp. 62-68. .