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Four months back, the Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art opened an ex­hib­it en­titled A Re­volu­tion­ary Im­pulse: Rise of the Rus­si­an Av­ant-Garde. The show re­ceived mostly fa­vor­able write-ups in lib­er­al out­lets like New York Times and New York­er as well as art/cul­ture mags like Stu­dio In­ter­na­tion­al, Seca Art, and He­don­ist. Marx­ist and left­ish pub­lic­a­tions such as World So­cial­ist Web­site (or­gan of the So­cial­ist Equal­ity Party) and Brook­lyn Rail also ran ap­pre­ci­at­ive re­views of the ex­hib­i­tion.

Per­haps my fa­vor­ite crit­ic­al re­flec­tion on the show came from Caesura, an off­shoot from the Platy­pus Af­fil­i­ated So­ci­ety ex­clus­ively fo­cused on art, mu­sic, and lit­er­at­ure. It fea­tured a fairly char­ac­ter­ist­ic but nev­er­the­less poignant ob­ser­va­tion:

Of the stag­ger­ing num­ber of ob­jects on dis­play, most strik­ing was film­maker Dziga Vertov’s 1925 col­lab­or­a­tion with Rod­chen­ko, Kino-Pravda no.21, a pro­pa­ganda film (the title trans­lates to cinema-truth) track­ing the fail­ing health, death and fu­ner­al of Len­in. Black and white graph­ics con­trib­uted by Rod­chen­ko de­pict­ing, without com­ment, the med­ic­al stat­ist­ics of the ail­ing re­volu­tion­ary lead­er cre­ated a palp­able sense of worry as they edge, at an ex­cru­ci­at­ingly slow pace, to­wards the res­ult we all know already: Len­in’s death in 1924. The film showed the massive long-faced pro­ces­sion of mourn­ers at his fu­ner­al, ded­ic­at­ing por­trait shots and name plates to party lead­ers: a hunched over, tear stricken Clara Zetkin, a somber Le­on Trot­sky and Joseph Stal­in stead­fastly look­ing ahead. The lat­ter was ut­terly chilling — a glimpse of a fu­ture yet un­known to the film­makers but known all too well today. Stand­ing, in 2017, in the Amer­ic­an Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art in a mo­ment of ut­ter polit­ic­al con­fu­sion, the tragedy of this mo­ment was cut­ting. Could the mourn­ers have pos­sibly known that they had wit­nessed both the be­gin­ning and the end of a mo­ment of tre­mend­ous his­tor­ic­al po­ten­tial? Did Vertov and Rod­chen­ko real­ize that in their mont­age of party lead­ers it would be Stal­in who would take power? Did they know that, after the crip­pling de­feat of the Ger­man Left the year pri­or, 1924 would mark a clos­ing and not an open­ing of his­tory?

Caesura’s re­view­er fur­ther spec­u­lates that “if the art of the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde has a time­less qual­ity, it is be­cause of its unique his­tor­ic­al ori­gin. Nev­er be­fore or since have artists op­er­ated un­der the thrall of three so­ci­et­ies — crum­bling czar­ist Rus­sia, the dy­nam­ic bour­geois west, and the ad­van­cing specter of so­cial­ism — so dif­fer­ent. It ex­presses all three but be­longs to none.” A sim­il­ar sen­ti­ment is cap­tured by a line in the New York­er: “His­tory is not a con­stant march for­ward; it can stand still for dec­ades and then, as it did in Rus­sia a hun­dred years ago, ex­plode in a flash.” This line it­self merely para­phrases a quip at­trib­uted to Len­in, to the ef­fect that “there are dec­ades where noth­ing hap­pens, but then there are weeks where dec­ades hap­pen.”

I my­self at­ten­ded the ex­hib­it, and was im­pressed by what I saw. Some of the same pieces had ap­peared in spe­cial gal­ler­ies across the city over the last few years, but the sheer wealth of ma­ter­i­al con­cen­trated in one space was breath­tak­ing. Fur­ther­more, the way this ma­ter­i­al was or­gan­ized and form­ally ar­ranged was skill­ful. You can see a pic­ture of me stand­ing next to Lis­sitzky’s “new man of com­mun­ism,” taken from his series for Vic­tory over the Sun. Be­low you can read a fine med­it­a­tion on the show writ­ten by Bloom Correo, a young ul­traleft au­thor who vis­ited NYC just to see it.

Alexandra Exter Maquette de lumière (1927)

Gustav Klutsis, Solomon Telingater Brigada khudozhnikov (Artists’ Brigade), no. 1 1931

Antoine Pevsner Cork Bas-Relief 1923

Gustav Klutsis Partbilet no.224332. Stikhi o Lenine (Party Membership Card Number 224332- Poems about Lenin) 1930

Varvara Stepanova Figure 1921

Antoine Pevsner The Eye 1923

Naum Gabo with Antoine Pevsner Realistic Manifesto (Realisticheskii Manifest) 1920

Mikhail Larionov Rayonist Composition- Number 9 (1913)

Nikolai Suetin Untitled (1922-1924)

David Burliuk, Vladimir Burliuk, Vasilii Kamenskii Tango s korovami. Zhelezobetonnye poemy (Tango with Cows- Ferro-concrete Poems) 1914

Yakov Guminer 1917 1927

David Burliuk, Vladimir Burliuk, Vasilii Kamenskii Tango s korovami. Zhelezobetonnye poemy (Tango with Cows- Ferro-concrete Poems) 1914

Jean Pougny (Ivan Puni) Flight of Forms (1919)

Vasilii Kamenskii, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Kirill Zdanevich 1918 1917

Mikhail Larionov Spiral (1917) (dated 1915)

Antoine Pevsner Abstract Forms 1913? (1923?)

Dziga Vertov Entuziazm (Enthusiasm) 1931

Aleksei Kruchenykh, Vasilii Kamenskii, Kirill Zdanevich Untitled from 1918 1917

Vera Ermolaeva Design for Victory Over the Sun (1920)

Alexandra Exter Construction 1922-1923

Vasyl Krychevsky, Alexander Dovzhenko Zvenygora 1927

Strelets (The Archer), vol. 1 1915

Col­lect­ive so­cial know­ledge

Bloom Correo
April 18, 2017
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In timely con­junc­tion with the centen­ni­al of the 1917 Rus­si­an Re­volu­tion, the Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) in New York hos­ted an ex­hib­it titled A Re­volu­tion­ary Im­pulse: The Rise of the Rus­si­an Av­ant-Garde. The ex­hib­it as­sembled an im­press­ive col­lec­tion of dy­nam­ic and mul­ti­fa­ceted works cre­ated dur­ing the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde peri­od in its zenith (1912-1935). Ori­gin­ally brought to­geth­er by Al­fred H. Barr, first pres­id­ent of the MoMA, the col­lec­tion in­cor­por­ates not one art form but many. Sculp­ture, pho­to­graphy, cinema, paint­ing, and graph­ic design are all in­cluded in the ex­hib­it. Film­makers such as the le­gendary Sergei Ei­s­en­stein and Dziga Vertov, paint­ers like Kazi­mir Malevich and El Lis­sitzky, and the pho­to­graph­er Aleksandr Rod­chen­ko are among the many bril­liant artists whose works could be seen at the event.

The ex­hib­it it­self is pre­faced by a short film, a three-minute reel show­ing a fu­ner­al for fallen re­volu­tion­ar­ies as well as scenes of Rus­si­an work­ers tear­ing down tsar­ist icon­o­graphy. The view­er is thus thrust in­to the his­tor­ic­al mo­ment that these artists were cre­at­ing un­der. The jux­ta­pos­i­tion of the sol­emn pro­ces­sion and the glee­ful de­sec­ra­tion demon­strates the con­tra­dict­ory im­pulses op­tim­ism and ex­cite­ment geared to­wards the Re­volu­tion it­self. Though this mo­ment was ground­break­ing, it destabil­ized the en­tire globe and re­quired the sac­ri­fice of many. Yet out of the rubble the yearn­ing for a re­volu­tion­ary fu­ture emerged.

It is from here that the ex­hib­it starts with Pop­ova and Malevich’s early, cu­bist-in­flu­enced works. Both were trend­set­ters in the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde, not­able for pi­on­eer­ing cubo­fu­tur­ism. The style, as the name sug­gests, is a cross of Itali­an fu­tur­ism and Parisi­an cu­bism, two move­ments at the fore­front of European art. Malevich and Pop­ova were not ex­clus­ively in­flu­enced by con­tem­por­ary move­ments out­side of Rus­sia, however; they also drew heav­ily upon Rus­si­an me­di­ev­al art and folk cul­ture.

Most mem­bers of the av­ant-garde in Rus­sia were thus in­ex­tric­ably linked to the in­ter­na­tion­al fu­tur­ist move­ment. Yet their art dis­played a dis­tinctly na­tion­al char­ac­ter. The ex­hib­it uses the cubo­fu­tur­ism of the early Malevich and Pop­ova to where the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde stemmed from in its evol­u­tion. At this early point (1912-1915), the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde was still re­l­at­ively apolit­ic­al in its con­vic­tions, un­like some oth­er art move­ments at the time. In 1916, just as Pop­ova was dis­tan­cing her­self from cubo­fu­tur­ism and rep­res­ent­a­tion­al art, Malevich foun­ded the group Su­premus.

As cubo­fu­tur­ism faded, artist­ic en­deavors amongst the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde grew in­creas­ingly geo­met­ric. Un­der the in­flu­ence of fu­tur­ism su­pre­mat­ism would emerge as new cur­rent in art cre­ated by Kazi­mir Malevich. With this trans­ition, the ex­hib­it takes the view­er in­to a sec­tion fo­cused on this move­ment. Nev­er­the­less, su­pre­mat­ism didn’t ap­pear out of nowhere. It wasn’t a spon­tan­eous cre­ation spun from the mind of a few artists. Traces of su­pre­mat­ism can be found through Malevich’s earli­er pieces, most not­ably Study for Décor of Vic­tory Over the Sun. The paint­ing was made for a fu­tur­ist op­era (Vic­tory Over the Sun), for which Malevich de­signed the sets.

Su­pre­mat­ism’s roots can be traced throughout early Rus­si­an mod­ern­ism, but its sub­sequent de­vel­op­ment can be seen as an ex­per­i­ment to test Malevich’s the­ory of non-ob­ject­ive art. Malevich found that feel­ing has su­per­seded art’s duty to rep­res­ent some sort of ob­ject­ive real­ity. In his book, The Non-Ob­ject­ive World, Malevich fam­ously stated:

By su­pre­mat­ism I mean the su­prem­acy of pure feel­ing in cre­at­ive art. To the su­pre­mat­ist the visu­al phe­nom­ena of the ob­ject­ive world are, in them­selves, mean­ing­less; the sig­ni­fic­ant thing is feel­ing.

in the philo­sophy ex­pounded in The Non-Ob­ject­ive World, Malevich was anti-ma­ter­i­al­ist and anti-util­it­ari­an. Read­ing this text, it’s little won­der why Marx­ists such as Adam Turl re­gard these artists as mere mys­tics. It makes per­fect sense. Look­ing at su­pre­mat­ist works such as Black Square or White Square on White through this lens, the ideal of a “trans­form­a­tion of the zero of form” should seem less tan­tal­iz­ing. But it doesn’t.

Malevich may not have been a polit­ic­al eco­nom­ist, but he and — to an even great­er ex­tent — oth­ers in­volved with the Su­premus group would over­turn the world of the av­ant-garde and bour­geois art, some of them evolving to­ward the much more pop­u­lar con­struct­iv­ism.

El Lis­sitzky saw a great deal in Malevich’s su­pre­mat­ism. Born to a Jew­ish fam­ily in Poch­inok in 1890, Lis­sitzky stud­ied at the Poly­tech­nic School of Darm­stadt in Ger­many as well as the Riga Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute. After this he moved to Mo­scow, where he swiftly made a name for him­self with­in the fledgling Rus­si­an av­ant-garde. Lis­sitzky helped found the con­struct­iv­ist school of art, along with Tat­lin and Rod­chen­ko, and to­geth­er they took the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde bey­ond the su­pre­mat­ism of Malevich. The town of Vitebsk it­self would be­come some­what of an ex­per­i­ment­ing ground for many of these artists. Con­struct­iv­ist and su­pre­mat­ist art could be found all throughout the town. In the words of Mayakovsky, “the streets our brushes, the squares our palettes”.

It was in this set­ting that Lis­sitzky be­came a lead­ing av­ant-garde fig­ure in the USSR. He de­signed the first flag for the Cent­ral Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee of Rus­sia and painted the fam­ous pro­pa­ganda work Beat the White with the Red Wedge. Lis­sitzky is then the only artist in the ex­hib­it the get an en­tire gal­lery ded­ic­ated to him. His Proun (Project For The Af­firm­a­tion of the New) series is ex­hib­ited not only through his paint­ings and litho­graphs, but also through the “mani­festo” he wrote as well as a chil­dren’s book he de­signed, About Two Squares.

The ex­hib­it also goes over oth­er artists between these points, thus avoid­ing the mis­take of a lin­ear present­a­tion from point A to point B to point C (cubo­fu­tur­ism → su­pre­mat­ism → con­struct­iv­ism, more or less). It’s much more el­eg­antly pieced to­geth­er than that. A wide ar­ray of artists is in­cluded along the over­arch­ing path of de­vel­op­ment, which the show oth­er­wise tries to con­vey.

By show­cas­ing the move­ment’s im­pact across every ma­jor me­di­um, the gal­lery of­fers a pic­ture of what it sought to ac­com­plish in the realm of aes­thet­ics along­side the Bolshev­ik party’s am­bi­tions in the realm of polit­ics. While av­ant-garde move­ments ex­is­ted throughout Europe be­fore, dur­ing, and after, and dur­ing World War I, the So­viet av­ant-garde alone was placed at the helm of cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions (if only briefly). Artists of all sorts took it upon them­selves to cre­ate a “col­lect­ive so­cial know­ledge” that could guide re­volu­tion­ary work­ers as they em­barked on an un­pre­ced­en­ted world-his­tor­ic­al jour­ney of so­cial trans­form­a­tion.

To il­lus­trate this, the ex­hib­it takes view­ers’ eyes away from the paint­ings lin­ing the halls with a single sculp­ture. An icon­ic pro­pos­al by Vladi­mir Tat­lin for a massive monu­ment to house the Third In­ter­na­tion­al could be seen as an ar­chi­tec­tur­al fantasy jut­ting sky­ward over Pet­ro­grad. Many of the bold­est projects of the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde were prac­tic­ally un­at­tain­able. Yet the un­built as­pir­a­tions of the early RSF­SR re­tain their grip over their pop­u­lar ima­gin­a­tion, even if of­ten over­shad­owed by the built leg­acy left by “ac­tu­ally-ex­ist­ing so­cial­ism.” Sput­nik and the Ber­lin Wall both come to mind whenev­er one thinks of the USSR, along with a long list of proxy wars waged against NATO and the US. It’s no sur­prise.

Re­gard­less, the cul­min­a­tion of the Rus­si­an av­ant-garde’s ef­fort to in­nov­ate a “col­lect­ive so­cial know­ledge” can be seen near the end of the ex­hib­it. Ad­vert­ise­ments, books, and polit­ic­al posters dec­or­ate the walls of this fi­nal sec­tion. It’s al­most as if the cur­at­ors want to sug­gest that the move­ment merely res­ul­ted in banal agit­prop. Wheth­er this was the cul­min­a­tion or simply the last hur­rah of the move­ment is de­bat­able, however. Per­haps the move­ment was putter­ing out any­ways. But as eph­em­er­al as the move­ment was, much of its out­put made a mark on the world.

The great ex­per­i­ments and the­or­ies cre­ated by Rus­si­an av­ant-garde film­makers are es­sen­tial to any un­der­stand­ing of mod­ern cinema. “So­viet mont­age” is of­ten the first thing that’s taught in 101 film classes. Every film schol­ar worth his or her salt knows of Ei­s­en­stein and Vertov. Su­pre­mat­ism and con­struct­iv­ism are also com­monly taught in mod­ern art his­tory classes. If any­thing, this ex­hib­it suc­ceeded in show­ing both the pro­gres­sion of the move­ments dir­ec­tion as well as the vast amount of art forms en­com­passed. On these grounds as well as many oth­ers, A Re­volu­tion­ary Im­pulse is worthy of ad­mir­a­tion and com­mend­a­tion.