Transitional Art

 “Art of the Soviets – Painting, Sculpture & Architecture in a One-Party State,” edited by MC Bown and B Taylor, 1917-1992 (1993)

Part 1:

This is an erudite and academic collection of articles about Soviet art discussing various painting styles – cubism, futurism, agit-prop posters, socialist realism, naturalism, realism, Constructivism, formalism. It also looks at public sculptures and building methods. The use of 'one-party state' in the sub-title implies that art in 'two-party' states is freer or better … which might be true and might not. The editor's point was that the government had a huge role in artistic scenes for awhile. On the other hand market forces in the U.S. have created a two-party duopoly 'Dollar state' with lots of questionable architecture, sculpture and painting. The authors are not leftists, but they are knowledgeable about the USSR, pointing out a wide range of Soviet art and achievements ignored by anti-communists. These articles do not go into Russian avant-garde styles like Constructivism very much, perhaps because it is so studied.

Public propaganda: The author asserts that the seeds of socialist realism were sown in 1917. He points to Lenin's plan, addressed to Lunacharsky, asking for “monumental propaganda” - referring to sculpture and statues – as proof. Yet the selected statues were of a broad cultural range, and in varied styles. Public sculptures included not just Marxists, but Chopin, Garibaldi, Bakunin, Proudhon and many writers, including Byron and Heine. The plan removed statues of Romanov kings and Russian Orthodox saints – the Confederates, slavers and colonialists of their day. The author notes the sophisticated use of propaganda by the Bolsheviks encompassed sculpture, film, theatre, posters, murals, agitational trains and ships, agit-prop, revolutionary festivals, photomontage – it was a “multi-media propaganda machine.” Tatlin's famous Constructivist spiral model - “Monument to the Third International” was both revolutionary in form and content. It showed the Bolsheviks were not afraid of modernism at the time.

Physical issues: The 'new man' of approaching socialism engendered a focus on physical fitness, non-competitive sports, gymnastics and eventually Stakhanovite workers, able to exceed at any kind of labor. In theatre, Meierhold incorporated move modeling, gymnastics and circus antics in his plays, while designers created sports clothing for women. The 'machine-man' was a trend. These corresponded to the Marxist idea of removing the barrier between mental and physical labor. Later, sports became competitive under Stalin and 'willpower' predominant. According to one of the authors “Lenin was somewhat of a fitness fanatic,” doing daily calisthenics and exercise. The civil war and industrialization made physical exhaustion and emotional fatigue a focus in the army, architecture, work-sites and also within the Party.

Early Artist Org: The AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia) was predominant between 1922 and 1932 and was favored by the dominant groups in the Soviet CP. Western analysts have ignored it for political reasons. The organization was molded by the cultural preferences of Lenin, Trotsky and sometimes Lunacharsky, Bukharin and later, Stalin. This involved battles around pre-revolutionary Turgenevism, futurist, realist, revolutionary, naturalist and early socialist realist art. The backwardness of the old artists' group inspired the formation of AKhRR. It's manifesto dedicated itself to the heroism of soldiers, workers, revolutionaries and peasants.

Tatlin's tower in honor of the 3rd International

Lines on Art:

To be noted, the Party still had no line about art, even though Lenin favored accessible, political art. AKhRR was criticized for not going beyond naturalism in its shows. It did gain friends in the Red Army and trade unions. Trotsky called their work “manure for the new culture” - a double-edged dialectical comment. Lunacharsky, while allowing modernism, criticized cubism for its bourgeois abstraction, and naturalism for being a dead mirror. At the time he favored 'agitational' art motivated by the idea, where form and content fuse. In 1925 still no style was decreed by the CPSU in literature or the arts, except to support a general communist world-view. The author contends these aesthetic conflicts created a diverse mélange of groups and styles – mostly naturalist or realist - from all over the USSR, best shown in the massive and pivitol 1926 AKhRR exhibition. It was praised by Lunacharsky as to its breadth and insulted by the modernist critic Novitski as to its archaic amateurism and Tsar-like portraits.

The author concludes that AKhRR's 'mass-ness' was “a reworking … of Russian nineteenth century painting within the framework of a class-conscious engagement with … Soviet reality.” A transitional method, so to speak. The prescient debate included insults by some against impressionism, cubism, dada and futurism as 'decadent' or 'bourgeois' western products. In 1932, after the victory of Stalin's faction, the CPSU decree “On the Reconstruction of Artistic and Literary Organizations” initiated Party control, and demanded some form of socialist realism. In 1934 culture potentate Zhdanov said that “art had to be socially relevant to the mass viewer … understandable and instructive ideologically.”  It became official policy.

Socialist Realism: The author thinks socialist realism used the old methods of allegory and iconography to convey its messages of national social planning.  It portrayed everything 'marching forward' as part of the 5 year plan; baptized progress with the color red; portrayed ideal physical bodies; idolized Stalin and Lenin, along with many icons and symbols of October like the hammer & sickle; used visual cues to show zeal like blowing hair; brought the viewer into the picture by portrayed a side character also watching the action. This author says many of these are 'pseudo-religious' methods. He looks at 4 socialist realist paintings for proof.

Views on Art: According to Lunacharsky Soviet artists should help to create 'the new man' and the future. Lenin opposed Proletcult's leader Alexandr Bogdanov who believed all art had to be made anew. Lenin followed Marx, who felt that a workers' state would absorb the high points of bourgeois culture, so starting anew was impossible. Lunacharsky agreed, but rejected European cubist / futurist, even Impressionist styles as too abstract for Soviet citizens. His views were important, as Lunacharsky was the first Commissar of Education & Culture, but lost his position to Stalin's faction in 1929. He became another commissar erased from Soviet history and the Kremlin Wall, only to have a revival under Khrushchev. He, too, is a transitional figure.

1926 Film Poster

Architecture: The author rejects socialist realist architecture as limited to the Stalin period. Large Soviet buildings are sometimes called 'brutalist' but the same style occurs in the west. It claimed to be a method, not a style; it sought to unite progress with tradition. It was summed up as 'National in form, socialist in content' – which indicates that Russianism had replaced internationalism. Nothing major was being built until about 1924 due to materials' shortages - and then the debates started between the main modernist Constructivist and socialist realist tendencies. In 1932 the debate about the never built “Palace of The Soviets” led to asymmetrical and unadorned methods being ruled out and socialist-realist monumentalism endorsed. This is prior to many environmental understandings, though Soviet apartment buildings efficiently shared inputs – electricity, heat, space, etc. Besides buildings, industrial cities were planned, laying out worksites, shops and living spaces in a logical order, as coherent wholes. Are these '15 minute cities'? They might be, as the car culture was not dominant. Old cities like Moscow and Kiev were partly re-designed in certain areas, trying to modernize the legacy of the Russian Czar and village.

The first real architectural project was the superb Moscow Metro, which a range of architects worked on, including Corbusier. It opening in 1935 with revolutionary art and sculpture added later. After WWII many more building projects started around the country, principally low-rise housing using local and environmental styles, much of which the author calls 'excellent.' The last gigantic socialist realist experiments ended in 1952 with Stalin's death – a series of huge, high buildings in Moscow. In 1954 Khrushchev, who'd worked on the Metro, denounced the socialist realist style as economically expensive, a waste of materials and inefficient due to heat losses and little usable floor space. And that was it.

End of Part 1 review. Part 2 to be posted on Thursday.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Adios Utopia,” “Women in Soviet Art,” “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class,” “Ways of Seeing” (Berger); “Desert of Forbidden Art,” “The Marxist Theory of Art,” “Elizabeth Olds and Wanda Gag,” “Art is DEAD,” “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “The Red Atlantis.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent used/cutout section!

Red Frog

April 20, 2023