Russian avant -garde - projects and projection

Recently, within the framework of the interfacial seminar of the Bibleistic and Judaic Center for the Russian State Humanitarian University “Jews and Culture of postmodern”, I gave a lecture on the projects and projections of the Russian avant -garde , Natalya Smolyanskaya , associate professor of the Department of Cinema and Contemporary Art of the Faculty of History of the RSUSU, associated researcher of the University of Paris VIII. It was about the artists of the avant-garde, whose activities fell at the beginning of the 20th century: about Ela (Lazar) Lisitsky (1890–1941), Solomone Nicritin (1898–1965) and Naum Gabo (Pevzner) (1890–1977). In their work, they combined practice and theory, which subsequently influenced the development of art in the twentieth century.

"Our time is an analysis era"

Many artists of that period left behind, instead of works, only ideas-driving. Projects, as is customary to say now. An example is Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), whose works have not been preserved. His heritage in the Tretyakov Gallery is mainly only reconstruction. Naum Gabo was more lucky, who left Berlin in 1922, then to the United States. In the second half of his life, he himself was engaged in the reconstruction of works that arose in the era of historical avant -garde. Artists tried to verbalize their thoughts and ideas, their records are incredibly interesting to read now.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a peculiar discovery of space by artists took place, and all the heroes of our meeting reflected this discovery in their work and in the texts. Records in the diaries of the avant -garde player Solomon Nikritin, who lived a long life in the USSR - his plays, essays, notes, drawings - include amazing artistic experience. Nikritin writes about biomechanics as a bodily exercise, the development of the body. Pictures from his diaries, records of art and philosophy, as well as about the famous projection theater are curious. They reduce the artistic component as much as possible and illustrate biomechanics with experiments in the development of the body of space. Num Gabo, along with his brother Nathan Pevzner in the “Realistic Manifesto” in 1920, also wrote about space. But the first text, which spoke of cubism and space by another author, appeared in 1912. This is the text of Glese and Metzenge "On Cubism".

In 1925, the book “Izma of Art. 1914–1924 ”, the conceptual solution of which was made by the artist and theoretician Ele of Lisitsky. It was created in collaboration with the German and French sculptor Hans Arp, spoke about new trends in the history of art and carried out a very complex reflection on “fresh” material, structuring very recent artistic experiments. The epigraph to this book was the words of Casimir Malevich, under the sign of which all conceptual changes occur. “Our time is an analysis era,” he writes. El Lisitsky is one of his close friends, a student and translator.

It was then that the concept of “project” acquires a new meaning. At the same time, this is a sketch and aspiration to the future, while he has some utopianity and dreaminess. New art characterizes the design, which means the simultaneous study of two forms of expression - both theoretical and work with the material.

The avant -garde art association of the UNOVIS (“APPRIDNIVARS of New Art”), created by Kazimir Malevich and his students and followers in Vitebsk in 1920, is a point where different ideas converge, where the theoretical development of both Malevich and Lisitsky begins. From this point there is the influence and spread of avant -garde ideas to Germany and America. Some of the domestic avant-garde players could not withstand the difficult times of the formation of the Soviet regime and went into oblivion, someone had to pay their lives, like Gustav Klutsis (1895-1938). Some were forced to get away from their experiments: in this sense, the being of Vladimir Tatlin is tragic. Solomon Nikritin for many years sought the opportunity to set his paintings.

In the postwandard period, the most famous due to exporting Malevich and Lisitsky continued their lives in Western European museums. After the war and the recovery period of the 1950s, a new wave of interest in the vanguard arises.

In 1957, a large exhibition of Casimir Malevich in the West was held. His works, left there in 1927, were redeemed from the keepers. And in 1962, then the young art critic Camilla Gray came to Russia and wrote a book-study book “The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863–1922”. After perestroika, a new round of interest in the vanguard arises, stimulated by new avant -garde exhibitions, which took place in the West, including the 1992 Great Utopia exhibition. Finally, in Moscow in 1988, a large exhibition of Malevich’s works was held. Alas, the big exhibition of his colleagues Solomon Nikritin did not take place.

Avant -garde and scientific revolution

Many remember the interest in Russia in the 1990s in the Russian religious philosophy of the early twentieth century, and the boom of reprints of that time. But the thinkers who influenced the artists of the avant -garde remained not entirely covered by this wave. These are scientists who developed the ideas of Ernst Mach: the philosopher of technology Pyotr Engelmeyer, physico-chemist and philosopher-idealist Wilhelm Oststild, priest, philosopher and scientist Pavel Florensky, as well as the utility thinker Alexander Bogdanov. The idea of ​​Mach about the unity of organic and mental was very important for the development of avant -garde concepts. The development of science, as well as the mentality of the whole society, was also important, the study of space. In particular, it is known that the book of Charles Nordmann “Einstein and the Universe” influenced the ideas of Solomon Nikritin.

The interest of avant-garde in space is associated with the scientific and cultural-philosophical revolution of the late 19th century, when public consciousness passes from the experience of the unity of being to the realization of the multiplicity of worlds, universes, and various types of experience. This is the time when new geometry is created, such philosophical works as, for example, the book of mathematics Poincare “Science and Hypotheses”, come out. Of course, many artists of such books do not read, but they cannot avoid already established trends in the late 19th century to the search for distant countries and their own means of art of expression: in the consideration of graphic traces of avant -garde artists, one can see that secret, hidden, which gives an impulse to the development of space. This is a return to romanticism, and a conversation about the basics of being.

The combination of esoteric searches and reflection on the theory of relativity gave a new look at the space, to the idea of ​​how geometric space can be combined with a representative space (Poincare speaks about this). So, El Lisitsky writes the article “Art and Pangoometry”. The context of avant -garde art successfully fit the drawings of Tsiolkovsky to the work “Dreams of the Earth and the sky”. The avant -garde approach to the space is heterogeneous - a plane is important for Malevich, and Lisitsky’s drawing is built on Suprematic elements; His project was confirmed is a kind of space station. But in any case, the space of avant -garde artists El Lisitsky, Solomon Nikritin and Naum Gabo is the possibility of a different perception of the world, representing reality, building the world in some remote ideal cosmic space.

Space "Over the storms of our everyday life ..."

In the 1920s, Solomon Nikritin and El Lisitsky often work on the same projects: for example, they participate in the design of the October holidays in Kyiv and create street art objects there. They are research artists, they go beyond the scope of visualization and are engaged in social projects and scientific research.

Fate was favorable to Lisitsky - he received engineering education abroad. The main project of Lisitsky, which manifested itself differently in various mediums, is the creation of a “demonstrative space” (an example-“Room of Proves”, 1923). The artist taught a lot, which is generally characteristic of representatives of the Russian avant -garde. According to the then popular idea of ​​education, it was not enough to engage in their own creativity, it was important to create the best, new worlds and share discoveries. Then there is a Moscow Vhutemas and the German Bauhaus. In VKhUTEMAS there was a propaedeutic discipline "Space". Lisitsky in Donis gives tasks on volumetric analytical drawing and calls it “architectonic principle”. Kandinsky is also engaged in an analytical pattern, but in another way, when students from drawing from nature proceed to abstract drawing.

Lisitsky’s “Room of the Anges” was created using the project principle. It opens the demonstration space in which the work is combined into the project and make up a single composition. You can even talk about the use of installation. Lisitsky writes articles devoted to perception, how certain objects are seen and how the space can be portrayed. This topic will later be raised in American art of the 1960s. He reveals the space in a new way, using this experience in scenography. It was then that the scenographs of the avant -garde, the creators of exhibition spaces, the predecessors of today's curators begin to act.

Another aspect of Lisitsky’s work is a book graphics, where its demonstrative space unfolds. He is a lot of Jewish book. The collection of poems “For the voice” of Mayakovsky (1923) is designed as a kind of phone book with addresses, and in the “Suprematic Tale about two squares” (1920) each turn - a new semantic space. Its texts of this period are inseparable from another artistic activity. Lisitsky is noteworthy and as a scenographer. But many of his works have not been preserved, they must be reconstructed.

Naum Gabo himself reconstructed his work in the 1960s. He created kinetic sculptures. El Lisitsky also made sculptures in the Ganover Museum, where one room was given under the experiment: there were used panels inviting the viewer to action, and not to a passive view.

The all -Union printing exhibition of 1927 in Moscow is also noteworthy, where the stands were organized in such a way that there was an open space on the one hand, and on the other, the books could be located on the stands and touch. Bauhaus artists subsequently used a similar principle. Example: photographs do not just hang on the wall, they open gradually.

The artist Solomon Nikritin also masters space in his own way and in 1922 creates a projection theater. Nicritan biomechanics differs from Meyerhold in that it has no technical elements and is performed with greater reduction of visual means. Keywords for the artist - “architectonics”, “tectonics”. In search of him, the reading of Alexander Bogdanov, as well as Peter Engelmeyer, helps him. Nikritin also created a projection theater only from gestures, without speech. There is evidence of the play by which the film was shot, whose location is unknown. Then the audience did not understand and did not accept the idea of ​​what did not prevent the current theorists of art from assuming that it was brilliant.

Solomon Nikritin composed treatises, including the philosophy of spheres, analyzed space, constantly painted and realized a person in the coordinate space. All figures are built into geometric constructions. For example, in a ball. But its difference from constructivists is that the painting for this artist is always important. He owns the idea of ​​painting as films and the idea of ​​combining personnel in one picture, the idea of ​​notations; Interest in installation. His projection theater was associated with a classic heritage (the author was familiar with Stanislavsky). He left a huge artistic heritage, partly presented in the Tretyakov Gallery.

His fate is noteworthy. In his youth, this artist receives the patronage of Gorky and goes to study in Moscow (as a Jew, he could not claim a full education before the revolution). He visits all the most interesting and progressive studios. Nicritin fiercely accepts the 1917 revolution, but he cannot stay in Moscow - he has nowhere to live. The artist leaves for Kyiv. This period includes important texts and diary entries. In 1919, when Kyiv was occupied by the Denikins, together with a friend, artist Kliment Redko (1897–1956), he goes to Kharkov, where he meets a long -standing acquaintance David Sternberg (1881–1948), now Lunacharsky assistant. He mines paper that helps young people go to Moscow and start studying at Vhutemas, where they listen to Malevich.

The drawings of the black squares of Solomon Nikritin, similar to the squares of Malevich, but have a different meaning, are known. They do not have a frame denoting the icon space, and are, according to researchers, not a plane, but an abyss. Solomon Nikritin also creates the commune of artists as a prototype of the space station of new people living on it and projecting new spaces. They are passionate about the ideas of energy, a certain power uniting space with invisible connections.

He did not create his mythology, did not build a biography, like other avant -garde artists - he had no workshop until 50 years old, for some time he lived with his wife in a four -meter room. He was full of Soviet illusions, was in Mosha, participated in the design of VDNH, worked as a researcher in the Tretyakov Gallery, but the authorities forgot about him. Nicritin's works strive to cross the framework between art and life, to become aesthetic synthetic action. Many consider Solomon Nicritin the harbinger of conceptual art.

We will finish this message by an excerpt from the document of the era. After the revolution, Naum Gabo, along with his brother Nathan Pevzner, made him talk about himself thanks to, as they would say now, to a skilled self -officer. Young people, having propagated the text of their “realistic manifesto”, sealed all of Moscow to them and then showed their work in urban space. Here is a piece of this manifesto, which is both a wonderful example of a poetic text and a sign of time:

Above the storms of our everyday life -
Above the wastelands and ash of the destroyed past.
In front of the gates of the undeveloped future, we announce to you, artists, sculptors, musicians, actors, poets - you, people, for whom art is not only a reason for a conversation, but serves as a source of real joy, ours - word and deed.
The impasse in which art stuck as a result of the last twenty years of searches should be broken.
The uncontrollable growth of human knowledge that began at the dawn of our century with its imperious penetration into the depths of the mysterious laws of the world - the heyday of the new culture and the new civilization with their still unprecedented in history of the broad masses to possess the benefits of nature - a impulse with which is closely connected by the spill of the peoples, which goes to the Unified Union of One Humanity, and finally, and, finally, and, finally, - and, finally, - and, finally, - and, finally, - and finally The war and the revolution - these cleansing thunderstorms of the coming era - set us before the fact that the already born, already acting new forms of life.

Maria Popova