Historical and revolutionary theme in Soviet fine art.
The publishing house “Kuchkovo Pole” published the album “Portraits of the era of the Russian Revolution. Drawings by Yuri Artsybushev from the collection of the Civil Aviation of the Russian Federation,” which includes about 240 rare portraits of figures from the times of the 1917 revolution - from members of the Provisional Government and white generals to security officers, Makhnovists and peasant deputies. The exhibition of the same name is available for visiting in the Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives until August 20.
Artist-publicist Yuri Artsybushev, whose creative path began at the turn of two centuries, is known as the author of a series of portraits of state, political and public figures Russia and the Soviet state during the February and October revolutions and the Civil War. The heroes of his works are representatives of a wide variety of political views, between whom there was an irreconcilable ideological struggle. As you know, working on your portrait gallery, the artist painted the participants historical events from nature. His heroes, as a rule, did not pose. The artist made sketches of their portraits on various meetings, rallies, congresses that took place in different parts of the country. This is what makes them special historical value. Yuri Artsybushev did not set himself the task of creating finished portraits. He pursued another goal - to capture the dynamism public life, spirit and atmosphere of the time.
Yuri Artsybushev was born on March 16, 1877 into a family hereditary nobleman from the old Artsybush family. The Artsybushev family was closely connected with the artistic and theatrical life Russia. His father Konstantin Dmitrievich Artsybushev, a travel engineer, was a close friend of a major industrialist and famous philanthropist Savva Mamontov, whose name is associated with the emergence of the Abramtsevo circle, which included Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, Viktor Vasnetsov and others. In many ways, this is what determined Artsybushev’s further passion for painting - he takes lessons in Mamontov’s house and enters the architectural department of the Higher art school at the Academy of Arts.
During the revolution of 1905-1907, Artsybushev, who chose the direction of political satire, collaborated with a number of opposition publications, but his talent as a portrait painter truly began to emerge in 1917. The artist is present at all the main meetings of the country: he makes sketches at the State Meeting on August 12-15, 1917, at which political figures such as A.F. spoke among 2,000 representatives. Kerensky, N.S. Chkheidze, A.I. Guchkov, P.N. Milyukov, M.V. Rodzianko; depicts participants in the Constituent Assembly on January 5-6, 1918. Later, Artsybushev goes to the Don region and Kyiv, where he depicts the Cossacks, the local government, and travels with his family to Odessa, where he makes portraits of members of the White Guard formations.
After the defeat of the White Army, the artist moved to Paris, where he continued to work on a series of portraits of Russian cultural figures who found themselves in exile in France. In 1947, Artsybushev and his wife, succumbing to the patriotic sentiments that spread after the war among the Russian emigration, achieve Soviet citizenship and return to the USSR, settling in Tbilisi. However, the Stalinist regime dealt harshly with the artist’s family: just three years later, he and his wife “as re-emigrants who arrived in Georgia from France” were sent to a special settlement in Southern Kazakhstan, where Yuri Konstantinovich died two years later at the age of 75.
"Kuchkovo Field"
The fate of the valuable archive of drawings practically repeated the fate of their author - after Artsybushev’s emigration, his works were acquired by the Russian Foreign Historical Archive in Prague, the materials of which were captured by Soviet troops and, after the end of World War II in 1946, moved to the USSR. While working on the book, I made great job on the identification of many of the depicted persons - this was facilitated by the study historical works, biographical reference books, as well as archival documents available to researchers. The idea of publishing an album of drawings belongs to scientific supervisor GA RF Sergei Mironenko.
On the eve of the 1917 revolution.
The 20th century came and moved impartially and inexorably at its own pace, marking grandiose events that shook not only individual countries, but the whole world. Europe dreamed of seeing “the sky in diamonds,” while it itself “stood at the edge of a black abyss,” the most famous personification of which was Malevich’s “Black Square,” an icon of modern times. But at the same time, the turning point and tragic years became the time when the arts flourished on the eve of the First World War. In Russia, the avant-garde, so beloved today, which gave the world outstanding masters, was not recognized or popular in the artistic community at that time, business card Since the beginning of the century, Art Nouveau has become, in Russia better known as Art Nouveau. Today we clearly understand how beautiful images style that captured the artistic and architectural world contrasted with moods, worries and fears Russian capitals- “There is an uprising in Petrograd!”, “There is a revolution in Moscow!” And the war was not reflected in works of art. Then contemporaries described the atmosphere of the time as “A feast during the plague.” The contrasts of life, economic and political turmoil seemed to sharpen the nerves and sensuality of the artistic environment, intensifying the manifestations of creative aspiration to depict the “beautiful”, the beauty of the world, the lightness of being. Art became alienated from life. But this does not mean that the artists were in happy detachment. Most of the masters who left memories and thoughts about their time experienced mental anxiety and confusion of spirit.
I am interested in learning how era and society influence the development of an artist, how his art changes in connection with the events taking place around him. How artistic life itself changes, depending on current events.
The eve of the '17 revolution. In Moscow and Petrograd, artistic life does not stop. On the contrary, exhibitions replace each other. Personal and group various artistic associations - “World of Art”, “Association of Mobile art exhibitions", "Union of Russian Artists", "Jack of Diamonds". But there are few visitors from the general public and the level is criticized. And yet, such a number of exhibitions as at the beginning of 1917 have not been seen in Moscow for many years. After the exhibition closed in Moscow, we went to Petrograd. The nature of such artistic life could be called salon-like, critics noted, since they observed the fragmentation of masters into separate societies and circles and believed that solid associations that had existed for decades no longer expressed the main trends of Russian art. And art lovers, as if caught in a fever of collecting, bought, according to witnesses, even what they had not yet had time to hang on the exhibition site. They invested in art indiscriminately, reminiscent of the bustle at the stock exchange, and the newspapers were full of reports from sales works of art or wrote about how prices for paintings had risen compared to previous years. Auctions become especially popular at this time. Works of art are increasingly becoming commodities and reflecting time and events less and less. We were waiting for the “Spring Salon” exhibition in Moscow, which would present all artistic communities and all art movements. And this feature also pointed to depression in the artistic world.
But not everyone had the same attitude towards what was happening and assessed their role in art. Evgeniy Lanseray strove to see the war with his own eyes, in order to more clearly reflect it in his work (in 1914-1915, Lanseray was a military artist-correspondent on the Caucasian front during the First World War). And according to another outstanding master, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, in his beloved city of St. Petersburg, as an artist, he was interested not so much in “generally recognized beauties, but in the details of the “underside” - nooks and crannies, courtyards and the like.”
One of the most notable exhibitions of the new season of 1917 was the exhibition of the sculptor Konenkov - the master, from the first years of his creative work, was distinguished by his particularly bold imaginative solutions. In due time thesis The sculptor “Samson Breaking Ties” seemed too revolutionary and, by order of officials of the Academy of Arts, was destroyed. Thus, the events of the 1905 revolution, which found Konenkov in Moscow, helped to give birth to a series of portraits of participants in the battles on Presnya (“Militant Worker of 1905 Ivan Churkin”). Sergei Konenkov dedicated his work “Wounded,” created in 1916, to the war. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin wrote “On the Line of Fire” in the same year, and Ilya Repin “Attacking with my sister”, 44th TPHV, 1916.
Sculptor Ivan Shadr, who was looking for ways to create monumental realistic sculpture, created monumental works in the 1910-1930s, most of which were dedicated primarily to the victims of the First World War. On the eve of the revolution, he creates the project “Monument to World Suffering” (1916), which later transformed into an even more grandiose project"Monument to Humanity".
At this time, Vera Mukhina created the composition “Pieta” (also 1916), in which she depicted a mother mourning her son who died in the war. It is noteworthy that the woman is dressed like a sister of mercy, and this image is not accidental. During the war, Vera Mukhina worked as a nurse in one of the Moscow hospitals and experienced all the hardships of wartime.
Looking ahead a little, let's say that Vera Mukhina was one of the first Soviet sculptors to begin working on images of new heroes - fighters of the October Revolution.
Sculptor Sergei Merkurov also began to carry out orders from the new state in the first years of Soviet power. From the monograph “History Soviet art”, published in 1965 by the Research Institute of Theory and History of Fine Arts and the USSR Academy of Arts, it is known that in Tsarist Russia The master's work did not find recognition, and only the October Revolution made him popular and famous. But Merkurov did not live in Russia until 1907, studying first in Switzerland at the University of Zurich, then at the Munich Academy and as a sculptor he was formed in Paris, influenced by the Frenchman O. Rodin and the Belgian C. Meunier, which was reflected in his own works . Merkurov began working in Moscow only in 1910. When in April 1918 Soviet power the decree “On Monuments of the Republic” was adopted, and a little later a list of names of historical figures was approved, whose monuments were to be erected in the cities of Russia; in Merkurov’s workshop there were already two ready-made granite compositions from this list - F. M. Dostoevsky, made in 1914 by commissioned by millionaire Sharov and L.N. Tolstoy, completed in 1912.
It should be noted that the printed graphics of this difficult pre-revolutionary period for the country were distinguished by a special “patriotism” when artists tried to depict life at the front The First World War as an idyllic picture, illustrating exploits and romantic heroism in illustrations uncharacteristic of the terrible realities of war. They were published by the magazines “Niva”, “Iskra”, “Ogonyok”. But the artists who visited the front were inclined to believe that their mission was to depict real paintings war, giving rise to an attitude towards it as the most terrible catastrophe, exciting indignation and protest. But there were few such works. They are all the more valuable as monuments of outstanding masters of their time, relevant today, unsurpassed in the artist’s assessment of the era.
Revolutions, 1917.
“And what happiness we have had in life. I still can’t believe it... What happiness,” writes “the main herald of socialist realism” (according to Wolf) Ilya Repin about the accomplished revolution, like many artists, who enthusiastically accepted the event. This is still the February revolution. Oktyabrskaya is just approaching. But artists have already faced the need to search for ways to interact with new government. They pinned their hopes on the project to create the Ministry fine arts, which would solve issues of artistic life and promote the development of art.
The Union of Artists operates in Petrograd. Masters dream of creating an All-Russian Union of Artists.
In Moscow, the role of the union uniting all figures of fine art was played by the Council of Artistic Organizations of Moscow, which included members of various associations, including the Union of Russian Artists and the Jack of Diamonds - on the presidium were Korovin, Lentulov, Mashkov, Yakulov, Milman, Pavlinov, Vasnetsov.
A new artistic life begins in a very difficult environment, with new guidelines, standards, and ideology. “The rear defeated the dynasty, the front will defeat the enemy” - Iskra magazine published an illustration political situation artist Martynov. The art of posters and printed graphics played a huge role at that time. Artistic propaganda is a weapon that speaks the language of images and slogans. Art takes on new features and characteristics, takes to the streets, joins public life, responds to the events of the time, and becomes more theatrical.
It was then, after the February one, that the time of ideological government orders could begin, when the relevance of, for example, All-Russian competitions, popularizing the achievements of the revolution. But the masters were not yet ready for this, and time was not conducive to creative growth. Before the October Revolution, few plans for the country's artistic life were realized. While the direction was emerging - art was appealing to the masses, the "Society of Proletarian Arts" arose under the newspaper "Pravda", but the societies and unions created by the new government were scattered, and their disagreement in general issues did not allow practical activities or made them very difficult. On the eve of the October Revolution, “artistic ruin” set in. A commission for the protection of monuments was created with the aim of preserving artistic heritage and preventing their export abroad.
Many artists began to evaluate events differently; the enthusiasm and euphoria from the changes disappeared. Some, like Alexandre Benois, strive to protect themselves from the “brewing class war” and live only in the bosom of art. But the very next day after the capture " Winter Palace“The Bolsheviks came to Alexander Benois with the task of fencing and preserving artistic treasures. (Later in 1918, Benois headed the Hermitage Picture Gallery, published its new catalogue, and continued to work as a book and theater artist and director, in particular, worked on staging and designing BDT performances).
After the revolution. New artistic life.
The new government resolved issues of uniting representatives of art and creativity and cultural life Moscow and St. Petersburg became lively again. A department of political caricatures was created in the Pravda newspaper, and new satirical magazines were published. “Cafe of Poets” appears in Moscow. But exhibition life is still quiet and inconspicuous. “Decree No. 1” appeared in the “Futurist Newspaper” in 1918! about the democratization of art. A figurative illustration of intentions is the slogan “Art belongs to the people.” The era of magazine graphics begins, monumental sculpture, posters, decorative art, the activity of Proletkult begins - a mass cultural, educational and literary and artistic organization of proletarian amateur performances under the People's Commissariat of Education, which existed from 1917 to 1932.
A certain elitism of art was destroyed; it was called upon to become democratic, popular, and accessible to understanding. At the same time, it became a social order, a means of propaganda. But the revolution also opened up wide opportunities for the masses to become familiar with art and creativity. The composition of readers, viewers, listeners, and even the creators and artists themselves became more and more democratic.
The period from 1917 to 1921 is the time of the birth and first steps of Soviet fine art. The first ones were created government agencies arts The new art realistically reflected Soviet reality, was inextricably linked with the people, and expressed the ideas of the revolution. During this period, the first works of easel painting and graphics were created, imbued with the pathos of building a new life. Art was born socialist realism, who subsequently dominated for many years and the only one recognized as an official direction.
Somewhat later, the Association of Revolutionary Artists appeared, the impetus for the creation of which was a speech delivered by Pavel Radimov, the last head of the Association of Itinerants at the last, 47th exhibition of the association, held in 1922 in the House of Education and Art Workers in Leontyevsky Lane in Moscow. This speech at the closing of the exhibition was called “On the reflection of everyday life in art” and set the realism of the late Itinerants as a model for the implementation of “ today: the life of the Red Army, the life of workers, peasants, revolutionaries and heroes of labor, understandable to the masses.”
Association of Artists of the Revolution - a large association Soviet artists, graphic artists and sculptors, which, thanks to the support of the state, was the most numerous and powerful of creative groups 1920s. Founded in 1922, dissolved in 1932 and was the forerunner of the unified Union of Artists of the USSR.
Should art be understandable? beautiful? plausible? Should art reflect reality? Should art reflect the time and character of the era? It is possible to find an answer to these basic questions of art by considering the role of artists in state and public life, their relationships with the authorities and the relationships among themselves, between unions and associations. I believe that the activity of an artist, despite the fact that his profession is usually called “free”, his success and promotion of creativity depend on many external circumstances, including public recognition plays not the least role, but far from the main one, as time and art history show. At the same time, we can say that if external circumstances influence the formation of an artist as a master and his creative path to a lesser extent, then artistic life, the culture of popularizing art among the general public, completely depends on state and public guidelines.
Daniela Ryabicheva
In 1921, the artist Konstantin Yuon, who was previously famous for his landscapes and depictions of church domes, painted the painting “New Planet”. There, a crowd of tiny people, actively gesticulating, watches the birth of a giant crimson ball. A little later, the same crimson ball appeared in the composition of Ivan Klyun, Malevich’s colleague. He is also in Kliment Redko’s painting “Midnight Sun”, and he is also held in the muscular hands of a worker from the painting of the same name by Leonid Chupyatov, a student of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.
Konstantin Yuon. New planet. 1921State Tretyakov Gallery
Leonid Chupyatov. Worker. 1928 arteology.ru
The motive is absolutely identical different artists indicative. Everyone feels changes on a planetary scale, but they do not fully understand what the role of the artist will be in this new world. No, this is not a selfish question about finding a place, this is an essential question - about the new function of art.
It would seem that everything is as before: artists unite, disengage, rattle manifestos, organize exhibitions, move from group to group. However, after the revolution, a new and very active space appears in their usual space. character- state. It has power, it has multiple methods of encouragement and punishment: these include purchases, the organization of exhibitions, and various forms of patronage. “Whom I love, I give.”
And this is an unusual situation, because before the state was not too interested in artistic endeavors. Tsar Nicholas II once gave money for the publication of the magazine “World of Art,” but only because he was asked for it, he hardly read the magazine itself. And now the government is going to rule everywhere. And in a way that suits her.
Therefore, looking ahead, when in 1932 the state closes all artistic associations by decree, this will be a completely logical gesture on its part. It is impossible to control something that moves and changes appearance. Blooming complexity is, of course, good, but it sometimes resembles a mass brawl at a tavern; and if everything is made uniform, then the hostility will stop, and it will be easier to control art.
We’ll talk about enmity later, but now let’s talk about how the presence of an external force in the person of the state changes the conditions of the game. For example, group manifestos, which were previously addressed to the city and the world and looked quite defiant, now have a specific addressee. And the words that everyone is ready to reflect new revolutionary themes in their works very quickly take on the appearance of ritual spells - because the addressee, the state, invariably demands them. In general, these are no longer so much manifestos as declarations of intentions sent to superiors. Moreover, most artists are sincerely ready to serve the revolution - but with their own artistic means and in the way they understand it.
Speaking about post-revolutionary artistic associations, let us first try to highlight those that are not really associations, but rather schools. Some significant artist, teacher, some kind of guru - and his students. Such schools could indeed be purely educational enterprises, such as the Petrov-Vodkin school, which existed from 1910 to 1932, but they could also be formed as artistic communities.
For example, Unovis (“Approvers of the New Art”) is a community of students of Kazimir Malevich that existed in Vitebsk in 1920-1922. It was truly a unification - with a manifesto written by Malevich, with exhibitions and other collective events, with rituals and attributes. Thus, members of Unovis wore armbands with the image of a black square, and the organization’s seal also had a black square. The maximum program of the association was that Suprematism should play the role of a world revolution and spread not only in Russia, but throughout the world, becoming a universal language - such artistic Trotskyism. Having left Vitebsk, members of Unovis will find refuge in Petrograd Ginkhuk - State Institute artistic culture, scientific institution.
Members of the Unovis group. 1920 evitebsk.com
Classes in the Unovis workshop - Kazimir Malevich stands at the blackboard. September 1920 thecharnelhouse.org
The association, albeit of a strange kind, was also the school of another avant-garde, Mikhail Matyushin. In 1923, the Zorved group took shape (the name is derived from the words “vision” and “knowledge”) with the manifesto “Not art, but life.” It was about expanded vision and training the optic nerve to form a new vision. Matyushin did this all his life, and this was clearly not how the country lived. Nevertheless, in 1930, Matyushin and another group of students organized the “Extended Observation Collective” (KORN) and managed to hold one exhibition. The works of the Matyushinites were most reminiscent of biomorphic abstraction in form; theory occupied a more significant place there than practice.
Group "Extended Surveillance Team". 1930s State Museum history of St. Petersburg In 1925, Pavel Filonov’s school also received the status of an association; it was named “Masters of Analytical Art,” abbreviated as MAI. MAI did not have a special manifesto, but Filonov’s previous manifesto texts existed in this capacity - “Pictures Made” of 1914 and “Declaration of World Heyday” of 1923. They set out Filonov's method of analytical elaboration of each element of the picture, the result of which should be a formula. Many of Filonov’s works are called “Formula of Spring”, “Formula of the Petrograd Proletariat”. Then Filonov himself left MAI, and the school would exist until 1932 without a leader, but according to his behests.
But all these association schools that gathered around central figures the old, pre-revolutionary avant-garde, now find themselves completely out of the mainstream. At the same time, the phrase of the critic Abram Efros about the fact that the avant-garde “has become official art new Russia”, accurately records the state of affairs in the first years of the decade. The avant-garde is indeed influential, but it is a different avant-garde, differently oriented.
The simplest (although not the most accurate) is to say that the main plot of the twenties was the active confrontation between avant-garde artists and artists of the anti-avantgarde, which was very quickly gaining strength. But in the early twenties, avant-garde art experienced a crisis on its own, without any outside help. In any case, it is experienced by art with high ambitions, which is exclusively occupied with the search for a universal language and the preaching of a new vision. It is not in demand by anyone except a narrow circle of its creators, their adherents, friends and enemies from the same field. But now being in demand is important; one laboratory work with students in Inkhuk and Ginkhuk is not enough, we must be useful.
In this situation, the concept of production art is born. It partly reproduces the utopia of modernity - to transform the world, creating new forms of everything that a person encounters every day, to save a person with the right beauty. Everything should be modern and progressive - from clothes to dishes. And art in this case justifies its existence: it is applied, even useful. Suprematist and constructivist fabrics, porcelain, clothing, typography, books, posters and photography - avant-garde artists are now doing all this. These are Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitsky, Vladimir Tatlin and many others.
Sergei Chekhonin. A dish with the slogan “There will be no end to the kingdom of workers and peasants.” 1920
Varvara Stepanova in a dress made from fabric made according to her design. 1924State Museum of Fine Arts named after. A. S. Pushkina
Nikolay Suetin. Milk jug with lid from the Baba service. 1930Collections of the Imperial Museum porcelain factory/ State Hermitage Museum
At the same time, it is interesting that Suprematist things - for example, dishes created with the participation of Malevich by his students - were not comfortable and did not even strive for it. Malevich thought in universal categories, and in this sense, his dishes - the so-called half cups - were akin to his designs for skyscrapers for people of the future: all this was not for those who live here and now. But constructivist objects found practical mass application; they had reasonable functionality: dishes could be used, clothes could be worn, buildings could be used for living and working.
Kazimir Malevich. Suprematist tea service. Developed in 1918Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / Bridgeman Images / Fotodom
Kazimir Malevich. Architects layout. 1920sPhoto by Pedro Menéndez / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The ideological justification of industrial art took place in the society “Lef” (“Left Front of the Arts”) and in the magazines “Lef” and “New Lef” published by it. It was an association of writers that existed since 1922, Mayakovsky and Osip Brik set the tone there. And the conversation was mainly about literature - in particular, about the literature of fact, about the rejection of essays in favor of documentation, and also about working for social orders and life-building. But around Lef there were also constructivist artists and architects, for example the Vesnin brothers, Moses Ginzburg. On the basis of Lefa, the Association arises modern architects(OSA group).
Cover of Lef magazine, No. 2, 1923 avantgard1030.ru
Cover of Lef magazine, No. 3, 1923 thecharnelhouse.org
Cover of the magazine “New Lef”, No. 1, 1927 thecharnelhouse.org
Cover of the magazine “New Lef”, No. 3, 1927 thecharnelhouse.org
Cover of the magazine “New Lef”, No. 6, 1927Auction house "Empire"
Lef - in his own way extreme point on the map of art associations of the twenties. At the other pole - AHRR - Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (later the name will be transformed into the Association of Artists of the Revolution and will lose one “r”). These are the late residual Itinerants and others. The Association of Traveling Exhibitions, which has been artistically irrelevant for thirty years, has existed all this time, recruiting artists from among the dropouts. Formally, the partnership ceases to exist only in 1923 - and its participants automatically become members of the AHRR.
AHRR says: we now have a new time, a revolution has happened, socialist construction is now underway. And art should simply honestly record this new time - its signs, plots, events. And don’t worry about the means of expression at all.
A small digression. At some point, part of Russian Facebook discovered the Akhrov artist Ivan Vladimirov. His films, which were exceptionally poorly executed, chronicled the first post-revolutionary years. How to rob noble estate. Like a dead horse lying there and the people tearing it apart, because it’s 1919 and there’s a famine. How the landowner and the priest are being tried - and now they will be shot. People began to repost selections of Vladimirov’s paintings, commenting like this: it turns out that even in the first post-revolutionary years, artists were aware of all this horror. However, this is precisely today’s perception, and Vladimirov did not have such an assessment. He, like an akyn or like a dispassionate reporter, recorded what he saw - and he saw a lot. In addition, Vladimirov worked as a policeman.
Ivan Vladimirov. "Down with the eagle!" 1917 Wikimedia Commons, Rijksmuseum political history Russia It turns out that AHRR painting is the art of fact. Let us remember that Lef defended the literature of fact. At some ideological level, aesthetic opposites converge.
Or there was such an Akhrov artist Efim Cheptsov. He has a painting called “Retraining of Teachers.” A room is depicted, there are people in it, among them there are pre-revolutionary types (there are two of them), there are others. They read brochures, we can see the names of the brochures - “Third Front”, “Red Dawn”, “Workers’ Enlightenment”. But the question is - why is this retraining, and not just preparation, an exam? The simple-minded artist is trying to convey in the title of the painting the idea that he could not depict with paints - and could not, because the word “retraining” contains the idea of duration. He seems to take the title “Retraining” from one of these brochures, not realizing that this is not a book, but a painting. And this happens very often.
Efim Cheptsov. Retraining of teachers. 1925 museum.clipartmania.ru, State Tretyakov Gallery The colorless and naive works of the artists of the early AHRR, with their lack of any aesthetic concern, are reminiscent of the early Itinerant movement, very early. When every concept of pictorial beauty was ideologically rejected: what kind of beauty is there when the world lies in evil and the task of art is to expose evil? Now the world, on the contrary, is developing revolutionaryly, but this is happening quickly, and you need to have time to capture all the events - is it so beautiful? The Red Army is winning, the village council is meeting, transport is being improved. All this should be depicted, documentary evidence should be left. The artist, as it were, voluntarily leaves the picture; his individual presence is not here. And this departure, paradoxically, brings the Akhrovites closer both to mass production art and to the fundamentally anonymous students of Malevich from Unovis, who did not sign their paintings.
Efim Cheptsov. Village cell meeting. 1924Photo by RIA Novosti, State Tretyakov Gallery
Mikhail Grekov. Trumpeters of the First Cavalry Army. 1934 Wikimedia Commons
A little later, in the thirties, this program would become the basis of socialist realism, whose credo would be “the depiction of reality in its revolutionary development.” But already in the 1920s, what the Akhrovites are doing resonates with many power structures - because it is a simple and understandable art. The main patrons of the AHRR are the military - the Red Army, the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar Voroshilov personally. The artists work on a social order, and this is spelled out in the association’s program: this is not considered something reprehensible here. We fulfill current orders, that's why we are current artists. And whoever has government orders has government money.
Members of the AHRR (from left to right) Evgeny Katsman, Isaac Brodsky, Yuri Repin, Alexander Grigoriev and Pavel Radimov. 1926 Wikimedia Commons Between the designated poles - AHRR and Lef - the map of associations of the 1920s resembles an artistic nomadism. People move from group to group, there are so many of these groups, it’s impossible to list them all. Let's name just a few.
Some of them were formed by artists of a relatively older generation - those who had formed even before the revolution. For example, the Society of Moscow Artists is mainly former “ jacks of diamonds": Konchalovsky, Mashkov and others. In their manifesto they defend the rights an ordinary picture, which production workers deny - so here they are conservatives. But they say that this picture, of course, cannot be the same: it must reflect the realities of today and reflect them without formalism - that is, without excessive focus on artistic techniques, allegedly to the detriment of the content. It is characteristic that before the discussion about formalism, which will give rise to repressions against creative professions, is still about ten years old, but the word is already used with a negative connotation, and it is amazing that it is uttered by former brawlers and troublemakers. Fighting formalism is a kind of pochvenism: we have the primacy of content, and experiments with form are Western. The Society of Moscow Artists will leave behind the tradition of the so-called Moscow school - thick, heavy writing, and the former “jacks” will ideally suit the court in socialist realism.
Another association of “formers” - those who exhibited with both the World of Art and the Jacks, and at the symbolist exhibition Blue Rose - is the Four Arts. Here are Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Martiros Saryan, Pavel Kuznetsov, Vladimir Favorsky and many others. Four arts - because, in addition to painters, sculptors and graphic artists, the association also includes architects. Their manifesto does not state any single program - it is a community of people who value the individual. And in general, this is a very calm manifesto, toothless in its own way. There are ritual words about new topic, but the main emphasis is on the fact that plastic culture must be preserved. Many of the participants in the “Four Arts” will turn out to be teachers at Vkhutemas-Vkhutein and train students who will create “under-the-cupboard” art, not related to the triumphant socialist realism.
Let's name two more associations that are not very noticeable against the general background, but allow us to evaluate the breadth of the spectrum. Firstly, this is the NOZH (New Society of Painters), which existed from 1921 to 1924. This is a young landing in Moscow, Odessa residents predominated there - Samuil Adlivankin, Mikhail Perutsky, Alexander Gluskin. They managed to hold only one exhibition, but in their paintings, especially Adlivankin’s, one can feel the primitive style and comic intonation, which will almost never be found in Soviet art. This is realism - but with its own special intonation: a completely missed opportunity in the history of Russian art.
Samuel Adlivankin. The first Stalinist route. 1936Photo by Yuri Abramochkin / RIA Novosti
Amshei Nuremberg. Bourgeois bastard. 1929Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0; State Tretyakov Gallery
And secondly, this is Makovets. This association was created around the artist Vasily Chekrygin, who died at the age of 25, leaving behind amazing graphics. It included the most different people— Lev Zhegin, Chekrygin’s closest friend and an underrated artist himself; Sergei Romanovich, student and adept of Mikhail Larionov; Sergei Gerasimov, future socialist realist and author of the famous painting “Mother of the Partisan.” And the name of the society was invented by the religious philosopher Pavel Florensky, whose sister, Raisa Florenskaya, was also a member of Makovets. Makovets is the hill on which Sergius of Radonezh founded the monastery, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.
Group of artists from the Makovets society. 1922 Photo by Robert Johanson/Wikimedia Commons The artists of Makovets were no strangers to the prophetic and planetary pathos of the avant-garde: they dreamed of a cathedral art that unites everyone, the symbol of which for them was the fresco. But since a fresco is impossible in a hungry, collapsed country, all art must be thought of as some approach to it, as sketches. Sketches for some of the most important texts about humanity - hence the remakes of old masters, the appeal to religious themes. It was very untimely art.
But very soon everything else will turn out to be marginal. By the second half of the decade, only two main forces remained on the field, opposing each other. But in the future, together they will have to form the signs of the “Soviet style.” This refers to AHRR and OST - the Society of Easel Painters, “the leftmost among the right-wing groups,” as they said about it. The most discussed works of those years were exhibited at OST exhibitions - “Defense of Petrograd” by Alexander Deineka, “The Ball Flew Away” by Sergei Luchishkin, “Aniska” by David Shterenberg and others. “Defense of Petrograd” is a kind of symbol of the times: a “two-story” composition, where in the upper register the wounded are returning from the front, and in the lower register they are replaced by a line of Red Army soldiers. The OST also included Alexander Labas, Yuri Pimenov, Solomon Nikritin, Peter Williams; many here came from the vanguard. And the face of the association was Deineka, who left OST several years before its closure. In Leningrad, the “Circle of Artists” society was a kind of backup to OST. Its face was Alexander Samokhvalov, who was a member of the society for only three years, but wrote “The Girl in a T-shirt” - the most life-affirming type of the era. It is characteristic that in 30 years the girl will be styled after Samokhvalov’s main character film about the 30s “Time, Forward!” - in everything, right down to the striped T-shirt.
Alexander Samokhvalov. Girl in a T-shirt. 1932Photo by A. Sverdlov / RIA Novosti; State Tretyakov Gallery
The very phrase “society of easel painters” declares an anti-Lef position. OST - for easel painting, for the painting, and Lef - for mass production and design, for dishes and posters. However, by the mid-1920s, AHRR was more influential than Lef: the production utopia had already outlived its active period. And in fact, the main dispute between OST is with AHRR - a dispute about what should be contemporary art. Instead of sluggish likeness and descriptiveness, the OST has sharp angles, editing, and a silhouette style of writing. The painting is graphic and resembles a monumental poster. The characters are necessarily young and optimistic, they play sports, drive cars, and are themselves like well-functioning machines. Here city and industrial rhythms are sung, harmonious teamwork, health and strength. Physically perfect man- he is also spiritually perfect; such new person and must become a citizen of the new socialist society.
Of course, this is not typical for all artists of the association, but only for its core. But in this rapture of technology and well-coordinated work, the Ostovites, paradoxically, are close to the constructivists from Lef, against whom their program seems to be directed.
And now, at the turn of the twenties, we see the beginning of some new confrontation. On the one hand, there is the pathos of OST, which will later turn into socialist realism. It is the joy of how wonderfully everything moves - people, trains, cars, airships and airplanes. How perfect the technology is. How wonderful collective efforts are, they lead to victory. And on the other hand, there are completely opposite emotions, themes and expressive means of “Makovets”, “Four Arts” and others. This is silence and static: indoor scenes, intimate scenes, picturesque depth. People drink tea or read books, they live as if there is nothing outside the walls of the house - and certainly nothing majestic. They live as if following the words of Mikhail Bulgakov from The White Guard: “Never pull the lampshade off a lamp!”
And this quiet one, with lyrical and dramatic shades, was to go underground in the 1930s. And the cult of youth and proper control of mechanisms will lead to parades and sports festivals, to a feeling of unity with a jubilant crowd. But this will happen after the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, with its 1932 resolution “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations,” bans all these organizations, and instead creates a single Union of Artists. And the next “imperial” period in the history of Soviet art, stretching over two decades, will begin. The dominance of socialist realism and the totalitarian ideology that feeds it.
IN exhibition hall State Archive Russian Federation(GARF) the exhibition "1917. Portraits of the era of the Russian Revolution. Drawings by Yuri Artsybushev" opened. These are sketches-evidence of the times: online broadcast from the main meetings and rallies revolutionary year, as if the artist had mobile phone with a camera that caught all the nuances of the character of the main characters of the drama of the revolution unfolding before him.
Here is Grigory Rasputin, the artist captured him shortly before his death, in December 1916: internally focused and wise, not at all like the lascivious old man he taught us to be modern cinema... Dozing, tired of waiting for his turn to speak in Constituent Assembly Lenin... Or an excitedly inspired Kerensky at the State Meeting: trying to reach out to a country heading for a revolution...
The Prague Archive bought 241 drawings. Only 87 are presented at the exhibition. But this is also the first time
According to GARF director Larisa Rogova, the special value of Artsybushev’s drawings lies in the fact that they show how Russia, before sliding into the abyss civil war, still tried to get out of the coming revolution peacefully: “We see the intensity of passions that was raging then, but these faces are not distorted by hatred of each other. They listen to each other, try to come to an agreement. Only the Bolsheviks have long ago decided everything for themselves, they don’t need peaceful development of events. This is a lesson that cannot be forgotten."
The curator of the exhibition, the head of the repository of the collection of documents on the history of the white movement and emigration of the State Russian Federation, Lidia Petrusheva, told RG that the collection of drawings taken to Paris from the artist was acquired by one of the largest emigrant archives in Prague - the Russian Foreign Historical Archive: “Later, in 1946 albums with the artist’s sketches returned to the USSR. The Prague archive acquired 241 drawings. Here we are showing only 87. But this is the most valuable documentary evidence. Although the artist attends meetings and congresses, he made sketches of the events themselves and the participants.” .
He painted a lot at the famous State Meeting at the Bolshoi Theater at the end of the summer of 1917, when there was an attempt to reconcile political fighters at a dangerous time for the country. Behind the seemingly “frivolous” sketches “among the crush and crowd” one can consider, for example, the unusual “rating” of the leaders of the October Revolution: the artist painted Lenin several times less often than Trotsky, who until October 1917 was clearly more popular in the revolutionary “get-together” . Artsybushev attended several landmark court hearings. For example, regarding the food riots in Moscow. “In 1916, both Moscow and St. Petersburg lived on food cards,” explains Lidia Petrusheva. “The tsarist government was forced to introduce something similar to surplus appropriation. This “inheritance” went to the Provisional Government and passed on to the Soviet government.”
The exhibition consists of pencil and watercolor sketches from life, hasty, but very honest and, as experts say, non-opportunistic, without compliments or caricature.
