Page 18 - Studio International - April 1966

The Realistic Manifesto 1920

Above the tempest of our weekdays, and the noise and the clang of carouselling streets them; colour is accidental and it has nothing in com­
Across the ashes and cindered homes of the past, •.• does one really need to convince them that all mon with the innermost essence of a thing.
Before the gates of the vacant future, that is not'necessary for speed and for its rhythms? We affirm that the tone of a substance, i.e. its light­
We proclaim today to you artists, painters, sculp­ Look at a ray of sun .•• the stillest of the still forces, absorbing·ma\erial body is its only pictorial reality.
tors, musicians, actors, poets .•• to you people to it speeds more than 300 kilometres in a second ••• 2 We renounce in a line, its descriptive value; in real
whom art is no mere ground for conversation but the behold our starry firmament ••• who hears it ••• life there are no descriptive lines, description is an
source of real exaltation, our word and deed. and yet what are our depots to those depots of the accidental trace of a man on things, it Is not bound up
The impasse into which Art.has come to in the last Universe? What are our earthly trains to those hurry­ with the essential life and constant structure of the
twenty years must be broken. ing trains of the galaxies? body. Descriptiveness is an element of graphic illus­
The growth of human knowledge with its powerful Indeed, the whole Futurist noise about speed is too tration and decoration.
penetration into the mysterious laws of the world obvious an anecdote, and from the moment that We affirm the line only as a direction of the static
which started at the dawn of this century, the blos- · Futurism proclaimed that 'Space and Time are yester­ forces and their rhythm in objects.
soming of a new culture and a new civilization with day's dead', it sunk into the obscurity of abstractions. 3 We renounce volume as a pictorial and plastic
their unprecedented-in-history surge of the masses Neither Futurism nor Cubism has brought us what our form of space; one cannot measure space in volumes
towards the possession of the riches of Nature, a time has expected of them. Besides those two as one cannot measure liquid in yards: look at our
surge which binds the people into one union, and artistic schools our recent past has had nothing of _ space .•• what is it if not one continuous depth?
last, not least, the war and the revolution (those puri­ importance or deserving attention. We affirm depth as the only pictorial and plastic form
fying torrents.of the coming epoch), have made us But Life does not wait and the growth of generations of space.
face the fact of new forms of life, already born and does not stop and we who go to relieve those who have 4 W£: renounce in sculpture, the mass as a sculp­
active. passed into history, having in our hands the· results tural element.
What does Art carry into this unfolding epoch of of their experiments, with their mistakes and their It is known to every engineer that the static forces of
human history? Does it possess the means neces­ achievements, after years of experience equal to cen­ a solid body and its material strength do not depend
sary for the construction of the new Great Style? Or turies .•• we say ••• on the quantity of the mass ••• example a rail, a
does it suppose that the new epoch may not have a T-beam etc.
new style? Or does it suppose that the new life can No new artistic system will withstand the pressure But you sculptors of all shades and directions, you
accept a new creation which is constructed on the of a growing new culture until the very foundation of still adhere to the age-old prejudice that you cannot
foundations of the old? Art will be erected on the real laws of Life. Until all free the volume of mass. Here (in this exhibition) we
In spite of the demand of the renascent spirit of our artists will say with us . . . All is a fiction .•• only take four planes and we construct with them the same
time, Art is still nourished by impression, external life and its laws are authentic and in life only the volume as of four tons of mass.
appearance, and wanders helplessly back and forth active is beautiful and wise and strong and right, for Thus we bring back to sculpture the line as a direc­
from Naturalism to Symbolism, from Romanticism to life does not know beauty as an aesthetic measure • • • tion and in it we affirm depth as the one form of
Mysticism. efficacious existence is the highest beauty. Life space.
The attempts of the Cubists and the Futurists to lift knows neither good nor bad nor justice as a measure 5 We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in
the visual arts from the bogs of the past have led only of morals .•• need is the highest and most just of art that held the static rhythms as the only elements
to new delusions. Cubism, having started with sim­ all morals. Life does not know rationally abstracted of the plastic and pictorial arts.
plification of th� representative technique ended with truths as a measure of cognizance, deed is the highest We affirm in these arts a new element the kinetic
its analysis and stuck there. The distracted world of and surest of truths. rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real
the Cubists, broken in shreds by their logical anarchy, Those are the laws of life. Can art withstand these time.
cannot satisfy us who have already accomplished the laws if it is built on abstraction, on mirage, and
Revolution or who are already constructing and build­ fiction? These are the five fundamental principles of our work
Ing up anew. One could heed with interest the ex­ and our constructi,;,e technique.
periments of the Cubists, but one cannot follow them, We say . • . Space and time are re-born to us Today we proclaim our words to you people. In the
being convinced that their experiments are being today. Space and time are the only forms on which squares and on the streets we are placing our work
made on the surface of Art and do not touch on the life is built and hence art must be constructed. convinced that art must not remain a sanctuary for
bases of it seeing plainly that the end result amounts States, political and economic systems perish, ideas the idle, a consol.ation for the weary, and a justifica­
to the same old graphic, to the same old volume and crumble, under the strain of ages .•. but life is tion for the lazy. Art should attend us everywhere that
to the same decorative surface as of old. strong and grows and time goes on in its real con­ life flows and acts .•. at the bench, at the table, at
One could have hailed Futurism in its .time for the tinuity. work, at rest, at play; on working days and holidays
refreshing sweep of its announced Revolution in Art, Who will show us forms more efficacious than this •.. at home and on the road •.. in order that the
for its devastating criticism of the past, as in no other •.. who is the great one who will give us foundations flame to live should not extinguish in mankind.
way could one have assailed those artistic barricades stronger than this? Who is the genius who will tell We do not look for justification, neither in the past
of 'good taste' ••• powder was needed for that and us a legend more ravishing than this prosaic tale nor in the future. Nobody can tell us what the future
a lot of it ... but one cannot construct a system of which is called life? is and what utensils does one eat it with. Not to lie
art on one revolutionary phrase alone. One had to The realization of our perceptions of the world In the about the future is impossible and one can lie about it
examine Futurism beneath its appearance to realize forms of space and time is the only aim of our pic­ at will. We assert that the shouts about the future
that one faced a very ordinary chatterer, a very agile torial and plastic art. In them we do not measure our are for us the same as the tears about the past: a
and prevaricating guy, clad in the tatters of worn-out works with the yardstick of beauty, we do not weigh renovated day-dream of the romantics. A monkish
words like 'patriotism', 'militarism', 'contempt for the' them with pounds of tenderness and sentiments. delirium of the heavenly kingdom of the old attired In
female', and all the rest of such provincial tags. The plumb-line in our hand, eyes as precise as a contemporary clothes. He who is busy today with the
In the domain of purely pictorial problems, Futurism ruler, in a spirit as taut as a compass ... we con­ morrow is busy doing nothing. And he who tomorrow
has not gone further than the renovated effort to fix struct our work as the universe constructs its own, as will bring us nothing of what he has done today is
on the canvas a purely optical reflex which has the engineer constructs his bridges, as the mathema­ of no use for the future.
already shown its bankruptcy with the Impressionists. tician his formula of the orbits. We know that every­ Today is the deed.
It is obvious now to every one of us that by the simple thing has its own essential image; chair, table, lamp, We will account for it tomorrow. The past we are
graphic registration of a row of momentarily arrested telephone, book, house, man ..• they are all entire leaving behind as carrion.
movements, one cannot re-create movement itself. It worlds with their own rhythms, their own orbits. The future we leave to the fortune-tellers,
makes one think of the pulse of a dead body. The That is why we in creating things take away from them We take the present day.
pompous slogan of 'Speed' was played from the hands the labels of their owners ••. all accidental and
of the Futurists as a great trump. We concede the local, leaving only the reality of the constant rhythm N. Gabo
sonority of that slogan and we quite see how it can of the forces in them. Moscow, Noton Pevsner
sweep the strongest of the provincials off their feet. 5 August 1920 2nd State Printing House
But ask any Futurist how does he imagine 'speed' and 1 Thence in painting we renounce colour as a pic­
there will emerge a whole arsenal of frenzied automo­ torial element, colour Is the Idealized optical surface
biles, rattling railway depots, snarled wires, the clank of objects; an exterior and superficial impression of
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