Page 39 - Studio International - March 1966

Judgement and identification

London Commentary by Edward Lucie-Smith

The pioneer Russian modernists—and to a lesser extent the resemblances between the pre-First World War
the Italian ones—are still somewhat neglected. It is still Russian avant-garde and things which are happening
usual to write as if the Ecole de Paris dominated every- today.
thing, as if all developments in modern painting sprang This is a preliminary to saying that the most fascinating
originally from the Fauves and the Cubists. Yet it exhibition of the month is for me the show of paintings
becomes more and more apparent, I think, that con- by David Burliuk, at the Grosvenor Gallery. Burliuk now
temporary painting owes a great deal to centres other lives in relative obscurity in America. He left Russia in
than Paris. Reading Camilla Gray's book, The Great 1918, and arrived in the United States in the early
Experiment, for instance, one is continually struck by twenties, having travelled there byway of Japan. Before
this, he had been for a decade the most vocal spokesman
of modern art in Russia, and one of the star performers
in an outstanding galaxy of talent. He and his brother
Vladimir (who was killed in 1917) seem to have been
memorably picturesque figures in those days. Camilla
Gray says that both the brothers were enormous :
'Vladimir, indeed, was a professional wrestler and always
took a twenty pound pair of dumb-bells around with
him on his journeys in the cause of the new art and
literature—it was David, however, who was made to
carry this spectacular equipment, for Vladimir insisted
that it would hurt his muscles.' Experts in uproar, the
brothers caused a sensation wherever they went. For
instance, they made a 'Futurist Tour' in 1913-14,
accompanied by Mayakovsky and Kamensky. In the
course of this they visited seventeen towns in various
parts of Russia, and throughout the trip David Burliuk
wore on his forehead a painted sign which read :
'I — Burliuk'. Sublime egotism could go no farther.
The Burliuks were Futurist poets as well as painters
(it was they who supported Mayakovsky and kept him
alive with their subsidies), and they had strong con-
nections abroad. David Burliuk is today the last survivor
of the Blaue Reiter.
I wish I could report, after filling in the background,
that the show is a triumph. Alas, it is not quite that.
Burliuk is reported to have left some 700 works behind
him, when he left Russia for Japan. All but a few of
these seem to have vanished. What he has been doing
in recent years is remaking his own lost oeuvre. There
David Burliuk Red Horse 1911 Oil on canvas 32 1/2 x 36 1/2 in. Grosvenor Gallery
are many pictures here which are recreations of paint-
David Burliuk Japan and America 1921 Oil on canvas 19 1/2 x 29 1/2 in. Grosvenor Gallery ings made in 1907 or 1910. The result, one may guess,
has been a sweetening and a softening of the originals.
Burliuk painted in many styles, and came under many
influences, but is at his most characteristic in the
'primitive' manner which was also used by the young
Chagall and by Larionov. The fierceness of the time is
now viewed through a veil of nostalgia. One or two
genuinely early pictures, a Cubist head of a sailor, for
instance, have more bite. And some of the paintings
of the transition period, when Burliuk had just settled
in America, are very interesting indeed. But he does not
seem to me an artist who has developed as he has aged,
from the evidence presented here.
Another 'senior' artist, Henri Hayden, is showing at the
Waddington Gallery. Here, too, nostalgia is at work,
but the painter has greater control over his emotions
—the pictures are free, lyrical, not very dense, but
beautiful none the less. In this, Hayden's paintings
resemble the Milton Avery watercolours which are to
follow them at the same gallery, though Avery in these
works has a refined sophistication which no one else
has equalled. But in both cases, what we see is modern
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