Page 45 - Studio International - November 1969

would be that 'technical organism' produced
social significance of a technological environ-
by the motion of the human body. Likewise, ment was never really questioned, neither did
his associate, Weininger, developed a spherical it seem possible that technology would tend
theatre whose spectators 'find themselves con- to cancel individual freedom. But totalitarian-
fronted with new possibilities for concentric, ism was not so very far away. Meanwhile,
eccentric, multi-directional, mechanical space- Tatlin and the Constructivists occupied but
stage phenomena'. an intermediate space between studio and
A final Bauhaus example should be noted : factory. As Lissitzky put it : 'There was a desire
Lásló Moholy-Nagy mentions the spiral in to be an inventor, to be materialistic; but
his Von Material bis Architektur as one of Raoul people still remained in the romantic period.'
France's seven `biotechnical constructional Pevsner and Gabo criticized Tatlin's monu-
elements', and says that 'in particular the ment from this standpoint, that it was a
spiral (screw) has led to solutions that are `romanticism of the machine', while Trotsky
astonishing in their relation to earlier expressed his scepticism by refuting Tatlin's
(baroque) aesthetic principles'. Such an ele- practical ambitions. And yet, the technological
ment produces a new conception of beauty, connection did seem the only possible way to
and spiral staircases (with radio towers and effect a social consciousness in the arts; hence
chemical plants) are specified as typifying the its eventual domination of Proletkult artistic
technological age. Moreover, the spiral in its theory, and its temporary degree of official
mechanistic analogy, the screw, is conceived support. 'The wall between art and industry
by Moholy-Nagy as symbolizing the whole will come down', said Trotsky, 'the direct
additive or constructive process, in art and co-operation between art and all branches of
in life, which expresses what he calls 'the technique will become of paramount impor-
first assemblage age'. tance'.
But the question of official support was a
IV vexed affair. While the state struggled to
This connection with technology conveniently establish its control of more urgent areas of
returns us to Tatlin's monument. When the activity, the arts continued to have their fling.
model was exhibited in 1920, it was adorned But the over-night extinction of the middle
with a red ribbon bearing the motto, 'Engi- classes who had supported contemporary art
neers, create new forms', and Tatlin himself brought urgent problems and the traditional
described the work as 'a union of purely social isolation of the artist became immedi-
artistic forms for a utilitarian purpose'. In ately of significant political importance. Since
this sense, it is an important symbol of the the artist was now supported by governmental
machine age, and as such infected the rest of subsidies, he was in fact ideologically respon-
Europe, including, for example, the Berlin sible to the state. But the artists of the Revolu-
Dadaists, who rightly recognized machinism tion were first and foremost dissenting agitators
as an aspect of if not anti-art at least non-art. aiming at an ideal and not convinced by
Yet, despite its pretensions to utilitarianism, political realities.
this is no 'Production art', rather the point of The dilemma of the Proletkult was typical. It
transition from a Formalist to a Constructi- has often been assumed that its members
vist ethos. This symbolist origin of later operated within the tenets of Marxist theory,
supposedly 'Functionalist' art is important, but had they done so, they would not have
since the machine was to be but another attempted to effect proletarian culture before
`image', and provided the contemporary Communism was itself established. Moreover,
significances which hitherto pure forms had the ideological premises of the organization
alone achieved. Tatlin's monument with its were based upon the Machist concept of
both political and machinist implications is `economized thought' achieved through the
thus the point of interface of content from erasal of the physical/psychological dichotomy
aesthetics or politics to the machine as symbol at the expense of the physical, which naturally
of the contemporary world. enraged Lenin, who recognized this subordi-
But the machine ideal was so closely linked nation of matter to mind threatened the
with the social ideal at this time that they are environmental primacy of Marxism. The
often inseparable. The ambition of Con- Proletkult, he felt, was diverting Marxism with
structivism, and of the collectivist theory of its 'special ideas' and was really promulgating
such an organization as the Proletkult, was the a minority culture. Unlike the artists, he
artist-engineer. This is succinctly stated in believed that economic status determined
Pletyanov's slogan: 'the locomotive of Revolu- consciousness, and that intellectuals entering
tion can be built only by the forces of "we", factories (even party members like Tatlin)
by the forces of class unity'. This was, how- solved nothing. In any case, Lenin was never
ever, not only mechanistic fetishism, but sympathetic to the forms of the new art, and
political blindness. Russia in 1918 had no dial by 1932 all advanced currents had been
telephones, and when Lissitzky was seeking suppressed by this self-confessed 'barbarian'
an image from technology with which to for a state-sponsored aesthetic which, under
equate Constructivism, all he could come up the name of 'realism', encouraged a regression
with was the safety-razor ! The machine which destroyed all that for which Tatlin and
seemed to be a symbol of liberation, but the his friends had worked so hard. q