Page 17 - Studio International - December 1970

literary groups passed the busy Lenin by' and freedom for their own ideas was a practical universal term, but takes its meaning from the
the futurists and the new proletarian writers one, that they were still essentially part of a real situation of each. 'The formless talk about
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simply made him angry'. Lenin himself said, bourgeois tradition. They are 'fond of calling proletarian culture in antithesis to bourgeois
' ... I have the courage to declare myself a themselves "proletarian" Communists, be­ culture, feeds on the uncritical identification
"barbarian". I cannot regard the works of cause there is very little that is proletarian of the historic destinies of the proletariat with
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impressionism, futurism, cubism and other about them and very much that is petty­ those of the bourgeoisie.' 7 It is precisely this
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isms as the highest expressions of artistic bourgeois.' 0The revolution was threatened on kind of uncritical 'identification' which Lenin
genius: I don't understand them. I get no joy the left, not just by peasant anarchy, but by criticizes when he talks of those who 'devote
from them.' 56 We know that Lenin's personal the anarchy of individualism, 'that petty­ more effort to learning by heart ... revolu­
taste was for the nineteenth-century classics; bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that tionary slogans than to thinking them out', 68
but what is interesting is that, even theoreti­ incapacity' for sustained effort, unity and i.e. those who used Marxist slogans, particu­
cally, he saw nothing revolutionary in Russian organized action, which, if encouraged, must larly those demanding freedom from tyranny,
Futurism: nothing to parallel the social and inevitably destroy any proletarian revolu­ to attack the centralized power of the Party.
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political changes of the time. 'The bolshevik tionary movement.' There is a philosophical But, as Trotsky says, referring to this period of
poets, painters, sculptors and architects who conflict between the tradition of Romantic dictatorship, 'There can be no question of the
have been trying to crown Lenin's mighty individualism in art, expressing an ideal creation of a new culture, that is of construc­
work by their creative activity, complain world-movement which appears first in the tion on a large, historic scale, during the
despairingly about the complete blindness inner being of the artist, and Lenin's materia­ period of dictatorship. The cultural recon­
• and deafness of the Master, who was unable lism which sees the creative act as actually struction, which will begin when the need of
to grasp the supreme and ultimate manifesta­ making the new world-movement in the real the iron clu�ch of a dictatorship unparalleled
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tions of his own system.' 7 world, by actually changing man's relation­ in history will have disappeared, will not have
The reasons for this are clear enough in ships with himself and with nature, a process a class character. ' 69 The future will work itself
Lenin's own writings. The desperate needs of which he considered hardly begun. 'To out; in the meantime, 'It is impossible to
the war and the continuing problems of peace­ attempt in practice today, to anticipate this create a class culture behind the backs of a
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time (leading to the apparent contradiction future result of a fully developed, fully class.' 0
of the New Economic Policy, which many stabilized and constituted, fully comprehen­ It is true that Trotsky is concerned very
Leftists saw as a betrayal of Socialism), as sive and mature communism would be like largely with literature and with many qifferent
well as the need to educate the illiterate and trying to teach higher mathematics to a child artists with different theories of revolutionary
to win over the few skilled engineers, execu­ offour.' 62 socialist or proletarian culture. It is also true
tives and professional men, made it necessary Trotsky, in Literature and Revolution, gives the that the Constructivists were very much more
for the Party to assume an unexpected degree problem a fuller analysis, on the grounds that 'materialist' than Malevich. Tatlin, whose
of control. In other words, the Revolution, it is neither winning the war nor achieving its first constructed reliefs date from 1913, was
which so many intellectuals thought was over, economic objectives which are the true test of clearly very involved in the idea of materials
had only just begun in Russia, and was still to socialist victory. He says, 'Only a movement itsel£ His pre-revolutionary reliefs are neither
begin abroad. It is quite clear that the avant of scientific thought on a national scale and cubist, though Picasso's work was a starting
garde had seen the revolution as freedom­ the development of a new art would signify point, nor are they connected with Duchamp's
freedom from the dead hand of bourgeois that the historic seed has not only grown into doctrinaire ready-mades. They are concerned
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culture and freedom to reach a wider audience a plant but has flowered.' Most of the book to investigate, intuitively, the properties of
for their essentially pre-revolutionary art. is an examination of contemporary trends in materials as such. 'An Exhibition held in 1917
Gorki talks about Lenin's and Trotsky's art, to determine whether they really do presented a number of examples of material
'shameful attitude to freedom of expression represent the new culture. While more combinations, which were the results of more
and freedom from arrest and to the whole sympathetic to the avant garde, Trotsky complicated investigations into the use of
sum of those rights for the triumph of which reaches essentially the same conclusions as material in itself, and what this leads to:
democrats have fought.' 58 It is the assumption Lenin. Since 'all through history, mind limps movement, tension and mutual relation­
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that proletarian or socialist culture could be after reality', and since a true socialist state ships.' 71 For Tatlin, after the Revolution, 'an
instantly created by a small circle of artists, does not yet exist, it is absurd 'to tear out of opportunity emerges of uni ting purely artistic
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without great changes in the material and the future that which can only develop as an forms with utilitarian intentions'7 (that is, of
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mental situation of the proletariat and inseparable part of it'. For Trotsky, Futurism uniting the ideal and the real, the artistic and
peasants themselves, that Lenin attacks again is still part of bourgeois culture, so that 'the the social), 'and the results of this are models
and again. 'Only a precise knowledge and call of the Futurists is meaningless to the pro­ which call upon the producers to exercise
transformation of the culture created by the letariat who are not part of that tradition in control over the forms encountered in our
entire development of mankind will enable us the least. So far, 'Politics is the only field in new everyday life.' 73 Tatlin's 'culture of
to create a proletarian culture. The latter is which the proletarian has really created his materials' and his attempts to fuse 'art' and
not clutched out of thin air; it is not an inven­ own style.' 66 Freedom means quite different 'production' make him, perhaps, the most
tion of those who call themselves experts in things to a bourgeois artist, even one in revolt Marxist of all the Russian avant garde. Al­
proletarian culture.' 59 His particular charge against bourgeois society, and a factory though he is still linked to the tradition of
against the left intellectuals who demanded worker or peasant, since it is not an absolute, Italian Futurism-in love with the machine

CAREL BLOTKAMP lectures on modern art at the Art­ at the Technische Hoogschule, Eindhoven. Jeffrey JOHN EPSTEIN, director of the Black Box group, is senior
Historical Institute of Utrecht University and is art Shaw is a member of the artists' panel of APG. lecturer in charge of painting at Ulster College of Art,
critic of the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland. Belfast.
JEAN CLAY is an art critic and editor of the French .
JOHN LATHAM calls himself a professor of nonentity, and magazine Robho. JOHN COPLANS was until recently director of the
is known in Europe and America for his works made SOL LEWITI currently has an exhibition at the Pasadena Pasadena Art Museum and organized the Andy Warhol
with books. Inno 70 centres on the interrelationship Art Museum. exhibition which will open at the Tate Gallery,
between art and economics. London, in mid-February.
TERRY MEASHAM, senior lecturer in art history at Stour­
JEFFREY SHAW and THEO BOTSCHIUVER , who compose bridge College of Art, will shortly be j oining the Tate DEREK BOSHTER has an exhibition of sculpture, drawings
the Eventstructure Research Group, are both lecturing Gallery's Department of Exhibitions and Education. and prints at the Hayward Gallery till J anuary 10.
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