Page 30 - Studio International - April 1971

tendencies—the cubist and futurist avant garde Proletcult artist, Gastev, collaborated with the revolutionary intelligentsia. Many workers,
and the Proletcult. These represented two Mayakovsky in organizing a symphony of especially militant workers, perhaps the
different concepts. On the one hand, there was factory sirens and locomotive whistles, majority, deeply distrusted intellectuals, whom
the concept of the avant-garde artist rallying to conducted by semaphore from a rooftop. they tended to see as parasites. Either
the revolution and bringing his specialized During the brief period that Proletcult survived intellectuals were actual servants and
skill to its service. On the other hand, there was into the NEP years, it was one of its main lieutenants of the bourgeoisie or else they were
the concept of the proletariat, now it had figures, Pletnev, who gave Eisenstein his start pointless adjuncts. Marxism seemed to point
achieved political power, producing its own in the theatre, with his 'montage of attractions'. to the truth that all value was produced by the
artists and its own art. These two concepts were The first years of the Revolution were a time working class. The cult of physical labour was
not necessarily contradictory but they could when collaboration was possible. pervasive at the time. Indeed, the intelligentsia
easily become so. Neither tendency was In part, this was because of the emphasis on itself felt worried about its role. Arvatov, one
particularly inclined to pay much attention to taking art to the public, in tearing it out of the of the theroists of Futurism and Constructivism,
the problems of the peasantry who, as Lenin salons and presenting it to the masses. wrote that 'the radical and leading part of the
was well aware, constituted the great bulk of the Rodchenko sent abstract, futurist and new intelligentsia, the so-called technical
Russian population. The Proletcult, by its very suprematist works all over the country, filling intelligentsia (to be precise) has been educated
nature, was exclusively proletarian in every gallery with them. Painted agit-trains and in the industrial centres of the present and has
composition and outlook. The avant garde, agit-steamers travelled all over Russia. Whole been permeated with the positivism of the
especially its dominant futurist section, was cities were covered with paintings. Huge public natural sciences and has become "Americanized"
fanatically urban and cosmopolitan in its spectacles were organized. The storming of the ... At the time when the former intelligentsia
world-view, mesmerized by the city, by the Winter Palace was re-enacted. Acting on a was soaring above the clouds in its "pure
machine, by industrial civilization. The hatred suggestion of Lenin's, monuments were erected. ideology" the new and "urbanized"
of the old which brought it to the revolution The IZO commissioned Tatlin's Monument of intelligentsia was concentrating on the material
went hand-in-hand with an aversion to rural the Third International which, though it was world, the world of things'. This kind of
life and rustic values. Neither tendency was never built, was exhibited and driven round the attitude envisaged that the 'literary' and
ready to make concessions to populism or to streets as a model. Artists had not yet given up `artistic' intelligentsia had to make a clean
peasant culture. As a result, neither was to the idea that art was a particular activity, with a break with its past. 'Pure art' was to be rejected
emerge a victor in the battles which were to validity of its own. Assuming it to be of value, alongside 'pure ideology'. The new
ensue. they were eager to take it to the masses, to intelligentsia must be urban, technicist,
At first, there was a considerable overlap make it accessible to everybody. Yet already materialist, integrated into modern industry,
between the Proletcult and the avant garde. the idea was beginning to form that art was working alongside the proletariat.
Proletcult artists joined with futurists in itself a pointless luxury and that for art to have Not all artists accepted this vision of the
contempt for the past and determination to any real meaning, it must be subordinated to future. In the first four years of the revolution,
produce new forms, representative of a machine the exigencies of industrial production, it must for instance, Kandinsky was prominent in the
age. It was a Proletcult pamphleteer, have an immediate practical utility. As artists INKHUK, the Institute of Artistic Culture
Kershentsev, who first launched the slogan of began to ask themselves what the role of art which had been set up by the NARKOMPROS
`Art in the streets'. Later the IZO organized should be in the revolution, pragmatist and to gather artists sympathetic to the revolution
mass pageants and festivals and decorated whole utilitarian arguments began to come to the fore. into one organization. Gabo and Pevsner were
cities with paintings on buildings, walls and Artists must not just take art to the workers; active at this time. Most important of all,
gigantic hoardings. Kershentsev was made head they must become workers. Ironically enough, Malevich, who had ousted Chagall from control
of ROSTA, the forerunner of TASS, where he the ideology of the Proletcult demanded exactly of the art school at Vitebsk, also demurred
commissioned Mayakovsky, among others, to the reverse— workers must become artists. and, unlike Kandinsky or Gabo, he had a
produce the famous ROSTA windows, Both proved abortive ambitions. group of talented and loyal pupils and followers,
posters-cum-broadsheets, satirical cartoons The underlying problem at issue was that of the UNOVIS group. Malevich was
combined with sloganeering verse. Another the relationship between the working class and emphatically not 'permeated with the positivism
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