Page 28 - Studio International - December 1973

Ivan Puni (Pougny) which he depended artistically.
Kuokkala, Finland (near Petersburg) 1894-1956, His liaison with the cubo-futurist group of
(Paris) Mayakovsky, discussed at length in the recent
The role of Ivan Albertovich Puni at the centre work `Pougny: Catalogue de l'oeuvre Russie-
of the Russian avant garde is ambiguous. A Berlin 1910-1923' by Benninger and Cartier,
talented organizer and futurist who became here comes into question. The book was based
actively engaged in the suprematist adventure of on the text of V. Katanyan, 'V. Mayakovskij :
Malevich, Puni occasionally created non- Litteraturnaja Xronika' (second edition,
objective works during brief periods only Leningrad 1948). Although difficult to
(1914-1916, 1919-1921); yet his works have a substantiate, Berninger and Cartier place a lot
great pictorial sensibility and are among the of emphasis on the personality of Mayakovsky
most successful of Russian Futurism. and Puni's relation to him and his group. In fact,
Puni was born into a wealthy family rich in Puni had few contacts with the futurist group of
artistic traditions. Thanks to his friendship Burljuk and Mayakovsky. The only photograph
with Kul'bin and especially with Malevich, he representing Puni in the company of
was integrated into the cubo-futurist milieu Mayakovsky and the futurists (`Catalogue de
of St Petersburg. The new plastic l'oeuvre', p. 49) is a photo-montage — a fact
consciousness of the decisive years 1915-1916 which has escaped the attention of the authors.
developed out of his friendship with and This montage, realized and published without
admiration for Malevich. At the exhibition the knowledge of Puni, brought an energetic
`Tramway V' (March 1915) he showed futurist protest from him, published in the form of an
assemblages bearing the marks of a 'pre-dadaist' open letter (Obzor teatrov, Petrograd, 2 April
mentality (Kliun's Ventilator and Larionov's 1915). Here he declared that 'this is a fake . . . I
Top Hat in Cross Section express a similar should like to affirm that I never participated in
mood). In December of the same year he this group and I was never photographed with
organized '0.10 — The Last Futurist V. Mayakovsky'.
Exhibition', in which Malevichian This is why it is difficult to overlook the
Suprematism emphatically declared itself. article by John Bowlt (Studio International,
Parallel to Kliun, Rozanova and Menk'hov, November 1973, pp 213-214) on the
Puni made the final jump into non-objective art `Catalogue de l'oeuvre'. If one can appreciate
when he fabricated several sculptures called the richness of the documents presented as a
Pictorial Sculpture (Zivopisnaja skul'ptura). corollary to Puni's impresario activities, one
With his pictorial sensibility and profound has difficulty in accepting uncritically (as does
admiration for Tatlin's work (with Shchukin Bowlt) the general thesis of the book, if indeed
and Exter, Puni was one of Tatlin's first there is one. Without exploring the
collectors), he interpreted Suprematism's ideal methodological implications of John Bowlt's
of the immateriality of planes while using attraction for a 'measure' and 'a certain
the constructivist principle of the texture of classical restraint' (Bowlt's aesthetic ideology),
material. Elements in metal and glass (from it seems impossible not to notice that precisely
Tatlin's Counter-Reliefs) are organized into these notions were violently attacked by the
suprematist compositions freely suspended in Russian avant garde in May 1915. Bowlt
the immaterial space just recently asserted by retrieves them without criticism and comments
Malevich. upon works of this same year, 1915, which
Archipenko Standing Figure 1914 The torrent of the Revolution took Puni seems a grave methodological error. It is also
h.27 in. Fischer Fine Art, London
briefly to Vitebsk where he taught at the same difficult to accept the idea that Puni 'was surely
time as Chagall. He participated in the great closer to Suprematism than Malevich was
social transformation with a few 'extremist' texts himself' (p. 214). To imagine that Suprematism
in reviews which were fired by revolutionary could ever be a 'clinical, more calculated
assumptions, Tatlin and Archipenko arrived engagement (Art of the Commune, nos 5 and 19) approach' to painting is a curious invention
independently — in the spring of 1914 — at a new but this new reality hardly corresponded to his which honours Mr. Bowlt's art-historical
form of plastic work which Tatlin called traditional social habits. So at the end of 1919 he imagination, but as Suprematism is known
`pictorial relief' (first exhibited in his own crossed the snows of Finland and arrived in today this interpretation is as misconstrued as it
studio from 10 to 14 May 1914) and Berlin in the autumn of 1920. Carried along by is surprsing.
Archipenko called `sculpto-peinture'. The the bohemian euphoria in the circle of At the exhibition `0.10' (Petersburg,
conceptual path of this evolution passed through Herwarth Walden, he fought again in the December 1915) Puni showed five Pictorial
the analysis of cubist composition with the exciting battles of the avant garde, in the new Sculptures (nos 1m-114 of the exhibition
help of the notion of the plane (this notion society of Russian artists and intellectuals. catalogue) which he accompanied with a
culminated in Malevich's Black Square). This however dissipated suddenly at the end declaration on the liberty of works of art and of
Sculpture abandoned the tradition of the object of 1923. In 1924 Puni came to Paris, and the non-objective forms in particular. While his
in the round and became a free manipulation of second great period of his art developed in the works were a compromise between the postulates
planes and masses. In sculpture it was not Gabo filtered atmosphere of an intimist painting in of Suprematism and the objects of Tatlin, his
who was the first to conceive a figure based on the colourist tradition of Vuillard. His ability declaration was equally coloured by an
the articulation of planes ( Young Girl, 1915) but to assimilate a fin de siècle pictorial sensibility ambiguity between the nineteenth-century
Archipenko, as the Head of 1913 proves. The assured him success in a style very opposed to aesthetic, 'art for art's sake', and a completely
importance of this work for the future the daring of his Petersburg and Berlin years. new attitude towards non-objective painting.
development of twentieth-century sculpture is His non-objective adventure, then, arose out of During 1916 Puni continued his work on non-
capital. a close association with a particular milieu, upon objective sculptures combining great

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