Page 52 - Studio International - February 1973

could not be reached by telephone. Perhaps he Matyushin discovered the genius of Malevich
was at his cottage outside Moscow. Sunday, June 21st very early, and considered him a great painter.
Today I managed to visit Mikhail Roginsky. `Matyushin was born in 1861 and was
The paintings I saw at his place when I was on Some years ago, while going through the originally a composer, a student of
my second-last visit to Moscow, in 1966, were accessible rooms of the reserve collection in the Rimsky-Korsakov — like Stravinsky — and later a
actually shocking. In some there was nothing Russian Museum in Leningrad, I stood gazing professional violinist with the Leningrad Court
except grotesquely enlarged kerosene-cookers down in surprise on two paintings which differed Orchestra. At the turn of the century he began
(so typical of those chopped-up Moscow flats), completely from all the other Russian art of the attending the Leningrad School for the Support
or there were walls with real switches, the first quarter of the century. Neither Cubism, nor of Art. There he met Yelena Guro, who was
surfaces merely divided into squares like tiles, or Suprematism, nor Abstract Expressionism, nor originally a painter.' (Yelena Guro was one of
finally paintings with rumpled trousers, a Constructivism, nor Lyrical Abstraction. the great figures in Russian poetry : she
woman's handbag, words added. 'It's necessary Who are they by ? Boris and Maria Ender, intuitively anticipated futurist poetics,
to absorb the techniques of advertising', he said both of them from the early nineteen-twenties. including 'zaum', the artificial trans-rational
at the time; and 'Not to paint but to act.' But I Boris and Maria Ender ? From the early language which first occurs in her poem Finland
was also surprised then by the uneasiness he twenties ? But who were they ? Matyushin's dating from shortly after 191o. Guro died in
displayed while showing his works : it seemed as friends and pupils. Boris Ender's widow is 1913 at the age of thirty-six.) 'Even though he
if he didn't even want to acknowledge them. living in Moscow. Here's her address . . . . became a painter, Matyushin did not leave off
This time I find him calm, and his painting too But I never got to see'Mrs Ender, nor did I composing. In Yelena Guro's books there are
has relaxed. His new works are small paintings ever find any more paintings by either Boris some musical contributions by him; in 1915 he
of traditional Russian life, painted in a cultivated Ender or his sister. And the same with published the compositions Autumnal Sleep and
post-impressionist manner. I linger most over a Matyushin : I never came across any of his Don Quixote; in the same year there appeared the
small painting of the Preobrazhensky Market in works. They told me that Matyushin's widow first quarter-tone composition for violin. He
Moscow, where people bring their old things to was still living in Leningrad, but she hadn't printed some examples of quarter-tone notation
sell. The juxtaposition of furniture from the turn anything by Matyushin and didn't receive in the supplement to Khruchonykh's libretto of
of the century and today's city evokes a visitors. Of course the name of Matyushin is Victory Over the Sun, and called it Noty
Chirico-like feeling. And just like Chirico, well known: the composer of the music for the budetlyanskye, that is, "Futurist notes".'
Roginsky too has drawn back from a ruthless famous futurist opera Victory Over the Sun My host takes from the bookcase a thin
disregard of tradition to painting which, in its from the year 1913, the friend of Malevich, pamphlet with Kruchonykh's text of Victory
content and consequently its form, marks a Filonov, and Kruchonykh, the husband of the Over the Sun: in the supplement, in addition to a
sentimental return to the past. Roginsky's work great poetess Yelena Guro, a professor at the very brief specimen of the idea of quarter-tone
from 1965 and 1966 belonged to the 'Pushkin Leningrad Vkhutemas from 1918. But what notation (the quarter-tones are indicated by
Boulevard School', but it is not easy to stick to were his paintings actually like ? The critical square notes), there are passages from
modern art in this country, and perhaps this is works, from the well-known outline by Camilla Matyushin's music for the opera. Critical works
especially true for an artist who lacks a certain Gray to the catalogues from recent exhibitions sometimes claim that the music was
ruthless tenacity. of the Russian avant garde, only refer to him quarter-tone, but it is in fact written in the usual
In the evening I go to visit Nikolai casually, and pass over the Enders in silence. semi-tones and classical scales, and so far as I can
Khardzhiyev. He lives in Kropotkin Street, Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiyev knows all the judge from a brief perusal it seems to be
lined with the old Empire-style palaces of the missing details. intentionally simple, rather reminiscent of Satie.
Russian nobility, and he himself has something `Mikhail Matyushin is in fact one of the key At that time Matyushin could not even consider
of an old-fashioned, ceremonious and noble figures in Russian Futurism', he begins. 'The composing Victory Over the Sun in the
manner. (In this he reminds one of another reason so little is known about his work is that quarter-tone system: it would have had to
Russian scholar, Roman Jakobson.) Half a he devoted so much of his time to other people remain unperformed, for a long time elapsed
century ago, still very young, he began preparing and their lives, the organization of their before quarter-tone instruments were made.2
the history of Russian Futurism: he gathered exhibitions, the publication of their books. The It is a well-known fact that Malevich was
together all the material, but the book never flat where he and his wife Yelena Guro lived was responsible for the design of the opera, and later
appeared. One after another the great Russian the headquarters of this new movement in art he claimed that in it he had been the first to go
futurists disappeared from the scene — the last and poetry, whose members originally called beyond representation into the realm of pure
of them, the 83-year-old Kruchonykh, only three themselves budetlyane — that is, "people of the abstraction. Nowadays there is some dispute as
years ago — and Khardzhiyev devoted his life to future" — and afterwards cubo-futurists. They to whether this is in fact the case, and so
their memory. His flat is a musum, library and all gathered and met there : the Burlyuks, suspicions have arisen that Malevich back-dated
archives of Futurism, and Khardzhiyev himself Khlebnikov, Malevich, Kruchonykh. In 1910 the origin of his abstraction. In his unpublished
is a living encyclopaedia. The hall is dedicated to they founded the Union of Youth, and memoirs (part of which he once placed at my
Olga Rozanova, and in the narrow study with its immediately afterwards they left it, but in 1912 disposal), Kruchonykh supports Malevich, and
single window there are pictures up to the they returned again. The Union of Youth broke at the same time sheds new light on the origin of
ceiling — Larionov, Matyushin, above the door up at the end of 1913, but before this they had this abstraction. 'The central theme of the
one of Malevich's most lovely works, a red organized several exhibitions and also two stage opera', he writes, 'was an apologia for the world
square on a white background (an emblem- productions, "the tragedy" Vladimir of technology, including flying . . . . the victory
painting, according to Khardzhiyev, which Mayakovsky and Kruchonykh's opera Victory of technology over the cosmic forces and
Malevich hung in all of his exhibitions), above Over the Sun. biology . . . . Malevich's decorations were
the desk a large, luminous painting, a portrait of `Matyushin and Yelena Guro also founded the designed in great surfaces — triangles, circles,
Boris Ender by Yelena Guro. Zhuravl (Crane) Library, and in this series they parts of machines. The performers wore masks
Matyushin, Guro, Ender: these are the main published a miscellany in 1910 under the title resembling modern gas masks. The extras —
reason for my visit. Khardzhiyev brings in his Sadok sudei1, which in fact marked the real actors — looked like moving machines. The
excellent tea and begins to chat. It is soon clear beginning of Russian Futurism, collections by costumes, made according to Malevich's
that we have embarked on a subject which Yelena Guro, Khlebnikov's numerical drawings, were fashioned in a cubist style from
cannot be covered in a single evening. We agree interpretation of history, Malevich's first book cardboard and wire. This altered the human
to meet again tomorrow. about Suprematism, and other works. anatomy — the actors' movements were linked
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