Page 31 - Studio International - October1973

Jewish historian Salo Baron observed: artist's shift from Jewish subject matters to a
`The eyes of even casual onlookers have been suprematist-based non-objectivity. 77 Instead,
caught by the contrast between the practical we should examine this increasingly traumatic
sense of the Jew and his unrestrained idealism; state in the light of the irreconcilability of the
between his adherence to tradition and `masters' Lissitzky hoped to serve in his work.
proneness to innovations : between his quick Throughout his career, even after he
intuitive grasp and endless, arid casuistry; capitulated to the demands of Socialist
between his commercial avidity and unlimited Realism, Lissitzky considered himself an
charitableness. In the Jewish religion, since the inspired, talented man who could help mankind
days of the prophets, universalism and achieve a better society. This vision of the
particularism have been logical antitheses artist, so typical of the messianism of the
persistently linked in a living unity . . . . Did avant garde, echoes the Hassidic concept of the
not ancient Pharisaism accept determinism and zaddik, the truly righteous and just individual
free will, and the mediaeval Jewish philosophers, who becomes the prophet for his fellow man.78
God's transcendence and immanence as Whether we call him a zaddik, a zhiznostroitel
The Abstract Cabinet 1927
coexisting realities in defiance of all logical (a Russian term for the builder of the new way
consistency ?'74 of life), or a visionary idealist, Lissitzky sought
As one caught in this net of conflicts, Lissitzky to bring all humanity closer to the goal of a
illustrates that type encountered so often in the harmonious, ideal world. q
This conflict between the communal and the twentieth century : the 'marginal man.' The
individualistic brings us back to the large marginal man is 'the individual who lives in,
number of opposites Lissitzky sought to or has ties of kinship with, two or more
reconcile in his art. It was not only a matter of interacting societies between which there exists
somehow fusing the goals of the Revolution, sufficient incompatibility to render his own
the avant garde, and a modernized Hebrew adjustment to them difficult or impossible. He
tradition. Each of these entities had its own does not quite belong or feel at home in either
internal contradictions. The Revolution, for group.'75 As for the marginal men among the
example, was both idealistic and obsessed with Jews, 'they are the partly assimilated, the partly
the pressing hard realities of the here and now. accepted, the real wandering Jews, at home
The avant garde proclaimed its break with the neither in the ghetto nor in the world outside
past as it continued to build upon the principles the ghetto.'76
of that loathsome inheritance. And as we have Consequently the tension we have observed
seen, in Judaism itself there were conflicts in Lissitzky's art is not hard to explain.
between the communal and the individual; Although other writers have noted this
knowledge accessible to all yet only perceived characteristic in him, they attributed it to the
by a select few; the worldly and the other-
worldly; the rational and the mystical. As the The Constructor (self-portrait) 1924

1 Hannah Arendt, 'The Jew as Pariah, A Hidden
Tradition', in Arthur A. Cohen, ed., Arguments and
Doctrines, A Reader of Jewish Thinking in the
Aftermath of the Holocaust, New York, 197o, p. 27.
2 El Lissitzky, `Autobiographie von El Lissitzky,' in
Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and
Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, El Lissitzky,
Eindhoven and Hanover, 1965, p. 33; Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky, Life, Letters, Texts,
Greenwich, Connecticut, 1948, p. 20.
3 For example, Eberhard Steneberg, Russische
Kunst Berlin 1919-1932, Berlin, 1969, p. 50. Ella
Winter, one of the first to call attention to Lissitzky's
work, considered him 'a dedicated Jewish nationalist'
only during the period of the Jewish illustrations
(`Lissitzky: A Revolutionary out of Favour,' Art News,
Vol. 57, No. 2, April 1958, p. 62).
4 Chimen Abramsky, 'El Lissitzky as Jewish
Illuminator and Typographer,' Studio International,
Vol. 172, No. 882, October 1966, pp. 182, 183.
5 Francois Pluchart, 'Lissitzky, romantique et
ingénieur du futur,' Art International, Vol. 10,
No. 2, February 1966, p. 16; Henryk Berlewi, 'El
Lissitzky in Warschau,' in Stedelijk van
Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Kestner-
Gesellschaft, Hanover, p. 63. For a broader
discussion of this phenomenon, see Hannah Arendt.
`Privileged Jews,'Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1,
January 1946, pp. 28-3o.
For arguments denying the psychological toll this
decision had on Lissitzky, see Abramsky, p. 183,
and Lucia Moholy, 'El Lissitzky,' Werk, Vol. 53,
No. 6, June 1966, p. 23o.
6 Henryk Berlewi, `Yidische kunstler in der heintiger
russischer kunst,' Milgroim, No. 3, 1923, p. 16.
7 Boris Aronson, Sovremmenaya evreiskaya grafika,
Berlin, 1924.
8 Alan C. Birnholz, 'For the New Art: El Lissitzky's
Prouns,' Artforum, Vol. 8, No. 2, October 1969, p. 66.

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