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PAINTING REVOLUTION
Chicago Cultural Center Part II The Revolution of the Russian Avant-Garde displayed an intensity, a passion, a lithe changeability that no one could have anticipated. And until October 8, 2000, the Chicago Cultural Center will host its legacy, "PAINTING REVOLUTION: Kandinsky, Malevich, and the Russian Avant-Garde," an exciting exhibition produced by the Foundation for International Arts and Education, Bethesda, Maryland, in cooperation with the State Russian Museum of Saint Petersburg and the State Museum-Exhibition Center (ROSIZO), Moscow. It presents important work from a prime incubator of Modern Art. Mikhail Larionov said it: "We despise and brand as artistic lackeys all those who move against a background of old or new art and go about their trivial business. Simple, uncorrupted people are closer to us than the artistic husk that clings to modern art, like flies to honey." [Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902-1934, Translator and Editor John E. Bowlt (Thames and Hudson: 1988).] Those were times of giddy optimism -- and of great insights; innovations; explorations: independent art -- great art.
And one among so many -- Liubov Popova: Liubov Sergeevna Popova -- was active then. Her husband died from typhoid fever in 1919... she continued art until 1924. The exhibition catalogue cites "her relentless effort to resolve the dichotomy between surface and space and to move from the pictorial plane to three-dimensionality." In 1917 and 1918, she was concerned with non-objective art, and even more with 'painterly architectonics.' Her four canvases in "PAINTING REVOLUTION" impress -- deeply, lastingly. Painterly Architectonics (1918) testifies to her tenacious efforts. It is striking and it is good. Another of several such series, Painterly Architectonics (1917) is in this showing. And between these two canvases, a years difference, there is an ever growing power and energy. It is personal: rough and angular, intensely compact, powerfully balanced and aggressive. Before her untimely death, she designed brilliant theater sets and then devoted her efforts to art for authentic people, declaring: "No artistic success has given me such satisfaction as the sight of a peasant or a worker buying a length of material designed by me." [Quoted by Camilla Gray.] Liubov Popova died in 1924 of scarlet fever. Vladimir Avgustovich Stenberg and his brother, Georgii, as the catalogue biography states: "worked in very close collaboration on most of their projects, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the contribution of one from the other." The exhibition catalogue notes Vladimir Stenberg's paintings often seem to imply a thrust beyond the canvas, into co-existence with the viewer's space. In this artist's Color Construction No. 4, the composition positions a Malevich-like red rectangle at upper canvas, opposite a Rodchenko-like black circle ringed with light blue -- but the tendril (or is it projectory?) which rises from canvas bottom like a mathematical sine curve seems to jump the panel into an unseen dimension beyond. Stenberg is among a number of artists in this showing who even at that date grew discontent with a concept of art that confined itself to canvas or frame, or, for that matter, to art as art commodity. In this, are the beginnings of aesthetic questions and philosophies which today drive lively debates among artists. With so much offered, one nevertheless must note that "PAINTING REVOLUTION" presents two excellent canvas by Vladimir Evgrafovich Tatlin: Sailor (1911) and Portrait of the Artist (1912). Both are of particular interest. Tatlin ran away from an unhappy home about 1900 and joined the Merchant Marine, serving on and off until 1915. The experience lingered in his art. Portrait of the Artist is of strong interest; as portraiture and a fine example of Tatlin's work. And among fellow creators, he exerted influence and was himself influenced. The times produced a revolution of art, and of creative community, of artists as much rivals as collaborators. Camilla Gray noted "the constant rivalry between Tatlin and Malevich -- which sometimes ended in physical violence," but even after their final break, Tatlin closely followed Malevich's career, collected reviews, notices; and "attended Malevich's funeral in Leningrad in 1935, although he had not seen him for years previously." Art was too important to let it fall a victim to personal lives or immediate situation. There is a constant awareness of this throughout "PAINTING REVOLUTION."
The artists in this exhibition were able to triumph over past, personalities, even privation. But there was a point beyond which this revolution in art seemed no longer able to conquer in the hope of its many futures. In 1932, the Communist Party decree "On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations" began what, two years later, would be the State's mandate of 'Socialist Realism' and the reign of Andrei Zhdanov, Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The revolution of art seemed to fall victim to a political ideology which at first seemed to nurture it, and which it had welcomed. Some left, scattered; others were stifled, and even suppressed. Their work was stored away, ignored, even sometimes lost or destroyed. It returns now. Poet Alphonse Lamartine (1790-1869) in his History of the Girondists quoted the French revolutionist, Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (1753-1793): "There was a reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, might devour every one of her children." To which, a former Yugoslav Vice-President, Milovan Djilas, was to add: "It is necessary for the revolution not only to devour its own children, but -- one might say -- devour itself." So much of this revolution, filtering abroad, found heirs throughout the world -- especially in the U.S. and particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. As Tom Wolfe noted in The Painted Word (Bantam: 1976), others now had Public Relations and they ran with it. That is another important reason to see "PAINTING REVOLUTION," while, until October 8, 2000, it is in Chicago. It has descendants here. And, as French actor, Jean-Louis Barrault (1910-) said -- "Art is permanent revolution." [In contribution, Atlas Dec. 1968.] The artists in "PAINTING REVOLUTION" are: Altman, Natan Iaevich; Baranov-Rissine, Vladimir Davidovich; Brunit, Lev Alexandrovich; Burliuk, David Davidovich; Chekrytgin, Vasilii Nikolaevich; Exter, Alexandra Alexandrova; Falk, Robert Rafailovich; Filonov, Pavel Nikolaevich; Goncharova, Natalia Sergeevna; Kandinsky, Vasilii Vasilievich; Klium, Ivan Vasilievich; Konchalovsky, Peter Petrovich; Kuprin, Alexandr Valievich; Larionov, Mikhail Fedorovich; Lebedev, Vladimir Vasilievich; Lentulov, Aristarkh Valisievich; Malevich, Kazimir Severinovich; Mansurov, Pavel Andreevich; Mashkov, Ilia Ivanovich; Palmov, Viktor Nikandrovich; Popova, Liubov Sergeevna; Puni, Ivan Albertovich; Rodchenko, Alexander Mikhailovich; Rozanova, Olga Vladimirovna; Senkin, Sergei Yakovlevich; Shevchenko, Alexander Vasilievich; Shterenburg, David Petrovich; Stenberg, Vladimir Avgustovich; Tatlin, Vladimir Evgrafovich; Udaltsova, Nadezhda; Vesnin, Alexander Alexandrovich; Stepanova, Varvara Fedorovna; Shevchenko, Alexander Vasilievich. The catalogue, PAINTING REVOLUTION: Kandinsky, Malevich, and the Russian Avant-Garde, with essays by John E. Bowlt, Evgeniia Petrova, and Andrei Sarabianov, is well worth the $30.00. There are 85 excellent works by 32 artists. Post Scriptum: Andrei Sarabianov, in the exhibition catalogue, remarked that under the Stalin era: "Works did, indeed, perish, and only as a result of the confidence and courage of certain museum workers were others saved." In Kazimir Malevich (1994), Charlotte Doulglas noted the subsequent fate of Malevich's paintings left in Berlin with architect Hugo Haring after the artist's 1927 exhibition tour through Berlin and Warsaw, Poland. Haring eventually passed them to Alexander Dorner, director of the provincial museum in Hanover, Germany, who hid the 'degenerate art' from the Nazis. They were eventually disbursed, many to the Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. ArtNews (Sept. 1999) reported a settlement with heirs, among them, Ninel Bykova.
Finis Part II --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Many of the books mentioned in www.artscope.net may be purchased through this website's Barnes and Noble Link. Particularly recommended is Camilla Gray's The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922 (Thames and Hudson, Revised and enlarged by Marian Burleigh-Motley: 1986). It remains timely and comprehensive. John E. Bowlt, a contributor to this exhibition's catalogue has edited Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902-1934 (Thames and Hudson: 1988); and co-authored with Nicoletta Misler: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting (Zwemmer: 1993). Evgenia Petrova and Irina Karasik's catalogue New Art for a New Age (Barbican Art Gallery, London: 1999) should also be noted. And one should look into Kazimir Malevich by Charlotte Douglas (Harry H. Abrams: 1994). |
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