Russian Avant-Garde. Evgueny Kovtun
mankind out into the space of the world and organise systems opposed to the ‘falling forces’ on a cosmic scale. He considered the cosmic space and the planetary and astral worlds as a sphere for organising the activity of mankind, creating new ‘architectonics of the sky’ that would contribute to and ‘liberate all worlds from the chains of gravitation and the blind force of attraction.’[25] Then Man will cease to be a ‘lazy passenger’ of Earth. He will become the ‘crew of this […] vessel that is the globe, put into motion by a force still unknown.’[26]
Fedorov’s futurological ‘project’ proved to be much more radical than the fantasies of the most audacious Futurists; the globe, governed by human willpower, moves freely in space like a gigantic spaceship. The philosophical concept of Fedorov led him to an original understanding of the nature of art. For the first time in the history of aesthetic theories, he saw the essence of all artistic creation in the resistance to gravity.
Valentin Kurdov, Chinese Lantern, 1926–1927.
Oil on canvas, 117 × 99 cm.
Private collection.
Mikhail Matiushin, The Rick. Lakhta, 1921.
Watercolour on paper, 53 × 41.5 cm.
Private collection.
Robert Falk, Landscape and Sailboat, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 90 × 116 cm.
Alexander Radischev Museum, Saratov.
Art © 2007, Robert Falk/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Well ahead of their time, the ideas of Fedorov, the grand vision he gave of the titanic struggle against fall/attraction, of the incursion of man into the cosmos, of interplanetary flights, exercised a great influence on the minds and imagination of the generation that succeeded him. There are invisible links between Fedorov and a number of phenomena in Russian artistic culture at the beginning of the 20th century. After the Revolution, Malevich returned several times to these ideas of surpassing attraction. In 1922, he published a booklet in Vitebsk entitled God Is Not Cast Down: Art, Church, Factory. One of his strongest ideas is the distribution of heaviness within the system of weightlessness, the creation of a visual structure in which gravitation, i.e., that form depends on the conditions and logic of terrestrial relationships, is absent. Another publication by Malevich in Vitebsk, Suprematism, 34 drawings is also linked to the idea of visual weightlessness, the work of art being interpreted as an independent planetary world. In this booklet, the painter describes the incursion of man into the cosmos. Malevich was the first to use the term Sputnik (artificial satellite from Earth) to describe an interplanetary spacecraft. What is important is that Malevich’s idea was not just a fantasy, but a conclusion based on the visual principles of Suprematism.
Ilya Mashkov, Landscape, 1911.
Oil on canvas, 53 × 71 cm.
Regional Art Museum, Kirov.
The ‘Renaissance’ of Vitebsk
During the Revolution, Vitebsk had a surprising destiny. This small, quiet provincial town was suddenly transformed into a bubbling hotbed of artistic life. Marc Chagall, who organised a school of painting there, wrote in December 1918: ‘The town of Vitebsk has at last started moving. In this ‘hole’, with a population of approximately one hundred thousand people, where, previously Yuli Klever made a living and where what remained of the Itinerant movement ended, in these days of October, is now blossoming a colossal revolutionary art.’[27] The school of painting had opened in the large light rooms of a hotel which once belonged to a town banker. On the days of celebration, one could see a flag floating on the roof, a knight mounted on a green horse, with the inscription: ‘To Vitebsk, from Chagall.’ For two or three years courses were taught by painters such as Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Robert Falk, Ivan Puni, Xenia Bogouslavskaia, Vera Ermolaeva and Nadeshda Ljubavina.
Pyotr Konchalovsky, Cassis. Boats, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 88 × 111 cm.
Collection Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin.
Aristarkh Lentulov, Landscape with Monastery, 1920.
Oil on canvas, 104 × 140 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
In 1919, Ermolaeva became director of the school, which had become the Art Institute. This 26-year-old woman was in charge of one of the painting workshops. The other teachers included Chagall and also Pen and Lakerson, Realist painters, followers of the Itinerants. Even so, Chagall’s workshop provided the general spirit. ‘The students adored him then; that is why they covered all the palisades and signs which survived the Revolution with little upside down cows and pigs in Chagall’s style.’[28] This situation was soon to change. Malevich, who was invited to Vitebsk by Ermolaeva, arrived in November 1919. He brought to the school the latest trend in new art: Suprematism. Passionate for Malevich’s system, won over by his discourse and his personality, Chagall’s students changed sides one by one. The artistic change of heart was dazzling: that is how Lazar Lissitzky, who had just published a tale about little goats, in the purest tradition of Chagall, became an orthodox Suprematist within a month.
On 14 February 1920, the Unovis group was founded in Vitebsk (‘Affirmers of new forms in art’). ‘Let the abolition of the old world be written in the palm of our hands’, this was the motto under which the works of the Unovis were published and their debates organised. The core of this new group, directed by Malevich, was composed of Vera Ermolaeva, Lazar Lissitzky, Nikolai Suetin, Lev Yudin, Ilya Shashnik, Nina Kogan, Lazar Khidekel and Evguenia Magaril. The Unovis group presented a vast transformation programme for all types of visual arts.
The active artistic life at the school was shaking the dozy atmosphere of the town; conferences, debates on the new art, evening drawing demonstrations with lectures on the principles of Cubism, Futurism and Suprematism, and of course exhibitions were taking place. After Vitebsk, Unovis groups were created all over the country: in Smolensk, Kharkov, Moscow, Petrograd, Samara, Saratov, Perm and other places. In Vitebsk, Malevich was much involved in the study of architectonics and became deeply interested in applied Suprematism. Some sketches of women’s clothing, fabric designs and even a fragment of printed fabric still remain. Suprematism submits coloured and geometric forms, in interaction between one and another, to the laws of contrast and harmony, each element of form being part, inevitably and logically, of one unique structure.
Almost none of Malevich’s students became Suprematists, although the school of Vitebsk and the Suprematist curriculum gave each student a charge of energy that would last for his or her life. Starting from this experience, Lissitzsky became a layout artist. Yudin developed into a graphic designer, bearing in mind the lessons of Cubism, which influenced him deeply at Vitebsk. Malevich gave them all a solid basis, a culture from the form, to the anarchy of colour for which Ermolaeva had always been passionate. The sketches for shop signs in Vitebsk made by Suetin are conserved at the Russian Museum. Contrary to the large number of students who worked with Malevich and merely assimilated the decorative side of Suprematism, Suetin made his the inner and philosophical principles of the new movement.
When numerous followers of Malevich moved away from their master at the beginning of the 1930s, Suetin remained loyal to him until the end of his life, continuing to develop the visual structures of Suprematism. At Vitebsk, Malevich had for the first time to deal with talented painters, allowing him to tackle teaching, which had always attracted him. These young painters literally impregnated themselves with the precepts and principles of the new art.
A. Efros,