Art
Great epoch
John McEwen
The contemporary art situation in London is very dull at the moment. Where are the shows of yesteryear ? Where the Marlborough, wise Helene Lessore, the Whitechapel, Robert Fraser, the ICA, even the Tate, so tatty now putting on dealers' shows, Where are they, where have they all gone? Yes indeed, where are the shows downtown ? There is only one answer to this refrain. Anneiy Juda.
. Over the years she has persisted in mounting serious historical exhibitions and her latest, Russian Pioneers at the Origins of Non Objective Art, the pick of four years' reSearch, is outstanding, all the more so for its Isolation. This is a sampling of the Russian artists we should have seen at the Academy last winter instead of all those dreary landscapes. Impossible, of course, because these artists are the ones that are still officially renudiated. Ironical too since they were in the vanguard of the Revolution. As a result their work is rare and even today information concerning it is at a premium. It would seem worthwhile therefore to devote most of this review to introducing rather than describing the pieces at Annely Juda (till 18 September), something which the catalogue does very Well
_ Alexander Benois (Peter Ustinov's grandfather) and his contemporaries Bakst, Dia ghilev and Rimsky-Korsakov (Stravinsky's teacher), to name some of those who are best remembered, had established Russia as a cultural force by the turn of the century. Benois subscribed to the prevailing fashion of 'art for art's sake', the belief that art should be the salvation of mankind, the medium of eternal truth and beauty that should invest every human activity. The abortive revolution of 1905 and, following it, the inflow of foreign money to speed up industrialisation, further stirred and subsidised this established artistic community. Russia became the focus of progressive ideas from Munich, Vienna and Paris. Morosov and Shchukin began to buy their famous collections of French pictures, particularly Shchukin's with its horde of early paintings by Matisse and Picasso. Larionov and Natalia Goncharova launched their expressly Russian 'Primitivist' style of painting. From this a true Russian school was to evolve.
The years immediately preceding the War saw painting, often in conjunction with poetry, become the most influential art in the country. The shock tactics of Italian Futurism were employed, though with more serious political intent, to break down both pictorial and social conventions and establish the artist as an active citizen rather than a superior recluse. In 1913 Larionov issued his Rayonnist Manifesto which rationalised most of the ideas current in Russia at the time: 'We declare: the genius of our days to be: trousers, jackets, shoes, tramways, buses, aeroplanes, railways, magnificent ships ... what a great epoch unrivalled in the history of the world.' So it began. The freedom inherent in these modern inventions would be mirrored by the creation of new forms in painting, painting whose essence would reside in the combination, saturation and relationship of its colour and 'the intensity of surface working.'
1914 served to gather Russian artists rather than disperse them. Many returned from their explorations in Europe and with
the War cutting off contact with the outside world it was no surprise that in the next three years such a concentration of talent generated new movements of its own. The first of these was Malevich's 'Suprematism' and the second 'Constructivism'. Although both were inspired by the vision of a new, regulated, industrialised world with man as the master of the machine and therefore his destiny, they differed considerably in their methods and principles. Suprematism argued that art was a spiritual activity creating sensations of infinity, limitless possibility, in which there was no human or natural measure. In no circumstances could it be a craft. Constructivism was concerned with finding a functional role for the artist. The Revolution supplied both ideals with a unique opportunity for practical expression. For four years the artists were allowed a freedom that has probably never been equalled in history. Its imaginative scale is best exemplified by Tatlin's famous 'Monument to the III International' which, had it been built, would have been a building at the centre of Moscow twice the size of the Empire State and incorporating three elements moving at different speeds !
That this period, when propaganda was briefly transformed into the expression of a great philosophical ideal, ended with the final triumph of the Bolsheviks in 1921 makes it no less astonishing—a desperate need for order and bureaucracy made artistic freedom a liability. In 1932 the doctrine of Socialist Realism was tyrannically enforced. Nor is it surprising that much of the creativeness of those few years was systematised in contributing to the commodity-dictated designs which have degraded so much subsequent modern architecture and applied art and, in passing, it must also be said, in contributing to much dull and commercial exploitation of populist themes in the guise of avant-gardism, particularly in recent years. But much good has come of it as well, perhaps most unreservedly through Lissitsky's brilliant typographical innovations, and even today something of its spirit lingers in Russia itself in their more mystical approach to space and stellar exploration.
Most of all, however, this spirit resides in the work, which still retains the purpose and urgency of the time in its extraordinary freshness and invention. At Annely Juda's you can see the first Malevich suprematist painting exhibited in Britain since 1958. You can see a 1923 portfolio of six Lissitsky lithographs in pristine condition ; a very rare Tatlin watercolour 'Study for Board No 1'1917; a Stenberg that can be identified in the famous photograph of the 1921 Obmokhu Group exhibition ; a Rodchenko 'Line Construction' 1919; and many others, Popova, Puni, a very fine composition also in prime condition by the Hungarian Bortnyik and a brilliant collage by an unfamiliar name, Annenkov. Too much, too much ! Just go and see and be thankful that one person survives to keep up the old standards of scholarly historical shows devoted to the best art of our time.
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