Against the Syntehtic Portrait, For the Snapshot by Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1928

 

“Any intelligent man will tell you about the photograph’s shortcomings in comparison to the painted portrait’ everyone will tell you about the character of the Mona Lisa, and everyone forgets that portraits were painted when there was no photography and that they were painted not of all the intelligent people but of the rich and powerful. Even men of science were not painted.

You need not wait around, intelligentsia; even now AKhRR artists will not paint you. True- they cant even depict the sum total, let alone .001 of a moment.

Now compare eternity in science and technology. In olden times a savant would discover a truth, and this truth would remain law for about twenty years. And this was learned and learned as something indisputable and immutable.

Encyclopedias were compiled that supplied whole generations with their eternal truths.

Does anything of the kind exist now?... No.

Now people do not live by encyclopedias but by newspapers, magazines, card catalogues, prospectuses, and directionaries.

Modern science and technology are not searching for truths, but are opening up new areas of work and with every day change what has been attained.” 

“It should be stated firmly that with the appearance of photographs, there can be no question of a single, immutable portrait. Moreover, a man is not just one sum total; he is many, and sometimes they are quite opposed.”

“Art has no place in modern life. it will continue to exist as long as there is a mania for the romantic and as long as there are people who love lies and deception.

Every modern cultured man must wage war against art, as against opium.

Photograph and be photographed!”

Not sure if I agree with that last part but… 

“Crystallize man not by a single ‘synthetic’ portrait, but by a whole lot of snapshots taken at different times and in different conditions.” (Nowadays, one may say selfies :))

“Paint the truth.”

“Value all that is real and contemporary.

And we will be real people, not actors.” 

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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt 

From Pictures to Textile Prints by Osip Brik, 1924

“Moreover, the conviction is gaining ground that the picture is dying, that it is indissolubly linked with the forms of the capitalist regime, with its cultural ideology, that the textile print is not becoming the center of creative attention, and that the textile print and work on it are the apex of artistic labor.” 

“The easel picture is not only unnecessary to our contemporary artistic culture, it is also one of the most powerful brakes on its development.”

“The point is that easel painters do not deny the importance and necessity of other forms of artistic culture. They fully tolerate the existence of agit-posters, sketches for textile prints and book covers; they simply affirm that all these ‘subsidiary’ forms are inconceivable without easel painting, that easel painting is the creative base on which painterly culture is built.

Hence the conclusion: if you want to make good textile prints, learn to paint landscapes.”

“After mastering the ‘secrets’ of easel painting, he thereby masters the ‘secrets’ of any painterly work, whether it is a textile print, a book cover, a poster, or theatrical décor.” 

“Let us assume that partial coincidences are possible, that some of the devices can prove to be general; why should one craft prove to be fundamental vis-à-vis another? why should the making of a still life be more “fundamental” than that of a textile print? Why should one first of all learn how to do a still life and then undertake textile prints, and not vice versa?”

“But the easel painters forget that the picture is not science, but practice, that it establishes no ‘general’ tenets. The experience of the easel painter is not that of the artist in general, but is only the experience of a single, individual case of painterly labor.”

“All the same, work in industry will always be inferior for the easel painter. That is why it is not the easel painters who will discover the methods of this work, and not from easel painting that the solution of productional art problems will ensue.” 

“Indeed, artistic labor and factory work are still disunited. The artist is still an alien in the factory. People treat him with suspicion. They do not let him come too close. They do not believe him they cannot understand why he needs to know technolgocal processes, why he needs information of a purely industrial nature. His job is to draw, to make drawing-s and the factory’s job is to select suitable ones and to stick them onto the ready-made finished product.” 

“Hence the inevitable applied art- the result of the artist’s alienation from industry. Not receiving the necessary economic directives, he resorts, willy-nilly, to aesthetic stereotypes.

But what is the conclusion from this?

Forward! To overcome this alienation.

Forward! To the union of the artist and the factory.

And by no means back to pure easel painting, back to pictures.

The progressive artists are already under way- from the picture to the textile print, and of course, why will not turn back. But that is not enough. it is essential that the whole mass of our young artists should realize that this is the only true path and that it is precisely by this path that artistic culture will develop.” 

“The artistic culture of the future is being created in factories and plants, not in attic studios.

May the young artists remember this- unless they wish to turn up prematurely in the archives, together with the proud easel painters.” 

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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt 

The Realistic Manifest, 1920 by Naum Gabo

Naum Gabo

Inventor of Kinetic Art.

The Realistic Manifesto, 1920 

"The text of this peace, Realisticheskii manifest, was published in August 1920 in Moscow. An open-air exhibition of Gabo’s and Pevsner’s work was organized simultaneously. […] ‘The Realistic Manifesto’ was to consolidate various ideas that had been supported by the Russian avant-garde long before 1920, rather than to advance totally new ones; furthermore, the manifesto itself exerted little influence on the actual development of Russian constructivism or of Russian art in general and had much more significance in the context of Western constructivism.”

[Excerpt from John E. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde]

“One had to examine Futurism beneath its appearance to realize that one faced a very ordinary chatterer, a very agile and prevaricating guy, clad in tatters of worn-out words like ‘patriotism’, ‘militarism,’ ‘contempt for the female,’  and all the rest of such provincial stages."

“Look at that ray of sun… the stillest of the still forces, it speeds more than 2000 kilometres in a second… behold our starry firmament… who hears it… and yet what are our depots to those depots of the Universe? What are our earthly trains to those hurrying trains of the galaxies?” 

“Indeed, the whole Futurist noise about speed is too obvious an anecdote, and from the moment that Futurism proclaimed that ‘Space and Time are yesterday’s dead,’ it sunk into obscurity and abstractions.” 

“But Life does not wait and the growth of generations does not stop and we go to relative those who have passed into history, having in our hands the results of their experiments, with their mistakes and their achievements, after years of experience equal to centuries… we say…

No new artistic system will withstand the pressure of a growing culture until the very foundation of Art will be erected on the real laws of Life.

Until all artists will say with us…

All is fiction… only life and its laws are authentic and in life only the active is beautiful and wise and strong and right, for life does not know beauty as an aesthetic measure… efficacious existence is the highest beauty.” 

“Life does not know rationally abstracted truths as a measure of cognizance, deed is the highest and surest of truths.”

“States, political and economic systems perish, ideas crumble, under the strains of ages… but life is strong and grows and time goes on in its real continuity.” 

“We know that everything has its own essential image; chair, table lamp, telephone, book, house, man… they are all entire worlds with their own rhythms, their own orbits.

That is why we in creating things take away from them the labels of their owners… all accidental and local, leaving only the reality of the constant rhythm of the forces in them.”

 

“Thence in painting we renounce colour as a pictorial element, colour is the idealized optical surface of objects; an exterior and superficial impression of them; colour is accidental and has nothing in common with the innermost essence of a thing.” 

"We affirm that the tone of a substance, i.e. it’s light-absorbing material body is its only pictorial reality.” 

“We renounce volume as a pictorial and plastic form of space; one cannot measure space in volumes as one cannot measure liquid in yards: look at our space… what is it if not one continuous depth?”

Space = continuous depth 

“We affirm in these arts a new element the kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time. “

“Today we proclaim our words to you people. in the squares and on the streets awe are placing our work convinced that art must not remain a sanctuary for the idle, a consolation for the wary, and a justification for the lazy. Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts… at the bench, at the table, at work, at rest, at play; on working days and holidays… at home and on the road… in order that the flame to live should not extinguish in mankind.

We do not look for justification, neither in the past nor in the future.

Nobody can tell us what the future is and what utensils does one eat it with.

Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will.

We assert that the shouts about the future are for us the same as the tears about the past: a renovated day-dream of the romantics.

A monkish delirium of the heavenly kingdom of the old attired in contemporary clothes.

He who is busy today with the morrow is busy doing nothing.

And he who tomorrow will bring us nothing of what he has done today is of no use for the future.

Today is the deed.

We will account for it tomorrow.

The past we are leaving behind as carrion.

The future we leave to the fortune-tellers.

We take the present day.”

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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt 

Cubism by David Burliuk, 1912

"These definitions in themselves show that everyone, even the  most Ignorant and those with no interest in the Spiritual, perceives the eternal gulf that has arisen between the painting of yesterday and the painting of today. An eternal gulf. Yesterday we did not have art."

“The fat bourgeois have shifted their shameful attention from the artist, and now this magician and sorcerer has the chance of escaping to the transcendental secrets of his art.”

“The component elements into which the essential nature of painting can be broken down are:

           I.                    Line

          II.                  Surface

         III.                Color

         IV.                Texture

To a certain extent Elements I and II were properties, peculiarities of old painting as well. But I and IV are those fabulous realms that only our twentieth century has discovered and whose painterly significance Nature has revealed to us. Previously painting only Sa, now it Feels. Previously it depicted an object in two dimensions, now wider possibilities have been disclosed… I am not talking about what the near future will bring us (this has already been discovered by such artists as P. P. Konchalovsky)- a Sense of Visual ponderability- A Sense of color Smell. A sense of duration of the colored moment… (I. I. Mashkov).” 

“The man deprived of a Painterly understanding of Nature will, when looking at Cezanne’s landscape the House, understand it puerely narritavely: (I) “house” (2) mountains (3) trees (4) sky. Whereas for the artist, there existed I linear construction II surface construction (not fully realized) and III color orchestration. For the artist, there were certain lines going up and down, right and left, but there wasn’t a house or trees… there were areas of certain color strength, of certain character. And that’s all.” 

An artist’s experience painting.

“Painting of the past, too, seemed at times to be not far from conceiving Nature as Line (of a certain character and of certain intensity) and colors (Nature as a number of colored areas- this applies Only to the Impressionists at the end of the ninetheenth century). But it never made up its mind to analyze visual Nature from the viewpoint of the essence of its surface. The conception of what we see as merely a number of certain definite sections of different surface Planes arose only in the twentieth century under the name of Cubism. Like everything else, Cubism has its history. Briefly, we can indicate the sources of this remarkable movement.”

“A few years ago artists wouldn’t have forgiven themselves if they’d talked about the aims, tasks, and essence of Painting. Times have changed. Nowadays not to be a theoretician of painting means to reject an understanding of it.”

“It has been known for a long time that what is important is not the what, but the how, i.e., which principles, which objectives, guided the artist’s creation of this or that work! it is essential to establish on the basis of which canon it (the work) arose! It is essential to reveal its painterly nature! It must be indicated what the aim in Nature was that the artist of the given picture was So attracted by. And the analysis of painterly phenomena will then be a Scientific criticism of the subject.”

“Disharmony is the opposite of harmony.

Dissymmetry is the opposite of symmetry.

Deconstruction is the opposite of construction.

A canon can be constructive.

A canon can be deconstructive.

Construction can be shifted or displaced

The canon of displaced construction.

“The existence in Nature of visual poetry- ancient, dilapidated towers and walls- points to the essential, tangible, and forceful supremacy of this kind of beauty.”

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David Burliuk seemed to have had a great personality. His energy is one of the most inspiring out of the Russian Avant-garde movement.

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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt 

Suprematism in World Reconstruction by El Lissitzky 1920

 

El Lissitzky: The Constructor, 1924. A triple exposure self-portrait  

“at present we are living through an unusual period in time a new cosmic creation has become reality in the world a creativity within ourselves which pervades our consciousness.”

“[…] – a world which issues forth from our inner being and which is only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the square of suprematism become a beacon.”

“in this way the artist become the foundation on which progress in the reconstruction of life could advance beyond the frontiers of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear, thus a picture was no longer an anecdote or a lyric poem nor a lecture on moralist nor a feast for the eye but a sign and symbol of this new conception of the world which comes from within us. Many revolutions were needed in order to free the artist from his obligations as a moralist as a story-teller or as a court jester, so that he could follow unhindered his creative bent and tread the road that leads to construction.”

“suprematism itself has followed the true path which defines the creative process consequently our picture has become a creative symbol and the realization of this will be our task in life.”

“we shall reshape it so thoroughly that the sun will no longer recognize its satellite.”

“we left to the old world the idea of the individual house individual barracks individual castle individual church, we have set ourselves the task of creating the town, the centre of collective effort is the radio transmitting mast which sends out bursts of creative energy into the world. by means of it we are able to throw off the shackles that bind us to the earth and rise above it, therein lies the answer to all questions concerning movement.” 

“the new element of treatment which we have brought to the fore in our painting will be applied to the whole of this still-to-be-built world and will transform the roughness of concrete the smoothness of metal and the reflection of glass into the outer membrane of the new life. the new light will give us new colour and the memory of the solar spectrum will be preserved only in old manuals on physics.” 

“this complicated structure taken as a whole represents a UNIFIED organism. It is not therefore for that very reason “artistic”?” 

“it is right that this perceptivity shall pass judgment on man’s concept of space on the way he reacts in time […]”

“seven years ago suprematism raised aloft its black square but no one sighted it for at that time a telescope for this new planet had not been invented. The might force of this movement however caused a succession of artist to focus on it and many more were influenced by it, yet neither the former nor the latter possessed sufficient inner substance to be held fat by its attractive power and to formulate a complete world system from the new movement.” 

“for the prayed point of the paintbrush is at variance with our concept of clarity expressing our creative ability paintbrush and ruler and compasses and machine are only extensions of the finger which points the way.”

“This path into the future has nothing in common either with mathematics and scientific studies or with raptures over sunset and moonlight- or indeed with the decline of the subject with its plague-ridden aura of individualism- rather is it the path leading from creative intuition to the increased growth of foodstuffs for which neither paintbrush nor ruler neither compasses nor machine were required.”

“the artist’s work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless. It is the revolutionary path along which the whole of creation is striding forward and along which man must also bend his steps. ‘artistic work’ is but an obstacle on this path and in consequence a counter-revolutionary concept, the private property aspect of creativity must be destroyed all are creators and there is no reason of any sort of this division into artists and nonartists." 

“by this reckoning the artist ceases to be a man who is not producing useful things and must not strive to attain his title to creative activity by painting posters in the prescribed form and colour on which any attempt to pass judgment shows a GROSS LACK OF FEELING, such work now belongs to the duty of the artist as a citizen of the community, who is clearing the field of his old rubbish in preparation for the new life.”

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“it is only the creative movement towards the liberation of man that makes him the being who holds the whole world within himself. Only a creative work which fills the whole world with its energy can join us together by means of its energy components to form a collective unity like a circuit of electric current.”

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“and if communism which set human labour on the throne and suprematism which raises aloft the square pennant of creativity now march forward together then in the further stages of development it is communism which will have to remain behind because suprematism- which embraces the totality of life’s phenomena- will attract everyone away from the domination of work and from the domination fo the indoxicated senses. It will liberate all those engaged in creative activity and make the world ainto a true model of perfection. This is the model we await from kasimir malevich.

AFTER THE OLD TESTAMENT THERE CAME THE NEW- AFTER THE NEW CAME COMMUNIST- AND AFTER THE COMMUNIST THERE FOLLOWS FINALLY THE TESTAMENT OF SUPREMATISM.” 


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Publishing Information: 

Russian Art of the Avant Garde Theory and Criticism Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by John E. Bowlt