The Principles of New Art by Vladimir Markov

"The Chinese liked to cover their vases with glaze of copper oxide, but the results of this operation were completely subject to chance. Depending on how the gases circulated around the object, it could turn any color- from white to bright red, blue or black. Because of this, the most unexpected, most beautiful combination and distributions of colored areas sometimes occur. No rational combinations could create such beauty; it is beyond the means of rational, constructive creation.”

“So essentially the principles of chance is not the result of rational processes consciously oriented toward a certain aim and is not even a game played by a hand ungoverned by the apparatus of thought, but is the consequence of completely blind, extrinsic influences.”

“Chance opens up whole worlds and begets wonders. Many wonders, unique harmonies and scales, the enchanting shades common to Chinese and Japanese pictures owe their existence only to the fact that they arose by chance, were appreciated by a sensitive eye, and were crystallized.”

 “In playing, we express our ‘I’ more vividly and unconstrainedly and emerge no longer as the masters of forces hidden within us, but as their slaves.”

"To be ugly and absurd externally does not mean to possess no inner values.
So, the principle of free art affords its ardent and passionate protection to all those absurd mamninfestations of man's soul, to that coarse and vulgar face, as it were, of art, which is so persecuted in Europe.

"In general, one can say that this apparent coarseness, vulgarit, lubok quality appeared, and began to be exploited, quite late in time and that it is the fate of only certain peoples.

"For many peoples this is a competely closed area. However much they may struggle, they will always remian graceful and delicate and will never create that distinctive lyricism that is concealed beneath the cover of the absurd and simple: the lyricism that Byzantium discovered after penetrating this area and developing it in all directions."

"It often happens that the 'I' that we have expressed turnsout, after a little reflection, to be not our 'I' at all." 

"Now one asks, was he expressing his own opinion when he flew into raptures over his purchase? I am inclined to think not. In his rapture he was sincere, but in that superfcial, shallow sense applicable to all the followers of fashion- that epidemic, that tyrant of men's opinions and tastes. I say in a superficial sense, because his raptures were not founded on the inward order of his soul created  by the presence of all impressions from reality; they were founded merely on a simple order of feelings from the conception evoked, a conception that conceals and gradually corrodes the peculiar depths of the soul." 

"And wherever fashion appears, it drives deep down into the soul that which has grown and stratified over thousdands of years and in its place foists on people its cheap, marketplace conception of beauty." 

"All this indicates that the free expression of our 'I' has dangerous enemies, becuase of which it is very difficult for man to be sincere in teh sense of freely expressing his inner essence adn not some surrogate evoked by chance.
Hence it is interesting to ask: which expression of the 'I' has more value? The expression of the 'I' that bursts from us spontaneously or the 'I' that is passed through the filter of thought?"

“Why do we think one thing, and not another, why does my glance slip into one direction and not another, why does my hand do this and not that? In all this there is sometimes no element of logic or actively directed will, and an audacious galloping about, striking changes of stimuli are always going on.

Thus, first by some miracle a brilliant thought sometimes imprints itself on the chaos of thinking, an intuitive solution to a task, a problem that had beset us for such a long time. Where does it come from?

Second, there are occasions when ideas, colors, tones, melodies of a particular order simply thrust themselves on us, and we are unable to shake them off because, like a volcano, they require an outlet.

And with dynamic force they appear at the first opportunity.

And we cannot be responsible for these phenomena, we cannot be accused of their appearance, just as we cannot be accused of our dreams and fancies.

In the same way, wec annot be responsible for our ideas taking forms in their embodiment seem, as it were, absurd and coarse but that demand their realization in precisely these forms.”

“I would go so far as to say that there is no art without plagiarism, and even the freest art is based on plagiarism in the above sense because beloved forms of the past instilled in our SOUL unconsciously repeat themselves.”

Which unites all of humanity. 

“It is not my task to analyze our ‘I’ in all its diversity, in all its nuances- that is the province of psychology; but i would like to distinguish three characteristic stages in it that to a greater or lesser extent determine our creative work.

First, the hidden, subconscious ‘I’, something that has appeared from one knows not where, often completely alien and fortuitous but at the same time, of course, individual, because in any case the right basis, whether temporary or permanent, has appeared within it..

Second, the ‘I’, also hidden, but already mature, something that we are aware of, which is organically inherent to the individuum and transmitted to it atavistically: it is all those impulses, stimuli that, like a ripe seed, demand an outlet, tormented and cramp it.

Third, the ‘I’ that presents the outward manifestation of these two hidden, individual ‘I’’s mentioned above.

In free art, of course, it is the third ‘I’ that interests us, but it does not emerge as the direct echo o fthe two preceding ‘I’s, it does not express the aggregate of the impressions and mysteries that accumulated in them, because much is lost through the effect of many outside factors encountered in the process of its manifestation that operate directly or indirectly.”

“Free creation is inherent in the artist not as a simple desire to be original, to play pranks, or to demonstrate ridiculous affectation, but as one of the means of satisfying the creative needs of man’s soul.”

  

“But, in any case, those factors that impede the free manifestation of our ‘I’ and choice it with alien surrogates should be acknowledged as undesirable.”

“We can distinguish an alien ‘I’ and any factors that impede our full manifestation of the ‘I’ by criticism and other means.

Therefore those works that the public sees marked as free action painting about which they imagine that their little Peter could daub ten such paintings at home are, as far as the artist is concerned, not works of over exuberant mischievousness or of a frolicsome brush; they are a product in which not a single spot, not one shade can be altered, a product that has appeared as a result of suffering, of long, persistent inner work, searching and experience.

Hence free creation contains the essentials of true creation and stands high above simple imitation; in now ay is it a game or mischief making, and by no means can’t be called the simple need to liberate the self from an inner repletion of life-giving energy (dissimilation).

Forms attained by the application of the principle of free creation are sometimes a synthesis of complex analyses and sensations; they are the only forms capable of expressing and embodying the creator’s intentions vis-à-vis nature and the inner world of his ‘I’.” 

“And it often seems that the absurd forms are not the echo and translation of nature but the echo of the creator’s inner psychology.” 

“The principle of free creation represents essentially the apogee in economy of resources and the last expenditure of technical devise, at the same time it proves the truest and most powerful echo of the Divine Beauty that man has sensed.” 

“And only narrow-mined doctrinaires and dunderhead philistines can demand that art should forever remain on safe, well-trodden paths, that it should not burst the dam of realism and depart for the endless horizons of free creation.

"A man possesses an ocean of impressions. He often receives stimuli that he does not see but only feels: in creating freely, obedient to his feeling, he depicts an object quite contrary to how he sees it.

Behind the outer covering of every object, there hides its secret, its rhythm- and the artist is given the ability to divine this secret, to react to the object’s rhythm, and to find forms to manifest this rhythm.

The lost image, word, melody, verse have often irrevocably sunk into oblivion, but the soul preserves and cherishes their rhythm, remaining in it as their eternal ndelible echo. And this rhythm guides the hand when he should wishes to restore lost beauty. The outward expression is often completely unattained, but we hold it dear by virtue of its analogous rhythm, its beauty equivalent to the forgotten object.

And often in objects seemingly absurd and coarse, there lies a wealth of inner beauty, rhythm, and harmony that you will not encounter in objects constructed by the mind on principle of pure proportion or practical truth.

Free creation is the mother of art. Free creation raises us above ‘this world’- this is its great prerogative.”

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“The aspiration to other worlds is inherent in man’s nature. Man does not want to walk, he demands dancing; he does not want to speak, he demands song; he does not want the earth but strains toward the sky. The surest path to this sky is FREE creation.”

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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 Meaning of the Theory of Art by Nikolai Kulbin

 Nikolai Kulbin (1868-1917)

 The Meaning of the Theory of Art

"There are no poems, symphonies, or pictures that are devoid of ideas. Pictures, words, music, and the plastic arts are the artist's expression. Works of art are the living, vivid epistles of art."

"It is difficult, very difficult, to read spontaneously the hieroglypics of life and of the strucutre of the cyrstal, the flower, and the beautiful animal."

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"Those who love, think, and desire- such are the
flower of the Earth. They desire poetry and hear it in the Good Book and in the thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare and Geothe, and other literati great and small: these are the real theory of art."
"This theory of artistic creation si the key to happiness because art is happiness. It is the philosopher's stone, the magic wand that turns life into a fairy tale. It is poetry."
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"Roger Beacon asks: which is better, to be able to draw an absolutely straight line by hand or to invent a ruler with the help of which anyonce can draw a straight line?
For the artist this ruler is the theory of artistic creation."

"The theory of artistic creation has taught man how to compose a poem, to discover colors, and to discover living harmony. This theory is inherent in pictures themselves an in discourses about pictures..."


I. Theory

"Ideology. Symbol of the universe. Delight. Beauty and good. Love is gravity. Process of beauty. Art is the quest for gods. Creation is the myth and the symbol. Freedom. The struggle of Titans and Olympus. Prometheus and Hercules. Paining and servitude.
A single art- of the word, music, and the plastic arts.

Creation. Thought is the word. Feeling. Will. Individuality. Child. Artist. Talent. Temperament. Sensation. Contrast. Dynamic principle in psychology. Growth and decline. Associations. Revelation and consciousness. Search, imagination, realization. Artistic vision. Mastery of unconscious creation. Accumulation of impressions, processing of them (the throes of creation). Outbursts of creation (inspiration). Interchange of creation and self-criticism. Harmony. Dissonance. Peace and life. Harmony of sequence. Rhythm, Style.
Blue. Thought in word, sounds, and colors. Drawing is melody.

Red. Mood. The sounds of colors. The colors of the word. The colors of sounds. Scales. Ornament.
Yellow. The plastic arts. Free creation. Illusion and form. The psychology of depiction. Mutual creation of artist and spectator.
Cognition. Sight and blindness. The psychology of the spectator. Sympathetic experience. Criticism.

Supplements. The life of the artist, of the picture, and of the spectator.

II. The history of Art

The sources of art. Nature. People. Nation.
Movement of the pendulum, realism- idealism. Ants. Spiders an bees. Translational movement. Evolution and revolutions in art. Cycles of art. Destruction, fertilization, decadence. Sowing. New styles. Flowers and fruits. School. Academism. Degeneration.

The past. Primitive art. The periods of antiquity. The middle Ages. The latest cycles.
The Present. Contemporary art trends.
New Tendencies. The revaluation of values.

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Publishing Information: 

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

History of Russian Painting in the Nineteenth Century by Aleksandr Benois

Aleksandr Benois 1870-1898

FROM BOWLT:

Benois' awareness of disintergration of contemporaneous social and cultural values was shared by many members of the World of Art group...

"His search for a cohesive style in the face of his 'spriitually tormented, hysterial ctime' his aesthetic devotion to bygone cutlures (particularly that of seventeenth-century France), his reaction against the sociopolitical tendencies of realistic art, and his very love of the teater and the ballet were elements central to the sybmolist world view..."
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History of Russian Painting in the Nineteenth Century

"Generally speaking, the whole art of our time lacks direction. It is very vivid, powerful, full of passionate enthusiasm, but while being entirely consistent in its basic idea, it is uncoordinated, fragmented into separate individuals. perhaps we only imagine this, perhaps the future historian will see our general characteristics in perspective and will outline our general physiognomy. But for the time being, this cannot be done; any unsuccessful attempt would be pernicious because it would create a theory, a program, where essentially, there should not be one.”

Historical necessity, historical sequence requires that an age that would absorb man’s individuality in the name of public benefit or of a higher religious idea would again come to replace the redefined epicureanism of our time, the extreme refinement of man’s individuality, his effeminacy, morbidity, and solitude.” 

Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention.

"Although of course, the sin does not lie with the artists alone; ti rests on the deepest foundations, on the whole of Russian society’s attitude towards art.” 

Society is as much as fault as the individual.

"We should be surprised only that in spite of this situation, we can now observe, nevertheless, a kind of allusion to our future flowering, a kind of veiled presentiment that we will still utter the great word within us.”

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Publishing Information: 

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

Cycle of Lectures [Extracts] Nikolai Punin

Nikolai Punin 1888-1953
(FROM wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Punin)

In 1949 Punin was arrested on accusations of "anti-Soviet" activity, because he said that many thousands of Lenin's portraits are tasteless. The Soviet government punished Punin by imprisonment in the Gulag camp in Vorkuta, northern Russia. This time nobody could help Punin, because the intellectual elite of Leningrad was devastated by the Leningrad Affair. Most intellectuals who could help, were imprisoned, killed, exiled, or silenced by fear of Stalin's attacks.
A secret file on Nikolay Punin was created with numerous accusations of his anti-Soviet activity. Most accusations were fabricated by various agents of the former Soviet KGB office in Leningrad, such as Lt. Prussakov, who accused "former professor of Leningrad University and Academy of arts, Punin" of "anti-Soviet" propaganda. Punin's popular lectures about European artists, such as Rembrandt and Impressionists were seen by the communists as evidence of his anti-Soviet activity.^[4]

In 1953, just months after Stalin's death, Nikolay Punin died in the Gulag camp of Vorkuta, after spending the four last years of his life under harsh conditions of cold and hunger, in an old barrack crowded with two hundred prisoners lit by one light bulb.

Legacy

 
Punin was known as "savior of art collections" because he protected many valuable paintings of western artists, which were labeled "decadent bourgeois art" by the communist propaganda. In doing so, Punin took many risks by raising his voice in opposition to the Soviet officials. As curator of the Hermitage Museum and the Russian museum Punin saved many important masterpieces of art from destruction by revolutionary mob and undereducated communists. He was severely attacked by the Soviet communists for his efforts in preservation of "Western" art in Soviet museums. He was respected by artists and intellectuals as the key figure in Russian art history.
Punin was also a remarkable lecturer; his lectures were extremely popular among open-minded members of the Soviet Academia, and among his numerous students.<sup>[5]

 FROM: RUSSIAN ART OF THE AVANT-GARDE by John E. Bowlt 

Lectures 5&6:</sup> 

“Almost always critics pass judgment not on the work of art but in connection with it…” 

“First and foremost- we consider science to be a principle of culture.” 

“We must create a cohesion and reciprocity between the individual person and individual groups of people so that relations between them will be organized.” 

PRINCIPLE OF ORGANIZATION 

"We strive primarily in order that our whole world view, our social structure, and our whole artistic, technological, and communal culture should be formed and developed according to a scientific principle. In this lies the characteristic difference between culture and civilization.

Man is a technological animal, i.e., in the new arrangement of European society- which has not yet come about,but which is in evidence- man must as far as possible economize his energy and must in any event coordinate all his forces with the level of modern technology. In this respect the role of the machine, as a factor of progress, is of course, immense in the modern artist’s development.

The machine revealed to him the possibility of working with precision and maximum energy; energy must be expended in such a way that it is not dissipated in vain- this is one of the basic laws of contemporaneity that Ernst mach formulated; the economy of energy and the mechanization of creative forces- these are the conditions that guarantee us the really intensive growth of European culture.” 

FROM WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach

Ernst mach

he and his son Ludwig were able to photograph the shadows of the invisible shock waves.

 

Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach (/ˈmɑːx/; German: [ˈɛɐ̯nst maχ]; February 18, 1838 – February 19, 1916) was a Czech-Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves. As a philosopher of science, he was a major influence on logical positivism, American pragmatism^[5] and through his criticism of Newton, a forerunner of Einstein's relativity.

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (German: Gestalt [ɡəˈʃtalt] "shape, form") is a theory of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology. Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies.

“…mechanization becomes the general stimulus for creating a new artistic culture. Hence, naturally there arises the acute question of the new artist’s attitude toward nature, because nature is something that contradicts mechanization. Nature is something that introduces into the modern world that peculiarity, that fortuity which is inherent in herself. Hence, the new artist’s attitude towards nature is the touchstone of his world view.” 

 

“We are formal. Yes, we are proud of this formalism because we are returning mankind to those peerless models of cultural art that we knew in Greece. Isn’t that sculptor of antiquity formal, doesn’t he repeat in countless, diverse forms the same gods who ultimately for him are equally alien, equally remote, inasmuch as he is an artist? And nonetheless, we love these antique statues and delight in them- and we do not say they are formula. This formalism is that of a classical, sound organism rejoicing in all forms of reality and aspiring one to one thing: to reveal all its wealth, all the tensions of its creative, elemental forces in order to realize them in works of arts that would contain only signs of great joy- of that great creative tension that is latent in us and bestowed on each of us, each of those who are born to be, and MUST be artists.” 

“...the closer the link between material and creative consciousness, the more lasting the work of art the more breautiful it is- and the less popular...”

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“And indeed, when we come to study art history, when we study our contemporary life and art, we convince ourselves time and again that the material aspect of life is joined closely to the spiritual, and this is this the mob cannot forgive the artist. The mob cannot endure this close interdependence, the mob strives continuously to escape this purity of method- pure insofar as the artist’s whole spiritual essence is expressed by distinct material elements: the mob does not like purity and comprehends better works of art whose material construcion is diluted by all kinds of other elements not deriving directly from the sensation of painting or  the sensation of plasticity. For the mob, painting as a pure art form, painting as an element, is unintelligible unless it is diluted with literary and various other aspects of artistic creation.”

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Poor man, he died in a gulag. Another example of how dictatorships exterminate creative and scientific activities.


FROM BOWLT:

Punin’s assertion that “modern art criticism must be … a scientific criticism: served as a logical conclusion to a process evident in avant-garde theory and criticism since about 1910 whereby the aesthetic balance had shifted increasingly from a narrative, literary criterion to a formal medium- oriented one […] Much in the formalist spirit, Punin even succeeded in reducing the creative process to a mathematical formula: 

S (Pi + Pii + Piii + … Pπ)Y=T

Where S equals the sum of the principles (P), Y equals intuition, and T Equals artistic creation.

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Publishing Information: 

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