El Lissitzky in the Proun Years: A Study of His Work and Thought, 1919-1927

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El Lissitzky in the Proun Years: A Study of His Work and Thought, 1919-1927

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by Peter Nisbet

Dissertation Director: Robert L. Herbert

May 1995

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DMI Number: 9538691

Copyright 1995 by Nisbet, Peter All rights reserved.

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Abstract El Lissitzky in the Proun Years: A Study of His Work and Thought, 1919-1927 Peter Nisbet 1995

This study investigates aspects of the work and thought of the Russian artist El (Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky (18901941) in the years 1919 to 1927, during which he made radi­ cally non-objective art, designated by him "Proun"

(from the

Russian words for "Project for the Affirmation of the New"). Why did he begin to produce such works? What was their mean­ ing and function? Why did he stop producing and exhibiting them? The study inquires both into the works themselves, and into the immediate cultural milieus within which the artist, in activities running parallel to and interacting with the production of Prouns, pursued issues directly related to the question of their status and modes of signification.

Topics addressed include: the decisive effect of Kazimir Malevich's painting and theory? architectural imagery and discourse as the initial impetus and arena for Lissitzky's abstract works and their utopian ambition; the Moscow avantgarde's debates about the role of art in a post­ revolutionary society as the context for the invention and elaboration of the Proun concept; the pervasive recourse to biological and organic metaphors and themes in Lissitzky's

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writings (reflecting his engagement with Oswald Spengler and the biologist Raoul Heinrich France), and in some composi­ tions; the Prouns' signifying position within the field of contemporary abstract art (especially the work of Malevich, Vassili Kandinsky, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy); issues of abstraction and reference in Lissitzky's illustrations and graphic design for literary work by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vladimir Mayakovsky; the increasing importance of photography to Lissitzky, as a possible successor to the Prouns; his innovative fusion of typographic design, experimental photography and work on an architectural scale as a key aspect of the decision to stop making and showing Prouns.

The dissertation incorporates newly identified or hitherto neglected images and texts by the artist, and includes addenda and corrigenda to the annotated transcript of Lis­ sitzky's Proun Inventory, and to the summary catalogue of his typographic design work, both previously published by the author. The bibliography includes a listing of Lis­ sitzky's published and unpublished writings.

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(c) 1995 by Peter Nisbet All rights reserved

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations........................................ vi

Preface and Acknowledgements............................... xxv

Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Sources.............xxviii

Introduction....................................................1

Chapter I Proun and the New Image of Architecture.................... 34 Lissitzky Before Proun: 1919 and 1 920.................. 39 Picturing Architecture................................... 66 The Invention of Proun................................... 81 The Proun Portfolio...................................... 89 Lissitzky's Writing about Proun in 1 921................ 97

Chapter II Proun and the Discourse of the Organic.................... 115 The Anthropomorphic Presence........................... 116 A Visual Debate with Malevich, Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky......................... 134 The Biological Metaphor .................................143 Oswald Spengler..........................................153 Raoul Heinrich Francd................................... 168

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iv

Chapter III Reassessing the Role of the R e a l , I Image and Illustration, 1 9 2 2............................... 190 Expressive Typography, 1920 and 1922.................. 194 Reading Mayakovsky: For the V oice..................... 200 Reading Ehrenburg: Six Tales About Easy Endings...... 214 Vitrion.............................................. 221 24 H o u r s.............................................229 Joint-Stock Company: Mercure de Russie............232 "Schif s-Karta"...................................... 238 Experimental-Demonstrative Colony 6 2 .............. 244 A Ruined F i l m ....................................... 249

Chapter IV Reassessing the Role of the Real, II Space and Light as Material,

1923.......................... 255

The Prouns Space........................................ 256 Excursus: The "Room for Typo-Lithography"........ 271 The Turn to Photography................................ 280

Chapter V Mixing the Modes: Photography, Architecture, Graphic Design................. 292 Photography as the Future of A r t ...................... 296

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V

Photography and Graphic Des i g n......................... 306 Architecture: Typography and Photography in Three Dimensions................................. 3 39

Conclusion....................................................368

Appendix...................................................... 374 Addenda and Corrigenda to "An Annotated Transcript of El Lissitzky's Proun Inventory".... 374 Addenda and Corrigenda to "A Summary Catalogue of Typographical Work by El Lissitzky"............378

Select Bibliography..........................................387 Writings by El Lissitzky................................387 Published in the Artist's Lifetime................ 389 Other Writings...................................... 403 Lectures, Essays, e t c .......................... 403 Correspondence.................................. 409 Writings about Lissitzky...........

414

Published in the Artist's Lifetime................ 415 Published since 1 9 4 1................................419 Other Works Cited in the S t u d y......................... 441

Illustrations....................................

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476

List of Illustrations

With the exception of documentary photographs and unless otherwise indicated, works illustrated are by El Lissitzky. Unless otherwise noted, photographs have been provided by the owner of the work.

1.

Documentary photograph of El Lissitzky in his studio in Vitebsk, 1920 (Photo: Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 28)

2.

"Arch." 1920. Watercolor included in the Unovis Almanac. (Photo: Archives Nakov)

3.

"Proun 23." ca. 1923. Oil on canvas. London, Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick.

4.

(Proun Inventory no. 6)

"Bridge 1." 1919/1920. Watercolor and graphite. London, Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick

5.

"House Above the Earth"

("Proun 1C"). 1919/1920. Oil and

sand on plywood. Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. (Proun Inventory no. 57)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

v ii

6.

"Town"

("Proun IE"). 1919/1920. Oil on plywood. Baku,

Mustafayev Museum of Art.

(Proun Inventory no. 56)

(Photo: The Great U t o p i a . Russian and Soviet AvantGarde . 1915-1932. exh. cat.

[New York: Guggenheim

Museum, 1992], pi 207

7.

"Moscow"

("Proun 7 A " ). Watercolor and graphite. Basel,

Kunstmuseum, Kupferstichkabinett

8.

Documentary photograph of Lissitzky's Propaganda Board "The Factory Workbenches Await You. Let's Get Production Moving." 1919/1920.

(Typ. Cat. 1920/2).

(Photo:

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pi. 42)

9.

Cover of Booklet for the Committee on the Struggle Against Unemployment. lery.

1919. Moscow, State Tretyakov Gal­

(Typ. Cat. 1919/3).

(Photo: Author)

10. Cover for Russland. Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowietunion (Vienna: Anton Scholl, Cat. 1930/1).

1930).

(Typ.

(Photo: Author)

11. "Proun." ca. 1920. Watercolor. Eindhoven,

Stedelijk van

Abbemuseum.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Vlll

12. "Proun ID." ca. 1922. Oil on canvas, mounted on wood. Basel, Kunstmuseum.

(Proun Inventory no. 59)

13. "Construction Floating in Space." 1920. Lithograph with graphite annotations. Formerly Jimenez Collection, Caracas.

14. "Movement over a Sphere" ("Proun 1"). 1921. Formerly George Costakis Collection

15. "Slide (Beginning)." ca. 1920. Watercolor and gouache with graphite. Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne

16. "Suprematism of Volume." Oil on card. Halle, Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg.

(Proun Inventory no. 30)

17. Documentary photograph of installation of works by Lis­ sitzky at Unovis Exhibition, Moscow, June 1921 (Photo: Von der Malerei zum Design. Russische konstruktivistische Kunst der zwanziaer Jahre, exh. cat.

[Cologne:

Galerie Gmurzynska, 1981], pp. 148-149])

18. "Proun 1A." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

19. "Proun 1C." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

ix

20. "System of A City Square"

("Proun IE"). 1921.

Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

21. "Proun ID." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

22. "Proun 2C." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

23. "Proun 2B." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

24. "Proun 2D." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

25. "Proun 2C." 1920. Oil on wood with paper and metal col­ lage. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

(Proun Inventory no.

14)

26. "Proun 3A." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

27. "Proun 5A." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

X

28. "Proun 6B." 1921. Lithograph. Formerly George Costakis Collection

29. "Proun 19D." ca. 1921. Gesso, oil, collage, and mixed media on plywood. New York, Museum of Modern Art.

(Proun

Inventory no. 56)

30. "The New Man" from the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio. 1923. Lithograph. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University

31. The "Spectacle Machinery" from the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio.

1923. Lithograph. Busch-Reisinger

Museum, Harvard University

32. "Spectacle Machinery" for "Victory over the Sun." 1924. Location and media unknown.

(Photo: Friedrich Kiesler,

e d . , Internationale Ausstelluna neuer Theatertechnik. K a t a l o g . Procrramm. A l m a n a c h . exh. cat.

[Vienna:

Kunsthandlung Wiirthle, for the Gesellschaft zur Forderung moderner Kunst, 1924], p. 51)

33„ Sheet from "Proun," the First Kestner Portfolio. 1923. Lithograph with collage. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

34. The "Prouns Space." Sheet from "Proun," the First Kestner Portfolio.

1923. Lithograph. Fogg Art Museum, Har­

vard University

35. Relief from the "Prouns Space." Sheet from "Proun," the First Kestner Portfolio.

1923. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard

University

36. Sheet from "Proun," the First Kestner Portfolio.

1923.

Lithograph. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

37. Sheet from "Proun," the First Kestner Portfolio.

1923.

Lithograph. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

38. Sheet from "Proun," the First Kestner Portfolio.

1923.

Lithograph with collage. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

39. "Proun." ca. 1920. Location and medium unknown. Inventory no. 29).

(Proun

(Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manus­

cript Library, Yale University)

40. Design for cover of MA. Linocut. 1922. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (Typ. Cat. 1922/13)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

x ii

41. "Proun." Watercolor, gouache, graphite and black ink on card. ca. 1923. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Inventory no. 43).

(Proun

(Photo: Author)

42. "Proun G7." ca. 1922. Oil, tempera, varnish and graphite on canvas. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westphalen, Dtisseldorf.

(Proun Inventory no. 64)

43. "Proun." ca. 1922 Collage with watercolor, crayon and graphite. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

(Proun Inventory

n o . 74)

44. "8 Positions Proun." 1923. Oil, gouache and metal foil on canvas. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

(Proun

Inventory no. 1)

45. "Proun." 1926. Location and medium unknown.

(Photo: Will

Grohmann, Die Sammlunq Ida Bienert, Dresden [Potsdam: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1933], pi. 73)

46. "Proun R.V." 1923. Oil and mixed media on canvas. Sprengel Museum Hannover.

47. Kazimir Malevich.

(Proun Inventory no. 2)

"Suprematist Cross." 1920. Lithograph.

(Photo: Donald Karshan, Malevich: The Graphic Works r 1913-1920. A Print Catalogue Raisonnd. exh. cat. [Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1975], pi. 40)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

48. Kazimir Malevich.

"Suprematist Cross." ca. 1923. Oil on

canvas. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Ma l e v i c h . 1878-1935. exh. cat.

(Photo: Kazimir

[Los Angeles: Armand Ham­

mer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, 1990], pi. 63)

49. "Proun." ca. 1923. Location and medium unknown (Proun Inventory no. 48).

(Photo: State Tretyakov Museum

[Library], Moscow)

50. Kazimir Malevich.

"Vertical Construction. Suprematist."

ca. 1920. Graphite and black crayon. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. cat.

(Photo: Kazimir Malevich. 1878-1935 f exh.

[Los Angeles: Armand Hammer Museum of Art and

Cultural Center,

1990], pi. 151)

51. Vassili Kandinsky.

"Circles in a Circle." 1923. Oil on

canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art

52. Vassili Kandinsky.

53. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

"Black Triangle." 1925. Lithograph.

"Construction." 1923. Location and

medium unknown (Photo: Kunst der Z e i t . vol III nos. 1-3 [1928], p. 75)

54. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

"A XI." 1923. Oil on canvas. San

Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

x iv

55. "Proun." Page in the Guest Book of Dr. nad Mrs. Steinitz. 1923 (4 January). Crayon. Sprengel Museum Hanover

56. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

"Z VIII." 1924. Oil on canvas. Neue

Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

57. "Proun." ca. 19 22. Watercolor, crayon, varnish and graphite. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

(Proun

Inventory no. 52)

58. "Proun"

("Conical"). 1924-1925. Graphite, gouache,

crayon and ink, on card. Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle.

(Proun Inventory no. 93)

59. "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge." 1920. Lithograph. (Typ. Cat 1920/5)

(Photo: Iskusstvp, vol.

1 no. 4

[1933], p. 211)

60. "They Fly Towards the Earth from Afar." Scene 2 from Of Two Squares. (Typ. Cat. 1922/12)

61. "Crash. Everything is Scattered." Scene 4 from Of Two Sq u a r e s . (Typ. Cat. 1922/12)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

XV

62. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): Title page (Typ. Cat. 1923/3, p. 1

63. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): Dedication page (Typ. Cat. 1923/3, p. 3)

64. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Left March"

(Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 6-7)

65. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Our March"

(Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. lo­

ll)

66. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "My May"

(Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 12-13)

67. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Garbage"

(Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 16-17)

68. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Third International" (Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 26-27)

69. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Order to the Army of the Arts"

(Typ.

Cat. 1923/3, pp. 30-31)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

xv i

70. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Order no. 2 to the Army of the Arts" (Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 34-35)

71. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "And You?"

(Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 40-41)

72. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Tale of the Little Red Hat"

(Typ. Cat.

1923/3, pp. 42-43)

73. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Story about How the Rumor about Wrangel Got Started" (Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 44-45)

74. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Naval Love"

(Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 50-

51)

75. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Good Relations with Horses"

(Typ. Cat.

1923/3, pp. 52-53)

76. Graphic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the Voice (Berlin, 1923): "Unusual Occurrence..." (Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 56-57)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

XVI1

77. Cover of II'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Berlin: Helikon,

1922)

(Typ. Cat. 1922/12)

78. "Vitrion." Illustration for II'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Berlin: Helikon, 1922)

(Typ. Cat.

1922/12, p. 8)

79. "Proun"

("Interpenetrating Planes"), ca. 1922. Graphite,

gouache and ink. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University.

(Proun Inventory no. 20)

80. "24 Hours." Illustration for II'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Berlin: Helikon, 1922)

(Typ. Cat.

1922/12, p. 30)

81. "Joint-Stock Company: Mercure de Russie." Illustration for II'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Ber­ lin: Helikon, 1922)

82. Kazimir Malevich.

(Typ. Cat. 1922/12, p. 62)

"Composition"

("Suprematist Cross").

1920. Woodcut (Photo: Donald Karshan, Malevich: The Graphic Works, 1913-1920. A Print Catalogue R a i s o n n e . exh. cat.

[Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1975], pi. 3 6

83. Kazimir Malevich. Lithograph.

"Suprematist Composition." 1920.

(Photo: Donald Karshan, Malevich: The

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

x v iii

Graphic W o r k s . 1913-1920. A Print Catalogue R a i s o n n d . exh. cat.

[Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1975], pi. 61)

84. "Schifs-Karta." Illustration for II'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Berlin: Helikon,

1922)

(Typ.

Cat. 1922/12, p. 102)

85. "Experimental-Demonstrative Colony no. 62." Illustration for II'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Ber­ lin: Helikon,

1922)

(Typ. Cat. 1922/12, p. 124)

86. "A Ruined Film." Illustration for Il'ya Ehrenburg, Six Tales about Easy Endings (Berlin: Helikon,

1922)

(Typ.

Cat. 1922/12, p. 146)

87. Documentary photographs of the El Lissitzky's "Prouns Space," as published in G. Material zur elementaren Gestaltung. no. 1 (July 1923)

88. Documentary photograph of the 1965 replica of the El Lissitzky's "Prouns Space," Stedelik van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

89. Vassili Kandinsky. Maquette for Mural for Unjuried Exhibition, Berlin 1922. Panel A. Gouache and white chalk on black paper. Musee National d'Art Moderne,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Paris (Photo: Kandinsky. Russian and Bauhaus Y e a r s . 1915-1933, exh. cat.

[New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim,

1983], cat. no. 94)

90. Vassili Kandinsky. Maquette for Mural for Unjuried Exhibition, Berlin 1922. Panel B. Gouache and white chalk on black paper. Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris (Photo: Kandinsky. Russian and Bauhaus Y e a r s . 1915-1933. exh. cat.

[New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim,

1983], cat. no. 95)

91. Vassili Kandinsky. Maquette for Mural for Unjuried Exhibition, Berlin 1922. Panel C. Gouache and white chalk on black paper. Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris (Photo: Kandinsky. Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915-1933. exh. cat.

[New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim,

1983], cat. no. 96)

92. Vassili Kandinsky. Maquette for Mural for Unjuried Exhibition, Berlin 1922. Panel D. Gouache and white chalk on black paper. Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris (Photo: Kandinsky. Russian and Bauhaus Y e a r s . 1915-1933. exh. cat.

[New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim,

1983], cat. no. 97)

93. Vassili Kandinsky. Maquette for Mural for Unjuried Exhibition, Berlin 1922. Corner Panels D-A, C-D, B-C,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

XX

B. Gouache and white chalk on black paper. Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris (Photo: Kandinsky. Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915-1933. exh. cat.

[New York:

Solomon R. Guggenheim, 1983], cat. no. 98)

94. Design for an Exhibition Room for Typographic Design. 192 3. Gouache and graphite. State Tretyakov Gallery (Photo: Moscow 1990, p. 110)

95. Documentary photograph of "Room for Constructive Art," designed by El Lissitzky for International Art Exhibi­ tion, Dresden, 1926.

(Photo: Author)

96. Documentary photograph of collage with axonometric plan and documentary photographs of "Room for Constructive Art," designed by El Lissitzky for International Art Exhibition, Dresden, 1926 (Photo: Eindhoven 1990, pi. 119)

97. With Vilmos Huszar.

"4/i/Light Bulb (Helioconstruction

125 Volts." Photogram. 1923. As published in Merz no. 6 (October 1923), p. 62

98. "In the Lamp." 1923. Photogram.

(Photo: New York 1991,

pi. 1)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

xxi

99. Portrait of Hans Arp. 1924. Photograph.

(Photo: Author)

100. "Runner in the City." 1926. Photograph. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

101. Self-Portrait ("The Constructor"). 1924. Photograph. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

102. Portrait of Kurt Schwitters. 1924. Photograph.

(Photo:

Courtesy of Houk/Friedmann, New York)

103

"Imaginary Rotational Body." Photograph, as published in El Lissitzky,

"K. und Pangeometrie," Carl Einstein

and Paul Westheim, e d s . , Europa-Almanach (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1925), p. 112

104.

[Untitled] ca. 1923. Photograph. Collection Thomas Walther, New York.

105. Page layout for El Lissitzky and Hans Arp, eds. Die Kunstismen (Zurich: Eugen Rentsch,

1925). Busch-

Reisinger Museum, Harvard University.

(Typ. Cat.

1925/2, pp. 8-9)

106.

[Untitled]. 1926-1930. Photograph. Museum of Modern Art, New York

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

x x ii

107. "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Head." 1924. Photograph. (Photo: Courtesy of Houk/Friedmann, New York)

108. Letterhead Design.

1924. Private collection.

(Typ. Cat.

1924/17)

109.

"Then Came God and Slew the Angel of Death." 1919. Lithograph, from the Khad Gadya Portfolio. Jewish Museum, New York.

(Typ. Cat. 1919/1, pi. 12)

110. Jan Tschichold. Design for cover of Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold, foto auae (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind,

1929), using Lissitzky's

photographic "Self-Portrait." Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University

111. The Artist's Stepsons.

1928. Photograph. Berlinische

Galerie, Berlin.

112. Design for cover of B r o o m . 1923. Graphite. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

(Typ. Cat.

1923/10)

113. Design for cover of B r o o m . 1923. Watercolor, gouache and graphite. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. (Typ. Cat. 1923/10)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

x x iii

114. Sketch for a Publisher's Device for the Venzky Publish­ ing House. 1924. Ink. T s G A L I . (Typ. Cat 1924/16)

115. Maquette for an Exhibition Poster. 1925. Gouache, graphite and collage.

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

(Typ. Cat. 1925/7)

116. Documentary photograph of advertising relief for Pelikan. 1924. Detroit Institute of Arts.

(Typ. Cat

1924/11)

117. Advertisement stand for Pelican Drawing Ink. 1925. printed card. TsGALI.

(Typ. Cat. 1925/6)

118. Design for a rotating display in book-store window for "Zemlya i fabrika"

(Land and Factory) Publishing House.

1928. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

(Photo: Author)

119. Cover for Arkhitektura. Raboty arkhitekturnoao fa k u l 'teta Vkhutemasa (Moscow: Izd. Vkhutemasa, 1927). 1927. Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles.

(Typ. Cat. 1927/2)

120. Invitation card to opening of "Vsesoyuznaya poligraficheskaya vystavka," Moscow 1927. Private Col­ lection.

(Typ. Cat. 1927/4)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

x x iv

121. Documentary photograph of installation at USSR Pavilion at P r e s s a . Cologne, 1928.

(Photo: Author)

122. Documentary photograph of "The Education of the Masses is the Main Task of the Press in the Transitional Time from Capitalism to Communism," the photographic frieze, designed by El Lissitzky and executed by Sergei Sen'kin,

in the USSR Pavilion at P r essa. Cologne,

1928

(P h o t o : Author)

123. "Hand." 1926, Photograph (with hand-coloring?), exhibited at International Art Exhibition, Dresden, 1926. Lost.

(Photo: Author)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Preface and Acknowledgements

During my many years of work on El Lissitzky, I have often had cause to recall the artist's warning:

"Let the

scholars flounder as they navigate the sea of art history." Quoting that sobering remark in 1987, I followed it with words which apply even more forcefully in 1995: "If my own vessel is still afloat and on course,

I owe this good

fortune to many friends and colleagues. Lissitzky was a great wanderer across boundaries, both geographical and professional. Those foolhardy enough to try to retrace his steps will find themselves calling on the advice and guidance of many people in many countries and in many areas of expertise. I am most grateful that my goal of understand­ ing Lissitzky and his work has always and everywhere prompted kind and collegial cooperation." Research on Lis­ sitzky takes a scholar from Moscow to Malibu, from Santa Monica to Saint Petersburg. To the many, many individuals and institutions who have helped significantly along the way, too numerous to list separately here, I offer a general and inclusive acknowledgement of my gratitude for all help received. I would like especially to thank two people who have supported this project in different but crucial ways. Robert

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xxvi Herbert, first of Yale and now of Mount Holyoke College, was a patient and probing adviser, to whom I am greatly indebted. The artist's son, Jen Lissitzky, then of Russia and now of Germany, was extraordinarily generous in allowing me to consult a wide range of materials from the family archive when I was doing research in Moscow (formerly of the USSR, now of the Russian Federation). assistance in Moscow,

Indeed, for decisive

I owe a special debt to the staffs of

the Tretyakov Gallery (particularly Olga Ptitsyna), of the former Central State Archive of Art and Literature, and of the former Lenin Library. Over the years, I have been fortunate to enjoy the stimulating environment of several academic institutions.

I

am very conscious of what I owe especially to Clare College of Cambridge University and to Yale University. My research leading to this thesis has been materially supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Concilium on International and Area Studies of Yale University, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Free University (Berlin), the British Council, Moscow State University,

and the Harvard

University Art Museums. To the last mentioned, my institutional home for the past dozen years, I owe a special debt of gratitude, not only for the chance to present a first version of some of these findings in the form of an exhibition and scholarly catalogue in 1987, but also for the recent granting of a

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XXVI1

leave from my duties at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, to com­ plete the writing of this thesis. To the museum directors responsible for both of these marvelous opportunities, Edgar Peters Bowron and James Cuno, I offer heartfelt thanks. This project has depended much on the support and encouragement from colleagues and friends, of whom I can only mention a few: Merrill C. Berman, Meg Chapman, Sue Com­ pton, Elizabeth Easton, Rachel Feldberg, Eric Rosenberg, Angelica Rudenstine, Jurgen Scharfe, Miriam Stewart, Anne Thompson. Amy Louise Phillips was a guiding light throughout. From a distance, my family has observed the long gestation of this thesis with great good w i l l , and I would like to dedicate these pages in the only way possible: Til min Mor.

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Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Sources

To facilitate reference to frequently cited sources and to avoid confusion among the numerous books and exhibition catalogues titled simply "El Lissitzky,

1890-1941," or a

minor variant of this, the following abbreviations for publications and archival materials,

listed here alphabeti­

cally, are used throughout this study.

Cambridge 1987: Peter Nisbet, El Lissitzky r 1890-1941, exh. cat.

(Cambridge

Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1987)

Cologne 1976: El Lissitzky, exh. cat.

(Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1976)

Eindhoven 1965: Jan Leering, intro., El Lissitzky, exh. cat.

(Eindhoven:

Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, 1965).

Eindhoven 1990: Jan Debbaut and Marielle Soons, eds,, El Lissitzky. 18901941. Architect. Painter, Photographer. Typographer r exh.

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xxix cat.

(New York: Thames and Hudson, for the Stedelijk Van

Abbemuseum, Eindhoven,

1990).

Halle 1982: Jurgen Scharfe, e d . , El Lissitzky. Maler, Arch i t e k t . Typoaraf. Fotoaraf. exh. cat.

(Halle: Staatliche Galerie

Moritzburg, and Leipzig: Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst, 1982).

Hanover 1988: Norbert Nobis, e d . , El L i ssitzky. 1890-1941. Retrospektive. exh. cat.

(Berlin: Propylaen, for the Sprengel Museum Han­

nover, 1988).

Letters to Sophie: My quotations from, and references to, Lissitzky7s extensive correspondence to his supporter, companion and then wife, Sophie Kiippers, come from a full transcript of these letters, which I was generously allowed to make in Moscow in 1984. Extracts from Lissitzky7s correspondence to Sophie, held in a private archive, have been published in LissitzkyKiippers 1967 and 1980, and in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, though some important parts have not, and others have been mis­ transcribed or mis-translated.

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XXX

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967: Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers, El Lissitzky. Haler, A r c h i t e k t . Typo a r a f . Fotograf. Erinnerunaen. B r i e f e f Schriften (Dres­ den: VEB Verlag der Kunst,

1967)

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977: Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers and Jen Lissitzky, eds., El Lissitzky: Proun und Wolkenbiiqel. Schriften. B r i e f e . Dokumente (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1977)

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980: Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers, El Lissitzky: Life, L e t t e r s . T e x t s . trans. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall, second, revised edition (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980)

Moscow 1990: [Tretyakov Gallery] Lazar' Markovich Lisitskii 1890-1941. V ystavka proizvdenii k stoletiyu so dnya rozhdeniya. exh. cat.

(Moscow: State

Tretyakov Gallery, 1990)

New York 1991: Friedman, Barry, foreword El Lissitzky. Experiments in Photographyf exh. cat.

(New

York: Houk Friedman, 1991).

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xxx i Proun Inventory: Peter Nisbet,

"An Annotated Transcript of El Lissitzky's

Proun Inventory," in Cambridge 1987, pp. 155-176, a detailed explication of Lissitzky's own handlist of his Proun works, compiled in early 1924, with current locations, some exhibi­ tion and provenance history,

illustrations (or, in a few

cases, references to illustrations elsewhere), and com­ mentary on the identifications.

"Proun Inventory and

Appendix" refers the reader also to the "Addenda and Cor­ rigenda" to this Transcript, printed as an Appendix to the present study.

TsGALI References to the Lissitzky Papers and other archival material in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow are cited with the acronym TsGALI followed by an abbreviated archival notation, such as "2361/1/25/6-8," meaning "fond [archive] 2361, o p i s ' [register] 1, edinitsa khraneniva 25 [file], listy [sheets] 6-8." TsGALI has now been renamed RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and A r t ) , but I have retained the anachronistic acronym for con­ sistency with previous publications.

Typ. C a t . : Peter Nisbet,

"A Summary Catalogue of Typographical Work by

El Lissitzky," in Cambridge 1987, pp. 177-202 (a listing [by

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X X X 11

year in the form, for example, "Typ. Cat. 1924/2," indicat­ ing the second item under 1924] of Lissitzky's graphic design work from 1905-1941, with detailed cataloguing information and illustrations, where available, on each item.

"Typ. Cat. and Appendix" refers the reader also to the

"Addenda and Corrigenda" to this Transcript, printed as an Appendix to the present study.

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Introduction

The investigation conducted in the following chapters concerns a set of related questions about one aspect of the production of El Lissitzky (1890-1941), long recognized as one of the leading figures in the remarkable efflorescence in the visual arts in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Republic during the first three decades of our century. These ques­ tions are: Why did El Lissitzky begin to produce radically non-objective works of art in 1919? What meaning and func-

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2 tion did these works have during the seven years in which they were produced? Why did he stop producing them in 1926? This study, then, involves broad concerns about the status and validity of abstract art under particular artistic, social and political conditions.

It takes the case

of Lissitzky and puzzles over the surprising fact that he takes up painting of a particular kind at a particular time - a time when a rejection of painting might have been more likely.

It explores some of the ways in which his abstract

art was related to the external reality surrounding it: how it accommodated reference to other art, to more or less definable meanings, to its cultural context and to an eman­ cipatory agenda. And it explores the motivations and circum­ stances of the decision to cease painting. The intention is not to isolate this art production from Lissitzky's other activities, but, on the contrary, to understand the three questions precisely in terms of those other activities. Much of the discussion will be devoted to these other activities (work in design and photography, for example) and to no n ­ visual evidence (Lissitzky's theory and writings, especially their sources and metaphors) in order to explicate the ways that these activities embody issues and problems relevant for the Prouns, as Lissitzky designated his abstract art. Anticipating the exposition of this Introduction,

it can

be said that my approach concentrates on what might be called the artist's immediate cultural milieu: aspects of

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3 his artistic, professional and intellectual world with which he engaged intensively in the course of developing his Proun oeuvre. The study analyzes several key, documented instances of Lissitzky's response to aesthetic and intellectual chal­ lenges over these eight years. Lissitzky was an artist who, perhaps more than others, acted on and reacted to proximate stimuli, including especially the work of other artists (a major theme of this study). This is not merely a quirk of character, but rather central to his creative project as an activist, pragmatic artist. By keeping the specific question of the Prouns' interaction with external referents as the common thread in these chapters (sometimes overtly, some­ times indirectly), my study hopes to supplement both the well-established and successful formal analyses of Lissitzky's pictorial strategies and their implications, and a possible treatment of Lissitzky emphasizing his role as an agent in a number of historically specific social and political arenas. The immediate cultural environment on which Lissitzky drew in working out the issues and impulses behind his Prouns has hitherto been relatively neglected, and the understanding of the intricate complexities of Lis­ sitzky 's experiment with non-objective art thereby impoverished. Although any answer to each of the opening questions about the undertaking, implementation, and abandonment of Proun, will necessarily influence the answers to the others,

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the investigation has been prompted especially by an inter­ est in the last. That is to say, consideration of the origins of Lissitzky's abstract art and of the use to which he put it during the seven years of its production will stress (though by no means exclusively) those factors which might help to account for the decision to halt that produc­ tion. While it is imperative to avoid a teleological narra­ tive which structures the history of Lissitzky's practice around a more or less inevitable progression towards the renunciation of abstract art, that renunciation (if such it was) does throw into relief aspects of that art, and indeed of Lissitzky's creative and intellectual procedures, which have been neglected or ignored. Moreover, the question of whether to continue making abstract art haunts the history of the Russian avant-garde (especially after the 1917 revolutions) and the history of European art in the inter­ war years generally, to such an extent that the careful assessment of one case can perhaps be a valuable contribu­ tion to an overall history of visual creativity in the period. Most of the leading figures in the so-called Russian avant-garde did, at one point or another, shift their energy and attention away from the creation of discrete, "modernist" objects, work one might usefully define as "studio art." By 1919, Kazimir Malevich had worked through and moved beyond his so-called "Suprematist" painting into

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activity focussed strongly on the elaboration of a theory and a pedagogical practice envisaging the transformation of the world; Vladimir Tatlin, known for his radically non­ objective reliefs and counter-reliefs in the second half of the 1910s was by 1919-1920 engaged in the creation of his symbolic model of sculptural architecture, the "Monument to the Third International;" Alexander Rodchenko was the lead­ ing member of the "constructivist" group of artists who in late 1921 renounced painting and sculpture, even of the most experimental and advanced kind, in favor of socially com­ mitted "productivist" work in design,

industry and teaching.

The validity of art generally and non-representational art in particular was at issue throughout Europe in these years, and this "legitimation crisis" resulted in many dif­ ferent responses. Only in the context of Russia and the establishment of a state proclaiming a communist form of social organization, however, did the "crisis" result so commonly in the decision to reject this form of activity in favor of the ultimate goal of dissolving art into life. The turn away from experimental studio art was in Russia often both couched in a language and driven by an ideology which was at least utopian, and at times Marxist. Although my investigation does not proceed from the assumption that this specific intellectual, social and political context alone can account for these developments,

it is important to ack­

nowledge the unique status and urgency of the debates on the

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6 social role of the arts in Russia. These debates were con­ ducted after 1917 (or, more accurately, after about 1920, with the Bolshevik victory over forces threatening their rule in the Civil War) on the understanding that decisive conditions for that social role either had been achieved or were achievable through the dynamic process of revolutionary progr e s s .1 1.

The "problem” of the abandonment of abstract art by participants in the experimental culture of post­ revolutionary Russia also opens on to an important larger guestion for all histories of this avant-garde: How to account for the transition from the radical experimentation in non-representational art charac­ teristic of the ten years straddling the 1917 revolu­ tions, to the subsequent commitment (by many, though by no means all, of the same artists) to affirmative, illustrational, propagandistic, and utilitarian creative activity in support of a repressive, ruthlessly anti­ modernist, and totalitarian state system, beginning in the late 1920s. Assuming for the moment that these developments did indeed amount to a "death of the avantgarde," one can ask, "Was it a death by murder, suicide, or natural causes?" In other words, was the audacity, freedom and vigor so typical of the extraordinary fermentation in the visual arts between, say, 1910 and 1921-1925, simply extirpated sooner or later by politi­ cal and social control (neatly, if misleadingly, per­ sonified by Joseph Stalin)? Or, was the avant-garde itself somehow implicated in effecting its own demise, willingly ceding subversive, critical positions in order to enlist in the service of authority? Or did the revolutionary artistic energies simply exhaust them­ selves, running their natural course and then giving way to a successor paradigm marked by different ends, means, and criteria of success? My investigation of Lissitzky in the years 1919-1927, while not addressing these ques­ tions explicitly, is intended to lay the foundation for any subsequent study of his activities under Stalinism. I assume that the abandonment of abstract art was probably a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to account for the work of the years 1927-1941, which took place under very different cultural and social circum­ stances from the "Proun years." More generally, it is important to stress that a full treatment of Lissitzky and his contemporaries should surely mitigate the apparent starkness of the shift from "abstraction" to

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This is especially important as the congruence of an aesthetic and a political revolution allowed for the p o p • sibility that the mode of signification of the abstract art itself, produced prior to the decision to "go into produc­ tion," might be as radically different from previous condi­ tions of reference and representation, as the new social order (proletarian, egalitarian, communist) was from the old (bourgeois, autocratic, capitalist). There might even be some necessary link between, on the one hand, the abstract artist's new attitude towards the sign, towards material, and towards the nature of creativity, and, on the other, the political revolution's ultimate aspirations for society. Whatever the validity of interpretations which attempt to correlate the radical innovations in the visual arts with radical innovations in society,

it is undeniable that the

artists themselves took the fact and promise of the Revolu­ tion as a point of reference for their own thinking and actions.

It may not be possible always to extrapolate from

their work a consistent political commitment (to the Bol­ shevik program, to the workers' revolution, to the defense of the new Soviet state, to artistic emancipation, to col­ lectivist creativity, and so o n ) , but their understanding of

"propaganda" by relativizing both the putatively "heroic" status of the avant-garde and the alleged sterility and uniformity of Stalinist culture.

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8 the Revolution was rarely less than a catalyst for that work. The career of El Lissitzky is one element that will have to be accommodated within any full account of these issues and this period. I approach important aspects of that career without assuming a priori that it was either exemplary or exceptional. It is, however, a particularly well-documented career, and, as such, can support research which proceeds from the belief in the urgent necessity of detailed and nuanced re-assessments (with as few pre-conceptions as pos­ sible) of the trajectory of each of the individuals involved in the cultural transformations in Russia (and in their cog­ nate transformations in Europe).2 In undertaking this study of the inception, performance, and demise of Lissitzky's abstract art, it has been possible to draw on a long, rich tradition of appreciative writing about the artist. This abundant fortuna critica is premised initially on two interlocking circumstances: Lissitzky

2.

This implies a belief in the continuing need for monographic research in the field. The study of the Rus­ sian avant-garde is still hampered to an exceptional degree by the extraordinary prevalence of inaccuracy in the authenticity, attribution, dating, rendering, and description of individual works, texts, and events. The monographic focus often provides the best discipline and incentive for correcting these distortions, and thereby ensuring a secure foundation for thematic, theoretical and synoptic approaches. The present study, while not intending to be a full monographic survey of Lissitzky's work, attempts to integrate corrections, amplifications and additions to the historical record, wherever that is possible without distracting greatly from the line of a rgument.

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worked in many professional fields and in many countries, ensuring that intellectual and physical traces of his achievement have been available to a wide variety of specialized interests in a wide variety of places. El Lissitzky had one of the most diverse and extensive careers in the history of twentieth century art. A bare out­ line of his activities can give only some indication of this wide-ranging multifariousness: Lissitzky the architecture student in Germany before the Great War; Lissitzky the participant in the revival of Jewish culture in Russia around the time of 1917 revolutions; Lissitzky the pas­ sionate convert to geometrical abstraction and coiner of the neologistic title "Proun" for his paintings, prints and drawings; Lissitzky the participant in the cultural debates on the social and political role of creativity; Lissitzky in Germany in the 1920s as a bridge between Soviet and Western European avant-gardes; Lissitzky the prolific essayist, journal editor, lecturer and theorist; Lissitzky as a founder of modern graphic design; Lissitzky the experimenter with photographic techniques; Lissitzky as architect of visionary skyscrapers, temporary trade fairs, and industrial buildings for the Soviet Union; Lissitzky in Russia in the 1930s as loyal propagandist of the achievements of socialism under Stalin. The variety of Lissitzky's activities in art, design, theory and cultural intervention matches the range of

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10 countries in which he worked: principally, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Moreover, his network of friends and collaborators would read like a roster of the leading creative figures of the international avant-garde during the inter-war years. It is this multiplicity of professional and geographical arenas, which, while surely programmatic for Lissitzky him­ self, has had the fortuitous side-effect of ensuring that the artist has enjoyed uninterrupted, more or less detailed attention in art-historical and art-critical writing since the early 1920s. Even after the increasing isolation of the Soviet Union under Stalin and the purging of modernism there and in National Socialist Germany, Lissitzky's traces in Western Europe and the United States (works of art in public and private collections, published writings and illustra­ tions, memories of friends and colleagues) were strong enough to guarantee continuing acknowledgement by writers in many of the fields in which he worked. At first, this can be seen mainly in essays by admiring professional acquaintances, such as the assessments published by Jan Tschichold in the 1930s and Alexander Dorner in the 1940s.3 By the 1950s, this interest broadened 3.

See listings in the Bibliography. Alexander Dorner, who emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s, was particularly significant in keeping the memory of Lis­ sitzky alive. This reputation was sufficient for the artist's death to be of interest to the society colum­ nist of a New York newspaper during the Second World War ("...The artist group here has learned this week that Lissitzky, the eminent Russian artist and head of the famous Constructionist School, died in Moscow in

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11 to a more historical focus, supported also by the activities of collectors and exhibition-makers, as the achievements of 1941..." Leonard Lyons, "The Lyons Den" New York Post, 23 December 1944). This surely reflects information passed on by Ella Winter (1898-1980), who had gone to Moscow as a correspondent for the P o s t . By her own account, she had been asked to find work by Lissitzky and other members of the Russian avant-garde. Indeed, her knowledge of Lissitzky and her acquisition in 1944 of work by him (thirteen watercolors, including eight designs for a children's book on mathematical processes of 1928) were instrumental in the revival of interest in the artist in the late 1950s (by which time she was living in London), as spurred on by two articles she wrote: "Looking for Lissitzky" The New Statesman vol. 54 no. 2 (2 November 1957), pp. 562-563, and "Lissitzky: a Revolutionary Out of Favor" Art News vol. 57 no. 2 (April 1958), pp. 28-31, 62-64. For further information, see her autobiographical writings, I Saw the Russian People (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1945), p. 250, And Not To Y i eld. An Autobi oar aptly (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1963), p. 249, and "I Bought a Klee," Studio International vol. 172 no. 879 (July 1966), pp. 24-25. For details on her collection, now dispersed, see Verzamelina Ella Win t e r , exh. cat. (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1961). One of those who asked her to find works by Lissitzky was apparently the emigre psychiatrist and social theorist, Fredric Wertham (actually her close relative, with whom she shared the original German-Jewish name Wertheimer), who had been acquiring significant works by Lissitzky, predominantly from German exiles, during the 1940s. On Wertham and his interest in visual arts, see Peter Nisbet "Collecting, Connecting: Fredric Wertham and his Art" in The Fredric Wertham Collection. Gift of his Wife Hesketh (Cambridge, Mass.: Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, 1990), pp. 23-30. Works by Lissitzky in Wertham's col­ lection are catalogued in the same publication (Cristina M. Ashjian, "Illustrated Checklist of the Fredric Wertham Collection," nos. 47-72). The provenance information given there highlights the importance of the forced emigration from Germany in sustaining Lissitzky's presence in the American art world. This source of works reinforced the attention regularly given to Lissitzky by the exhibiting activities of the Societe Anonyme collec­ tion, formed by Katherine Dreier, which included major pieces by the Russian. For details, see Robert L. Her­ bert, Eleanor S. Apter, Elise K. Kenney, coeditors, The Societe Anonyme Collection and the Dreier Bequest at Yale University. A Catalogue Raisonnd (New Haven and London: Yale University Press for the Yale University

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12 the so-called "Russian avant-garde," to which Lissitzky was readily ascribed, came under growing scrutiny.4 The scholarly evaluation of Lissitzky also began in the Soviet Union.5 It was the decade of the 1960s which witnessed the qualitative transformation of this trend in the West, begin­ ning with the publication of Camilla Gray's pioneering sur­ vey of advanced Russian art from the 1860s to the 1920s and ending with the appearance of a magnificent compendium of

Art Gallery, 1984). The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum also own works by Lissitzky formerly owned by Miss Dreier. 4 . In addition to the articles by Ella Winter cited in the previous note, see, for example, the first monograph on Lissitzky, published in 1958: Horst Richter, El Lis­ sitzky. Sieg Ueber die S o n n e . Zur Kunst des Konstruktivismus (Cologne: Galerie Christoph Czwiklitzer, 1958), the bibliography in which gives a good impression of Lissitzky's continuous presence in surveys of modern art, essays and other forums since the 1920s. This pioneering work bears the marks of its era, of course, not least in its introductory association of con­ temporary satellites and space exploration with the utopian dreams of the Russian artists. 5 . See especially the two articles of the early 1960s by Nikolai Khardzhiev, "Pamiati khudozhnika Lisitskogo," Dekorativnoe Iskusstvo S S S R , no. 2 (31) (February 1961), pp. 29-31, and, more substantially, "El Lisitskii konstruktor knigi," in Iskusstvo knicri 3. 1958-1960 (Mos­ cow: Iskusstvo, 1962), pp. 145-161. There was a brief (two-day) exhibition of Lissitzky's work at the Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow, in November 1960 (TsGALI 2361/1/71/1-3). There was also an exhibition of Lissitzky's work organized at the picture gallery of the Siberian Section of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk) by the local chapter of the Union of Architects in 1967 (TsGALI 236l/l/7la/l).

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13 visual and verbal documents compiled by the Lissitzky's widow.6 The 1960s also saw the first substantial monographic exhibitions and a number of focussed studies of specific aspects of Lissitzky's career.7 The period's enthusiasm for 6.

Lissitzky was a central focus of the closing pages of Camilla Gray, The Great Experiment: Russian Art 18631922 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962), republished in 1971 as The Russian Experiment in A r t . 1863-1922. with a second edition with this title, revised and annotated by Marion Burleigh-Motley (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986). Still unsurpassed as a resource for work on Lis­ sitzky are the various editions of the monograph by Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers: Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967 and, for the slightly revised edition in English translation, Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980.

7.

The first substantial museum exhibition devoted to El Lissitzky was organized in 1965 by the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland (Eindhoven 1965), with a catalogue containing important memoirs and analytical essays (some taken up in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967). The same year saw a new German edition of Lissitzky's book on architecture in the U.S.S.R., first published in Vienna in 1930. Although originally entitled Russl a n d . Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowietunion ("Russia. The Reconstruction of Architecture in the Soviet Union"), the new edition in 1965 was retitled Russland. Architektur fur eine Weltrevolution (Berlin: Ullstein, 1965). This edition was then issued in an influential English translation in 1970, with an addi­ tional essay by the translator, Eric Dluhosch. (R u s s i a . An Architecture for a World Revolution [Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1970). While Lissitzky's own title reflects the late 1920s' autarkic and reconstructive mood of "socialism in one country" in which the book was written, the altered title reflects both the resurgent utopianism of the 1960s and Lissitzky's own, earlier internationalist activism. The extent to which the 1965 title answers to the continuing desire to see Lissitzky in this light is shown in an essay by Paul Wood, in which he cites precisely the inauthentic title as "unambiguous" evidence of Lissitzky's position, in the course of an otherwise careful and valuable argument about the political commitment of the Russian avantgarde and for ways in which that commitment should be assessed and related to actual political developments (Paul Wood, "The Politics of the Avant-Garde," in The Great Ut o p i a : The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde. 19151 9 3 2 . exh. cat. [New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1992], p.

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14 the Russian avant-garde and for Lissitzky derived in equal measure from the search for historical precedents for con­ temporary geometric abstraction, and from the need to con­ struct a plausible lineage for a radically interventionist, socially activist art of the kind attempted by contemporary artists. Both interests were paralleled by increasing activity on the art-market.8 The monograph published in the German Democratic Republic in 1967, and subsequently in many translations and

3). This is, of course, not to argue that Lissitzky must not be seen in terms of an undoubted political commit­ ment, only that the case must be made with different evidence and perhaps then with somewhat different con­ clusions . 8.

The increased attention paid to the Russian avant-garde was not confined to scholars and artists. 1970 saw the first commercial auction devoted exclusively to material from this field. More than with comparable "dis­ coveries ," the acceleration of interest in the Russian avant-garde over the past three decades has been tightly intertwined with commerce and collecting, a circumstance that has not only rendered scholarship both easier (by bringing to light overlooked practitioners) and harder (by imposing a climate in which provenance, ownership and other key information is regularly withheld for com­ mercial reasons), but it has also probably encouraged some to overemphasize the aesthetic autonomy and formal beauty (and hence the acceptability for acquisition) of the discrete works of art made available by commerce. For a bracing though belated warning about the rela­ tively primitive state of visual information available to students of the Russian avant-garde, see the catalogue of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Col­ lection. Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting [London: Zwemmer, 1993]), which is admirably honest in its presentation and evaluation of the problems of attribution and authenticity regarding many works in one of the premier collections of its kind.

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15 revised editions, has exercised a decisive influence on all ensuing research, by virtue of its authoritativeness, use­ fulness and comprehensiveness.9 It provided the invaluable foundation for the first scholarly treatment of Lissitzky's career, a doctoral dissertation for Yale University by Alan C. Birnholz, which incorporated the material of the monograph into a contextual survey of Lissitzky's activities through his career. Work on this thesis also generated noteworthy articles by Birnholz in the scholarly journals during the late 1960s and early 1970s.10 The accumulation of new information about Lissitzky gathered pace again during the second half of the 1970s. New 9.

10.

These qualities have, however, tended to obscure the extent to which this monograph was conditioned and partly compromised by the circumstances of its publica­ tion, which was only possible in the German Democratic Republic of the 1960s by stressing Lissitzky's political loyalties in the commentary. Furthermore, editorial interventions are noticeable not only in the tidying up of Lissitzky7s expressively idiosyncratic German, but also in more political decisions. For example, even the most minor verbal and visual references to Trotsky were excised, from Lissitzky7s letter to Sophie of 24 Septem­ ber 1925 ("In general, we here, like Trotsky, must undertake everything, war if i t 7s necessary, and the economy if t h a t 7s necessary"), and from the left hand side of a photograph of the artist working on an agita­ tional wall-display in Vitebsk in 1920, illustrated in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967 and 1980, p. 29 (as recounted by Erhard Frommhold, personal conversation). Lissitzky7s critical comments on L e n i n 7s Tomb in and other such sub­ jects suffered a similar fate. The publication must nevertheless count as a magnificent achievement for Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers and her editor, who wrote an appreciation of her in 1971 (Erhard Frommhold, "La Mere des Bolschewiks," Die Weltbiihne. no. 52 [1971], pp. 1658-1660). See listing in the Bibliography.

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16 primary materials (with associated interpretive essays) bec­ ame available in collections published in both the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany.11 Although the wealth of documentation was supporting an ever­ growing number of detailed studies of aspects of Lissitzky's career, the consensus remained that Lissitzky's claim to our attention rested primarily on his achievement as a synthetic artist marked by the astonishing multiplicity of his fields of activity, all unified by a commitment to the public, social and even political role of creativity. The urge to subsume the variety of Lissitzky's career under one allencompassing project remained (and remains) strong.12 11.

See Cologne 1976, with essays by John E. Bowlt, Donald Karshan and others, in German and English. Many essays, letters, documents and other materials omitted for lack of space from the Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers's 1967 monograph were published ten years later in LissitzkyKiippers 1977. Unfortunately, unlike its monographic predecessor, this important collection has not been translated into English. A further significant contribu­ tion from the German Democratic Republic to Lissitzky studies was the exhibition organized by Jurgen Scharfe, Halle 1982, with essays by Hans Heinz Holz, Vassili Rakitin, Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov, and others (also, unfortunately, not translated into English).

12.

Just as Camilla Gray wrote in 1962 of Lissitzky's typographic design as combining Constructivist and Suprematist principles, and as such "coming closest to creating the synthesis which we recognize as 'modern' design" (Great Exp e r i m e n t , p. 252), so too did the organizers of the centennial exhibition in 1990 write in their foreword to the catalogue of Lissitzky's search for "the all-embracing synthesis which would contribute towards the creating of a new and better world." A paradoxical artist who "put himself at the service of the pursuit of a reality which could never exist," produced work that was "coherent in its conception but eclectic in its execution" (Jan Debbaut, Maria Corral, Suzanne Pagd, "Foreword," in Eindhoven 1990, p. 7). This emphasis on the singularity of a fundamental vision has

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17 Increasingly, however, a countervailing tendency has come into play, one that not only acknowledges the dif­ ficulty of finding a common denominator amongst the various phases of Lissitzky's work (say, the "Jewish" phase, the "constructivist" phase, and the "Stalinist" phase), but also its undesirability. Even for those interpretations which tended unfairly to dismiss the Jewish and Stalinist phases as juvenilia and irrelevant forced propaganda respectively, and focussed instead on the years of "avant-garde" achieve­ ment, this broad, synthetic overview has become harder to sustain. The blending of Lissitzky's work into more or less homogeneity (even if that homogeneity was described as the unifying principle of commitment to diversity of fields of activity) was blinding investigators to specific intellectual and aesthetic issues at various points in his career, issues which, when separated out for closer study, revealed a yet more complex artist. Research on Lissitzky has gradually been able to move beyond the level of generalization and diffusiveness which seemed to be imposed

even led some commentators to expand the concept of "Proun" to cover all Lissitzky's activities in a way that undermines its historical and conceptual specificity (see, for example, Birnholz, El L issitzky. p. 71, quoting with approval the notion that Proun was the name Lissitzky gave to all his activities, and that Proun was ultimately to be identified with life itself).

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18 by his multifarious career and the many contexts in which it had to be fitted.13 This increasingly detailed attention to Lissitzky's work has, of course, not happened in an art-historical vacuum.

It

has run alongside equivalent investigations, both of the Russian avant-garde in gen e r a l , and of many of its individual practitioners. Since the early 1980s, scholars have been trying not only to assess the particular achieve­ ments of the various individual "members of the Russian avant-garde," but also to avoid a synchronic conflation of all the various aspects of those individual careers into one characterization.14 While the scholarly and journalistic accumulation of new facts, names, texts and images (of widely varying accuracy and authenticity,

it must be added) since the late 1960s has

often seemed overwhelming to those interested in the Russian 13.

This trend is best exemplified by a series of theoreti­ cally sophisticated essays by Yve-Alain Bois, beginning in 1976 (and listed in the Bibliography), which were especially successful in analyzing the social implica­ tions of the formal qualities of Lissitzky's work.

14.

An exemplary instance of the complicating effects of precision is Angelica Zander Rudenstine, e d . , Russian Avant-Garde A r t . The Georae Costakis Collection (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981). For two articles which review and comment on recent developments in Soviet and Western historiography of the avant-garde respectively, see John E. Bowlt, "Some Thoughts on the Condition of Soviet Art History," Art B u l letin. vol. LXXI no. 4 (December 1989), pp. 542-550, and Marian Bur­ leigh Motley, "Arte Russa e Sovietica dal 1870 al 1930: Lo Stato Attuale degli Studi in Occidente," in Giovanni Carandente, e d . , Arte Russa e Sovietica. 1870-1930. exh. cat. (Milan: Fabbri, for Lingotto, 1989), pp. 60-72.

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19 avant-garde and Lissitzky's generation, one effect of the explosive growth in knowledge about the period has surely been a proper reassessment of Lissitzky's achievement in comparison to his contemporaries. In the case of Lissitzky's mentor, Kazimir Malevich, the fact that a substantial body of work was available in the West since the late 1950s, has facilitated serious atten­ tion.15 In other cases, the spotlight has in some ways shifted to the work of those who, by accident or design, both remained in the Soviet Union throughout the period in question and did not have the chance or desire to offer their work for sustained exposure to Western audiences. In particular, artists such as Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rod­ chenko and Liubov Popova have, in their different ways, now come to occupy more central positions in the narrative.16 15.

In fact, an impression of the rapid increase in atten­ tion to the Russian avant-garde as a whole can quickly be gleaned from the detailed bibliography (arranged in part chronologically) of books, catalogues and essays about Malevich in Rainer Crone and David Moos, Kazimir Ma l e v i c h . The Climax of Disclosure (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), pp. 215-226.

16.

The bibliography of writings on these artists is now, as for the subject as a whole, enormous. For Englishspeaking readers, the best sources on Tatlin remain Troels Andersen, Vladimir T a t l i n . exh. cat. (Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1968), John Milner, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), and Larissa Alekseevna Zhadova, Tatlin (New York: Rizzoli, 1988). Rodchenko is well covered by Selim 0. Khan-Magomedov's useful but mis­ leadingly titled Rodchenko: The Complete Work, intro, and ed. Vieri Quilici (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), and Peter Noever, e d . , The Future is our Only G o a l : Aleksandr M. Rodchenko, Varvara F. Stepanova. exh. cat. (Munich: Prestel, for the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 1991). For Popova, Dmitri V. Sarabianov and

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20 This "demotion" of Lissitzky, a reasonable reaction to his earlier undeserved and partly accidental status as the prime representative of the Russian avant-garde, has been con­ tinued in the re-evaluation of other artists, such as his close contemporary, the Latvian artist Gustav Klutsis, who seems often to precede, surpass or at least parallel, Lis­ sitzky in many developments in painting, photomontage and political passion.17 It is especially with regard to the general movement of Russian Constructivism that Lissitzky's position has been much clarified. For the English-speaking world, this clarification was achieved most persuasively by Christina Lodder in 1983, with the publication of her massively researched and meticulously documented study of the sub­ ject .18 Natalia L. Adaskina, P o p o v a . trans. Marian Schwarz (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990), and Magdalena Dabrowski, Liubov P o p o v a . exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1991). 17.

The current state of knowledge about Klutsis is wellrepresented by the illustrations and essays in Hubertus Gassner and Roland Nachtigaller, eds., Gustav Klucis. Retrospektive. exh. cat. (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, for the Museum Fridericianum Kassel, 1991), with its bibliography, pp. 389-394. Discrepancies among the con­ tributors to this catalogue indicate the extent to which the precise dating of Klutsis's work, and therefore its relationship to Lissitzky's similar production, is still unclarified.

18.

Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983. Lodder's ack­ nowledgements, footnotes and extensive bibliography record the extent to which Soviet scholarship, espe­ cially work by such courageous researchers as A. V. Abramova, S. 0. Khan-Magomedov, and L. Zhadova, had laid the foundations for her interpretation. Lodder writes

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21 In explicating Russian Constructivism, Lodder justly concentrates on a definition of the movement as one which "posited an entirely new relationship between the artist, his work and society [and offered] an approach to working with materials within a certain conception of their poten­ tial as active participants in the process of social and political transformation."19 This politically radical strand in creative production after the 1917 revolutions is dis­ tinguished for having "rejected art and aesthetics." Deriv­ ing largely from the work of Tatlin, the formal language and material investigations of the Constructivist artists (armed after 1917 with experience in political agitation, cultural administration, and ideological argumentation) were trans­ lated into work in production towards the building of a com­ munist society.

that she was inspired to study the subject by seeing Tatlin's flying apparatus, the "Letatlin," being reconstructed in 1968, and in many ways, her book is a full-fledged elucidation of the theoretical, practical, and historical details behind definitions of Con­ structivism given by writers around 1970. For example, Kenneth Frampton wrote in an essay first published in 1968 that "Constructivism was first and foremost seen as the act of construction conceived primarily as the organization of a total technical capacity, specifically to be compounded out of communism and industrialization" ("Notes on a Lost Avant-Garde" in Art in Revolution. Soviet Art and Design since 1917. exh. cat. [London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1971], p. 21). 19.

Lodder, Russian Constructivism. p. 1.

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22 Fueling Lodder's account is the desire to correct what is seen as the West's long-standing misunderstanding of the true nature of Constructivism. The analysis of this in her final chapter has been taken up by subsequent scholars who indict the Western cultural reception of Russian Con­ structivism for having purged it of this defining charac­ teristic: a rejection of "art," generated by an explicitly communist and materialist ideology, applied in and to an era of industrialization and mass-production.20 20.

See Lodder's final chapter ("Postscript to Russian Con­ structivism: The Western Dimension," pp. 225-238), which concludes her book programmatically with an extended quotation from Aleksei Gan, ending "Our Constructivism is fighting for the intellectual and material production of a communist culture." Variants on this theme are given by two essays in Art Into L i f e . Russian Con­ structivism. 1914-1932. exh. cat. (New York: Rizzoli, for the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, 1990), a catalogue for an exhibition whose overall concept follows Lodder's schema very closely: Stephen Bann, "Russian Constructivism and Its European Resonance" (pp. 213-221), and Hal Foster, "Some Uses and Abuses of Russian Constructivism" (pp. 241-253). The case "against" the West for sanitizing Constructivism has been powerfully argued by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh in an essay dealing especially with the case of Naum Gabo, "Cold War Constructivism," in Serge Guilbaut, e d . , Reconstructing Modernism. Art in New Y o r k , Paris and Montreal 1945-1964 (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 85-110. For architec­ tural historiography's equivalent "making taboo" of the Russian contribution, see Werner Oechslin, "Die Tabuisierung des russischen Beitrages zur modernen A rchitektur," in J. Christoph Biirkle, £1 Lissitzky. Per Traum vom Wolkenbuael (Zurich: GTA Institut fur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, 1991), pp. 9-29. The positing of a polar opposition between Russian Constructivism and a Western "constructive tendency" can be too strict, however, as it may depend too much on uncritically accepting the former's own self-assessment (especially by its theoreticians) as radically different from any Western equivalent.

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23 In this schema, Lissitzky necessarily moves to the margins. As a figure more indebted to Malevich's than to Tatlin's vision of avant-garde creative practice, as someone who in 1921 did not renounce painting, move into the investigation of "three-dimensional non-utilitarian objects," or undertake a new approach to the needs of design and production, as someone who travelled to and remained in the West during the crucial years of "productivist" experimentation - for all these reasons and more, Lissitzky could no longer be a key figure in this narrative. At best he could be accommodated as a "late adherent," given his heightened application to socially committed design tasks only after giving up the Prouns and returning to the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s.21

21.

For Lissitzky as a "late adherent" to Constructivism, see Lodder, Russian Constructivism. p. 183. Indeed, Lis­ sitzky has been partly blamed for the alleged "aesthetic" misreading of Constructivism in the West, because of the views expressed in the journal V e s h c h . edited .by Lissitzky with II'ya Ehrenburg in Berlin in 1922. In a sense, this version of Lissitzky's lack of centrality continues the tradition of seeing Lissitzky primarily as an intermediary, transitional figure, join­ ing other, implicitly more important things (Tatlin and Malevich; Constructivism and Suprematism; Russia and the West). At times, this can lead to a view of Lissitzky as a compromising, second-generation epigone, adept at synthesizing the achievements of others. S. 0. KhanMagomedov come close to this view in his essays on Lis­ sitzky (see Bibliography). Stripped of its valuejudgment, such an assessment is not unreasonable, and it does highlight the extent to which Lissitzky is a provocative case study in the problem of the coherence or diversity of the artistic subject in modernism.

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24 Nevertheless, this fully articulated (if not uncontested) paradigm for understanding Russian Con­ structivism has in turn generated powerful new questions for the study of Lissitzky. After all, Lissitzky can be seen as following a trajectory similar to the "true" Con­ structivists, only with a different time-scale.22 The ques­ tions about the relationships between avant-garde creativity, political ideology,

intellectual milieu, social

circumstance, and the status of art, which were posed by the re-evaluation of Russian Constructivism, can be used to throw into relief key issues in the work of Lissitzky. This would not involve the unrewarding effort to determine whether Lissitzky's version of the dream of dissolving art into life was closest to that of Malevich, Tatlin, Rod­ chenko, or of someone else (say, Trotsky or Lenin). Rather, it would deploy the historical precision and conceptual rigor exemplified by the work on all these models in order to construct a richer, fuller account of Lissitzky's own complicated trajectory in the context of the broader move­ ment.

22.

A period of 5-6 years of work in abstract art (painting and sculpture) preceding the move into utilitarian work of one kind or another, characterizes the careers of Tatlin (1914-1919), Rodchenko (1915-1921), Popova (19151921, even Malevich (1914-1919). On this account, Lis­ sitzky's equivalent period would begin in 1919 and end in 1925/1926.

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25 The present project wishes to be a contribution to the construction of that account.23 As such, it belongs with a trend in scholarship on the Russian avant-garde (and on avant-gardes in general) of the last ten or fifteen years to

23.

At certain points in the exposition, my study elaborates, modifies and extends points made in a number of essays which I published during the period of research and writing. One in particular should be men­ tioned here. Parts of the following chapters can be seen as an outgrowth and revision of the material presented in an exhibition catalogue of 1987, which attempted an overview of Lissitzky's career based in part on the assessment of previously unknown or neglected works, writings and archival documents (Cambridge 1987). Although the present study differs in many respects and in many of its conclusions from the earlier one, it will often cite this publication in order to avoid unnecessary repetition of the documentation, arguments and citation of earlier authors first presented there. It contained "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," transla­ tions and commentary on three hitherto inaccessible essays by Lissitzky, an annotated transcript of the listing of his Proun works made by the artist in early 1924, and a detailed catalogue of over 160 items of Lis­ sitzky's graphic design production, from 1905-1941. (Addenda and corrigenda to the last two are included as the Appendix to the present study.) The contents of the exhibition catalogue, with the unfortunate exceptions not only of two of Lissitzky's essays and accompanying commentary, but also of much of the new and rare illustrational material from the documentary sections, were then translated into German and published, together with essays by a wide variety of other authors, in the expanded catalogues which accompanied the revised ver­ sions of the exhibition organized, selected and presented by museums in the Federal Republic of Germany (Hanover 1988) and the German Democratic Republic in 1988 (the catalogue for which duplicated Hanover 1988, with a different foreword and the addition of three sup­ plementary essays). These German-language publications have then informed more popularizing treatments of Lis­ sitzky, such as Kai-Uwe Hemken, El Lissitzky. Revolution und Avantqarde (Cologne: Dumont, 1990) and Katrin Simons, El Lissitzky. Proun 23 N oder der Umstieq von der Malerei zur Gestaltuna als Thema der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel, 1993).

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26 pay special attention to the later, perhaps closing stages of the movement. Very broadly speaking, the early years of engagement with the Russian avant-garde and related develop­ ments in Europe can be said to have been characterized by attention to the beginnings of that avant-garde, to the cultural and formal conditions necessary and sufficient to bring about a radical, revolutionary art.24 More recently, the "fate" of that radical, revolutionary art has played a larger role in setting the research agenda.25 Work on this project began in 1981, and the ensuing decade saw the publication of interpretations which have concerns that parallel and echo its concerns.

24.

There were no doubt political reasons for the "redis­ covery" of the Russian avant-garde since the 1950s to stress the vitality and freedom of creative ferment which generated Russian abstract art. Moreover, when the 1920s were understood simply as the time when an experimental avant-garde was cruelly crushed, then the interesting questions concerned the inception of that avant-garde: was that avant-garde best explained as an autonomously Russian development? Or was it a result of Western European aesthetic discoveries? If the latter, was French Cubism or Italian futurism more important? and so on.

25.

Recent interest in - and appreciation of - the formerly dismissed later work of Malevich, with its problematic return to figuration in the late 1920s and early 1930s, is a particularly striking and welcome example of this trend. For all their differences, the study of the "end" of the Russian avant-garde and the battle over the "end" of high modernism (of the kind promoted by the writings of Clement Greenberg) have to some extent been parallel phenomena. In the 1970s and 1980s, the intellectual agenda implied in this broaden­ ing of focus was surely also encouraged by the ebbing of simplistic anti-communism and the growth of a con­ comitantly more sophisticated understanding of the political history of the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

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27 Two scholarly contributions of particular importance to the questions animating this account can be cited as crystallizing this stage in the historiography. Articles published in 1984 by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh and in 1986 by Yve-Alain Bois articulated many of the salient issues and have been, explicitly or implicitly, important points of reference for the present attempt to understand Lissitzky's enactment of the passing of painting.26 In "From Faktura to Factography," Buchloh engaged with the history of Russian Constructivism to offer an account of its shift from non-objective, self-reflexive art production to an instrumental iconicity (photographic propaganda) as being caused largely by the need for the artists to find new ways of communicating with the mass audience of an industrialized, socialist society. His argument was addressed in part to Lodder's problematic contention that it was crucially the turn to photography (prompted by the social and economic conditions denying them work in "real"

26.

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "From Faktura to Factography," October 30 (Fall 1984), pp. 82-118; and Yve-Alain Bois, "Painting: The Task of Mourning," in Endgame. Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and S culpture. exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1986), pp. 29-49. This important essay is now available in Yve-Alain Bois, Painting as Model (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 229-244, 314-316.

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28 industry) which set the Constructivists on the path to coop­ tation by state authority.27 Less specifically focussed on the Russian situation was B o i s 's "Painting: The Task of Mourning," which provocatively articulated a dynamic within modernist abstraction by which the whole history of abstract painting can be read as a longing for its death.(...) Freed from all extrinsic conventions, abstract painting was meant to bring forth the pure parousia of its own essence, to tell the final truth and thereby terminate its course. The pure begin­ ning, the liberation from tradition, the 'zero degree7 which was searched for by the first generation of abstract painters could not but function as an omen of the end. One did not have to wait for the last painting of Ad Reinhardt to be aware that through its historicism (its linear conception of history) and through its essentialism (its idea that something like the essence of painting existed, veiled somehow, and waiting to be unmasked ) , the enterprise of abstract painting could not but understand its birth as calling for its end.28 27.

Lod d e r 7s chapter entitled "Confinement: Photomontage and the Limited Design Task" concludes that "where [the Constructivists] had previously sought to restructure the whole living environment from the inside, they now were only able to exercise their creativity within the relatively cosmetic and transient medium of photomontage and exhibition display design. The dimension of social construction had been pared away, leaving them with merely artistic tasks. At the same time, the use of photomontage and the photograph led them back to the real image, and thus to traditional concepts of art and its representational role" (Russian Constructivism. p. 204). For a critique of Lodder's parallel contention that it was the economic and material poverty of Soviet Russian society which was decisively influential in con­ tributing to the ineffectuality and demise of Con­ structivism, see Paul Wood's extensive review of her book, "Art and Politics in a Workers' State," Art H i s t o r y , vol. 8 no. l (March 1985), pp. 105-125, at pp. 117-119.

28.

Bois, "Painting," p. 30. Bois's article also tren­ chantly reviews the contemporary cultural climate which has given rise to so much speculation of the "death" of various categories, movements, certainties. For another stimulating essay relevant to thinking about the

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29 To what extent could this understanding of one of abstraction's founding myths be applied to Lissitzky,

a

second generation artist? Recalling, as it does, that the "essentialism" driving much of abstract painting is an effect of the historical crisis of industrialization, mass production and the appearance of photography, Bois's argu­ ment can be brought into useful contact with the analyses of Lodder and Buchloh. The following chapters recount aspects of the status of Lissitzky's abstract art and related work in terms of the historical and theoretical tensions and negations implied by such discussions.29 Lissitzky's project of beginning,

"demise11 of vanguard cultural positions, using the example of German visionary architecture during the years immediately after the end of the First World War, see Iain Boyd Whyte, "The End of an Avant-Garde: The example of 'Expressionst' Architecture," Art H i s t o r y , vol. 3 no. 1 (March 1980), pp. 103-115. 29.

The names of Lodder, Bois, and Buchloh, of course, must stand here for a very wide variety of inquiry into these and related topics. Important also for this investiga­ tion have been the contributions to the study of con­ structivism by Hubertus Gassner. Not only was he coresponsible for a very broadly-based, stimulatingly annotated collection of text documents from the history of the Russian avant-garde (Hubertus Gassner and Eckhard Gillen, eds., Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischem Realismus [Cologne: Dumont, 1979]), but has also written a number of essays which are well attuned to the complexities and contradictions of the movement. See, for example, "Von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft und Zuriick," in "Kunst in die Produktionl11 Sowietische Kunst wahrend der Phase der Kollektivieruna und Industrialisierung, exh. cat. (Berlin [West]: Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, 1977), pp. 51-101, and "The Constructivists: Modernism on the Way to Moderniza­ tion" in The Great U t o p i a , pp. 298-319.

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30 implementing and then ending an abstract art (partly in a post-revolutionary society, partly in Western constitutional democracies) called on a complex set of justificatory and explicatory moves. These moves involve engagement with the question of the autonomous presence or "purity" of the abstract work of art, as opposed to its "impure" relationships with externality - at the level of material (in some uses of collage), of reference (in the gestures towards imagery of one kind or anoth e r ) , of intertextuality (in the visual debate with works by other artists), of instrumentalization (in the socially revolutionary role) and so o n . 30 Lissitzky, as a member of the second generation of the Russian avant-garde, could exploit a series of con­

30.

An understanding of the ways in which Lissitzky can invoke both "pure" and "impure" forms of existence for his work is aided by the exposition of critical issues of early modernist abstraction in Johanna Drucker, Theorizing Modernism: Visual Art and the Critical Tradi­ tion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), espe­ cially chapter 3 ("The Ontology of the Object"). To the extent that my study points up "circumstances, con­ tingent terms, transitory situations, and moments of valuation" (p. 106), it is marked as a product of the period which gave rise to the theoretical and artistic practices in the 1980s which Drucker's phrases demar­ cate. For a trenchant exposition and critique of the thrust towards purity in early modernist abstraction (notably in Mondrian and Kandinsky), see Mark A. Cheatham, The Rhetoric of Pu r i t v . Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991). There are points of contact between Cheatham's view of Paul Klee as an artist who disrupted metaphysical purity from within the modernist tradition (in his postscript "Klee and the Interrogation of Purity," pp. 139-151) and my study's approach to Lissitzky.

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31 ceptual and formal instabilities to generate and deploy an abstract art with a claim to utopian and emancipatory social p o wer .31 Lissitzky's Prouns existed somewhat precariously and it is this precariousness which this investigation hopes to illuminate.32 To which existing, modified or new category of activity should they be assigned? Did they refer to architecture, and if so, how? In what ways were they autonomous, and in what ways were they representations? Were they pure or impure? Were they a necessary form of debate with other artists pursuing strategies of abstraction? Were they instruments for perceptual, and thereby social destabilization? How could they be justified within a

31.

There is little doubt that throughout the period under review here, Lissitzky was intellectually and emo­ tionally committed to the broad goals of the Soviet Revolution, and this commitment is interwoven into many of the themes which I will be addressing in the follwoing chapters. In my research, I have been especially interested in those instances where Lissitzky's activities and interests transcend, supplement, or some­ time even deviate from such loyal sympathy to the Revolution.

32.

To repeat, many previous analyses of Lissitzky's work have paid careful attention to the manner in which the formal instability of the Prouns (their complexity and irrationality, their spatial and perspectival devices, their dynamic composition) can be experienced and read as a metaphor or analogy for aspects of the utopian world of the future: dematerialized, non-hierarchical, transformative. The Prouns would, by that account, also actively intervene in restructuring the viewers' con­ sciousness, thereby contributing to the achievement of a fully revolutionized world. The present discussion understands itself as a complement to those persuasive, established interpretations.

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32 ideological scheme favoring efficiency and immediacy of utilitarian application (whether that scheme derived from Marxism, or from another world-view built on scientific, specifically biological functionalism)? What would the future development of the Prouns, or of art in general, look like under Lissitzky's understanding of the meaning of historical progress in general, and of the socialist revolu­ tion in particular? What forms of creative activity could best accommodate the potential of an abstract art that no longer satisfied the demands put upon it? The answers to these questions found in Lissitzky's work are intricate and changing. His search for a political, social,

intellectual and aesthetic validity for abstract art

took place in several rather different historical contexts. There is surely a substantial difference between undertaking that search in Vitebsk in 1919, Moscow in 1921, Hanover in 1923 and Moscow (again) in 1925.33 The precariousness and instability of Proun as theory and practice was surely programmatic,

as it could thereby flexibly adapt to the

varying demands of the moment, and to the demands of the future. Lissitzky's intense response to local conditions is

33.

The question of Lissitzky and the practice of abstract art is, to be sure, not the only question which can be asked of Lissitzky's career, even when the focus is limited to the years under discussion here, 1919-1927. In other accounts, the problem of the Prouns could, for example, be subordinated to Lissitzky's activities as an organizer, catalyst and theorist amongst the creative avant-garde (conferences, essays, journals).

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stressed in these pages, which hope to balance an understanding of Lissitzky's shifting tactics in a period of rapidly changing and widely varying, cultural and historical circumstances, with an underlying recognition of his overall evolving strategy, his deep, but not unchanging, personal commitment to the universal liberation of creative, social and political energies. Indeed,

(to anticipate the conclu­

sion implicit in the discussion which follows), it seems that for Lissitzky, that liberation meant precisely achiev­ ing and maintaining the freedom to engage creatively with local conditions.

It is in that light that this study of the

birth, life and death of the Proun works is undertaken.

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Chapter I Proun and the New Image of Architecture

El Lissitzky never offered an etymological derivation or a "dictionary" definition of his word "Proun," either in his published writings or in his private correspondence. He used his enigmatic neologism to designate a series of non­ objective works of art produced over a seven year period, from 1919 to 1926. Exhibited during this time in a very wide variety of contexts, from provincial Vitebsk and contentious

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35 Moscow in post-revolutionary Russia to cosmopolitan Berlin and throughout Central Europe in the 1920s, these so-called "Prouns" attracted much admiration and attention from critics and other artists. Importantly, the artist's decision to deploy an apparently meaningless term for part of his creative output was never seriously questioned or challenged. The invention of a new, non-referential concept was considered a wholly appropriate gesture for the creator of a new, nonreferential art. Indeed, the exotic artificiality and attendant "meaninglessness" of the word, in a sense, c o n ­ stituted in large measure its meaning. The word's evocation of fresh originality accrued to the works exhibited under its banner. Moreover, the word functioned as a trademark, a recognizably proprietary mark of distinction and individua­ tion; and it also functioned as a proper name, in a manner parallel to the personal name of a human individual. the name with which Lissitzky,

It was

so to speak, christened his

infant. To pursue this particular naming strategy was tlusual amongst the avant-garde artists of his time.1 Obviously, the 1.

For an artist to use an opaque neologism as the designa­ tion for a body of creative work, was unusual, if not unique. Interest in neologisms and their deployment within literary works were, of course, central to the activities of the previous generation of Russian Futurist poets and painters of the avant-garde. For example, Alexei Kruchenykh's famous manifesto of 1913 ("Declaration of the Word as Such") had extolled the value of newly invented words and advocated the freedom of the artist "to express himself not only in a common language (concepts), but also in a private one (a

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36 act of labeling one's own artistic movement using an incomprehensible neologism is a gesture radically different from adopting either the generalized and generalizing terms imposed from without (one thinks of Fauvism, Cubism), or the broad designations chosen by the artists themselves to cover a collectivity of creators working in a similar vein (Futurism, Suprematism). All these examples used language in a traditional way, as the root word for each movement was - and remains understandable and, in some measure, appropriate. qualitatively different from these instances.

"Proun" is

It can even be

distinguished from cases that seem initially closer in spirit.

"Dada," for example, while at one level a nonsensi­

cal neologism, was clearly a word chosen for its associa­ tions with child-like speech and themes. Even "M e r z ," the concept invented at almost exactly the same time by Lis­ sitzky's later friend and collaborator, Kurt Schwitters,

is

a syllable with specific, non-esoteric meaning in the German

creator is individual), as well as in a language that does not have a definite meaning (is not frozen), that is transrational. A common language is binding; a free one allows more complete expression..." (quoted from Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist M o m e n t . Avant-Garde. Avant-Guerre and the Rupture of Language [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986], p. 121, as part of a valuable analysis of the Russian Futurists' theory and practice - to which Lissitzky was to some extent an heir - of destabilizing the relationship of word to image, and of both to the world). The best introduction to this radical literary culture is Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism. A History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).

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37 language (unlike "Proun" in any language); moreover, unlike Lissitzky, the German artist did openly publish an explana­ tion for the origins and source of the word.2 Although Lissitzky's "Proun" concept preserved its autonomy and self-sufficiency with remarkable and unique effectiveness, it too, of course, has roots and derivations which subsequent scholarship has identified. A consensus now exists that the word is an acronymic composite of the Rus­ sian phrase,

"Project for the Affirmation of the New."3 The

circumstances surrounding the coining of that phrase and its declamatory contraction into "Proun" need to be recounted, not for the sake of archaeological precision alone, but rather because the process by which the "Proun" concept was born (as a way of suppressing linguistic signification of a conventional kind) parallels the evolution of the abstract compositions to which the term came to be applied. Lis­ sitzky's new visual images themselves also attempted to sup­ press or subvert referentiality. In this, Lissitzky's production can be seen as part the larger thrust of avant-

2.

Cf. John Elderfield Kurt Schwitters (New York and London; Thames and Hudson, 1985), pp. 12-13. In this, the accuracy and helpfulness of this explanation is not relevant to the main point, i.e. that a plausible explanation was offered at all.

3.

See Alan C. Birnholz, El Lissitzky. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1973, p. 70 and n. 1. See also the remarks on the meaning of the word by Henk Puts, "El Lissitzky (1890-1941): His Life and Work," in Eindhoven 1990, p. 15.

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38 garde culture of the period, to complicate the status of the sign in both verbal and visual representations. In particular, Lissitzky's works problematized the sub­ ject of architecture. This point of reference not only focussed attention on the problem of how a two-dimensional rendering could and should refer to a material reality (a potential object in three dimensions) but it also engaged with a field of activity - architecture, building, construc­ tion - with more or less direct social and political implications. The "building of a new world" was more than a rhetorical or metaphorical undertaking in Russia after the First World War and the 1917 Revolutions. An adequate accounting of these works in light of their invocation of the discourse of architecture, necessitates a description of the tension-filled balance between their "iconography"

(the

consistent reference to external meanings of various kinds, including the practical and the political) and their denial or evasion of any such limiting figuration. This chapter will elaborate the traces of this problem through the first two phases, or aspects, of Lissitzky's career. First, in the "pre-Proun" period in Vitebsk, when the engagement with architectural reference was most explicit; and then, the introduction of the Proun concept itself, in the milieu of the Moscow avant-garde's debates

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39 concerning the proper relationship of creativity to reality in a post-revolutionary situation.4

a) Lissitzky before Proun:

1919 and 1920

Central to an understanding of the theory and practice of Proun is the fact that the concept was invented by the artist at least a year after he began to produce abstract works under the influence of Kazimir Malevich,

i.e. at least

a year after the careers of these two artists crossed at the Vitebsk art school in autumn 1919. Between this time and spring 1921, the concept of Proun does not appear in any published or unpublished form that has hitherto come to light.5 Before the introduction of Proun, it was architec­ 4.

Of course, architecture in its technical and social ramifications was not the only point of reference for Lissitzky's abstract works. Especially in the later years (after 1921 and the move to Western Europe), there is a noticeable expansion of the range of allusion to include the human figure and various branches of the natural or mathematical sciences. These will be dealt with in the following chapter. A consistent point of reference was also provided by the relationship of the Prouns to the work of other artists.

5.

Two circumstances have obscured this point. Firstly, Lissitzky's habit of giving to many of the works now known under Proun titles the date "1919," the date of his first commitment to Suprematism (and, indeed, the date of execution of at least some of his abstract works). In this, he is following the common avant-garde practice of preferring the date of origin of a style or notion, to the actual date of making a work. Secondly, the influential monograph on Lissitzky published by his widow in 1967 (and in many subsequent editions and translations) erroneously quoted a passage including the Proun concept from a 1921 lecture, as if it were part of a letter written by Lissitzky to Malevich in 1919 (Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 15, which conflates and

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40 ture, conceived both broadly as a system of structures, and narrowly as an array of building types and projects, which formed the primary point of reference for Lissitzky7s work. Many, if not most, of the paintings and drawings of the period 1919 to early 1921 will be found, in the discussion below, to have some form of architectural imagery and implications. The social and political situation of Russia in the throes of a Civil War over the fate of the Bolshevik Revolution gave to these architectural allusions, themes, and titles a special resonance. Just as it will be crucial to consider the various ways in which the social art of architecture provided the thematic point of reference for these works, so too is it important to investigate the man­ ner in which Lissitzky brought his architectural training and interest with him to Vitebsk before Malevich arrived, and then to see how this interest resonated with Malevich's own idiosyncratic program for the utopian reconstruction of the world. Only then will the status of the abstract works "before Proun" become clearer.

garbles two articles by Szymon Bojko, "Sztuka rewolucji," Wiedza i zvcie. Organ towarzystwa wiedzy powszechnei. vol. XXIII no. 10 (October 1956), pp. 680687 and "El Lisicki," Fotoqrafia [Warsaw], vol. XI no. 11 [November 1963], pp. 262-266). These two factors have even misled scholars into believing that Malevich derived the name for his artists' collective, Unovis, (as described below) from Lissitzky's concept of Proun, thus reversing the actual sequence. See, for example, Susan P. Compton, Kazimir Malevich; A Study of the Paintings, 1910-1935, Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1982, p. 223.

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41 Malevich's arrival in Vitebsk marked a pivotal caesura in Lissitzky7s career. Malevich was the catalyst for Lis­ sitzky7s "conversion" to geometric abstraction and to a con­ ception of art that involved far more radical transforma­ tions of creativity and society than could ever be inferred from his works up to that point. The presence of Malevich and the resulting upheavals at the Vitebsk school form the ineluctable context for much of Lissitzky7s subsequent career (and especially for the aesthetic and conceptual development of Proun). Though the documentary record is sparse, the circumstances of Lissitzky7s early months in Vitebsk are decisive. In late July 1922, as one of series of statements by leftist visual arts groups published for a proposed con­ ference to discuss a united organization, a brief history of the Vitebsk school appeared in the journal Ermitazh. Over­ looked in the current literature, it is a prime source for understanding the creative atmosphere surrounding Malevich's so-called "Unovis" group within the school.6 6.

Ermitazh. no. 10 (18-24 July 1922), pp. 3-4. This article, and the others in the series of statements, were published at a time of deep uncertainty and some rivalry amongst the radical artists' groups, confronted in the "reactionary" cultural climate of the New Economic Policy by the perceived necessity of forming a united front to preserve something of the revolutionary elan and radical agenda which had been so prominent in the "heroic years" of the Revolution and Civil War. Each grouping was concerned to establish its vitality and legitimacy. This contemporary account can now be expanded and corrected using three important articles by Aleksandra Shatskikh: "K. Malevich v Vitebske," Iskuss t v o . no. 11 (November 1988), pp. 38-43; "Chagall und Malewitsch in Witebsk," in Marc Chagall. Die russischen

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42 How Unovism Emerged In 1919 in the town of Vitebsk, State Arts Studios were opened with the participation and under the leadership of painters of the left and the right. At the head of the leftists there were: the individualist Chagall, Yermolaeva, N. 0. Kogan, I. Puni, K. Boguslavskaya, L. M. Lissitzky and N. I. Lyubavina. On the right, there were Academician Pen and the sculptor Yakerson. On the 5 November of the same year, on the insistence of the leftist leaders and the young, Kazimir Malevich was called from Moscow. Regardless of the protests of Chagall - Malevich came. The youth were enthused by his presence, began to form groups, to organize and to lead agitation, declaring themselves the followers of the new art - in short, "Posnovists.11 In this group there emerged above all Lev Yudin and Osip Berenshtein. Older colleagues also turned towards the youth. A campaign against Malevich was waged by Academician Pen and Chagall, who defended the individual studios. But as time went on, students increasingly preferred that the program, under the Posnovis banner, as elaborated by Malevich, be taught in all studios, in opposition to the programs of the individual studios. This was achieved and Chagall left for Moscow. His students dissolved into the general collective. Pen united the academic group around himself, but it was unimportant and had no influence. After the "Posnovists" had finally strengthened their positions in the art studios, they crossed into the town. Having called a general meeting, the "Posnovists" decided to rename the organization "Unovis," i.e. the party with the goals of affirming the new art. An "Unovis" central committee and creative committee were elected.

Jahre, 1906-1922. exh. cat. (Frankfurt am Main: Schirn Kunsthalle, 1991), pp. 62-65; and "Unovis: Epicenter of a New World," in The Great Uto p i a . The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde. 1915-1932 r exh. cat. (New York: Gug­ genheim Museum, 1992), pp. 53-64.

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43 Agitational-organizational work was entrusted to the central committee, and ideological and productional work to the creative committee. Members of the central committee were: K. Malevich, L. Lissitzky, Yermolaeva, Kogan, Chashnin [sic, i.e. Chashnik] and Chazakel [sic, i.e. Khidekel], At this meeting the first "Unovis" slogans were promul­ gated : "May the overthrow of the old world be imprinted on your p a l m s ." "We affirm suprematism as the new constructivity of the forms of the world." At lectures and meetings, the "Unovists" defended their ideology and right to production tooth and nail. The leaders of the popular education departments and the art-workers union tried everything to discredit K. Malevich and his group, but in the end the "Unovists" encountered sympathy and the entire town was hung with new signs, the trams were redecorated in new colored forms, on which slogans were written. Factories and workshops were decorated, banners were made. "Unovists" joined tailoring and sewing organizations. Workers inspected sketches with curiosity and hurled questions, whereby they understood the answers better than, for example, their head cutter from Warsaw. On the day of one of the proletarian demonstrations, when almost all the banners had been made by "Unovists" and the town and main theater had been decorated in the style of "Suprematism," the workers gave an ovation to Malevich's revolutionary group. The question arose of transcending the town boundaries with the goal of widening the sphere of activity. K. Malevich, Lissitzky and other members of the central committee made their way to other towns of the Republic with the aim of agitation and propaganda. "Unovism" had success, and "Unovis" organizations were established in Moscow, Petrograd, Smolensk, Samara, Saratov, Perm, Kaluga and Borisov. Lissitzky's role in the dramatic events described here was undoubtedly a major one. Not only did he participate in

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44 major decisions concerning the direction of the school, but he also came personally to symbolize the struggle through his change of allegiance from Chagall to Malevich in the course of autumn 1919. At the age of 28, Lissitzky had been called to Vitebsk in summer 1919 by Chagall, presumably on the basis of their shared interest in the revival of Jewish culture which had been proceeding apace for previous five years or more. Before moving to Vitebsk, he had been in Kiev, working with the autonomous Jewish cultural organization, the Kultur-Lige (see Typ. Cat. 1919/1) and for the short-lived Bolshevik government.7 He had also produced a number of illustrations 7.

Lissitzky's Work Service Record ("Trudovoi spisok," an official state document prepared in 1930 and now in a private archive) records his work for the art department of the Kiev Soviet of Workers' Deputies in 1919, attested by a Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) document of 26 May 1919 (perhaps issued on his resigna­ tion to move to V i t e b s k ) . One recent scholar has asserted that, during this time in Kiev, Lissitzky, Ehrenburg, Mandelshtam and others, held high positions in the "National Department of Education of the USSR," i.e., presumably, Narkompros. See Dmitri Gorbachev, "Bohomazov's Cubo-Futurism," in Ukraiinska Avancrarda. 1910-1930, exh. cat. (Zagreb: Musej suvremene utmjetnosti, 1990), p. 182. This publication gives detailed information on the cultural ferment in Kiev in this period, especially on the activities of Aleksandra Exter and her studio. It should be supplemented by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, e d . , Avant-Garde and Ukraine (Munich: Klinkhard and Biermann, 1993), which specifically argues for an influence from Exter on Lissitzky's Khad Gadya portfolio cover (Typ. Cat. 1919/1), and on an unsigned painting attributed to Lissitzky, now in the State Museum of Ukrainian Art in Kiev (Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, "The Avant-Garde and the Ukraine," pp. 13-40, at pp. 3031). On this latter attribution (unproven, in my view), see also Alexander Kanzedakis, "Ein unbekanntes Bild von Lissitzky," in Die arosse U t o p i e . Die russische AvantGarde , 1915-1932, exh. cat. (Frankfurt am Main: Schirn Kunsthalle, 1992), p. 77.

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45 for Jewish children's books (Typ. Cat. 1919/1-8).

In addi­

tion, Lissitzky could offer his training and work experience as an architect-engineer. He had studied at the Darmstadt Technical University from 1910 to 1914, and had then com­ pleted his studies at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, which had been evacuated during the First World War to Moscow. He received his diploma on 27 April 1918. His practical experience included working as a bricklayer on a workers' housing development in Darmstadt from April to July 1911, as a draftsman in Brachman's St Petersburg office in 1912 (apparently from March to October), and as an assistant in B. M. Velikovskii's architectural practice in Moscow from April to November 1916.8 This mix of exposure to the prac­ ticalities of the design of books and buildings made Lis­ sitzky an ideal candidate to lead the new Workshops for Graphic Art, Printing and Architecture. Indeed, this curious combination of specialties seems tailor-made for his qualifications. His appointment to this position was

8.

Although it is usually written that Lissitzky began at the Darmstadt school in 1909, official German residence documents exhibited in the exhibition El Lissitzky. Konstrukteur. Den k e r . Pfeifenraucher. Kommunist at the Matildenhohe Darmstadt in 1991 indicate that he had been in Germany since 1908 and arrived in Darmstadt in 1910, as do some of his autobiographical statements (such as the one from ca. 1925 [TsGALI 2361/1/58/9-11]). His diploma from the Riga Institute is preserved in TsGALI (2361/1/53/1). Details about his work experience are drawn from the entries in his Work Service Record. Travel and other activities may have interrupted his actual employment.

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46 announced in the local newspaper on 16 July 1919.9 It appears that Lissitzky was part of a concerted effort mounted by certain teachers at the school to persuade Malevich to join the teaching staff.10 When Malevich did arrive in early November, Lissitzky quickly became a firm member of the Suprematist's camp, leading to a bitter estrangement from Chagall, who finally did leave Vitebsk for Moscow in May 1920.11 Chagall may have initially seen Lissitzky as an ally, given their shared enthusiasm for the revival of a Jewish folk culture and for the combination of traditional motifs with Cubist-inflected stylistic devices. Nevertheless, Lis­ sitzky 's

statements from summer 1919 in fact give no

evidence of a commitment to incorporating any aspect of the so-called "Jewish revival" into the curriculum at Vitebsk. Actually, Lissitzky adopted essentially the opposite approach,

invoking the universalism of architectural train­

9.

As quoted in Wassili I. Rakitin, Proune," in Halle 1982, p. 18.

"iiber Lissitzkys

10.

This is argued, for example, by Shatskikh, "K. Malevich" and others. Certainly, we have evidence that Lissitzky was writing to Malevich about his ideas on book design already in mid-September 1919. A letter of 12 September 1919, quoted in Nikolai Khardzhiev, "El Lisitskii - konstruktor knigi," Iskusstvo kniqi 3.: 19581960 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1962), p. 154, argues that all the visual aspects of a book, including words, letters, punctuation marks and line-length, should be studied for their design potential.

11.

See Susan P. Compton, Chagall exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1985), p. 40, and Mark C h a g a l l . Die russischen Jahre.

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47 ing as the basis for an education which would reflect the transcendence of capitalist specialization achieved by Com­ munism. 12 In July, Lissitzky announced that he intended to give his students "the opportunity to become acquainted with the fundamental methods and systems of architecture and to learn how to express their own architectural ideas in drawing and in three dimensions (through working with models)."13 This curricular intention, though unadventurous in itself, is the first clear evidence of Lissitzky moving on from Jewish and folkloric concerns and returning to his architectural train­ ing. One month later, Lissitzky published his first major essay, entitled "The New Culture," intended as a program­ matic statement for the workshops which he now headed.

12.

13.

In his stimulating study of Chagall's use of words and language in his art, Benjamin Harshav concludes by stressing the "polyphonic" nature of Chagall's work, its richly anti-essentialist layering of references to a Yiddish culture (personal, peripheral) and to the prevalent formal experimentation of international modernist art ("The Role of Language in Modern Art: On Texts and Subtexts in Chagall's Paintings," Modernism/Modernity. vol. 1 no. 2 [1994], pp. 51-87. I thank Romy Golan for bringing this article to my atten­ tion) . Lissitzky does not pursue this path of heterogeneity, but opts instead for an art that, at least publicly, rejects this kind of local "thick knowledge" and private allusion. As further discussed in Chapter III, this difference is played out especially in the treatment of texts within paintings, which Chagall exploits and Lissitzky (unlike some of his Jewish con­ temporaries, such as Natan Altman) avoids. Rakitin,

"Uber Lissitzkys Proune," p. 18

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48 Although focussed primarily on his ideas about the book, the essay unequivocally places architecture and architectural thinking ("tectonics") at the top of the agenda, with no mention whatsoever of promoting a national, ethnically based Jewish culture. As this revealing article has never been reprinted, translated from the Russian or discussed in the secondary literature, it is worth translating here in full.14

The New Culture The capitalist system turned man into a narrow specialist. The communist system of social life creates a new man from a small insignificant cog in the machine, he trans­ forms himself into its captain, its helmsman. The same will also occur in art. Artists were divided into various categories: monumen­ tal, easel, decorative, applied, printmakers, illustrators etc. etc. They were taught, more or less well, to make things skillfully within their speciality, they were sat on wheels, placed on the tracks and off they went. But there was no thought of cultivating their living spirit and fertilizing their creative will. We must now find a completely new path of artistic education. It must be found in a studio where the master and his apprentices in close contact and persistent common work want one and the same thing - absolutely free effort, called forth by nothing but the pressure of creative intuition, to find the form for self-imposed tasks. To be fruitful, this work must have a certain system. The workers' spirit must be versatile, broad and deep. 14.

Lazar' Lisitskii, "Novaya kul'tura," Shkola i revolvutsyia (Vitebsk), nos. 24-25 (16 August 1919), p. 11.

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49 Acquaintance with the fundamental principles of architecture will help this. Tectonics (the art of bringing order, expediency and rhythm to chaos) serves as the foundation of all the arts. This work will be those mathematical exercises, problem solving which already in school promoted the development of flexibility of mind and breadth of perception. Now we come to one of the concrete tasks of contemporary artistic creativity: book-making. We certainly do not now have a book as a form cor­ responding to its content. But surely the book is now everything. It has become in our time what the cathedral with its frescoes and stained glass (colored windows) used to be, what the palaces and museums, where people went to look and learn, used to be. The book has become the monument of the present, but in contrast to the old monumental art, it itself goes to the people, and does not stand like a cathedral in one place, waiting for someone to approach. And now the book expects from the contemporary artist that he makes of it this monument of the future. He must take upon himself this work, and here he will be forced to set aside his old instruments, his quill pens, brushes, little palettes and take up chisel, burin, the lead army of the type-case, the rotary press. And then all this will obediently begin to turn in his hands and will give birth to a work not in one copy, not a unique object for the enjoyment of the patron, but thousands and thousands of identical originals for all: whosoever thirsts, he shall be satisfied. These are some of the tasks which the newly-opened Studios of Architecture and Graphics of the Vitebsk State Free Art Studios set themselves.

"The New Culture" is important evidence of Lissitzky's thinking on the eve of the momentous change represented by his "conversion" to Suprematism.

In content and in style, it

shows no sign whatsoever of allegiance to, or influence from, Malevich and Suprematism. In this, it is important

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50 negative evidence against the assertion made by some scholars that Lissitzky had had a significant encounter with Suprematism, before his arrival in Vitebsk.

In making this

case, it is often argued that Lissitzky visited the Tenth State Exhibition in Moscow, devoted to "Non-objective Creativity and Suprematism.1,15 This exhibition in fact opened on 27 April 1919.16 Lissitzky, who was presumably still living in Kiev at the time, may well have visited the exhibition, especially if he attended the first All-Russian Conference of Art Workers held in Moscow in early May.17

15.

This has often been asserted, for example, by Vassili Rakitin in various articles about this period in Lis­ sitzky7s career.

16.

This can now be established by the announcement in Izvestiya. 27 April 1919, p. 4. Hitherto, the exhibition has been said by scholars to have been held at times ranging from late 1918 to Spring 1919. Most influential has been the erroneous date January 1919, given in John E. Bowlt, ed. Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism, revised and enlarged edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), p. 138. The same issue of Izvestiva also announced the simultaneous opening of five other State Exhibitions, whose variety of orientation and medium is some evidence that the avant-garde, as now understood, was not much privileged by the state art bureaucracy, even at this early stage: the Seventh (works by students of the Free State Crafts Studios), the Eighth (Unjuried), the Ninth (Naturalist and Realist tendencies), the Eleventh (works by members of the Union of Workers in Applied Arts and Crafts), and the Twelfth ("Tsvetodinamos" [color dynamism] and Tectonic Primitivism).

17.

Lissitzky7s Work Service Record indicates that he joined the Art Workers7 Union in Kiev on 7 March 1919. He then rejoined the Union (this time the Moscow branch of the All-Russian organization) on his return from Europe in the mid-1920s. The exact date of this re­ joining is not clear in the Work Service Record, but is probably 16 August 1925.

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51 However, there is no evidence that the exhibition or some other exposure to Malevich's painting had a profound effect on his visual or theoretical thinking at the time. This point is reinforced by the fact that "The New Cul­ ture" is more immediately practical, indeed even tradi­ tional, than anything Malevich would have written at this time. Understandably it deals with issues of art education, stressing the need for a new universality which would dis­ pense with old-fashioned specialization, much as Communism, in Lissitzky's rather perfunctory opening reference to the new social order, overcomes the division of labor, senti­ ments that go back to Marx's The German Ideology. A surpris­ ing but actually not uncommon characteristic of all Lis­ sitzky' s writings is exemplified by his use of a mechanical metaphor for the bad (specialists as trains on fixed tracks) in contrast to an organic one for the good (where vital creativity is "cultivated" and "fertilized").18 This focus on universality (and the concomitant need for versatility and flexibility) reflected Lissitzky's own crea­ tive practice. By 1919, he had already been active in almost all the fields which would later characterize his achieve­ ment: painting, printmaking, architecture, illustration, book design.

Indeed, it would make sense to argue that Lis-

sitzky's "conversion" to non-objective art was facilitated

18.

This under-studied aspect of Lissitzky's thinking is treated extensively in Chapter II.

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52 by Malevich's elaboration of a creative method and philosophy with the potential of fully unifying these dis­ parate fields. Thus, it is significant that Lissitzky not only highlighted the universality of unfettered "creative intuition,1119 but also introduced two further types of universalism into his text: architecture as the universal foundation of all the arts (tectonics as bringing order, efficiency and rhythm to all creative activity), and the book as "everything," the modern form replacing cathedrals, frescoes, stained glass, museums, and so on. A good half of the text is devoted to the "concrete task" of book-making. Lissitzky first described the book as the "monument of the present," comparing it in function to monumental architecture of the past.20 However, Lissitzky emphasizes three further features of the book: that it is educational, that it is mobile, and that it is infinitely reproducible.

19.

The article's stress on unconstrained creativity meshes well with the Free State Studios' desire to work with little or no outside interference, not least from the state. This aspect of the Moscow institution presumably also characterized the Vitebsk branch. Cf. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 109-112.

20.

It was, of course, one of Lissitzky most fruitful later design decisions to treat the book as a built object, as a piece of architecture, notably in his "constructing" of Vladimir Mayakovsky's For the Voice (Typ. Cat. 1923/3), aspects of which are discussed below in Chapter III. The notion that printing will supersede the cathedral goes back, of course, to the dictum that "the book will kill the edifice" in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (1837).

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53 Given the context of this article and Lissitzky pedagogical inclinations,

it is not surprising that he

should bring out the potential of the book as a place to "look and learn". However, when he states the obvious and underlines the static nature of the cathedral in contrast to the "dynamic" mobility of the book, readers are alerted to the extent to which movement and change, whether literal, potential or metaphorical, will form a recurrent theme in Lissitzky's work, from two-dimensional compositions taut with implicit dynamism, through rotatable paintings and variable exhibition spaces, to stage sets with moving props and apartments with mobile walls. Not only can the pages of a book be moved (and change thereby experienced), the book itself was movable. This form of rather literal interpretation of conceptual and abstract concerns is also typical for Lissitzky.

In his

penultimate paragraph, where he finally seems about to des­ cribe the kind of book, the "monument of the future," which his students will be educated to produce, Lissitzky resorts to an affirmation of the guantitative: mass-production of books can replace elite consumption. Certainly, this simple, statistical goal is given a much deeper resonance by the Biblical language of thirsting and satisfaction in the clos­ ing words of that paragraph - reminiscent of, say, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall be filled"

(Matthew 5:3) - but Lissitzky is

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for

54 clearly reluctant to divulge in any detail the ways in which he expects the new book to have a form corresponding to its content. He simply calls on artists to abandon the tools of drawing and painting in favor of reproductive tools and technologies (which, unsurprisingly, will "give birth to" a w o r k ). This orientation towards the testing of approaches through actual work (rather than through theory), this repeated recourse to the future tense for his verbs, indeed, this overall tentativeness surely give a hint of the void in Lissitzky's system which Malevich and his teaching would soon fill so productively. Nevertheless,

it is his firm,

decisive invocation of "tectonics" and "architecture"

(as

overarching systems) which lie at the core of this program­ matic declaration, and they provide the leitmotif for Lis­ sitzky 's creative activity under the impact of Malevich. Having traversed most of the internationally current avant-garde styles, from Impressionism through "Primitivism" and Cubism, Malevich had himself made a radical leap into total abstraction, exhibiting thirty-nine wholly nonrepresentational canvasses at a Petrograd exhibition at the end of 1915.21 In the subsequent four years, Malevich had 21.

The fullest account of this exhibition is given by Charlotte Douglas, "0.10 Exhibition" in The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930. New Perspectives. exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum, 1980), pp. 34-40. The literature on Malevich's art is now vast. Detailed discussions may be found in Troels Andersen, Malevich. Catalogue Raisonne of the Berlin Exhibition 1 9 2 7 . including the Collection in the Stedeliik Museum Amster­ dam . with a General Introduction to His Work (Amsterdam:

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55 elaborated a "system" of abstract art, based on twodimensional, predominantly straight-edged, colored forms deployed intuitively over a neutral white ground. His can­ vasses' dynamically arranged squares and rectangles seemed to float in infinite, cosmic space, emblems of pure energies and spiritual dimensions beyond earthly matter. Malevich's method was not restrictive: diagonals, curves, overlappings, single elements and, significantly, even some literary allu­ sion could all be accommodated, as were most of the colors of the spectrum. This mode of painting Malevich dubbed Suprematism, as it built, he claimed, on the supremacy of pure feeling. This was feeling not in the sense of emotion, but as sensation, the sensation of "the world as non-objectivity"

(the title

of one of his major theoretical treatises), which Malevich saw as the only true world. The power of this intransigent and wholly unprecedented painting, allied to Malevich's strong personality and pen­ chant for extensive (and poetic) theorizing, quickly won

Stedelijk Museum, 1970); Larissa A. Shadowa, Suche und Experiment. Aus der Geschichte der russischen und sowietischen Kunst zwischen 1919-1930 (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1978); Sherwin Simmons, Kasimir Malevich's "Black Square" and the Genesis of Suprematism. 1907-1915 (New York and London: Garland, 1981); Charlotte Douglas, Swans of Other W o rlds: Kazimir Malevich and the Origins of Abstraction in Russia (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1981) and Kazimir Malevich. 1878-1935. exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, 1990).

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56 Suprematism adherents among the Moscow avant-garde. Suprematism,

it seemed, had brought traditional painting to

an end-point, dealing it the death-blow symbolically represented by Malevich's canonic painting, the "Black Square.11 Art had been resurrected into a new world of pure sensation beyond material objects and their representations, a world where everything, including consciousness, would be restructured. By 1919, Malevich had not only tested his new painting to the limit (by exhibiting a series of "White on White" canvasses), but he had also begun to draw out the implica­ tions of his 'discovery' for other creative fields. He had started both to codify a teachable program and to apply Suprematism to other branches of the arts (and, through them, to the world as a whole).22 This especially concerned architecture. The insistent fact of the 1917 revolutions and the ensu­ ing Civil War had created new pressures on artists. The social and political upheaval not only allowed many individual artists to take positions in the new cultural bureaucracy as replacements for the Tsarist officials, but it also implied some new role for art, one that would be

22.

See, for example, the curriculum he worked out for the Moscow Free State Art Studios, dated 15 September 1919 (i.e. on the very eve of the decision to move to Vi t e b s k ) , as translated and discussed in Charlotte Douglas, "Malevich the Organizer," Soviet Union/Union Sovietique. vol. 5 prt. 2 (1978), pp. 146-148.

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57 appropriate to the new (and revolutionary) state. In administration,

it was, broadly speaking, only the more

radical, "leftist" artists who were prepared to offer their services to the new government after the October Revolution. This circumstance gave them the opportunity and the responsibility to conduct a debate this new role. Especially in the pages of the weekly journal Iskusstvo kommuny ("Art of the Commune") from late 1918 to Spring 1919, contributors such as Osip Brik, Nikolai Punin, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Boris Kushner argued over "such fundamental issues as the nature of proletarian art, the role of art in a socialist society, and whether art itself was not an essentially bourgeois phenomenon."23 Although the Communist Party itself and many of the government functionaries had more immediately pressing military and political crises to over­ come and were therefore not at first closely concerned with such matters, the future of art was hotly debated among the artists themselves. Understandably, a common theme was the question of the utility of that art, the purported need to make creative activity serve a useful purpose, either in the

23.

Christina Lodder, "Constructivism and Productivism in the 1920s," in Art into L i f e : Russian Constructivism. 1914-1932. exh. cat. (New York: Rizzoli, for the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, 1990), p. 99. To these issues can be added such questions as the role of museums, the definition of cultural work and its appropriate compensation in a socialist state, and the status of the cultural heritage. It should be stressed that the range of opinions expressed on these topics in the period immediately after the Revolution was very wide.s

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58 short-term defense of the threatened Revolution or, more fundamentally,

in the long-term service of society. Much of

the thinking about this issue was focussed on the question of "art and production," that is, the relationship of visual creativity to the industrial processes (obviously privileged by Marxist theory and, where possible, by Bolshevik prac­ tice) . Architecture, as the most obviously functional of the arts, also acquired a privileged position through these debates, both as a metaphor for the needed construction of an ideal society and as a practice that would contribute real and useful things to the world. Throughout Europe, the years after the end of the First World War saw a broad turn towards the deployment of crea­ tive energies in the construction or reconstruction of society. Many artists came to see the collective and useful art of architecture as the most powerful model for their work, even if economic conditions (and the desire for untramelled creative inventiveness) dictated that that work would be in the realm of "paper architecture" and utopian dreams. In Germany, such thinking is best represented by the visionary architects and artists associated in 1918-1920 with Bruno Taut, who "had insisted that architecture was the natural leader of the plastic arts and concluded from this that artistic and ultimately social regeneration could but

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59 be achieved under the aegis and guidance of a new architec­ ture. "24 In Russia, an equivalent phenomenon in 1919-1920 was the short-lived association of painters, architects, and sculptors (called "Zhivskul'ptarkh," from the first syll­ ables of each profession, and associated with the Com­ missariat of the Enlightenment [Narkompros]), who strove for a synthesis of these activities in a series of theoretical discussions and in inventive,

"expressionist" designs, full

of romantic symbolism. Significantly, these experiments con­ cerned such projects as a "house of the commune," a "meeting-house of the peoples," or agitational kiosks.25 24.

Iain Boyd Whyte, ed. and trans., The Crystal C h a i n . Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle (Cambridge, Mass.: 'the MIT Press, 1985), p. 1

25.

The history of "Zhivskul'ptarkh" is brief and intense. It began in May 1919 as a Committee on Questions of Synthesis of Sculpture and Architecture, adding paint­ ing to its name in late 1919, when Alexander Rodchenko and another painter joined. Its work continued until autumn 1920, when it was dissolved. Many members joined then the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk), which pursued many of the same questions, if in a different spirit. The foremost historian of this grouping is S. O. Khan-Magomedov. See, for example, his "Pervaya novaya tvorcheskaya organizatsiya sovetskoi arkhitektury (sinskul'ptarkh-zhivskul'ptarkh, 1919-1920gg)," in Problemy istorii sovetskoi arkhitektury. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov vol. 2 (1976), pp. 5-9, and, for the illustrations, his "Bedingungen und Besonderheiten in der Entstehung der Avantgarde in der sowjetischen Architektur," in Avantgarde 1900-1923. Russisch-sowietische Architekturf exh. cat. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, for the Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, 1991), pp. 18-20, and figs. 298-329. Just as the "expressionist" thinking about architecture characteristic of Bruno Taut and his friends Adolf Behne and Walter Gropius deeply informed and influenced the conception of the Weimar Bauhaus, so too did much of the experimentation of "Zhivskul'ptarkh" relate to the later work of Inkhuk and the Moscow Higher

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60 In this context, the extension of Suprematism into three-dimensions constituted Malevich's response to this current debate. Not necessarily a capitulation to external demands for a socially responsible art, architectural Suprematism had surely always been a possibility for an art that had implicitly envisaged universal transformation. Indeed, Malevich was able to point to one painting in the 1915 exhibition which had included a three-dimensional bar element as the source of architectural Suprematism. This work had then been illustrated in 1919, at a time when Malevich was also publishing articles about architecture.26 Lissitzky, with his architectural training and sensibility, was able to develop aspects of Malevich's art and thought in a way that at least reduced the incongruence between a

Artistic-Technical Studios ("Vkhutemas"), founded in 1920. 26.

For the most comprehensive overview and documentation of Malevich's work in, and writing on, the threedimensional, see the essays, illustrations and bibliography in Jean-Hubert Martin, e d . , Malevitch. Oeuvres de Casimir Severinovitch Malevitch (1878-19351 (Paris: Centre George Pompidou, Musde national d'art moderne, 1980). Important for acknowledging the roots of Malevich's conception is the article by Evgenii Kovtun, "The Beginning of Suprematism," in From Surface to Space. Russia 1916-1924. exh. cat. (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1974), pp. 32-47. Malevich's own so-called "architectons," models of an ideal, interplanetary, "abstract" architecture, date primarily from the mid1920s, and are more likely to be the partial result of Lissitzky's influence on Malevich, rather than vice versa.

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61 visionary abstract art and the imperatives of practical work.27 Malevich himself acknowledged this role in the text for the collection of lithographs documenting his work, Suprematism. 34 Drawings. Towards the end of the introduc­ tion which he wrote in mid-December 1920, Malevich explains that he has had to be brief. Having established definite plans for the Suprematist system, I place the further development of architectural Suprematism in the hands of the young architects, in the broad sense of the word, for in this alone do I see an epoch with a new system of architecture.28 Beyond this general appeal to the next generation, which for Malevich in Vitebsk would surely have included Ilya Chashnik, Nikolai Suetin, Lazar Khidekel, Gustav Klutsis and other s , there has also survived an evocative exhortation from the older artist to Lissitzky personally. Twelve months before the publication of Suprematism. 34 Drawings. the Vitebsk printing workshops had issued On the New Systems in

27.

Of course, Lissitzky was not the only follower of Malevich to attempt this. Parallel investigations of the volumetric potential of Suprematism were carried out by artists such as II'ya Chashnik, Lazar' Khidekel, and, the best documented, Gustav Klutsis. For details on Klutsis, see Larissa Oginskaya, Gustav Klutsis (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1981) and Hubertus Gassner and Roland Nachtigaller, eds., Gustav Klucis. Retrospektive. exh. cat. (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, for the Museum Fridericianum Kassel, 1991).

28.

K. S. Malevich, Essays on Art, vol. 1 (1915-1928), ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968), pp. 127-128.

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62 Art (Typ. Cat. 1919/12). On one copy, Lissitzky pencilled a note to Malevich, asking him to annotate it with his com­ ments. This Malevich did, adding about ten manuscript nota­ tions to particular passages throughout the book. Of espe­ cial interest are the further inscriptions made by Malevich to the first page where Lissitzky had written his request. Malevich's remarks are dated 4 December 1919: With the appearance of this booklet, I greet you, Lazar Markovich. It will be the trace of my path and the beginning of our collective movement. From you I expect the clothing of constructions ["odezhd sooruzhenii"] for all who come along behind the innovators. Design the clothing such that one cannot sit in it for a long time, cannot get a petty bourgeois arse, does not get fat in its beauty.29 Although Malevich's own universalizing theory would seem to demand the abolition of the distinction between con­ tainers and the contained, he here calls on his acolyte to produce "clothing" for those members of the human race who are not part of the Suprematist avant-garde. These are people, presumably, who do not blaze the trail into the supremacy of pure feeling or sensation, but rather, those

29.

This copy of the booklet is in a private collection in Greece. See Malewitsch. Suetin. Tschaschnik. exh. cat. (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1992), cat. nos. 78 and 79, col. plate p. 120 and 121, and the commentary, with translation into German, by Wassili Rakitin, "Der biblische Anarchist Kasimir Malevich kommentiert seine Predigt Von den neuen Svstemen in der Kunst," pp. 247250.

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63 who follow on behind, tempted by indolence and corpulence.30 It is the job of Lissitzky's "clothing" to work against those temptations; Malevich is requesting that Lissitzky design activist environmental devices, not neutral con­ tainers. By assigning him responsibility for those who fol­ low the innovators, Malevich is also in some way recognizing the social function of applied design in reaching the unconverted.31 For these reasons,

it is appropriate for Malevich to

expect "clothing" from Lissitzky. What else is book and building design (Lissitzky's primary responsibilities at Vitebsk at this early stage) but the creation of "con­ tainers" for ideas and people? While Lissitzky may not have ever designed textile patterns (such as Malevich and several of his followers did) or clothing itself (as did Tatlin), he surely did fulfill Malevich's mandate to create "housing" (broadly defined) for those expected to enter the new

30.

The linking of passivity, obesity and the bourgeoisie was, unsurprisingly, a topos of radical thinking. Kandinsky invokes the same association (along with the color green) in On the Spiritual in Art (Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky; Complete Writ­ ings on Art [New York: Da Capo, 1994], p. 183).

31.

Another use by Malevich of the concept of "clothing" at this period helps to elucidate this. In a letter to the critic Paul Ettinger of 3 April 1920, Malevich wrote: "In a short while Suprematism will conquer and it will introduce new objects as clothing for the new meaning" (From Surface to S p a c e f p. 54 [translation modified]). In Malevich's radically "non-objective" world-view, meanings exist prior to and independent of "objects," which may, however, be used as containers or "clothing," to embody those meanings.

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64 Suprematist world.32 Moreover, whether a page layout, an architectural project, or, more generally, a composition existing under the Proun concept, Lissitzky's works are lean and dynamic: one cannot get fat, lazy or immobile when deal­ ing with them. A generic description of Lissitzky's abstract work (one that can apply to works produced both before and after the introduction of the Proun concept) must stress that they are visually very diverse.33 Broadly speaking, they are composi tions with several geometrical34 elements, both two and

32.

In fact, the metaphor of clothing associated with architecture remained important to Lissitzky, reemerging especially in the mid-1920s. In letters of 30 June 1924 and 6 September 1925, to the Dutch architect, J. J. P. Oud, Lissitzky refers to the house as a "machine to accommodate our body (like clothing)" and to his interest in the idea of a "short-term building, [kept] only as long as it is wearable, like a suit." Both letters (Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven) are reprinted in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 125-126 and 130-131, though the latter is there mis-dated.

33.

This description borrows from one which I first offered in 1987 (Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," in Cambridge 1987, pp. 18-19), which also first laid out some of the evidence for the following discussion about the relatively late introduction of the Proun concept, and about the architectural references which preceded it. While this interpretation has been quickly adopted by subsequent writers on Lissitzky, the full implica­ tions of the attempt to create a new image of architec­ ture have not been worked out.

34.

Here geometrical is understood in the casual sense, implying rectilinearity or regular curvature (as in hyperbolas and parabolas). Strictly speaking, many apparently irregular shapes can be geometrical. However, not any shape would have the desired associations with clarity, logic, cleanliness, order and truth evoked by the squares, rectangles, circles and straight lines of "geometrical abstraction," including Proun.

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65 three dimensional, dispersed across an uninflected ground in a manner that defies expectations of normal (or, indeed, possible) spatial relationships. Elements are arranged with little attention to the conventions of gravity, which has apparently been overcome (or at least countered by an equi­ valent upward force) in the infinite expanse of the image's world. Interlocking and interrelated forms disturb equi­ librium and 'curve' space; perspective devices distort the regularity of shapes, thereby creating the implication of potential movement. Contrasts of shape, scale and texture enhance these dynamic tensions. Though many works are built around three-dimensional, quasi-architectural elements (often rendered axonometrically3 5 ), some are painted entirely with flat planes.

Some

introduce collage elements (such as metal, cardboard and paper), others use conventional oils and watercolors.

Some

surprisingly simple and ordered works stand beside the larger number of highly complex,

'irrational' compositions.

Although the use of axonometry can create a space that extends equally in front of and behind the picture plane,

35.

For the importance to Lissitzky of axonometry as a particular way of depicting three-dimensions in two, see two articles by Yve-Alain Bois, "Lissitzky, Malevitch et la question de l'espace" in Suprematisme. exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Jean Chauvelin, 1977), pp. 29-46, and "Metamorphoses of Axonometry," in Het Nieuwe B o u w e n . De Nieuwe Beeldina in de architectur. De S t i i l . exh. cat. (Delft: Delft University Press, for Haags Geraeentemuseum, The Hague, 1983), pp. 146-156, also in an abridged version in Daidalos. Berlin Architectural Journal no. 1 (15 September 1981), pp. 40-58.

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66 the visual effect of Lissitzky's works emphasizes the space between that plane and the viewer more than the infinite extension of space into distance.36 Most are essentially relief compositions, with the pictorial structure built up (literally so, in the case of work with textured collage elements) on a ground which is anchored to the picture plane by one or more large, flat geometrical forms reaching to the edge of the support. The variety of strategies reflects the undogmatic, openended nature of their creator's search for images that would both reject the representationalism of traditional art and affirm the utopian hopes for a thoroughgoing revolution in the understanding of material, space and creative activity.

b) Picturing Architecture

Within these parameters, Lissitzky's earliest abstrac­ tions.. many of which we now know under titles incorporating the Proun concept, made central reference to architecture. The point can be made most effectively by considering the seven paintings visible in the documentary photograph of

36.

In this, the Prouns differ from Malevichian Suprematism and are closer to the shallow, tactile, projecting space of cubism, a style that Lissitzky certainly absorbed at least indirectly via Chagall, as some of his illustra­ tions for Jewish children's books show. The activation of the space between work of art and viewer was some­ thing Lissitzky admired in Tatlin's counter-reliefs.

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67 Lissitzky in his studio in Vitebsk, probably taken in mid1920 (fig. I).37 The painting of the easel is a large scale version of a watercolor which Lissitzky captioned "Arch."38 The elements of the composition are indeed configured so as to span the distance between the two parabolic forms entering the pic­ ture plane from the top and bottom margins. As the lower parabolic form contains within, or on itself a rectilinear block,

it would seem to be associated with construction and

37.

First published in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967 and 1980, p. 28 and reprinted in Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lis­ sitzky," p. 16, fig. 4. The date given here is derived from the following considerations. 1919 is surely too early a date for Lissitzky to have completed so many compositions in his new manner, given that Malevich only arrived in Vitebsk in November. Moreover, according to the listing in the catalogue, Lissitzky only showed Jewish graphics in the early December 1919 State Exhibi­ tion in Vitebsk (Rakitin, "Der biblische Anarchist," p. 250, n. 49). The photograph cannot have been taken later than August 1920, the date of acquisition by the state of one of the paintings on the wall (see note 57, b e l o w ) . It seems likely that this very official-looking photograph was taken at the end of the school year, in mid-1920.

38.

Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. no. RS 3763), now illustrated in Moscow 1990, cat. no. 79, p. 47. Another version of this watercolor was included in the Unovis Almanac, also with the caption "Arch," as documented in a photograph in the collection of Andrdi B. Nakov (fig. 2, and reproduced in Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lis­ sitzky,11 p. 21, fig. 10). It is not clear whether the reversed direction of the image in this photograph reflects the orientation of the watercolor in the Almanac, or results simply from a reversal of the nega­ tive. It is revealing that later versions of this com­ position, which then carry only "Proun" titles, omit several of the "arch" forms, thereby suppressing and stripping out the architectural allusion quite effec­ tively (Proun Inventory nos. 6 [fig. 3], 44 and 90).

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68 building, so that the arch of disparate, and precariously balanced forms, appears to reach from one "built up" area across the blank white (a public plaza? a street?) to the other side. A similar treatment of the issue of spanning an urban distance is seen in the painting immediately above the artist's head. This lost work is the painted version the composition known under the title "Bridge 1," as inscribed on a watercolor (fig. 4), in a manner identical to the inscription of the drawing "Arch," just described.39 Here the concatenation of rectilinear, interlocking forms thrusts diagonally from a solidly constructed and stable left pillar to a more delicate and spatially tense right pillar, across a lightly shaded, curved area, which fades into the white paper at the top of the composition and plausibly alludes to the liquid insubstantiality of a river.40 Immediately below "Bridge 1" is a third example of Lissitzky exploring the possibilities of redefining traditional

39.

See Lissitzky-Ktippers 1967 and 1980, pi. 22, and Nis­ bet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," p. 20, fig. 9 (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick). "Arch" and "Bridge 1" have virtually identical dimensions.

40.

Another drawing in Moscow carries a detailed inscrip­ tion explaining that it shows a proposal for a bridge across a river from a higher bank to a lower one (State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. no. RS 1950, illustrated in Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioniere der sowietischen Architektur [Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1983], fig. 26 and in Moscow 1990, cat. no. 220, ill. p. 107). This second "Bridge" may account for the presence of the "1" in the title of the work under discussion.

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69 architectural units. Again, the architectural reference in this painting (fig. 5) is attested by a watercolor version, this time with the inscription "House Above the Earth."41 This spatially coherent image can be read as a view of a building on the ground, seen from a low vantage point, with a larger (or closer?) building, composed of five or six solidly drawn and firmly connected rectilinear forms, hover­ ing above, perhaps having just left its tethering to a moor­ ing mast-like element at the left. The painting to the right of "House Above the Earth" reveals Lissitzky's interest in not merely investigating

41.

Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. no. RS 3768; 23.7 x 18 cm.) Cf. Proun Inventory nos. 12 and 57. In his 1918 article about architecture, Malevich had called for "flying houses" (Malevich, Essays on Art, vol. 1, p. 64). Also, one of Malevich's early Suprematist paintings was exhibited with the title "House Under Construction," perhaps a conscious reference to F. T. Marinetti's "The Birth of the Futurist Aesthetic" of 1915; "To a finished house we prefer the framework of a house in construction whose girders are the color of danger - landing plat­ forms for airplanes - with its numberless arms that claw and comb out stars and comets, its aerial quarterdecks from which the eye embraces a vaster horizon..../ The frame of the house in construction symbolizes our burn­ ing passion for the coming into being of things" (quoted in Perloff, Futurist M o m e n t . p. 102). To some extent, Lissitzky's play with the role of signification and referentiality in his abstract works, mirrors Malevich's practice, though the status of the latter's "illustrational" titles for his Suprematist paintings (such as "Painterly Realism. Boy with Knapsack - Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension" or "Airplane Flying") is not yet fully clarified. For a suggestive "iconographical" read­ ing of Suprematist collages of 1916 by 0 1 'ga Rozanova, made for Alexei Kruchenykh's Universal W a r , see Juliette R. Stapanian, "Universal War 'b' and the Development of Zaum': Abstraction toward a New Pictorial and Literary Realism," Slavic and East European J o urnal. vol. 29 no. 1 (1985), pp. 18-38.

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70 single architectural types, but in the problem of conceiving a new urbanism to accommodate these features. This painting presents Lissitzky's consistent image of the "town." The painting (fig. 6) was sold under this title to the Museum Bureau of Narkompros in August 1920, and it was subsequently exhibited and reproduced with this title.42 It is not hard to read this composition as the aerial view of a city, with buildings, plazas and arterial roads legible.43

42.

See Proun Inventory no. 56 and Appendix. In this case, the surviving watercolor version of the painting is not inscribed with the referential title, and may indeed be an unfinished work (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick, illustrated in Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," p. 20, fig. 8). Both watercolor and painting may now be conveniently compared in adjacent color illustrations in The Great Utop i a . pi. 205 and 207.

43.

The lithographed version of this composition was included in the 1921 Proun Portfolio. As with others discussed here, it carries a "Proun" title, though in this case, at least one impression of the lithograph has the additional graphite inscription "System of a City Square," (fig 20, also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, p. 84, pi. 21), which, while narrowing the frame of reference from the entire city to only one part of it, also widens the frame by stressing that Lissitzky is not illustrating a city square, but rather its "system" (presumably in the alluding to Malevich's use of the t e r m ) . The question of the specificity of reference is also raised by the case of two drawings from this early series which seem to carry the names of particular towns as their title (as it is unlikely that Lissitzky would inscribe the place of execution of a drawing of this kind). These are "Moscow" (fig. 7, also illustrated in Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," p. 21, fig. 11, [Basel, Kunstmuseum, Kupferstichkabinett]) and "Orenburg-Tevkelevo" (ex-collection Ella Winter, illustrated in Andrdi B. Nakov, The Suprematist Straight L i n e . Malev i c h . S u e t i n . Chashnik. Liss i t z k y . exh. cat. [London: Annely Juda Fine Art, 1977], no. 20, p. 70). I suggest that these works represent proposals for some kind of "Suprematist" reconfiguration of the town in question.

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71 It is the example of "Town" which best shows that Lis­ sitzky's compositions had, at this time, a relatively stable "iconography" consistent with the architectural references being stressed in this discussion. Lissitzky also used this configuration of forms, with slight variation, consistently when he needed to refer to urban centers. This occurs most notably in the famous propaganda board of late 1919 or early 1920 (fig. 8, Typ. Cat.

1920/2), with its slogan exhorting a

return to the factory workbenches. The Civil War and attendant disturbances had forced a large percentage of the urban population to disperse into the better-provisioned countryside, exacerbating the crisis in industrial produc­ tion to catastrophic levels. Government policy required an urgent re-urbanization, a theme that Lissitzky has rendered somewhat literally in his board with a diagonally placed arrow-like element pointing upwards towards the 'town' con­ figuration. 44 A similar point can be made about the con­ 44.

The best-known illustration of this board is a cropped photograph in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967 and 1980, pi. 42. Jan Tschichold's copy of the photograph (Basel, Kunstgewerbemuseum, inv. no. GS 108/i/19), identical or very close to that illustrated in Eindhoven 1990, cat. no. 74, p. 147 (in a private archive), shows more of the decorative ironwork under the porch against which the board is leaning. The word "Lanin'" in art-nouveau, evenly spaced and sized letters is legible in reverse. This is presumably the name of some commercial establishment (a restaurant?), now abandoned. The seam­ less integration of these letters into the decorative ensemble stands in marked, and surely deliberate con­ trast to the dynamic layout of words in varying sizes and letter shapes, set in tension with the image, on Lissitzky's board. It is also noteworthy that the photograph positions the board at the right of the com­ position (i.e. as if moved in the direction of the arrow forms on the board), thereby also revealing the curve of

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72 temporaneous cover for the Unemployment Committee booklet (fig. 9, Typ. Cat. 1919/13), where block-like forms occupy the perimeter of a tilted black square.45 Both these cases combine image and text in a way that narrows the range of meaning available to the abstract image, thereby reinforcing the iconographic reference to urban centers (i.e. to places of employment and production,

in the view of the prevailing

anti-rural ideology). In this deployment of form and word, these works are close to the two major instances in 1920 in which Lissitzky combined an apparently suprematist visual language with a "narrative" text, raising the question of the relationship of word to image, the Story of Two Squares and the agitational poster Beat the Whites with the Red W e d g e .4 6 The remaining paintings in the photograph are not so readily linked with a conventional architectural referent.

the street and building facade. Real space is incorporated into this staged presentation of Lis­ sitzky's work. There is no evidence that the board is set up in front of a factory. Indeed, its message almost demands that it be set up in a rural, non-urban setting. 45.

The "Town" image reappears with this meaning, now in the lithographed form, combined with a photograph of workmen on a scaffolding, in the 1930 cover for Lis­ sitzky's book on Soviet architecture (fig. 10, Typ. Cat. 1930/1).

46.

These are discussed at the beginning of Chapter III, introducing a discussion of works from 1922/1923 in which Lissitzky further explores the expressive and sym­ bolic nature of abstract form in direct relationship to text.

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73 It would seem likely that the work in the upper right corner of the arrangement on the wall, now extant only in a water­ color version (fig. 11) and a sketch,47 could have made some allusion to an urban skyline, or to the schema of a tri­ umphal arch of some kind. Equally, the composition at the upper left, of which at least three painted versions (Proun Inventory nos. 58, 59 [fig. 12] and 89) and a lithograph (fig. 21) were made, bears a close enough resemblance to the "Town" images for it to carry a similar allusion to urban spaces, intersections, and buildings. Immediately below this painting is the painted version of a composition which introduces a more theoretical dimen­ sion to Lissitzky's repertoire of representational forms of architectural import. A sketch of this composition carries the inscriptions "turn" and "energy planes carry complex no.

47.

Eindhoven, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum (inv. no. 20228, illustrated in Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lis­ sitzky," p. 19, fig. 7). A small-scale watercolor ver­ sion is in Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. no. RS 3767). Interestingly, this drawing, recording a composi­ tion of around 1920, is signed by Lissitzky using Hebrew initials, as is another drawing of a similar kind (State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. no. RS 3762). The same initials appear on a design for a masthead, dated 1920 in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1980, pi. 41 (Typ. Cat. 1920/1, loca­ tion unknown). The fragments of evidence raise the intriguing, but as yet only speculative, possibility that Lissitzky continued to use his Hebrew initials until the invention of the Proun concept in early 1921, at which point he "changed" his own name, as well as that of his art. He certainly used the Roman and cyril­ lic alphabets for signing works after the introduction of Proun.

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74 1 " 48 Language such as this could be seen as deriving less

from practical architecture, than from tectonics (as radi­ cally reconceived by Lissitzky). It appears on a number of early abstract studies, as in the cases of "principle of turning" and "slide (beginning)"

(fig. 15).49 In his article

about "The New Culture" Lissitzky had underlined the importance of tectonics "as bringing order, efficiency and rhythm to all creative activity" and these works are exemplifications of these concepts,

in much the same way as

the notions of "bridge," "arch," and the others were treated

48.

Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. no. RS 3765). Cf. Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," p. 48, n. 36. A lithographed version of this composition (fig. 13) was printed four times, one in each orientation, on one sheet to illustrate the idea that this composition revolved around a center (or, conversely, that the spec­ tator revolved). The graphite inscription on this sheet reads: "Construction floating in space, propelled together with its spectator beyond the limits of the earth, and, in order to complete it, the spectator must turn it and himself around its axis like a planet. This plan is only a mechanical demonstration of entering the essence of the construction - only four planes" (quoted from Cambridge 1987, p. 77, pi. 14). As this text is very close to the language of Lissitzky's essays published in late May 1920 in the Unovis Almanac, it might be suggested that this print was produced as an illustration for the same publication. A later lithograph, as included in the Proun Portfolio, is inscribed with a circle, marked with arrows indicating revolution in both directions, and the words "movement over a sphere," a more abstract, less specific version of the earlier inscription (fig. 14, also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, p. 80, pi. 17). This change in inscrip­ tions is entirely in line with the process of generalization which accompanied the introduction of the Proun concept.

49.

Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. no. RS 3761) and Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne (inv. no. AM 197827) .

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75 by Lissitzky in the paintings discussed here.50 Of course, "sliding" and "turning" are almost anti-architectural con­ cepts, in the traditional sense that buildings imply struc­ ture, stability, statics.

"Sliding" and "turning"

(perhaps

meaning "movement in a plane" and "movement in space" respectively) embody Lissitzky/s new tectonics of dynamism, appropriate to an architecture of and for revolution.

It is

characteristic of Lissitzky's careful awareness of the danger of simply illustrating tectonic facts (however radi­ cally redefined), that he titles these two drawings "principle of turning"

(to indicate that he is dealing with

an embodiment of a concept) and "slide (beginning) ." indicating that the work can only 'represent' a fragment of a dynamic process extending into the future. Such complexities are fundamental to the way these paintings and drawings with architectural or tectonic themes relate to their titles, referents, or inscriptions. Clearly, Lissitzky is not depicting, say, any particular, existing bridge. Reference is operating at a level beyond such

50.

One further example of this type is the early painting which carries the inscription on its verso "Suprematism of Volume" (fig. 16, Proun Inventory no. 30). The modesty of the format, simplicity of the composition and generality of the title suggest that the painting may be one of the earliest of Lissitzky's abstract composi­ tions. The watercolor version of this composition (Mos­ cow, State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. no. RS 3762) carries the inscription "balka" ("beam" or "girder"), evidence of how close to specific architectural features and ele­ ments even a composition with such a broad title still is.

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76 specificity. Equally, the representation is not a proposal for the construction of a particular bridge at a particular site. The painting does not refer to a planned building in the present,

just as it does not, obviously,

illustrate a

bridge from the past. Such a work is surely best understood either as referring to a bridge in the unspecified future (conveniently, but not necessarily described as utopian), or as positing an evaluation of the architectural concept of "the bridge."5 ! At about the same time as the taking of the photograph in the studio with the works discussed above, Lissitzky con­ tributed two essays, "Suprematism of World Construction" and "Suprematism of Creativity," to the almanac of the Unovis group, published in summer 1920, with a cover and layout by Lissitzky (Typ. Cat. 1920/4).52 While both essays are 51.

Lissitzky would surely argue that such a painting is not so much a depiction of a bridge in the future (in a suitably transformed w o r l d ) , as a stimulus or incentive towards the creation of such a bridge (and such a w o r l d ) . If the painting is seen as a linguistic state­ ment, it would function less as a descriptive sentence with a claim to truth value, and more as a performative utterance, an exhortation, wish, command. This optative or imperative sense reflects the intention of the work of art actively to intervene in the given situation, a central concern of Lissitzky (and, indeed, of many of his contemporaries).

52.

Unfortunately, neither of the surviving copies of this almanac has been accessible to me. The two essays under discussion here are available in German translations: "Der Suprematismus des Weltaufbaus" in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pp. 327-330, and "Der Suprematismus des Schopferischen" in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pp. 15-20. The typed transcript of "Suprematism of Creativity," from which the translation was made, was kindly made available to me by Erhard Frommhold, Dresden. The original Russian title of "Der Suprematismus des

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77 largely concerned with redefining the notion of work and labor in a way that clearly differentiates the Suprematist world understanding from the communism prevailing in the current political situation, they both contain comments relevant to understanding the mode of signification which these early abstract works imply. ’’Suprematism of World Construction” contains most about architecture, scattered through the text in rather gnomic sentences. Lissitzky writes that the development of the city had led to complete confusion, with the isolated elements (house, square, bridge, etc.) conflicting with the new network of communication and energy supply (underground railways, electric cables above and below the earth, and so o n ) . After Suprematism, a new architectural conception has arisen: after the horizontals of the archaic, the spheres of the classical and the verticals of the Gothic, a fourth

Weltaufbaus” is (according to the reference cited in Moscow 1990, p. 24, n. 17) "Suprematizm mirostroitel'stva," i.e. "Suprematism of World Construc­ tion." This title, adopted here, is significantly dif­ ferent from "Suprematism in World Reconstruction," as the essay has become known in its English translation (Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 331-334). The English ver­ sion significantly weakens the title's import, implying that Suprematism is only one factor in the re­ construction of the world, rather than the defining, primary force encompassing the new making of a universe. There is evidence of at least two other contributions by Lissitzky to the almanac, an article on "Unovis and its Social Creativity" and some notes on graphic design, as listed in the Bibliography.

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78 stage is achieved: spatial diagonals and economy are established. Lissitzky continues: We left to the old world the idea of one's own house, one's own apartment block, one's own castle, one's own church. We set ourselves the task of the town. Its unified creative warehouse, its center of collective effort is the radio transmitting mast which sends out bursts of creative activity 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. This dynamic architecture creates the new theater of life, and because we are capable of grasping the idea of a whole town at any moment and at any l e v e l , the task of architecture - the rhythmic arrangement of space and time - is perfectly and simply fulfilled, for the new town will not be as chaotically laid out as the modern towns of North and South America, but clearly and logi­ cally like a beehive. The new element of faktura which we have created in our painting will be applied to the whole of the world which we are to build, and will transform the roughness of concrete, the smoothness of metal, and the reflectivity of glass into the skin of the new life.53 Lissitzky's early works are, of course, not a seamless exemplification of these thoughts. Though most do deploy the dynamic diagonal in some form, a composition such as "House Above the Earth" (fig. 5) is built around horizontal and vertical orthogonals that seem almost to contradict the artist's prescription. Nevertheless, the emphasis on the organization of the city as a whole provides not only a con­ text for the way in which individual compositions dealing with the theme of "house," "bridge," "arch," and the like,

53.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 328; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 332 (translation modified).

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79 might be seen as a group, but also reinforces the importance of the works purporting to "depict" the system of a town as a whole.

In "Suprematism of Creativity," Lissitzky used a

schematic illustration of a street layout of Manhattan to show the difference between the random street pattern of the earliest settlers, and the implicitly infinite grid of later expansion.

"Suprematism of World Construction" goes further,

by arguing that the grid of the modern town is also in a sense chaotic and unplanned (perhaps because it has no cen t e r ) . This is to be replaced by a city plan organized hierarchically like a beehive around a central focus, the radio mast (the equivalent of the queen bee, presumably). Lissitzky's image of "The Town" is also structured around a main focus and a peripheral area, whereby the urbanistic proposal parallels the compositional dynamic of main and subsidiary pictorial events. It was also in "Suprematism of Creativity" that Lis­ sitzky addressed the problem of reference and illustration which has animated this discussion. The map of Manhattan is primarily introduced as part of a discussion about signs. Lissitzky argues that maps (whether of street plans, the globe or the heavens) are abstracted representations of things we already know. Signifier and signified are stable, even if the complex relations between them (the secrets, as Lissitzky puts it) are underpinned only by the intricate evolution of the human brain, from microbe through the fish

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80 to human. But, Lissitzky argues, we do not yet know the secrets of the sign created by the artist, because the intricacies of something other than the brain, are not yet sufficiently multiplied in humanity.54 That is, the referentiality and meaning of the artist's sign (including, presumably, Lissitzky's abstract paintings) will become com­ prehensible only after humans have developed some further cognitive capacity. Typically, Lissitzky does not want this located in the brain, an organ too associated with old and current modes of knowledge.55 It is this tension between the literal, illustrative quality of Lissitzky's works and their proposed ability not to refer to anything yet known or understood, which is les­ sened, if not resolved by the introduction of the idea of Proun shortly after the Unovis almanac appeared. By sup­ pressing the specific architectural references which have been identified here, this concept allowed the works to embrace both a creative autonomy and self-sufficient

54.

These passages are either mistranslated or omitted from the translation into German in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977.

55.

The idea of a new organ, or a new level of evolution of an old organ, was not uncommon among the Russian avantgarde. Mikhail Matiushin, for example, led a group of artists called "Zor-ved" ("See-Know") in the 1920s, devoted to research into the concept of expanded seeing, which would extend the normal physical process of look­ ing. See Angelica Zander Rudenstine, e d . , Russian AvantGarde A r t . The George Costakis Collection (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981), pp. 268-322. However, Eberhard Steneberg is surely unwarranted in claiming Matiushin as an influence on Lissitzky (Russische Kunst. Berlin 1918-1932 [Berlin: Gebrtider Mann, 1969], p. 32).

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81 authority, and a role linked to the external world, acting in the present for the benefit of the future.

c) The Invention of Proun

The word "Proun" was invented some time between August 1920 and April 1921. It does not appear in the "Unovis" almanac of mid-1920, though Lissitzky does announce the impending publication on the subject of "ex-painting,11 an early attempt to conceptualize what later became Proun.56 In August 1920, the Museum Bureau of Narkompros purchased a painting by Lissitzky and registered it under the title "Suprematism (Town)." Nine months later, in April 1921, the State purchased a set of lithographs from the artist, the first "Proun" portfolio.57 These lithographs, though

56. 57.

See Rakitin,

"tiber Lissitzkys Proune."

The minutes of the meetings of the purchasing committee of the Museum Bureau in the Visual Arts Department of Narkompros record these acquisitions on 2 August 1920 for 30,000 rubles (TsGALI 665/1/13/68) and on 15 April 1921 for 455,034 rubles (TsGALI 665/1/13/118). Several work by Unovis artists were purchased in August 1920, presumably from the Unovis exhibition on view in Moscow at the time. No further purchases of Lissitzky's works by the state in this period have yet come to light. It is interesting to note that the Soviet government's Department of National Minorities had requested in February 1921 that a museum of Jewish art be established. Lissitzky was on the list of artists (alongside Naum Gabo, Mark Chagall, and many others) which formed part of the Museum Bureau's proposal to the head of the Visual Art Department of Narkompros in March 1921 (TsGALI 665/1/10/148-149). The fate of the proposal is not known.

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82 apparently not published with a cover using the word "Prouns" were each inscribed in the stone with the letter "P" as the initial of Proun, and a quasi-scientific num­ ber.58 This indicates that the neologism had been coined by Spring 1921, and that it was being used to designate Lis­ sitzky's works of art.59 58.

For Lissitzky's cover designs, see Typ. Cat. 1921/2. The Dutch artist Peter Alma acquired a set of these lithographs (now in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam [inv. nos. A3719-3729]) in summer 1921, when he attended the Comintern conference. He remembered getting them as a "proof" set from Lissitzky's studio (as reported to me by Jean Leering in conversation, 1981). See also Alma's letter to Leering, 26 October 1965, in the archives of the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. That these lithographs were printed in Moscow (and probably not in Vitebsk) is further indicated by the fact that several have faint counter-proof impressions on the verso from forms of a Moscow printing establishment (such as a copy of the "Proun 5A" lithograph, auctioned at Sotheby's London, 17 May 1979, lot no. 121G and inspected at the Galerie Beyeler, Basel, December 1982).

59.

One further piece of circumstantial evidence for this date, which has the additional advantage of making it likely that the Lissitzky wrote a theoretical text about Proun at about the same time, comes from II'ya Ehrenburg. Ehrenburg left Moscow for the West in March-April 1921, taking with him a great deal of illustrational and written material about art and culture in the Soviet Republic. (For more information about Ehrenburg and his relationship with Lissitzky, see Chapter III.) He used this documentation to publish articles and a book in the West. Most notably, in his very well-informed survey of the Russian avant-garde, completed in Belgium in Septem­ ber 1921, Ehrenburg illustrates one of the Proun lithographs, "Proun ID" (dated 1920 in the caption) and quotes from what he calls a book by Lissitzky, entitled P r o u n s . (Il'ya Ehrenburg, A vse-taki ona vertitsya [Berlin: Gelikon, 1922], p. 85 and before p. 81). As the Ehrenburg's text contains no mention of any cultural event or phenomenon which can be securely dated to after Spring 1921, it can be surmised that Lissitzky gave him the manuscript text and image to take to the West at that time. Perhaps Lissitzky intended to publish a pamphlet about the Prouns along with the lithographs, and so Ehrenburg quoted the text accordingly. No such

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83 Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the invention of the concept Proun coincides with Lissitzky's move from Vitebsk to Moscow. The circumstances of this move are not entirely clear. In autumn 1920, he had visited Orenburg to give instruction in the techniques of visual propaganda.

In

connexion with his official attendance at a regional con­ ference in Smolensk in October 1920, he received an identity card attesting to his position as a professor-teacher in the Vitebsk Free Art Studios, issued by Vera Ermolaeva on October 17, 1920.60

Lissitzky's name is absent from the

printed materials produced by Unovis in Vitebsk after late 1920. Moreover, in various later autobiographical statements and work-history documents, Lissitzky often mentions working in Moscow in 1920-1921 or 1921. One such reference pertains to work for the Communist International. This is little known, but attested to by a

published pamphlet by Lissitzky has emerged. Admittedly, it is possible that Lissitzky communicated with Ehren­ burg after Spring 1921, maybe sending him the text of his lecture about ’'Prouns" delivered at Inkhuk in Sep­ tember 1921 (as discussed below) and perhaps intended for publication. The short passages quoted by Ehrenburg are identical with the presumed text of that lecture. An additional, but even fainter piece of circumstantial evidence that the "Proun" text existed already in Spring 1921 is provided by Naum Gabo, as elaborated in n. 67, below. 60.

TsGALI 2361/1/54/2. The second Unovis almanac records October 17 as the date on which Lissitzky, along with Malevich and others departed for the conference, which began on 20 October 1920 (Shadowa, Suche und Experiment. p. 301).

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84 draft autobiographical statement of 1941, in which Lissitzky writes that "in 1920/21 [I was] in the publishing division of the Comintern."61 More often, Lissitzky writes of being at Vkhutemas in Moscow in 1921. For example, in a detailed biographical statement prepared in connexion with his appointment to the wood-working department of Vkhutemas in 1925/1926, he writes that in 1919-1920 he was professor in the Vitebsk Art-Technical Studies and in 1921 "at Vkhutemas gave a lecture course on monumental painting and architec­ ture."62 Moreover, during the autumn, he was also scheduled 61.

TsGALI 2361/1/58/21. A number of drawings among the Lissitzky holdings in TsGALI (e.g. 2361/1/16/37, illustrated in Cambridge 1987, fig. 14, p. 22) and State Tretyakov Gallery (e.g. inv. nos. RS 3769 [inscribed P5A] and Arch. Gr. 3535, 3538-40, 3548, 3556, 3572) are on the blank versos of proof sheets from Comintern publications of late 1920. The exact nature of Lis­ sitzky's work for the Comintern remains unclear. Could he have been a translator, or an employee in an artists' liaison bureau? Did he travel to Berlin in late 1921 somehow under the auspices of the Comintern? Future research in the archives of the Comintern may bring more information to light.

62.

TsGALI (2361/1/58/9-11). This statement corresponds with a Vkhutemas document listing all those teaching at the school on 1 July 1921, in which Lissitzky is listed as a lecturer on questions of monumental painting (Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, V khutemas. Moscou, 1920-1930 [Paris: Editions du Regard, 1990], vol. 1 p. 225, translating into French a document in TsGALI [681/2/25/111-126]). Again, in a questionnaire filled out on 23 August 1930, Lissitzky writes that he was professor at the Higher Art School in Vitebsk 1919-1921, and "in 1921 in Moscow in the Higher State Art Studios" (TsGALI 2361/1/58/4-5). One student remembers beginning to study at Vkhutemas in February 1921, and attending Lissitzky's studio (Sandor Ek, "Ya videl ego takim," Khudozhnik. vol. XI no. 6 [June 1969], pp. 21-22). Perhaps Lissitzky began teach­ ing at this school after the reorganization announced in December 1920 which in fact established Vkhutemas as such. In the official Work Service Record, prepared in 1930, Lissitzky is listed, presumably on his own

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85 to give a series of four lectures at Inkhuk (including one of the same topic), as recorded in the contract signed in late October 1921.63

Other evidence of Lissitzky's activity

in this year includes participation in at least two exhibi­ tions, one mounted in the hotel housing delegates to the Comintern Congress in the summer,64 the other a Unovis exhibition of around the same time (fig. 17).65 mistaken recollection, as working as a teacher at the Moscow Higher Art Studios in 1922 [sic]. Unlike most other entries in this document, this one has no reference to any official supporting document. 63.

Now in a private archive, the contract is translated Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pp. 207-208, but erroneously dated 1926.

64.

Lissitzky's painting "Town" (fig. 6, Proun Inventory no. 56 and Appendix), along with some 65 other works, was lent from the Museum of Painterly Culture to the special exhibition of the most advanced art, held in the foyer of the hotel in which foreign delegates to the conference of the Communist International were staying. For a list of works, signed for by Comrade Mansurov on 16 June 1921, see TsGALI 665/1/8/136. The Comintern Con­ gress opened on 22 June 1921. Lissitzky himself proudly refers to this exhibition in his lecture on the New Rus­ sian Art in 1923 (Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 338; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 342). Aleksandra Shatskikh has suggested that this exhibition might have been seen by the exhibitors as in some way related to the pathbreaking Obmokhu (Society of Young Artists) exhibition which opened in May 1921 ("A Brief History of Obmokhu," in The Great Utopia f pp. 257-265, here p. 264). If this is true, it may explain why Lissitzky mentioned the 1921 Obmokhu exhibition in his final autobiographical state­ ment (TsGALI 2361/1/58/17-20, 21, 22-23, published in Eindhoven 1965, pp. 33-35, and often reprinted), when none of the surviving documents related to that exhibi­ tion make any mention of Lissitzky.

65.

It seems most likely that this exhibition was held in late May and early June 1921. A hitherto overlooked new­ spaper announcement probably refers to this exhibition: "Exhibition. In the Paul Cdzanne Club at VKhuTeMas there is open an exhibition, "Unovis," with works from the Vitebsk, Orenburg and Moscow studios. Free admission

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86 In Spring 1921, shortly after his presumed arrival in the c a pital, Lissitzky seems to have undertaken a campaign to establish his reputation. In addition to preparing the Proun portfolio, Lissitzky contributed a very polemical article to the first and only issue of a new journal, Izo, published in March 1921 by the visual arts department of Narkompros, as well as designing a proposed masthead for the publication (Typ. Cat. 1921/1 and Appendix).66 The controversial nature of Lissitzky's article, entitled "The Catastrophe of Architecture," is indicated by the editorial note, so common in Soviet practice, remarking that it is published as "a discussional document," without any endorsement. The need for this distancing becomes immediately clear, when Lissitzky opens with an attack on

daily from 4 to 10 p.m. On Tuesday, 7 June, lecture about the exhibition, and discussion about the lecture, and on Wednesday, 8 June, closing of the exhibition" (Izvestiya, 4 June 1921, p. 2). The newspaper announce­ ment does not make clear how long the exhibition may already have been running. The installation photograph showing the work of Lissitzky (representing Vitebsk?), Klutsis (from Moscow), and Kudriashov (who worked in Orenburg), surely document this exhibition (fig. 17, and also reproduced in Von der Malerei zum Design. Russische konstruktivistische Kunst der zwanziaer J a h r e . exh. cat. [Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1981], pp. 148-149, and in Gustav Kl u c i s . Retrospektive. figs. 14 and 15). It may be that this Unovis exhibition was timed to coincide with (and counterbalance) the Obmokhu exhibition, which opened on 22 May 1921. 66.

Lissitzky's article is translated into English in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 369-371. My summary of its contents is based on the Russian original, with my own translations.

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87 the architectural department of Narkompros, as reflected in articles published in recent issues of the journal Khudozhestvennaya zhizn', also sponsored by the visual arts sec­ tion of Narkompros. He pours scorn on those who envisage the limited goal of overturning of the state and its building culture, at a time when all the foundations of the old society are being destroyed and the entire world is being reborn in a new form. Passing over the attempts to create a class-based architecture, Lissitzky moves on to what he con­ siders more important things: the failed understanding of the notion of "utopia" in the published proposals for the reconstruction of Moscow. These ideas about urban reconstruction, Lissitzky claims, all come from the "archives" and Lissitzky applies the same contempt to the results of a recent competition for a bridge across the Moskva River. Academic historicism is the enemy. Equally misguided are efforts to deploy bourgeois townplanning (Hausmannian redevelopment, garden-city reform) to revolutionary Moscow. This is nationalist, chauvinist, counter-revolutionary.

The situation is even worse in the

design of factories and workers' housing (especially in the waste of money on competitions for single-family houses, when they will soon be purchasable complete from Western Europe and anyway will surely not satisfy the demands of the new proletariat). In questioning the relationship of architecture to the "art of building," Lissitzky even doubts whether architec-

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88 ture should be a separate department at Vkhutemas, where the new generation is being trained. He asks whether youth is being hypnotized by academic historicism, when life demands creative human beings. Lissitzky ends with a question:

"How

are these people to be brought into the field of the art of building, which faces the huge task of reconstructing the entire material environment of our life [Lissitzky's original Russian says literally "the reconstruction of the whole body of life"], according to its yet-to-be-created new content?" Part of the answer to Lissitzky's question was to be found in the word "Unovis" next to his name at the bottom of the article. Here too was the indication that this was the first part of a two-part contribution. No doubt, the sequel would have presented the positive, pro-Unovis counterpart to this indictment of the architectural past and present. The second part of Lissitzky's article did not appear (probably as Izo published only this one issue).67 However, it is not 67.

Although Gabo is never a wholly reliable witness in matters regarding Lissitzky, the following reminiscence of a conversation with Gabo in 1959 may contain a germ of truth about an incident in 1921, perhaps referring to this article and the journal I z o . "Gabo then told a fantastic story about how Lissitzky antedated the second part of an article on the architecture of the future. Gabo had read Part I of the article and had thought it was good. It was a general, slightly historic account of the state of architecture. He accepted it and printed it. When he received Part II, on architecture of the future, he noticed that practically all the ideas were out of the Realistic Manifesto. This was in 1921, but it was dated 1917. Gabo challenged Lissitzky, who maintained that he wrote it in 1917. "Can you prove it?" asked Gabo, but received no satisfactory answer. Lis­ sitzky was furious. " I refused to put "1917" under the

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89 unreasonable to speculate that it would have amounted to a presentation of Lissitzky's newly elaborated Proun concept as the new image of architecture. Indeed, in some ways, the preparation of the Proun portfolio at virtually the same time, constituted a substitute for this second article as part of the artist's intervention in the Moscow debates.

d) The Proun Portfolio

Issuing a print portfolio was also a recognized publicistic device. Several of Lissitzky's contemporaries used this medium to consolidate their aesthetic position and achievements: Liubov Popova has prepared a set of linocuts in 1917-1919, and Alexander Rodchenko did the same in 1919.68 Closer to home, of course, was the example of article. If I did, I would testify that it was written at that time. So we went to Sternberg [recte Shterenberg, the head of the Visual Arts Department of Narkompros, and presumably ultimately responsible for the journal] for arbitration. Sternberg said: "My good­ ness 1 It's copied from Realistic Manifesto." As a result Lissitzky took it away in anger." Leif Sjoberg, "Naum Gabo: Some Reminiscences and an Unpublished Interview," The Structurist no. 29/30 (1989/1990), p. 87. 68.

For Popova, see Dmitri V. Sarabianov and Natalia L. Adaskina, Popova. trans. Marian Schwarz (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.: 1990), pp. 110-111, and n. 61, and, for illustrations, pp. 122-126. For Rodchenko's prints, see Peter Noever, e d . , Aleksandr M. Rodchenko. Varvara F. Stepanova. The Future is Our Only G o a l . exh. cat. (Munich: Prestel, for the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Vienna 1991), p. 157, cat. nos. 64-71. Slightly earlier, Alexandra Exter had made a series of gouaches in preparation for a portfolio to be issued in 1917 under the title "Explosion, Movement, Weight" (Compton, M a l e v i c h , pp. 192-193).

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90 Malevich, whose booklet Suprematism. 34 Drawings Lissitzky had probably helped to produce in the Vitebsk studios in late 1920. This catalogue-like survey of the artist's career included a summary of Suprematist theory, followed by 34 lithographed drawings covering the essential stages and com­ positions of the movement. Lissitzky's Proun portfolio fol­ lowed a similar strategy of translating key compositions which existed as paintings, into the austere but more acces­ sible medium of lithograph. If Lissitzky had indeed intended to issue a text about Proun at the same time, he would have been following his mentor's example even more closely. The major thrust of the Proun concept, as documented in this portfolio of eleven lithographs, was to complicate the relationship between the visual images and their external referents. The introduction of Proun titles suppressed the specific architectural meanings. The composition known as "Bridge 1" (fig. 4) became "Proun 1A" (fig. 18), "House Above the Earth"

(fig. 5) became "Proun 1C" (fig. 19),

"Town" (fig. 6) became "Proun IE" (fig. 20) - to name only some of those included in the portfolio.

Interestingly, in

all these cases, the architectural images received designa­ tions involving the number 1. This applies also to "Movement over a Sphere" which became "Proun 1" (fig. 14) and the com­ position resembling another aerial view of an urban area (fig. 12) became "Proun ID" (fig. 21). This would appear to

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91 be Lissitzky's acknowledgement that the compositions belong to this early stage of his career.69 At the very beginning of Proun then, an aestheticizing process, a 'de-functionalization' took place through this renaming. This strategy played up the utopian potential of Proun diverting attention from any immediate applicability or external occasion, in favor of a vaguer, but undeniably richer range of associations. The invention of a new word to designate this activity, a word that, as stressed above, Lissitzky never himself explained, focus on unknown possibilities.

is symptomatic of this

In a sense, this brought

Lissitzky back more closely into line with Malevich's project, with geometrical abstraction as the kind of art which could most promisingly alert viewers to the potential for fundamental transformations in their sense of space, order, movement and material. These transformations could themselves be metaphors (or even necessary preconditions) for the radical restructuring of society, but the connecting links that were to join the visual postulates of a Proun

69.

Exceptions to this clear association of the "1" numbers in this portfolio, with architecture, would be the two compositions identified above (see n. 43) as carrying the names of specific places: "Orenburg-Tevkelevo" b e c ­ ame "Proun 2C" (fig. 22), and "Moscow" (fig. 7) became "Proun 7A" (by adding this inscription on two margins of the d r a wing), a composition which is in turn very close to the large painting "Proun 19D" (fig. 29, Proun Inventory no. 65, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

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92 composition to the actual work of building a new society were now left unclear. This indeterminacy can be seen in those lithographs from the Proun Portfolio which do not represent the suppression or attenuation of a known architectural reference. Prouns 2 B , 2C and 2D (figs. 23, 22, 24) are all vertical in orientation,

in contrast to the horizontal emphasis of the

set with the number "1" (excepting 1C, the "House Above the Earth [figs. 5 and 19], whose square format is tempered by the horizontal extension of its forms).70 Within this verticality, these three sheets all explore the visual dynamics of a diagonal element (or cluster of elements) set within an ever less definable space. These three lithographs also introduce transparent forms not used in the more con­ crete, "buildable" Prouns l, 1C, ID and IE. This increasing level of abstraction is also evident in "Proun 3A" (fig. 26), which is constructed almost exclusively of two-dimensional forms. Only in one or two

70.

Actually, in keeping with his recurrent interest in varying the orientation of his works, Lissitzky indi­ cated both verticality and horizontality for the lithograph version of "Proun 2B." While it is marked as a vertical by the artist's graphite annotation in one set of the prints (fig. 23, also illustrated in Cam­ bridge 1987, p. 85, pi. 22), sheets in other sets have the title drawn in the stone to indicate a horizontal orientation (such as the example in the Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett [inv. no. 66.7-62(N)]). The painted ver­ sion of this composition (fig, 25, Proun Inventory no. 14, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art) is now exhibited vertically, though an early installation photograph (fig. 17) from the "Unovis" exhibition of June 1921 shows it hanging horizontally.

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93 places is an implied corporeality of form to be discerned.71 This relatively static investigation of forms that somehow suggest shadow and insubstantiality is then in strong con­ trast to the final two prints in the portfolio, "Proun 5A" and "Proun 6B." These are the two most explicitly dynamic images in the portfolio, though their energies of motion are very dissimilar.

"Proun 5A" (fig. 27) appears to burst out

of its framing border, with all forms reaching to the edge, with the implication that they have either arrived from out­ side the image or are escaping it.72 "Proun 6B" (fig. 28) on 71.

This composition does, however, evoke the form of a speaker's rostrum, thereby also recalling the studio project Lissitzky gave to his workshop in Vitebsk, as reflected in II'ya Chashnik's design for a "Rostrum under the Sign of Suprematism" (see Larissa Zhadova, "'Tribuna Lenina.' Stranitsa istorii sovetskogo dizaina," Tekhnicheskaya estetika, vol. 14 no. 9 [September 1977], pp. 20-22). Lissitzky's later rework­ ing of this design in 1924 (Proun Inventory no. 85) is discussed below, in Chapter V within the context of incorporating photographic imagery into architecture.

72.

The radical dynamism of this explosive composition may lead to speculation about a peculiarity in the printing of this image. Unique among the lithographs of this portfolio, "Proun 5A" has its title printed from the stone in reverse. All examples of this lithograph with margins wide enough to accommodate the inscription have it printed this way (such as the examples in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett [inv no. 66.4-62(N)], in the Amster­ dam Stedelijk Museum [inv. no. A3728] and in the State Tretyakov Gallery [inv. no. GRS 2912]). This consistency makes it unlikely that Lissitzky simply made an error, which in any event would be unlikely for one so experienced in lithographic printing. Was Lissitzky here again experimenting with multiple orientations for view­ ing, in this case perhaps implying that this work was being viewed from behind? In this reading, "Proun 5A" did not simply challenge the four margins of the planar image, but attempted symbolically to break through the space "surrounding" the recto and verso of the sheet as well.

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94 the other hand, is entirely contained within itself: its motion is circular, revolving as indicated by the multiple orientations of its printed title. This sheet is also spa­ tially the most elaborate of the eleven lithographs, perhaps the only one whose spatial interlockings and intersections are actually impossible, rather than just difficult to imagine. The diversity of compositional format, textural effect, implied tensions and movements, and spatial complexities is in itself a marker of the extent to which Lissitzky is refusing a limiting iconological reading of these images. Moreover, there is a further aspect of these lithographs which pertains to the new status which Lissitzky is attempt­ ing to define for his images. While the earlier lithograph version of the "Proun 1" composition (printed both singly and in the rotational grouping of four images) is restricted to outline drawing of the forms, the version included in the Proun portfolio exploits the full range of textures and "faktura" effects available to the lithographer. The variety and delicacy of the textural renditions is a distinguishing feature of these works. There is some evidence that this concern reflects a change in Lissitzky's attitude towards the material surface of his painted works, a change that seemingly parallels the introduction of the Proun concept.

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95 Unfortunately,

five of the seven paintings depicted in

the photograph taken in Lissitzky's Vitebsk studio in 1920 are lost. Of the two that survive, one is "Proun 1C" (the "House Above the Earth" composition) now in the ThyssenBornemisza Collection (fig. 5, Proun Inventory no. 57 and Appendix), the other is "Proun IE" ("Town") which recently emerged from the provincial Russian museum to which the Museum Bureau had sent it, presumably shortly after its return from the First Russian Art exhibition in Berlin and Amsterdam in 1922 and 1923 (fig. 6, Proun Inventory no. 56 and Appendix). While both of these are made of oil with some textural additions (sand in one case, a small piece of tin­ foil in the other) on plywood, there is a noticeable dif­ ference in surface treatment between them and some of the paintings related to Proun lithographs with higher numbers, such as "Proun 2C" (fig. 25, which has survived) and "Proun 5A" and "Proun 6B"

(which have not), all three of which were

exhibited in Moscow in mid-1921.

"Proun 2C" is on wood

panel, as appear to be the other two as well, to judge from the installation photograph (fig. 17). "Proun 2C" offers a very richly textured surface, incorporating paper, metal and varnish alongside oils handled in a wide variety of ways. Together with paintings that are likely to date from this year as well (such as "Proun 19D" [fig. 29], displaying a similarly intense range of textured surfaces and materials), this painting is perhaps evidence of Lissitzky's heightened

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96 attention to issues of "faktura" when working within the Moscow avant-garde.73 Malevich's paintings are, of course, not without texture or effects of paint handling and brush­ stroke. However, they are all on canvas and eschew extreme contrasts of handling, not to mention the addition of "extraneous" everyday materials.

If this suggestion about

Lissitzky's practice in 1921 is correct, then it can be accommodated within the proposed interpretive paradigm of a shift away from direct reference to architecture. The procedure of making paintings on wood with a wider range of real materials can, in this view, be described as the attempt to create autonomous objects (built things in them­ selves) which relate to reality at the level of material rather than at the level of image. In this concern, Lissitzky is both approaching and dis­ tancing himself from the current debates and issues within the Moscow avant-garde. Although an attention to real materials as resources for collage or assemblage is charac­ teristic of the tendency within the Moscow artists now con­ veniently dubbed "Constructivist," Lissitzky's strategy of

73.

In his essay, "Suprematism of World Construction," written in Vitebsk in 1920, Lissitzky had been sensitive to the value of incorporating modern materials into paintings (especially the Cubists' use of sand, con­ crete, and so on), but had warned of the danger of simply "decorating" the object with emblems of modernity to which it was not really entitled (a critigue he aimed especially at the Cubist "counter-relief," presumably including the work of Tatlin). See Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 332-333.

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97 using this "culture of materials" to create self-sufficient things puts him at odds with the prevailing trend among the Moscow avant-garde, who were moving, in the course of 1921, towards abandoning the interest in making art or aesthetic objects of any kind. This is the milieu in which Proun needs to be initially understood.

e) Lissitzky's Writing about Proun in 1921

The exact relationship between the various extant early texts dealing with Proun has not yet been fully clarified. The essay most commonly cited in scholarship about Lissitzky has been the one published in mid-1922 in De Stiil,74 This article seems to have been ultimately based on a Russian version, preserved as a one and a half page typescript.75 Along with it, there are two typescripts (one top copy, one carbon) of a translation into German. Various annotations on these translations, as well as an additional sheet of paragraphs by Lissitzky, correspond largely to the published text in the Dutch magazine, especially when the editorial corrections and emendations by Theo van Doesburg and Max

74.

See Bibliography and Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pp. 344345; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 347-348.

75.

TsGALI 2361/1/25/13-14. This text is not actually entitled "Proun." It is headed "Not World Vision - But World Reality" ("Ne mirovidenie - no miroreal'nost'").

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98 Burchartz are taken into account.76 The Russian typescript may be a condensed version, or, alternately, an earlier formulation of the text of the long lecture on Proun which Lissitzky delivered to a general meeting of Inkhuk (the Institute of Artistic Culture)

in September 1921. This too

exists in various typed transcripts, which have in turn been translated into several European languages.77 As this text was given as a lecture to a plenary session of the most advanced members of the Moscow avant-garde,

it is the best

76.

TSGALI 2361/1/25/6-8, 9-11, and 12. Lissitzky's cor­ respondence with van Doesburg provides some evidence of the editorial changes made. See especially Lissitzky's letter of 16 July 1922 (The Hague, Dienst Verspreide Rijkskollekties). Among the passages the Russian types­ cript omitted in the published version in De Stiil (perhaps for political reasons) were the sentences: "Life is currently building the new reinforced concrete slab of a communist foundation under the people of the whole earth; through Proun, we will arrive at the con­ struction, on this general foundation of a unified world city, of the life of people of the terrestrial globe." (The German manuscript renders the second sentence a little differently: "through Proun, it [life] will arrive at the construction, on this foundation, of a unified world commune city for the life of humankind.") The passage is also present in Lissitzky's more extended elaboration of Proun, the lecture of September 1921, discussed below. Lissitzky saw Proun as building on the foundation of communism, just as in 1920 he had written: "After the Old Testament there came the New; after the New, the communist; and, after the communist, there follows the testament of Suprematism" (Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 334).

77.

I have not been able to locate the original manuscript or typescript of Lissitzky's lecture. John Bowlt kindly made available the Russian transcript from which he translated the text into English (Cologne 1976, pp. 5972), and Erhard Frommhold did the same with the virtually identical Russian transcript translated into German in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pp. 21-34.

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99 place to look for Lissitzky's reformulation of the status of his works of art, their relation to any architectural project, their mode of signification in general, and their role within society at that moment.78 At one point in his lecture, Lissitzky returns to a formulation from one of his essays of the previous summer in the "Unovis" almanac. He argues again that there are two different kinds of sign, one which refers to what is already known, the other to what is not yet known:

"The second

derivation is when a symbol is born, then acquiring its name later, and then revealing its meaning later still."79 here, revealingly,

New

is the addition of the stage at which the

sign is named - an acknowledgement of the process by which the name Proun emerged only after Lissitzky had embarked on abstract art. Lissitzky argues that the form of the new age and its goals will be created primarily by painters, who

78.

79.

The lecture, of course, deals with many topics besides these. It deploys a history of mathematics, derived from Oswald Spengler (as established in Nisbet, "An Introduc­ tion to El Lissitzky, p. 29, and further discussed below, in Chapter II); it rehearses the history and status of Suprematism; it distinguishes Proun from science and engineering; it posits Proun as a new col­ lective form of creativity; and so on. Many of its formulations are combined with those of the 1920 essays in an article on "The Conquest of Art," published in Yiddish in a Warsaw cultural journal in early 1922 and probably made available by Lissitzky on his journey westward in late 1921. See the translation and com­ mentary in Cambridge 1987, pp. 53-54, 59-62. Cologne 1976, p. 65 (translation modified).

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100 have more than others succeeded in throwing off old con­ straints. Indeed, the lecture as a whole can be read as a pas­ sionate defense of work in two dimensions. Most of this argument is focussed on Proun's ability to be "constructive" in the new Suprematist "aerial" space. The creator of Proun is one of those who are "on the path" (one of the lectures most frequently used notions) to create new objects and realities. Beginning with paint on canvas, this creator noticed that the surface of the canvas had ceased being a picture, and was now more a building to be studied from all directions. This rotation of the picture (surely more metaphorical than literal) creates (somehow) a multiplicity of projectional axes positioning the spectator in real space, at the center of a "scaffolding," which demands to be named. Empty, unnatural chaos becomes ordered, natural space when we apply certain structures, proportions and inter­ relationships . The name Proun is now applied to this "rotating" picture which is no longer pictorial, though it may still hang like a map or mirror on the wall.80 On inspecting his early works, Lissitzky notes, he found that two dimensional planar

80.

It is at this point in his exposition that Lissitzky attempts to describe the goal of Proun: "the creative manipulation of form (thus also the mastering of space) through the economic construction of transfigured m a t e r i a l ." Much of the lecture is then committed to explicating this enigmatic formulation.

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101 space is basically the same as three dimensional space. The former leads to the latter and the two can be treated as a unity. Extension in two dimensions is found to be equivalent to that in three. Both are equally sturdy and resistant; one can build as well on a two-dimensional foundation as on the earth. This line of argument preserves Proun's relationship to three-dimensional architecture, while making it substan­ tially less clear and direct. This powerful defense of the two dimensional was surely aimed directly at such practitioners in the Moscow avantgarde as Rodchenko, who had begun making sculptures in late 1918 or 1919 and whose contributions to the seminal Obmokhu exhibition of May 1921 consisted,

like many other of the

most radical works exhibited, of three-dimensional creations in aggressively real materials. Lissitzky is careful to point out that even three dimensional objects can be non­ constructive, and he devotes a few paragraphs to a critique of Tatlin's counter-reliefs and a so-called machine art which imitates the forms of modern mechanics. Lissitzky's earlier essay,

"Suprematism in World Construction,11 had also

included a critical comments about counter-reliefs in general, and it is clear that this long-standing rival of Malevich was an especially important target for Lissitzky's critique. For the 1921 lecture, this was especially true, no doubt, because of the seminal influence exerted by Tatlin's "Monument to the Third International," one of the very few

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102 concrete proposals for a radically new architecture which had been hitherto been offered and a powerful catalyst for discussion when it was shown at the end of 1920 in Moscow. A consideration of Lissitzky's reaction to Tatlin is important for an understanding of his emerging conception of utopian architecture. The public presentation by Tatlin of his "Monument" in December 1920, on the occasion of the Eighth Congress of Soviets, must have had a stupendous effect on the competing factions among the artistic avant-garde in Moscow, Petrograd and elsewhere. His architectural sculpture was surely a catalyst in most of the major developments in creative circles over the next few years; this possibility is certainly strengthened by scattered reports of the serious and energized debates occasioned by the display of the model. A particularly intriguing report comes from Lissitzky, who, on arrival in Moscow around the end of 1920, quickly took up argumentative positions in the discussions and dis­ agreements characterizing the intellectual milieu in the aftermath of the Civil War. One instance is recorded in the manuscript of an article about architecture in the Soviet Union, written in late 1924 (that is, some four years after the presentation of the "Monument" or so-called "Tower"). Lissitzky writes:

"At the large meeting in the Academy

(1921), at which a vote was taken on whether the Tower

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103 should be built or not, I was the first to critici 2 e the design, but nevertheless to vote in favor."81 Although Lissitzky mentions the date 1921, he is surely referring to the public discussion, which probably took place on 10 December 1920, as documented by other participants.82 Tatlin's model,

As an index of the challenge represented by it is significant that such a meeting took

place at all, and that its format demanded that members of the avant-garde "stand up and be counted." Moreover, it is typical of Lissitzky that he would have supported the execu­ tion of such a project; he was always in favor of undertak­ ing experiments and, if necessary, learning from failure and mistakes. Most interesting in the present context is the fact that he was quick to criticize the proposal, and that,

81.

TsGALI 2361/1/27/1-8 ("Auf dem groBen Meeting in der Akademie in Moskau (1921), wo abgestimmt wurde ob der Turm gebaut werden soil, war ich der erste den Entwurf zu kritisieren und doch dafiir zu stimmen"). Paul Westheim edited these and other anecdotal remarks out of the published version of the essay. See his postcard to Lissitzky, dated 22 December 1924 (TsGALI 2361/1/36/6). The final version of the essay appeared in Westheim's journal Das Kunstblatt vol. IX no. 2 (February 1925), pp. 49-53. The reprint in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pp. 366-368, is misleadingly incomplete.

82.

See Larissa Alexejewna Shadowa, ed., Tatlin, (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1984), p. 423. The encounter between Gabo and Tatlin, recounted by Christina Lodder ("Tatlin und Naum Gabo" in Jurgen Harten, e d . , Vladimir T a t l i n . L e b e n . Werk, W i r k u n q . Ein internationales Symposium [Cologne: Dumont, 1993], pp. 231-240, here pp. 235-236 and n. 21) presumably also took place at this event. Some of my discussion on the relationship between Tatlin and Lissitzky was published in my "Lissitzkys Tatlin," in the same volume, pp. 196-203.

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104 years later, he still felt it important to mention these reservations. Of course, Lissitzky never made any secret of his reser­ vations about Tatiin's work. His admiration was always qualified with some skepticism. These doubts were most extensively presented in his lecture on the new Russian art, delivered in Holland and Germany in 1923. Lissitzky accused Tatlin and his colleagues of a certain romanticism, fetishism of materials and neglect of the need for "a new plan." Lissitzky's remarks imply that, although the "Monu­ ment" was the first work of the new generation which demanded of itself "invention,

elemental design, unambiguous

construction and control of materials," these goals may not have been achieved.83 As a fiercely loyal supporter of Malevich, Lissitzky would naturally be critical of his mentor's long-standing rival. As recently as 1919, Tatlin had been reported as announcing that "Suprematism was the sum total of the errors of the past."84 Although Malevich seems not to have commented explicitly on Tatlin in these years, it seems clear that those in the Suprematist camp could not wholeheartedly approve of Tatlin.85 83.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pp. 330-340; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 334-344.

84.

Quoted by Nikolai Punin in Iskusstvo k o m m u n y . no. 10 (9 February 1919), p. 2, as cited in Andrdi B. Nakov, e d . , Malevitch Ecrits (Paris: Champ Libre, 1975), p. 138.

85.

Many of these attitudes survive in the use by Lissitzky of the image of Tatlin in his illustration for II'ya Ehrenburg's story "Vitrion," in 1922, discussed below in Chapter III.

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105 To coincide with the display of the "Monument," Tatlin issued his now famous statement of "The Tasks Ahead of Us," the call by his collective of collaborators on the project. This addressed what had become perhaps the fundamental ques­ tion of the avant-garde debates: the status, role and func­ tion of the created object.86 The statement opened with a complaint about the individualism and fragmentation of the various arts and a call for their unity. The sentiments are very close to those of Lissitzky on specialization and its ill-effects. He then describes the "Monument" as the result of researches in material combinations and the resultant tensions, researches which provide the opportunity of unit­ ing "artistic forms with utilitarian intentions." Tatlin closes with the affirmation that "the results of this are

86.

The question of work as labor was also hotly debated. Lissitzky's 1920 essays were largely devoted to present­ ing the Suprematist point of view about labor (creative work) in contradistinction to the orthodox communist point of view (which, in its bureaucratic form, paid artists according to a rigid scale, with categories of artist, payment determined by size of the canvas or sculpture, and so on). This debate continued into 1921 in important ways. For my comments on this issue, including the documented dissatisfaction of Gabo and Kandinsky with the system, see Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," pp. 23-25. The writer Yeygeny Zamyatin (author of the anti-utopian novel We [1920-1921]) made the point as it affected literature in an essay of 1921: "The work of a literary artist, who 'embodies his ideas in bronze' with pain and joy, and the work of a prolific w i n d b a g .... are today appraised in the same way: by the yard, by the sheet. And the writer faces the choice: either he becomes a [windbag] or he is silent" ("I am Afraid," in Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet H e r e t i c . ed. and trans. Mirra Ginsberg [London: Quartet, 1991], p. 57).

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106 models which stimulate us to inventions in our work of creating a new world, and which call upon the producers to exercise control over the forms encountered in our new everyday life."®7 Significant in this passage is not only the clear state­ ment of the problem of utility, but also the complicated distance placed between the "model" and "our new everyday life." Tatlin's convoluted sentiment seems to be carving out a role for the "models" which insulates them from the demand for immediate applicability.

For the creative artists, the

models stimulate inventions which are in turn somehow related to the task of creating a new world. For the "producers" (i.e., a category of engineers and manufacturers separate from creative artists), the models are warnings or inspirations to take charge of design of objects in general. This approach surely responded to the more extreme calls for artists either to be abolished as irretrievably bourgeois, or to devote themselves to immediately practical tasks.88 Lissitzky undertakes a similar strategy towards the 87.

Quoted from Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. pp. 206-207.

88.

This pervasive sentiment in the intellectual discourse of Moscow around 1920 can be summarized by statements by the theoretician Osip Brik and the artist Georgii Stenberg. Brik wrote that "we want the worker to cease to be a mechanical executor of some plan that is alien to him. He must consciously and actively participate in the process of creating things. Then there will be no need for a special group of artist-decorators. Artistry will blend into the very creation of things" (quoted in John Milner, "Material Values: Alexander Rodchenko and the End of Abstract Art," in David Elliott, ed., Rodchenko and the Arts of Revolutionary Russia [New York:

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107 end of his 1921 lecture, where he attempts to make con­ ceptual distinctions between goals, functionality and utility, all the while arguing that Proun works at a level not wholly covered by any of these terms. Through Proun, Lissitzky seems to argue, the artist creates,

invents, or discovers f a cts. These facts then bec­

ome the goal, though the creator moves on, leaving the "goal" behind. The goal as a single quality, Lissitzky con­ tinues in his typically elliptical way, is then redefined in terms of utility as a broader quantity. This redefinition is justified when it increases the expediency that is most urgent on the current agenda, though there are occasions when the utilitarian perspective is in conflict with the expedient.

(Lissitzky gives the example of the utility of

aluminum pipes contrasted with the expediency of clay pipes as determined by social-economic backwardness.) less, we cannot but advance,

"Neverthe­

and Proun, moving on the path

of the discovery of goals, will give expediency and will carry the seeds of the widest utility."89 While maybe not wholly coherent, the thrust of this thinking is clear. It protects Proun from the growing con-

Pantheon, 1979], pp. 50-55, at. p. 55). Stenberg in December 1921 was blunter: "[Artists] are good for nothing, they should be dealt with the way the Cheka [the Soviet secret police] dealt with the counter­ revolutionaries" (quoted in Art into L i f e . p. 77). 89.

Cologne 1976, p. 70 (translation corrected).

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108 structivist and productivist demand for a utilitarian and functionalist ethic of creativity, under which the artist would be transformed into the artist-engineer and set to work on tasks of quotidian usefulness. Lissitzky's sophisti­ cated gambit parallels his justification of two-dimensional work in a creative climate which was more and more favoring the concrete reality of the actual object. This theoretical edifice protects the ultimate value of Proun, releasing it from political and ideological claims on its service, much as the step of creating the concept had released the images from too literal a dependence on architectural or tectonic referents.

For Lissitzky, Proun was not purposeless in some

aestheticist sense of art for art's sake; it remained in some powerful way useful, expedient, goal-oriented. However, rather than Proun responding to these established uses and goals, they responded to Proun as the prime mover. Similarly, Proun was not abstract in some wholly non­ objective way; it retained reference, symbol, allusion. Moreover, Proun was not dependent on external reality for this referentiality, but rather to some extent itself created this external reality (or created the conditions for this external reality). Proun could then, with enigmatic but rich allusion, refer to this reality. The argument is daring, and runs the risk of solipsism. Nevertheless,

it is

an attempt to capture in words an understanding of the new art's unprecedented potential for confronting and changing

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109 reality in a revolutionary context. Lissitzky's protective manoeuvre was necessary in the Moscow art world of 1921. The first half of the year had seen the intense but somewhat opaque debates within Inkhuk about "composition" versus "construction" as principles of creative activity.90 The second half of the year 1921 saw the crucial turning point for many artists, the decision to abandon art (both the traditional bourgeois easel painting and similar activity carried on under the rubric of "scientific" research into the nature of materials and form). In November, twenty-five artists declared their renunciation of fine art in favor of productive work in industry and design. Artists such as Rodchenko, Popova, and Varvara Stepanova had pursued their abstract art to a point where they felt no further development was either possible or desirable. They adopted an explicitly utilitarian plat­ form, and undertook a wide range of tasks, from advertising to textile and furniture design.

90.

The best guide in English to these debates remains Lodder, Russian Constructivism. pp. 83-94. While it is not surprising that a debate of this kind was held amongst members of the Moscow avant-garde at about this time, the origins of the use of the "composition vs. construc­ tion" opposition as the terms in which to conduct the debate are not clear. It may even have been prompted by the use of this pair of terms in Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler's book on cubism, which was published in 1920 and would surely have found its way to Moscow. Kahnweiler writes of the goals of the new art being "not arbitrary 'composition,' but inexorable, structured con­ struction" (Der Wea zum Kubismus (Stuttgart: Gert Hatje, 1958), p. 27: "keine gefallige 'Komposition,' sondern unerbittlicher gegliederter Aufbau").

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110 While the debates of the first half of the year had, implicitly or explicitly, threatened to replace the artist with the scientist, the developing momentum towards a "productivist" stance set up the engineer as the model for creative activity, as the profession which would fill the gap left by the superfluous artist. Common to both was the ruthless invocation of "objectivity," either in the guise of the laws of form, material and tectonics, or in the guise of the demands of society for functional things. The inherent characteristics of either material or society were the focus of creativity, with the individual artist merely the agent of their discovery or exploitation. Lissitzky/s Suprematist convictions set him at odds with this conception. Fundamental to most of his writings since 1919 had been the stress on the source of the new world (however mystically or aesthetically defined) inside the consciousness of the human being. For a while, Rodchenko had seemed to occupy a similar position, as he had been close to Suprematism and then to Kandinsky (especially around 1920). However, by 1921, Rodchenko had shifted allegiance to the more "objectivist" camp. His conclusion from the Inkhuk debates of January-April 1921 on the nature of "construc­ tion" is entirely characteristic for this line of thinking. Rodchenko sees it as an objective or a task performed according to a particular system, for which purpose particular materials have been organized and worked in a manner

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Ill corresponding to their inherent characteristics, and are used for their own purpose, and contain nothing super­ fluous .91 Much of Lissitzky's lecture on Prouns in September 1921 is directed against much of what Rodchenko now proposed. Lissitzky energetically rejects both the scientist and the engineer as models.92 Moreover, although he devotes many paragraphs to tracing the history of mathematics and numera­ tion systems, he is also at pains to point out that this is merely an analogy. This assertion,

in turn, is in clear con­

trast to Rodchenko's slogan of February 1921 for his course at Vkhutemas (where Lissitzky was also probably teaching) affirming that "art, like any science, is a branch of mathe­ matics ."93 Towards the end of his lecture, Lissitzky speaks of arriving at architecture and of architecture being the frame

9 1 . Art into L i f e . p.

66.

9 2 . A continuing role for the artist is also envisaged in a lecture which Lissitzky apparently delivered on 30 October 1921 in Moscow. He is reported to have said: "We in the visual arts burnt our monastery cells and are going into the expanse of life in its entirety. Let us unite with workers and intellectuals, with technicians and inventors for collective construction....It is time to turn intellectual meetings from bazaars of ideas into factories of actions" (quoted in Khardzhiev, "El Lis­ sitzky - konstruktor k n i g i ," p. 148). In its universalism, its impatience with theory, and its broad based appeal for collective creativity, this (otherwise undocumented) lecture is typical of Lissitzky's approach. 93.

Quoted in German Karginov, Rodchenko (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), p. 90.

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112 of reference for current work. This, after his extended critique of what we now call the Constructivist position as it was developing in 1921, seems to bring him a little closer to the emphasis on utility and practicality which were the order of the day for his Inkhuk audience. However, he immediately steps back to insist on postponing a discus­ sion of architecture until it has provided some examples of its work, i.e. until there are concrete results (such as those that Proun has already offered) to judge and analyze.94 He then goes on to point out that the pace of life has slowed, after the accelerations of the past few years. He is surely referring to the adoption of the New Economic Policy beginning in March 1921 (a reintroduction of limited forms of capitalism, trade, and private proprietor­ ship) and, perhaps, to the waning hopes for an international revolution to match the Russian one. Lissitzky here implies that a move to the concrete implementation of the more utopian avant-garde notions (associated, in a way, with the politics of War Communism and the heroism of the Civil War95 94. 95.

Cologne 1976, p. 71 (translation corrected). Given that the most radical constructivist notions first emerged in 1920-1921, three or four years after the 1917 revolution, it seems likely that the cultural atmosphere of the Civil War (as a time of heroic mobilization of resources to defend the new state) may have played as important a role as the Revolution itself in prompting the theory and practice of the avant-garde artists to progress towards the most radical positions. For an assessment of the importance of the Civil War in forming key aspects of Bolshevik politics (including cultural politics), see Sheila Fitzpatrick, "The Civil War as a Formative Experience," in Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites, eds., Bolshevik Culture.

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113 ) would be premature and unwise. At a time when Rodchenko and his colleagues are apparently pressing the most radical consequences of their theory and practice by preparing to "abandon art," Lissitzky advocates a more measured response, one that acknowledges the reality of "the moment of inter­ mission or hesitation." "No, we will march in step with the earthly globe, however slowly it may revolve. So, in the hour of need, we will be standing firmly on it."96 Lissitzky's approach is, in a sense, pragmatic. He is defending the creation of a radically new type of work of art, precisely while the surrounding society pauses, com­ promises, and deviates on the path to a truly revolutionized society.97 After the sobering introduction of the New Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 56-76. 96.

Cologne 1976, p. 71. For many Bolsheviks and supporters of the revolution, the New Economic Policy marked a dis­ tressing backsliding from the radical purity of the attempt, under the conditions of the Civil War, to introduce socialist planning as a way to "eliminate com­ modity production and institute direct products-exchange within a totalized socialized economy with production dor the direct use of the socialist economy," in the words of Paul Craig Roberts ("'War Communism:' A Re­ examination," Slavic Review, vol. 29 [June 1970], p. 260). Roberts gives a good account of Lenin's attempts to explain the shift from a revolutionary approach to a reformist approach.

97.

There is in this conception of creative work something of the utopian spirit of Ernst Bloch, the German thinker who in the same years after the end of the First World War was elaborating a philosophy of utopia and hope. The summary by Fredric Jameson of Bloch's view of philosophy could stand for Lissitzky's understanding of the role of his own work in Proun: "[it] stands as a solution to problems of universal culture and a universal hermeneutics which have not yet come into being. It thus

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114 Economic Policy and the attendant political adjustments, Lissitzky is prepared to advocate patience and to paint Prouns, while the productivist group associated with Rod­ chenko presses forward with attempt at radical restructuring of the processes of design, production, and the organization of life. It was shortly after his lecture of 21 September 1921, that Lissitzky left Russia for Germany. On arrival there, he did nothing for about 18 months to pursue an interest in architecture. Rather, he continued to make, show and sell Prouns, expanding their repertoire of allusion and reference to include anthropomorphic figures and various branches of science. Architecture,

in the form that it had absorbed him

since his arrival in Vitebsk in Summer 1919, faded.

lies before us, enigmatic and enormous, like an aerolite fallen from space, covered with mysterious hieroglyphs that radiate a peculiar inner warmth and power, spells and keys to spells, themselves patiently waiting for their own ultimate moment of decipherment" (Frederic Jameson, Marxism and Form [Princeton, New Jersey: Prin­ ceton University Press, 1971], p. 159. Bloch developed a powerful conception of art, by which it contained within itself the vital foreshadowings, however distorted, of a future resolution and transfiguration of the world. Lis­ sitzky 's view that his Prouns would only be understood (and therefore only be fully effective) in the future parallels this idea in a way that points to the com­ monalities of stance amongst European vanguardists of this generation (Bloch was five years older than Lis­ sitzky) .

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Chapter II Proun and the Discourse of the Organic

If "architecture" broadly defined had constituted the paradigm for the development and interpretation of Proun in the early years, as discussed in the previous chapter, then a new, additional system of reference can be made out, one which can conveniently be assigned to the years which Lis­ sitzky spent in Germany and Switzerland,

1922-1925. This can

be approximately defined as a discourse of the organic,

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116 understood to encompass the human form, biological science, and general organic analogies. Conceived as a counterbalance to one-sided, limited understandings of the machine and the mechanistic (and, by extension, of the architectural as an artificial technical sy s t e m ) , this discourse is surprisingly pervasive in Lissitzky's oeuvre, and among many of his con­ temporaries. This chapter will address two sides to this increasingly prominent theme in Lissitzky's work. First, the presence and significance of anthropomorphic form in the Prouns will be assessed (with a complicating elaboration of the ways in which this anthropomorphic form can also be interpreted as part of another set of references, in this case references to compositionally related works of abstract art by Lissitzky's contemporaries); secondly, the depth and range of analogies and metaphors drawn from the natural world will be explicated (but with special attention to the ways in which this cognitive paradigm also fails, in Lissitzky's terms and in ours, fully to cover the role and significance of the Prouns in this period.

a) The Anthropomorphic Presence

In a liberal Berlin newspaper in February 1924, one of Germany's leading art critics published a positive and per­ ceptive review of Lissitzky's solo exhibition at the

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117 Graphisches Kabinett J.B. Neumann. Lissitzky, Max Osborn wr o t e , is one of the purest spokespersons for constructivism. Here everything that chatters on about secrets of the soul, is banished. The artist does not want to bother the world with his inner concerns. He forces himself to repress such things. Or, more accurately: he does not even need to force himself. The reaction against expressionism led automatically to freeing oneself for once entirely from the chaos of life, and to meditating on the grand, higher laws which float around us. To some, this may sound like windy nonsense ["verblasen"]. But when one sees Lissitzky's pictures - this clear and quiet play of planes and angles, of lines and circles, dipped in yellow-brown, gray-silver, matte-colored tones - then one realizes, with growing astonishment, what a rich optical pleasure is to be found in such abstrac­ tions. An artist is conversing with the spheres - an artist who grew up in the epoch of machines, of engineering, of mechanism. After the storm of the previous decade, constructivism is like a cleansing in the spirit. It reflects a major cultural shift ["eine Kulturwende"]. When Lissitzky becomes literary and makes his angular constructions ["Winkelgebilde"] into symbols for human beings, or even for human characteristics, he strays from his straight path. Then the play becomes frivolity.1 This sensitive review appealed to Lissitzky. He wrote to Sophie in early March that "Osborn is very decent, espe­ cially when one takes into account the fact that he apparently visited the exhibition alone, received no

1.

Max Osborn, "Kunst-Umschau" Vossische Zeitunq. 21 February 1924, evening edition, pp. 2-3. The exhibition ran from 13 January to late February (Letter to Sophie, 7 January 1924: "Exhibition opening Sunday 13. Lecture by Behne. Catalogue with introduction. Saturday in the gallery lecture by Midia Pines"). The exhibition must have closed before 27 February, the date of a newspaper announcement of the next exhibition at the Graphisches Kabinett J. B. Neumann, showing the works of Otto Freundlich and Alexander Bortnyik (Vorwarts, 27 February 1924) .

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118 "explanations" from anyone, and that's why he missed on the 'Figurines.'"2 This last comment refers to Osborn's closing remark, where he confronts and criticizes the portfolio of lithographs with Lissitzky's stage and character designs for the Futurist opera, "Victory over the Sun." According to the broadsheet/catalogue for the exhibition, sheets from this portfolio, completed in December 1923, were on view. Perhaps the text page explicating the context and purpose of such images as "Announcer," "Troublemaker," or "New Man" (fig. 30) was not available to Osborn. However, the critic acutely identified a continuing tension in Lissitzky's work, when he contrasted the apparent pure non-referentiality of the paintings and watercolors on view in Berlin to the literary allusiveness and symbolism of the figurative compositions, which deploy the spatial, compositional, textural and coloristic devices of the Proun works to illustrational pur­ poses. 3 2.

This passage appears in a fragment of a letter, probably written on 1 March 1924. The first sheet or two of this letter are no longer extant. A few excerpts from this letter were published in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 37, as if they formed part of the letter of 2 March 1924.

3.

Interestingly, a similar point about the weakness inherent in literary allusion was made in another review of the same exhibition, of a much more negative cast. In Per Cicerone, Willi Wolfradt complained that there was little new to Lissitzky's works, and that they were fundamentally compromised in their lack of con­ sequentially. "This Russian does indeed have his caprices - his ruler does sometimes dance, and a balanc­ ing act oscillates not without spirit. But there is much trifling [Tandelei] in these things, and it is charac­ teristic of their half-heartedness that a literary con­ ception does nevertheless penetrate the figurine [i.e. the Victory over the Sun figures]" ("Berliner Ausstel-

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119

Osborn's irritation and disappointment is understandable, in the light of the text which Lissitzky chose to publish in the broadsheet/catalogue. This publica­ tion, with a cover designed by Lissitzky, printed a powerful essay by Adolf Behne discussing individual, national and international characteristics in art, the revolutionary approach of the Russians compared with the evolutionary approach of the Western Europeans (whereby both are deemed necessary), the status of the revived neo-classical figura­ tion, and the resounding vitality of Lissitzky's work. The broad sweep of this magisterial review stands in strong con­ trast to Lissitzky's contribution, written in the noticeably casual form of an extract "from the letter to Mr. N." presumably Karl Nierendorf, the proprietor of the gallery

lungen," Per Cicerone. vol. XVI no. 3 [February 1924], pp. 142-143). In his general comments, Wolfradt claims that nowhere in this admittedly fantasy-filled play of forms does one glimpse a moment of true discovery ["ein Heureka"], and he compares Lissitzky unfavorably to Moholy-Nagy's concision, endless clarity of facture, and precise logic of execution. Lissitzky wrote to Sophie on 21 March 1924 that he had read this review "with pleasure" (presumably of an ironic kind), and expressed anger only at the presumption of a critic (sarcastically renamed "Wildrat"), who surely had never had "even one half or one thousandth of a Eureka-moment" at all in his own life. It may well be that Lissitzky appreciated precisely those very open-ended, unresolved, tentative aspects of his w o r k s , which Wolfradt eloquently criticized. For comments on Wolfradt's review of the "Prouns Space" of 1923, also critical but also percep­ tive, see below, Chapter IV, n. 9 and n. 17.

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120 presenting the exhibition.4 Lissitzky's letter begins and ends with a line and a half of dashes to indicate its fragmentary nature.5 This tentativeness is then reinforced by the opening sentence, which declares that "I cannot give an absolute definition of

4.

This "letter" must have been written in late 1923. The text as it appeared in this broadsheet (Typ. Cat 1924/1) was republished in a stylistically and grammatically "improved" form in ABC Beitraae zum B a u e n . ser. II no. 2 (1926), p. 3 as "Aus einem Briefe ["From a Letter"]. This text was then reprinted in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1967, p. 355, giving the source as A B C . but for some reason the erroneous date 1925 (with no mention of the date and place of original publication). The resulting confusion over dates has led to misreadings of the progression of Lissitzky's thinking about Proun and its "definitions." In the present context, translations are based on the 1924 publication.

5.

It seems very likely that a second text published by Lissitzky in the mid-1920s, also in the form of a frag­ ment of a letter, was in fact part of the same piece of writing: "Aus einem Briefe" in Paul Westheim, ed. Ktinstlerbekenntnisse. B r i e f e . Tacrebuchblatter. Betrachtunqen heutiaer Kunstler (Berlin: Propylaen, n.d.), p. 357. The text is dated 1923, and begins (after a salutation to "Mr. So and So" and a series of periods to indicate foregoing text) "You further ask..." (See Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 345-346). Dealing with how to display Lissitzky's works (and secondarily with the machine metaphor), this fragment would appropriately be sent to someone preparing an exhibition (and that some­ one could be a commercial dealer, as Lissitzky refers by way of counter-example to museums and museum directors). Only the fact that this fragment is published as having been translated by R. von Walther, while the catalogue text was clearly written in Lissitzky's idiosyncratic German, weakens the connexion between them. Probably Lissitzky himself translated the one fragment, whereas the more formal requirements of book publication (and perhaps Lissitzky's departure for Switzerland immediately after the opening of the Berlin exhibition) necessitated professional translation. Lissitzky offered a mild critique of the translation in a letter to Sophie on 15 September 1925, acknowledging receipt of his copy of Ktinstlerbekenntnisse.

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121 what Proun is, because the work is not yet dead." Lissitzky repeats the "old truth" that, had he been able to give a definitive explanation of the concept he invented (Proun), then he would not have needed to create his entire oeuvre (thereby implying, interestingly, that this oeuvre is to be seen as an ongoing explication or illustration of that con­ cept, rather than vice versa). When Proun's life is complete and it lays itself gently into the grave of art history, then the concept will be defined. Until such time, Lissitzky says, his goal (and not only his goal, for this is the "con­ tent" of the new art) is not to represent anything, but rather to form a "self-engendered reality," a "thing" to which he has given a "self-engendered name - Proun."6 This assertion of the "endogenous" autonomy of the work of art (a position itself traditionally buttressed through the use of the metaphor of the organic work of art) and the rejection of representation have a more absolute tone than earlier writings by Lissitzky, where Proun is at least related in some way to architecture or the (metaphorical) construction of new form. Against this background, the insistent figura­ 6.

In Lissitzky's idiosyncratic German original, the word here translated as "self-engendered" is "selbstaufgewachsen," a solecism meaning approximately "grown up autonomously." Probably Lissitzky was attempting to render the adjectival form of a Russian word such as "samozarozhdenie" (self-generation) or a similar concept with biological or agricultural overtones. An alterna­ tive rendering might use "autogenous" or "endogenous." In the later republications of this text, Lissitzky's awkward term has been replaced by the more acceptable, but less evocative "selbststandig" ("independent").

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122 tiveness of the "Victory over the Sun" lithographs must have seemed anomalous to critics. Lissitzky's practice may have seemed to contradict, or at least complicate, his theory. In fact, the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio can alert the attentive spectator to a range of figurative allusion in Lissitzky's work. The watercolor originals on which the lithographs of 1923 were based, were executed in Moscow, as Lissitzky writes in his introductory note on the text page of portfolio,

in "1920/21," that is, at the time when he

introduced the concept of Proun as a way of loosening the referential link of his abstract paintings and prints to specific meanings.7 Lissitzky distinguishes in this 1923 text for the port­ folio between, on the one hand, the "spectacle machinery" to be constructed on an open public square, with mobile, rotatable, extendable parts, controlled at the center by the "spectacle director" in charge of the electromechanical energies, sound systems, lighting and other devices, and, on the other, his proposals for staging this particular Futurist opera with these particular characters on this flexible "stage set" (which could theoretically be used for many different productions). In this, Lissitzky is ack­ nowledging that the performing "bodies" on his inventive scaffolding could be wholly abstract, but in this case, as

7.

The 1923 text is reprinted in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1967, p. 349 and translated in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1980, pp. 351352.

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123 determined by the demands of the text, they must retain something of human form and reference (fig. 31). In a sense, the stage machinery is a concrete proposal for an architec­ tural type, analogous to the design for a speaker's rostrum which was a student exercise in his Unovis workshop.8 Seen this way, the title page of the portfolio becomes an exercise in the integration of figurative reference (the humanoid characters from the opera) with a proposed threedimensional literalization of a Proun work. The question of the possible relationship of figures of one kind or another to non-objective form was a major concern of the artist in 1922-1923 .

8.

For a detailed study of this project, see L.A. Zhadova, "'Tribuna Lenina.' Stranitsa istorii sovetskogo dizaina," Tekhnicheskaya estetika, vol. 14 no. 9 (Sep­ tember 1977), pp. 20-22, and my comments below, chapter V. In fact, the fragment of the stage machinery presented by Lissitzky as the title page of his 192 3 portfolio (fig. 31) bears many similarities to the "Lenin Tribune" (see fig. 105) of the following year: an extendable diagonal form arising from a basic geometric element (in one case, the circle, and, in the other, a cube) carries both a figure (the "Announcer" or the "New Man," respectively, and a photograph of Lenin) and a slogan (the multilingual closing words of the opera "All is well that begins well and has no end" and "Proletarians"). The "stage machinery' was of special interest to Lissitzky. He presented at least three dif­ ferent variations on the chutes, scaffolding and sup­ ports: the version in the portfolio itself (fig. 31, also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, p. 128, pi. 65), a version published in mid-1924 in the Hungarian journal MA (Proun Inventory no. 86), and the version published in the catalogue for the international theater exhibi­ tion in Vienna in 1924 (fig. 32, as in Friedrich Kiesler, e d . , Internationale Ausstelluna neuer Theatertechn i k . K a t a l o q . Proaramm, Alman a c h . exh. cat. [Vienna: Kunsthandlung Wiirthle, for the Gesellschaft zur Forderung moderner Kunst, 1924], p. 51).

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124 However, the individual "characters" as rendered in Lis­ sitzky's designs are also themselves hybrid fusions of Proun-like abstraction and anthropomorphic reference, of a kind that can also be found in works which lack the illustrational occasion of the "Victory over the Sun" port­ folio. One such is a sheet from the other portfolio of lithographs produced by Lissitzky in 1923, the "First Kestner Portfolio," so called because it was the first of six print portfolios produced by the private art exhibiting organization in Hanover, the Kestner Society, for sale to its members.9 This sheet (fig. 33) unmistakably echoes the compositional format of the "New Man" from the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio (fig. 30), with its evocation of a stand­ ing figure seen in three-quarters profile, legs in a strid­ ing position, arms raised.10 This "figure" is presented as

9.

For details on the society and its activities, see Die zwanziaer Jahre in H a n n o v e r . Bildende K u n s t . Lite r a t u r . T h e a t e r . T a n z . A r chitektur. 1916-1933. exh. cat. (Hanover: Kunstverein, 1962).

10.

"At first glance, a struggle occurs between the solid geometrical forms of the black circle and the red col­ lage quadrilateral on the one hand, and the underlying "skeleton" of the crossed diagonals on the other. This struggle is uneasily resolved only when one realizes that the forms can be perceived as a human figure. This process, of course, occurs in a few moments" (Lynn Gumpert, "El Lissitzky's 'Proun 1. Kestnermappe,'" Bul­ letin r Museums of Art and Archaeology. The University of M i c h i g a n . vol. II [1979], pp. 57-69, at p. 64). For drawn and collaged versions in different formats of this important composition, see Proun Inventory nos. 54 and 77.

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125 part of a set of prints which come with no explanatory text, only with the overarching title "Proun." While two years earlier, Lissitzky had proposed a cover for his first set of lithographs using the word in the plural (Prouns), implying a set of individual pieces each designated as "a Proun," the concept has now undergone a further generalization, a further removal from concrete specificity. The 1923 portfolio has the larger ambition of providing works which collectively delineate the concept. It is as if, say, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy had entitled his portfolio for the Kestner Society "Constructivism" rather than "Con­ structions"

(as he in fact did).

This titling manoeuvre encourages the viewer of the portfolio to see each of the six sheets as exemplary manifestations of aspects of Proun's potential meaning. It is in that light that a further range of allusion and "iconography" becomes detectable.

"Unified by Lissitzky's

remarkable sensitivity and craftsmanship, the Kestner port­ folio...can be interpreted as a review of Proun's many facets - the architectural and decorative, heroic and human, witty and visionary."11 Specifically, the portfolio seems to

11.

Quoted from the catalogue entry (prepared with my assistance) on the Yale University Art Gallery's copy of the Kestner Portfolio, in Robert L. Herbert, Eleanor S. Apter, Elise K. Kenney, coeditors, The Soci^te Anonyme and the Dreier Bequest at Yale University. A Catalogue Raisonn^ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, for the Yale University Art Gallery, 1984), no. 435A-G, pp. 416-418.

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126 anthologize references to the human form ([fig. 33], as elaborated above); to three-dimensional space (in the sheet documenting the "Prouns Space" created by Lissitzky for an exhibition in Berlin in summer 1923 [fig. 34]); to pre­ existing works of art (in the sheet [fig. 35] rendering one of the wall-reliefs contained within the Proun Space); to the tectonics of dynamic forces (in the sheet [fig. 36] showing a vertical, top-heavy form "balancing on" a horizon­ tal line, with the same pattern then printed again at an angle); to science and experimentation (in the sheet [fig. 37] recalling prisms and optical devices); and to a more rigorously non-objective configuration of precisely rendered lines, cross, trapezoid, beam and circle (in the sheet [fig. 38] with the collaged black circle1 2 ). The anthropomorphic allusion can be pursued through a progression of Lissitzky's works.13 This sequence can throw 12.

Lynn Gumpert makes the provocative but ultimately unpersuasive suggestion that this combination of circle and cross alludes to the "age-old botanical and astrological symbol for the female or Venus," making this sheet a representation of Universal Woman and a pendant to the figurative evocation of Universal Man in the other sheet with a collage in the portfolio ("El Lissitzky's 'Proun 1. Kestnermappe,'" p. 64). Among other objections, one can note that the "Universal Man" sheet does not use the equivalent astrological symbol. That there may nevertheless be some engagement with symbols of the masculine and the feminine in Lissitzky's work would not be inconsistent with his deep interest in biological metaphors and analogies for creativity, as discussed below.

13.

The anthropomorphic figuration outlined here is to be distinguished from the more casual or even hostile response by critics reading human form into non­ objective art. Although the specifics of any such response are not necessarily helpful, the fact that con­

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127 some light on the ways in which the echo or undertone of figuration survives in various compositions, even at some distance from the more overtly legible treatments of the subject. The sequence constructed below is not intended to parallel the chronology of execution of the works. The ques­ tion of the precise dating of Lissitzky's abstract works and their organization into a coherent temporal development is still an open one.14 Instead, the sequence is an artificial temporary viewers of abstract art did this is not without some hermeneutic value. The artists themselves operated within a horizon of expectations in which such "translations” could occur. Two examples for Lissitzky can be taken from American responses to his work. The sheet of the Kestner Portfolio with the vertical forms precariously poised on a horizontal wire was described as "a waiter with a tray teetering on a tightrope" (cited in Herbert, Societe A n o n y m e . p. 418). Moreover, the large painting "Proun 19D" (fig. 29) "interpreted" by a reviewer of an exhibition in early 1924: This pic­ ture, "which is aided and abetted by bits of old cardboard boxes and strips of silver paper, calls up the emotional contour of a frenzied golfer trapped in a bunker" (Christian Science Monitor, 10 March 1924). 14.

Alan C. Birnholz has summarized some previous attempts to arrange the Prouns in chronological sequence and proposes a criterion of his own in his "Notes on the Chronology of El Lissitzky's Proun Compositions," Art Bu l l e t i n . vol. LV no. 3 (September 1973), pp. 437-439. His argument (that "as the Proun series developed, the spatial interplay increased both in dynamism and sub­ tlety" [p. 437]) is, however, compromised by his mistaken assumption that the picture he uses as a prime example of early work, Proun Inventory no 6 (fig. 3), is the same as the painting on the easel in the photograph of Lissitzky's studio in Vitebsk (fig. 1, which he dates 1919, though 1920 is a much more probable date), which it is not. The painting in the photograph is, in fact, Proun Inventory no. 71, and has a significantly dif­ ferent configuration of forms. Proun Inventory no. 6 cannot be dated with precision, though it probably dates from 1922 or 1923. It is worth noting here that the apparently identical Proun which Lissitzky illustrates in his 1925 survey of recent art, Die Kunstismen (Typ. Cat. 1925/2, p. 8 [fig. 105]) is actually neither of

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128 arrangement, designed to highlight structural and composi­ tional consistencies which may carry some iconographic weight. Nevertheless, all the works discussed do seem to have been executed around 1922/1923, forming a clustered group with inter-related formal and figurative concerns. The figurative allusion traced here is especially revealing, as it intersects with a second mode of referentiality by which these works signify: the dialogue with compositionally similar abstract painting by others, either of a previous generation, or from his immediate con­ temporaries participating in the discourse of non­ objectivity in Germany in the 1920s. This example, in which Lissitzky's work positions itself on a spectrum of related work by Kazimir Malevich, Wassili Kandinsky and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, will be discussed after the figurative allusion in one set of Lissitzky's works has been described. The "anthropomorphic" sheet from the Kestner Portfolio (fig.

33) is built up on a framework of crossing diagonals

between whose upper and lower intersections parabolic curves

these, but yet another version, Proun Inventory no. 90, painted in late 1924 or early 1925. Yet another rendi­ tion of this composition has survived and is now in a private collection in Basel (Proun Inventory no. 44). The number of comparable variations on this basic theme and the fact that Lissitzky twice chose to give the similar compositions official prominence (once on the easel in the Vitebsk studio, once as the representative of Proun in Die Kunstismen1 surely make this one of the key Proun configurations in his oeuvre.

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129 are placed. The legs, arms, neck and shoulders thereby indi­ cated then support a "torso" of geometric form (including the red collaged quadrilateral) and a circular "head." An equivalent description with minor modifications can be given for this sheet's cognate, the "New Man" from the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio (fig. 30). This configuration has been plausibly linked to Leonardo Da Vinci's famous late 15th century rendition of "Vitruvian Man," in which the frontal view of a nude male figure with his arms and legs extended is inscribed into a perfect circle (and, with legs vertical and arms horizontal,

into a perfect square).15 The

meaning of Leonardo's figure,

its evocation of an ideal,

transformed humanity, is close enough to Lissitzky's professed agenda of utopian renewal of the world to make the association plausible. Moreover, this image's implication that the human being is "the vital point of study, vaguely identified with nature and containing within himself the source of nature's secrets"16 accords well with the

15.

Alan C. Birnholz, "Forms, Angles, and Corners: On Mean­ ing in Russian Avant-Garde Art," Arts M a g a z i n e . vol. 57 no. 6 (February 1977), p. 102. Birnholz stresses that "Leonardo, the brilliant thinker and many-sided man, was a paradigm for artists and philosophers in Russia during these y e ars."

16.

Michael Levey, Early Renaissance (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1967), p. 122. Levey eloquently evokes the message of this "ideal" image: "Leonardo's...highly memorable...figure, with arms outstretched in crucified pose, is dynamic and confident, master of the square and circle which he seems to have conjured up around him. That is indeed an arresting symbol of man his own moulder" (p. 123).

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130 Suprematist tenet that the transformation of the world will proceed from within consciousness, from inside the human skull, as Malevich liked to say. The allusion to Leonardo can be accommodated within a broader project of exploring the visual form of "new man," appropriate for the new world promised by the Revolution, and appropriate as a figural echo underpinning and facilitating the response of the viewer to the abstract work.17 The basic compositional format of this lithograph is also used by Lissitzky in a Proun composition (figs. 39, 40, 41) involving a set of geometric elements clustered at the intersection of a diagonally placed, vertically elongated cross-like form, whose arms curve as they join to create a parabolic form at each edge. These forms on the upper and lower edge are the same color, as are the two at each side, reinforcing the sense of a vertical,

"portrait-like"

orientation. This composition is then set precisely within a circular band (though the circle stops just short of comple­

17.

The trope of the "new man" carried enormous weight in radical thinking in pre- and post-revolutionary Russia in many fields, including politics, pyschology, biology, and sociology. For an exemplary expression of this, see the final paragraph of the first part of Trotsky's Literature and Revolution (1923): "Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman" (Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution. trans. Rose Strunsky [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960], pp. 255-256).

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131 tion), which is actually a circular back panel in the painted version (fig. 39, Proun Inventory no. 29) and printed as part of the lino-cut design in the version used as the cover for an issue of the Hungarian avant-garde journal MA in 1922 (fig. 40, Typ. Cat. 1922/13).18 Although now lacking a "head form" (unless the small circle in the lower segment is a remnant of this form, further disguised by a top-bottom inversion of the composition), the symmetry of the outstretched limbs and their inscription within the circle make the allusion to Leonardo remain a potent one. One further step in the development of this configura­ tion is shown by the painting entitled "Proun G7" (fig. 42, Proun Inventory no. 64) and the closely related mounted col­ lage with watercolor, crayon and graphite (fig. 43, Proun Inventory no. 74). Both these cases retain the configuration of two or more elements at the center, including a trans­ lucent triangle, a split beam-element and a small circle.19 These are arranged, as before, at the crossing point of four arms (or "limbs"), which are now, however,

inscribed not on

18.

The version on card of this composition (fig. 41, Proun Inventory no. 43) omits the circular surround. Also, by giving only the rectangular dimensions, archival docu­ ments imply that the oil on panel version was once exhibited without its circular back-panel (see Proun Inventory no. 29).

19.

There is some evidence that the work on card (fig. 43, Proun Inventory no. 74) may have lost a collaged tri­ angle made of the new material, celluloid (perhaps not coincidentally associated with film and photography, a growing interest of the artist at this moment, as dis­ cussed in the Chapter V ) .

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132 a rectangle in a circle, but onto the circle itself, which in turn is set at an angle and off-center in the composi­ tion. The four parabolic forms are still rendered in two colors, but they now reach not to the edge of the picture plane, but rather to four broad bands (light in the paint­ ing, dark in the collage), which stretch like a deformed cross to the four sides of the support.

(This cross is more

ruptured and uneven in "Proun G7," where one arm actually reaches to a corner of the canvas, than in the more stable version in collage on c a r d . ) This masterful transformation of the compositional format greatly heightens its manifold spatial tensions and ambiguities.20 It also sets the "emblem" of Vitruvian Man into motion, tilting it, shifting it, twisting it. This manoeuvre brings Leonardo, so to speak, into line with Lis­ sitzky, by introducing a dynamic tension into the rendition of the form, implying a spinning which in turn seems to derive from the circular "band" which ran around the firstmentioned versions of the composition.21 20.

It should be stressed again that the present discussion of the resonances of such a composition is intended to supplement this fruitful focus on spatial and formal analysis, not supplant it.

21.

This raises the question of whether, say, Proun Inventory no. 29 (fig. 39) was intended actually to rotate either on or with its backboard. There is no con­ crete evidence for this. Indeed, rotating and spinning are not as common as implied movements for Lissitzky's works as some commentators have believed. The very large majority of his works has a single, clearly indicated orientation. While some works do carry inscriptions that imply rotation and viewing in any orientation (such as the lithograph inscribed "Movement over a Sphere [fig.

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133 A further consequence was the emergence of a composi­ tional format involving a circle set against a thick-limbed cross, however distorted either element might be. This leads directly to the final stage in this constructed sequence of compositions, the painting known as "Proun R.V." (fig. 46, Proun Inventory no. 2). Here, in this square painting, a

14]), others imply no more than the possibility of exhibition in a number of differing orientations. "Proun 8 Positions" (fig. 44, Proun Inventory no. 1), for example, could presumably be shown with any of its four edges and four corners at the bottom; the intermediate positions were not intended and the manner of changing the orientation of the hanging (whether by rotating or by re-hanging) was entirely secondary. An interesting case is the now lost painting made by Lissitzky for the International Art Exhibition in Dresden in 1926 (for inclusion in his so-called "Demonstration Room" [figs. 95, 96]). This circular work, formerly in the collection of Ida Bienert, Dresden, (fig. 45, and also illustrated in Peter Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," in Cambridge 1987, fig. 18, p. 31) was a simplified version of the lithograph known as "Proun 6B" (fig. 26, and also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, pi. 27, p. 90). In a hitherto unnoticed newspaper review of the Dresden exhibition, Sophie Kiippers, laying out in detail the polar opposition of her companion Lissitzky's work to that of Mondrian, wrote of this work that "for Lis­ sitzky, the problem of "balance" results from the ten­ sion between body and space. The illusionistic body hovering in infinite space is so perfectly balanced out, that it retains its balance with every turn of the panel [my emphasis], and carries itself. While in this case, a strong, pointed concentration ["eine starke Zugespitztheit"] creates the unprecedented tension which forces the rotating body into the space, for Mondrian, the original impulse for his creativity may be the yearning of the mild European for a point of rest." (Sophie Kiippers, "Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden," Hannoverscher K u r i e r , morning edition, 17 August 1926, pp. 2-3). Does Sophie's wording imply that spectators could actually rotate this panel on the wall of the exhibition room, designed by Lissitzky to activate them in several different ways?

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134 cross form, while not wholly regular, has stabilized in such a way as to bring all four of its arms into relatively per­ pendicular contact with the edges of the support close to their center. Hovering "within" the cross is a white circle, surrounded by a more elaborate configuration of geometrical beams and rectangles, relatives (though by now, very distant ones) of the quadrilateral, beams and lines at the "heart" of the sheet from the Kestner Portfolio (fig. 33). The gradual translation of formal components from one version to another has left any plausible allusion to the human figure (or to Leonardo) far behind, and has incremen­ tally replaced it with a network of references to other artists. In particular, this painting can be situated at the center of a network of compositional strategies encompassing Kazimir Malevich, Vassili Kandinsky and Lazslo Moholy-Nagy.

b) A Visual Debate with Malevich, Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky

In the painting "Proun R.V."

(fig. 46), Lissitzky quotes

his mentor Malevich in the "background" cross formed by the four irregular, and differently colored quadrilaterals at the corners of the square format. The shape thereby formed is, in a sense, a "negative" form, through which the white circle appears visible behind the picture plane. This nega­ tive form is an unmistakable, if not a direct quotation from Malevich's "Black Cross." First in the form of a painting

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135 shown at the seminal exhibition in late 1915 which intro­ duced Suprematism to the Moscow art world, this composition was included as the third lithograph (preceded only by the canonical "Black Square" and "Black Circle") in the survey booklet Suprematism. 34 D r a wings. published in Vitebsk in late 1920 (fig. 47).22 This subtle, but clear homage to Malevich is perhaps also expressed in the dominant white circle (the "opposite" of Malevich's black, much as the cross form is in negative). Indeed,

"Proun R.V." can be associated with other paintings

by Lissitzky plausibly dated 1923 which concentrate on a

22.

The earliest "Black Cross" painting is now in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Malevich later painted a second version (fig. 48), now in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg and usually dated ca. 1923 (inv. no. Zh. 9485). For an interpretation which stresses this con­ nexion of "Proun R.V." to Malevich, see Kai-Uwe Hemken, "Hannover 2 3 im Bett: Zum Gemalde R.V.N.2," in Hanover 1988, pp. 138-141. (Hemken retains "N.2" in the paint­ ing's title, though this refers to the work's place in the Proun Inventory ["number 2"] and is not really part of the title.) In his interpretation, Hemken invokes the appropriate "scene" from Lissitzky's book for children Of Two Squares to interpret the prominent circular form as an image of the globe, and the various floating geometrical elements as elements of construction. He sees the stability and clarity of "Proun R.V." as evidence of Lissitzky's reflection on his creative heritage at a time of his sickness and possible death. Although not mentioned by Hemken, Lissitzky's associa­ tion of the sphere (and, by implication, the circle) with perfection and therefore with death in his letter to J. J. P. Oud of 30 June 1924 (Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, p. 125) would strengthen this potentially rich reading. Interestingly, all three of Lissitzky's versions of the "Stage Machinery" for "Victory over the Sun" (see above, n. 8, and figs. 31, 32) place the figures of the Gravediggers, obviously associated with death, on a prominent black circle.

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136 large circle as the anchor of a relatively stable and centered composition:

"8 Positions Proun" (Proun Inventory

no. 1) is built around a grand black circle, and "Proun 2flR" (Proun Inventory no. 5) had an equally large red circle. Is this trio of similarly sized paintings a systematic investigation of the Malevichian set of colors: black, white, red? Each painting also includes a cross in some form (as background, as a small compositional element, and, most tenuously, as the intersection of thin, diagonally placed lines), and their very format, with height and width dimen­ sions equal, introduces an indirect homage to Malevich's square, as well. Of course, the closeness to Malevich set up by these family resemblances is immediately complicated by Lis­ sitzky's assertion of his individuality. For example, Malevich, as far as is known, did not grant a red or a white circle such prominence in any composition. He never adopted a diamond format (as Lissitzky did for two of the paintings under discussion), and would not have countenanced anything other than a white ground for a Suprematist painting. Lis­ sitzky introduces many "impurities" into Suprematism (which itself was less rigorous and exclusive a painterly system than is commonly supposed).23 23.

For an exemplary case in which Lissitzky appears to be more directly adopting a composition by Malevich and translating it into the textures, techniques and spatiality of a Proun, see Proun Inventory no. 48 (fig. 49), in which the younger artist has "revised" a drawing by the older, now dated ca. 1920 (fig. 50, also illustrated in Kazimir Malevich, exh. cat. [Los Angeles:

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137 "Proun R.V." does not only locate itself in relation to "past art" (if Malevich's work can be so described, in the sense that for Lissitzky it belongs largely to a personal context in Russia). It also derives significance from its engagement with contemporary art being made and shown in Germany by artists with whom Lissitzky was, in several senses, competing. The configuration of cross and circular form which has here been traced through "Proun R.V." and related works was also treated by other "abstract" artists in Germany. Vassili Kandinsky "Circles within a Circle"

(fig. 51)

shows a large circular band encompassing numerous smaller circles and scattered straight lines, set against a thick cross formed by the intersection of two diagonally placed

Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, 1990], cat. no. 151, p. 149). Malevich's horizontal rectangles are rendered as two combinations of a three-dimensional beam and a flat rectangle, which pass both behind and in front of the vertical strip (instead of just behind it). The strip is itself changed from a hollow outline to solid black. The standing diagonal shaded in solid, but textured graphite which Malevich had balanced in front of the strip, but with its lower point tangent to the rectangles behind, is moved by Lissitzky to a plane behind all these elements, and positioned to the right of the composition so that its base is "resting" on the lower of the two beam-and-rectangle forms. The diamond has been vertically divided, with its right side a solid black, but its left rendered as a dynamically deformed grid created by the intersection of lines radiating from the top and bottom corners (similar to the patterns in Proun Inventory nos. 91 and 99). The entire composition is noticeably rotated to the left.

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138 bands.24 Painted in July 1923, this work was shown at the exhibition mounted by the Bauhaus in Weimar, from August to September the same year. As Lissitzky is known to have visited this exhibition, there is some chronological underpinning for the notion that "Proun R.V."

(plausibly

dated late 1923) may constitute in some way Lissitzky's ans­ wer to Kandinsky (fig. 46). Certainly, he was very conscious of the older artist's status and achievement, especially given Kandinsky's association with the Bauhaus, with which Lissitzky also felt some rivalry.25 In this reading, Lis­ sitzky would be responding to Kandinsky's decorative con­ glomeration of arbitrarily placed circles and lines with his clarified and stabilized configuration of constructive beams and one small black circle, set against the white circle, which in turn is interlocked with the implied cross.26 24.

Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky. Catalogue Raisonn6 of the Oil-Paintings. vol. 2, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984), no. 702, p. 656. The painting, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is to all visual intents and purposes, square (97 x 95 cm).

25.

For a more detailed treatment of Lissitzky's manifold and continuing response to Kandinsky, including an explication of the ways in which the former's "Prouns Space" of 1923 may be read as a riposte to the latter's exhibition room of 1922, see Chapter IV.

26.

The diagonal and recessive placement of Kandinsky's perspectivally diminishing cross suggests in turn a creative relationship to Lissitzky's "Proun G7" and related collage (figs. 41 and 43), discussed above. As "Proun G7" was illustrated in the catalogue of the col­ lection of its first owner, published in the first half of 1923, it would have been available to Kandinsky (Adolph Behne, Ludwig Hilbersheimer, and Salomo Friedlander-Mynona, Erwerbungen der Sammlung Gabrielson Goteborg, Berlin 1922-1923 [Berlin, 1923]). The present

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139 Another artist working at the Bauhaus who attempted a painting built out of the cross and circle forms here highlighted was Moholy-Nagy. A black-and-white illustration (fig. 53) of a now lost painting of 1923 shows Moholy-Nagy's horizontal rectangular composition with a broad cranked cross, whose horizontal arms extend to the left and right

argument invokes in equal measure the empirical details necessary to prove that one artist's work was reacting to and commenting upon another's, as well as the premise that non-objective art of this kind does derive some meaning from the comparison with other abstract art of its time and place. That something akin to a "conversa­ tion" among works and artists of this kind can be legitimately reconstructed is also reinforced by other indications that Kandinsky implicitly "debated" Lissitzky. Two later instances from Kandinsky's theoretical treatise of 1926, Point and Line to P l a n e . A Contribu­ tion to the Analysis of Pictorial Elem e n t s . may be cited. Plate 2 3 of the book is a line drawing essen­ tially reproducing a painting of 1925 (also made into a lithograph [fig. 52]) entitled "Black Triangle" (Roethel and Benjamin, K a n d i n s k y , no. 763, p. 716). This work not only demands to be read as a standing figure with legs apart and arms raised, holding a straight and a curved element, but also very strongly calls to mind Lissitzky's figure of the "New Man" (fig. 30) from the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio of 1923 (also rendered as a now lost painting, formerly in the collection of Alexander Dorner). Point for point, the one seems to quote and reconfigure the other. Kandinsky's substitu­ tion of his beloved triangle at the heart of the figure, for Lissitzky's emblematic square is only one of many such "debating points." The second instance is more marginal. Does a sentence of Kandinsky's foreword to this book rebuke Lissitzky's closing words in the text accompanying the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio: "Once I have set out in a particular direction, I have to carry on" (Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky. Complete Writings on Art [New York: Da Capo Press, 1994], p. 530) vs. "The further adaptation and application of the ideas and forms set down here I leave to others while I proceed to my next task" (LissitzkyKuppers 1980, p. 352)?

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140 edges, while the vertical ones reach the top and bottom edges adjacent to the right and left edge respectively.27 At the intersection of these shifted diagonals, the artist has placed a single circle (within the contours of the cross), and other geometrical forms,

including two semi-circles and

parallel beams. Moholy's painting is significantly more "pictorial" than Lissitzky's,

in the sense that the horizon­

tal format is a less stringent and "disorienting" format than a square, and Moholy exploits the effects of transparency and translucency to more decorative effect than Lissitzky. Although the reproduction does not allow any com­ ment about the use of color by the Hungarian, other works of the period indicate that his works are distinguished from those of Lissitzky by their greater coloristic range and freedom.

In this case, as in others where Lissitzky and

Moholy produced works that are comparable in this way, it seems more likely that the latter was responding to the former.28 However, more important than documenting the 27.

Reproduced as "Construction (1923)" in Kunst der Zeit. Zeitschrift fur Kunst und Literatur (Berlin), vol. Ill nos. 1-3 (1928), p. 75. This issue of the journal was a special number devoted to the tenth anniversary of the "November Group," the radical artist's organization founded in the wake of the attempted revolutions of November 1918 in Germany. This painting was presumably shown in one of their annual exhibitions.

28.

For instance, Moholy-Nagy's painting "A IX" of 1923 (fig. 54, San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, inv. no. 51.3208) is strikingly close to the design which Lis­ sitzky drew in the guest book of his Hanover friends, Dr. and Mrs. Steinitz, on 4 January 1923 (fig. 55, also illustrated in Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lis­ sitzky,11 in Cambridge 1987, fig. 17, p. 28). As Moholy was present that same day and signed the guest book as

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141 evidence necessary to establish a pattern of one artist reacting to another,

is the indication that Lissitzky's

painting was made and shown within this network of cognate compositional strategies among artists whose creative visions were competing in a specific artistic (and commer­ cial) marketplace.29 This differentiation of his own con­ well, it is all but definite that he knew Lissitzky's composition. Again, Moholy's painting "Composition Z VIII" (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Neue Nationalgalerie) of 1924 can be considered as a deliberate re-interpretation of Lissitzky's "Proun S.K." (Proun Inventory no. 8) as recorded in the surviv­ ing watercolor study (Proun Inventory no. 52). Inter­ estingly, Moholy returned to an extended consideration of the cross and circle theme in a set of paintings of 1927, including "A 18," "A 19," "A 21" and "A 23." One earlier painting, perhaps by coincidence also built around a circle and crossing lines, which would also belong in a discussion of Lissitzky's effect on Moholy, is "LIS" of 1922 (Zurich, Kunsthaus), whose title is surely a form of homage. The extraordinary closeness of some of Moholy's compositions to works by Lissitzky probably in turn helps to explain the latter's fierce attempts to demote Moholy's role in the "invention" of the photogram (see Chapter IV), and his suspicious caginess in dealing with Moholy's later invitation to publish a book about graphic design in the series of "Bauhaus B o o k s ." 29.

Research on the respective prices and sales success of the abstract and constructivist artists in Germany in the 1920s is yet to be undertaken. Equally, the dis­ persal of private collections through the agency of National Socialist dictatorship and the Second World War has discouraged the study of private collecting and patronage of advanced art. Certainly, the indications are that works by Lissitzky sold well to a small, loyal group of collectors. For example, in a letter to the director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim of 20 December 1926, Alexander Dorner was able to list nine private collec­ tors, including himself, with unique works by Lissitzky in Hanover alone (Mannheim, Kunsthalle, Archives). The nine were Messrs. Basse, Beindorf, Bode, Brauweiler, Dorner, Oppenheimer, Rose, Schwitters and Steinitz. However, it is unlikely that Lissitzky would have been stimulated by competition for financial rewards to con­ duct this "aesthetic" debate with, to use the example

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142 tribution from those of his rivals was part of Lissitzky's broader debate with these artists on broadly cultural ques­ tions, questions that could include the role of the artist, the future of art, the role of subjectivity, and other issues. Just as Malevich, Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky and Lis­ sitzky all had differing notions of the functioning of nonref erential art (its relative permeability to cognitive interpretation), so too they surely differed on the ideal form of a putative "new man"

(whether weakly alluded to in

pictorial compositions or n o t ) . However, the intensity of the debates, carried out in part through the process des­ cribed here (which might be dubbed compositional competi­ tion), was surely due in some measure to the potential closeness and overlap of views and positions amongst these artists (all of whom, as "utopian abstract artists" of the 1920s, shared enough common ground for the debate to engaged in the first place). In Lissitzky's case, the issue of figuration of the kind analysed here (deploying the human form) was especially important because it played a triple role. Firstly, it formed a testing ground for the tension between the purity and the impurity of non-objective painting; secondly,

it

invoked the possibility of the "new man" as the subjective

given here, Kandinsky and Moholy, though he was always willing to accept local conditions under which to make a contribution to creative life.

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143 source of the transformed cosmos; and thirdly,

it could be

seen as a subset of a larger engagement with images, argu­ ments and analogies drawn from biology and biological think­ ing. The body as anthropomorphic form was implicated in a range of speculation about nature, growth, ecology and the organic, in which Lissitzky is deeply rooted. Moreover,

just

as the example of anthrpomorphic figuration in Lissitzky's work turned out to be inseparable from an understanding of the way in which the artist responded to the works of other artists in his immediate cultural environment,

so too, in

the case of his encompassing interest in the organic, did Lissitzky respond directly to stimuli from colleagues and contemporaries in the social and physical sciences. The dis­ course of the organic, whether in the exemplary case of anthropormorphic reference and its transformations, or in the general one of Lissitzky's theorizing about morphology, is embedded in the artist's responsiveness to circumstance.

c) The Biological Metaphor

El Lissitzky was, of course, not the first artist to invoke the authority and credibility of ideas from science and technology to explicate or justify his own artistic practice. Since the latter decades of the nineteenth century at the latest, artists had appealed to the achievements of both pure and applied science to provide persuasive paral-

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144 lels for their own activity. Discoveries in optics, atomic science, and mathematics, to mention only the most prominent examples, had been seen as plausible points of reference for the creative undertakings of the avant-garde, which had even eventually adopted the language of scientific "research” and "experiment."30 With technology in general and the machine in particular being seen as the utilitarian application of science (and benefiting from science's aura of rationality, objectivity, purity), much of the art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century can be seen as engaged in a dialogue (whether affirmative or critical) with this central feature of modernity. This dialogue became particularly intense for Russian artists working after the Revolution. The year 1917 brought to power in Russia a party professing a fundamental belief in science and technology. Not only did Marxism claim to have uncovered the scientific laws of history; those laws also pointed to industry (and thereby technology) as the inexorable expression (and motor) of progress in that history. This pervasive ideology was inescapable for

30.

The literature on these parallels and mutual influences is now vast. An exemplary case-study revealing both the extensiveness and the complexity of the appropriation by artists (including Lissitzky) of scientific "results" (in this case, of mathematical or pseudo-mathematical principles), is provided by Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton: Princeton University press, 1983) .

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145 writers, artists and intellectuals attempting to come to terms with the new regime and its implications.31 Lissitzky himself often had recourse to images of science and technology in positioning his art and his life experiences. A few examples must stand for many more: the autobiographical statement of 1926, prepared for Katherine Dreier (and therefore an American audience) measures out his life in terms of his experience of new technologies: Edison's phonograph, electric trams, airships, aeroplanes.32 In his catalogue statement of 1924, he likens the artist who creates Proun works to the scientist who combines chemical elements to make an acid, which is no mere laboratory experiment, but is strong enough to affect all aspects of life.33

31.

For a survey of ways in which visual artists have addressed issues of science and technology in the Soviet Union, see Peter Nisbet, "The Response to Science and Technology in the Visual Arts," in Loren R. Graham, ed., Science and the Soviet Social Order (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 341-358, 421-427. This essay emphasizes three aspects of the problem: the deployment by the early avant-garde of science and tech­ nology less as subject matter than as an epistemological and organizational model; the theme of flight in Soviet art as metaphor, as political and propagandistic subject matter, and as fusion of traditional artistic themes with an emblem of modernity; and attempts by Soviet artists to harmonize technology with nature, notably by allying it in some way with symbols of the feminine and with evocations of landscape.

32.

Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, pp. 325-326; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 329-330.

33.

Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 355; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 358

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146 In his lecture about the New Russian Art, delivered in 1923, Lissitzky explicates the difference between "composi­ tion" and "construction," the twin poles of the debate about the proper natures of art conducted by the Moscow avantgarde in 1921, by comparing them with the difference between "a bunch of flowers" and a "safety razor."34 The power of this analogy can only be understood when the specific historical resonance of its terms are understood. While the implied negative connotations of "a bunch of flowers," are clear (with the evocation of decorative arbitrariness, the prettiness of harmless nature, the resolutely unmodern, though somehow bourgeois and definitely feminine implica­ tions of the bouquet), the "safety razor" carried associa­ tions that are illuminating. The safety razor (i.e. the razor using double-sided, disposable wafer-thin blades) in 1923 was not just another example of modern technology. Something of the cultural aura attached to the safety razor may be gleaned from the text of an American advertisement for the Gillette Safety Razor from 1904: "Think of the cleanliness, the comfort, the security from infection of shaving yourself and of being free from the barbershop habit. Think of the waits you save - and the dollars." By the early 1920s, Gillette razors were known the world over as one of the great mechanical inventions of period. The

34.

Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 336; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 340. For the Moscow debates, see above, Chapter I.

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147 introduction of new, more precisely built models in 1921 (ahead of the expiration of the original patent) had been accompanied by very extensive publicity and led to yet greater sales. American in inspiration, but international in its availability, the safety-razor was a mass-produced con­ sumer product which was advertised as a model of hygiene, speed and efficiency (and it was clearly associated with the masculine world). As an emblem of sharp-edged, highly func­ tional precision using modern metals and manufacturing processes, the safety-razor was a potent symbol of "Con­ structivism" in a general sense. Much like the chemist's sulphuric acid, the razor could etch and cut away super­ fluous encrustations.35 35 .

For details on the history of the safety-razor (which means in effect, the Gillette), see Russell B. Adams, Jr. Kina C. Gillette. The Man and his Wonderful Shaving Device (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), from which the details in this paragraph have been taken. (It is tempt­ ing to speculate that Lissitzky may have known of Gil­ lette's commitment to a utopian vision of a future society wholly free of competition and strife, to be achieved by the economic activities of a "world corpora­ tion" superseding all governments and overcoming all barriers of class and nation, uniting all the peoples of the world in brotherhood. These ideas were elaborated by Gillette in his The Human Drift of 1894 and other writ­ ings. There is, however, no evidence that Gillette's social utopianism formed part of the web of associations evoked by reference to the safety razor in popular cul­ ture, especially in Germany.) For a contemporary painted homage to the safety razor which deploys some of the associations to which Lissitzky is alluding, but to dif­ ferent ends, see Gerald Murphy's painting of 192 2, "Razor" (Dallas, Museum of Fine Arts). This work, painted in Paris, links the safety razor, a box of safety matches and a fountain pen (probably a "safety" model, designed not to leak or spill). This iconic praise of mass-produced objects of efficiency and safety is also an evocation of the world of implicitly ma s ­ culine creativity evoked by the attributes of the smok­

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148 Lissitzky's metaphors repay such discriminating atten­ tion. Indeed, a careful reading of his writings reveals a prevalent tendency running apparently counter to these examples. Alongside applause for the machine and its importance in society, a consistent predilection for posi­ tive metaphors from the realm of the natural and the organic may be detected in Lissitzky's writings. Sometimes this emerges as an explicit complaint about the one-sided over­ emphasis on the machine as the best framework within which to understand Lissitzky and his "constructivist" colleagues; at other times there is even an explicit critique of the mechanical as constraining and negative. Most common, however, is the rich vein of allusions to natural and biological processes, an easy recourse to organic metaphors when discussing questions of art and creativity. This aspect of Lissitzky writings, both in public pronouncements and in private correspondence, turns out to be a clue to a range of reference and meaning in the "Proun" works, obscured by one­ sided attention to mechanistic functionalism and engineer­ ing.36 Lissitzky's interest in the biological became highly ing, shaving, author. 36.

Consider, for example, the following passage from a review by Ludwig Hilbersheimer of Lissitzky's solo exhibition in Berlin in early 1924: "Lissitzky has a primordial feeling for elements of the mechanical and the technical, an urge towards the realization of novel tensions and relationships. He creates constructions of impressive vitality. Here too [as with most other con­ temporary constructivists] the tendency towards the aesthetic dominates. Some of his pictures amount in effect to an aestheticization of technical drawing" fSozialistische Monatshefte. vol. 30 no. 3 [26 March

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149 significant in around 1924, though having little direct effect on the form and composition of his Proun works (and thereby their "iconography"). More important were the con­ sequences for the thrust and topics of his extensive writ­ ings and probably also for his view of his own creativity in the world. To grasp the import of this dimension to his thinking adequately, a brief survey of related aspects will be helpful. Furthermore, Lissitzky's deep involvement in the biological analogy must be seen in the context of a range of contemporary activities which took the organic as their sig­ nificant point of departure. At one level, Lissitzky's use of the language of fertilization, gestation, birth, growth and death, is simply the cliched currency of an organic metaphor for creativity and the work of art which has an extremely long heritage, and an especially strong presence in critical language since the Romantics of the early nineteenth century.37 However,

1924], p. 201). It is the word "vitality" here, embedded and almost overlooked in the pervasive language of engineering and the machine, which points to a wider discourse in the art world of the 1920s, one in which the concepts of "life," "vitality," the "organic" all play a significant role. Hilbersheimer's language is in fact close to Lissitzky's, as, for example, in the latter's remarks on "the vitality, the uniformity, the monumental quality, the accuracy, and perhaps the beauty of the machine" in his 1923 lecture on Modern Russian Art (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 333; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 337). 37.

See G. S. Rousseau, ed. Organic F o r m . The Life of an Idea (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).

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150 its prevalence in Lissitzky's writing and thinking is marked. For instance, in his lecture of late 1921 published in Warsaw early the following year, "The Conquest of Art," examples of this are so numerous that it becomes hard not to see their use as the sign of something more than just the survival of an outdated critical language.38 Cezanne is here described as approaching the canvas "like a field which one tears open, fertilizes, sows and then cultivates..." However, for Cezanne, when "the fruit should have dropped from his creative womb, the dead water of reason would flood him, and the stillborn would be marinated in the little pic­ ture."39 Similarly, for Malevich and the Suprematists,

"as

38.

The following quotations in this paragraph are from the translation by Michael Steinlauf in Cambridge 1987, pp. 59-61. The examples from this one lecture could be mul­ tiplied. The use of this language is especially common in Lissitzky's private correspondence, additional evidence of its centrality to his thinking.

39.

This passage is clearly adapted from language in Malevich's essay "On Poetry," published in the first and only edition of Izobrazitel'noe Iskusstvo (Petrograd) in 1919. There, Malevich had written of the visual artist that "his creativeness rises to its full height with a whole avalanche of colours, in order to go back to the real world and create a new form. But something com­ pletely unexpected happens. Reason, like a cooling dome, turns the stream back into drops of water, and the rush of steam, which had taken the form of something else, becomes water again" (K. S. Malevich, Essays on A r t , vol. 1 (1915-1928), ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin [Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968], p. 74). Characteristically, in describing the deleterious effects of reason on creative intuition, Lissitzky has translated Malevich's language of con­ densation and the laws of physics, into a metaphor of parturition and biology. For some general comments on a related metaphor in the thinking of the Russian avantgarde, see Charlotte Douglas, "Evolution and the Biological Metaphor in Modern Russian Art," Art J o urnal, vol. 44 no. 2 (Summer 1984), pp. 153-161.

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151 the flower, which is clearly colored [and] distinctly defined,

[and which] mimics nothing and describes nothing

except itself, grows out of the earth, so must the painting blossom out of the artist." Proun, in turn, was part of the progress towards new form "which grows out of the earth which is fertilized with the dead bodies of the picture and the artist." The creator of Proun believes in "creative intuition which creates its own method and system outside mathematics and outside [engineering] designs, but according to laws which are just as organic as the growth of the flower." Such a person creates "in order to grow with all of nature according to the law of the world." Some of this language Lissitzky inherits from Malevich. For example, Malevich, perhaps betraying his early years in rural surroundings, had a fondness for images of sowing and cultivation, as reflected, say, in the passage about Claude Monet seeing Rouen Cathedral as: beds of the plane on which the essential painting grew, like a field and beds where grasses and crops of rye grow. We speak about how fine the rye is and how beauti­ ful the grasses in the meadows, but we forget to mention the earth. In the same way, people ought to examine what is painterly, and not the samovar, cathedral, pumpkin, or Mona Lisa. And when the artist paints and sows in a painting, with the object serving as a bed, he ought to do it in such a

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152 way that the object becomes lost, for out of it grows the painting as seen by the painter.40 Furthermore,

it was the older artist, who, referring to

the invention of Suprematism, dubbed the square "a living, royal infant" and had constant recourse to the language of corpses and living bodies, death and life.4i

40.

From On the New Systems of Art published in Vitebsk in late 1919, as translated in Malevich, Essays on A r t . vol. I, p. 109.

4^.

For the former, see Malevich, Essays on A r t . vol. 1, p. 38, from the third edition of the booklet From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. The New Realism in Painting of 1916 (or, from the same source: "Such forms will not be copies of living things in life, but will themselves be a living thing. A painted surface is a real, living form" [p. 33].); and for the latter, see, for example, the article "Architecture as a Slap in the Face of Ferro-Concrete," published in Anarchyia in Spring 1918 (Malevich, Essavs on A r t , pp. 60-64). Although, no detailed study of the style and imagery of Malevich's voluminous writings has yet been undertaken, a recent article has explored Malevich's rich use of tuberculosis and its bacterium as an analogy (with medical, theoreti­ cal, and social overtones) in his major essay of the mid-1920s, "Suprematism: The World as Non-Objectivity" (Matthew G. Looper, "The Pathology of Painting: Tuber­ culosis as a Metaphor in the Art Theory of Kazimir Malevich," Configurations. vol. 3 no. 1 (Winter 1995), pp. 27-46. I thank Linda Henderson for bringing this essay to my attention.) Such imagery from the organic and the biological spheres was not, however, dominant in Malevich's writings. It could be noted, for example, that he used similes and metaphors of fire, flames and burning with a frequency that indicates a special mean­ ing (perhaps derived from alchemy or the writings of P. D. Uspensky).

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153 d) Oswald Spengler

It was this background which would have made Lissitzky receptive to the second writer, after Malevich, who can be shown to have had a demonstrable effect on his writing, Oswald Spengler, the German historian and philosopher whose world-historical treatise, The Decline of the West created such a furore in the years immediately following the end of the First World War. Of particular appeal to Lissitzky must have been Spengler's organicist view of the birth, infancy, maturity and senescence of cultures. This led inevitably to the notion of the "death" of a particular culture and Lis­ sitzky signaled his interest in this aspect of Spengler by quoting the German philosopher in an epigraph to two related essays of late 1921.

"All art is mortal," Lissitzky quotes

Spengler as writing,

"not just individual works, but art in

its totality. A day will come when a portrait by Rembrandt will wither - the painted canvas will be whole, but the eye which responds to that very language of forms will vanish.1142 42.

Lissitzky used the passage as an epigraph for "The Con­ quest of Art" (Cambridge 1987, p. 59) and the lecture "Prouns," delivered in September 1921 (Cologne 1976, p. 60, though this epigraph and one quoting Malevich were omitted from another translation of the same lecture, in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 21-34). For Spengler's text, see Oswald Spengler, Per Unteraang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morpholoaie der Weltaeschichte (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1972), p. 217. The passage appeared in the first volume of Spengler's work, first published in 1918 ([Vienna and Leipzig: Wilhelm Braumiiller, 1918], p. 239). This would have been the version used by Lissitzky, as the second volume did not

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154 In the Russian context, Lissitzky's interest in Spengler was precocious. According to his own recollection, he first heard of Spengler in mid-1920, from a delegate to the meet­ ing of the Communist International, who also brought news about the work of Albert Einstein and the Swedish abstract film-maker, Viking Eggeling.43 Presumably, Lissitzky was able to obtain a copy of the first volume of Spengler's Per Untercrancr des Abendlandes. which had been published in 1918. This book then served as the source not only of the epigraph about Rembrandt just quoted, but also of numerous ideas and formulations about mathematics and numeration systems, which

appear until 1922, together with a revised edition of the first volume. Lissitzky slightly altered Spengler's original, primarily by omitting a reference to Mozart's music as a example parallel to Rembrandt's painting, thereby making the sentiment more directly applicable to his concern for visual art. 43.

Lissitzky mentions this in his obituary notice Eggel­ ing, who died in May 1925, published in the bulletin of the ASNOVA group of architects in 1926 (and translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 205-206). It may be that the "young German comrade" who met Eggeling during the short-lived Munich revolution of 1918 was Wilhelm Herzog (1884-1960), a independent literary critic, journalist and pacificist. Herzog had served briefly in an official capacity in the Munich soviet government, and attended the 1920 Comintern Congress. On this, see Wilhelm Her­ zog, M e n s c h e n . denen ich beaeanete (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1959), pp. 25-40, 55-69, and his entry in Neue Deutsche Bioaraphie. vol. 8 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1969), pp. 742-743. This assumes that Lissitzky is remembering correctly that the year was 1920. However, Lissitzky may perhaps have meant to write 1921, given his permanent presence in Moscow in 1921, his close involvement with the Communist International that year, and the fact that the September 1921 lecture's extensive, almost promiscuous borrowings from Spengler suggest a recent rush of enthusiasm.

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155 form a large part of the early arguments of the lecture on "Prouns."44 Only in the year following this lecture did Spengler's writings enter the mainstream of intellectual discussion in Russia. A welter of translations, articles and books began to appear in early 1922, including especially essays in such compendia as Severnoe U t r o . Strelets, Feniks. and Parfenon.45 This reflected a lively discussion, though a

44.

For some summary documentation of the dependence of Lissitzky's text on Spengler's, see Nisbet, "An Intro­ duction to El Lissitzky," p. 49, n. 56. It is important to stress that there are several more examples, almost all involving direct borrowings and quotations. YveAlain Bois has adapted this insight by seeing many of the mathematical examples in Lissitzky's later essay, "K. und Pangeometrie," as also deriving from Spengler ("From - oo to 0 to + oo. Axonometry, or Lissitzky's Math­ ematical Paradigm," in Eindhoven 1990, pp. 27-33, with a substantially fuller version of the argument appearing in the French edition of this exhibition catalogue, El Lissitzky. 1890-1941: architecte. p e i n t r e . photoaraphe. tvpoaraphe exh. cat. [Paris: Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, 1991], pp. 27-37). Lissitzky was also using an as yet unidentified book on the history of mathematics during the writing of "K. und Pangeometrie."

45.

For details, see the bibliographical listings in N. P. Rogozhin, Literaturno-khudozhestvennve al'manakhi i sborniki, 1918-1927 aody (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo vsesoyuznoi palaty, 1960), p. 78 (no. 181), p. 89 (no. 197), p. 90 (no. 205) and p. 95 (no. 213). Influential books on Spengler from 1922 include V. I. Lazarev, Osval'd Shpenaler i. ego vzaliady na iskusstvo (Moscow: A.G. Mironov, 1922) and the collection of essays by N. A. Berdiaiev, Ya. M. Bukshpan, F. A. Stepun and S. L. Frank, Osval'd Shpenaler i Zakat Evropy (Moscow: Bereg, 1922). Two translations of the first volume of The Decline of the West appeared in 19 23, one an extract (Prichinost' i sud'ba. Zakat E v r o p y . vol. 1, prt. 1 [Peterburg: Akademiya, 1923]), the other complete, with an introductory essay by the philosopher A. Deborin (Zakat Evropy [Moscow-Petrograd: L.D.Frenkel, 1923]). Neither is listed in the bibliography of translations of Spengler provided in Anton Mirko Koktanek, Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit (Munich: C.H.Beck, 1968).

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156 Bolshevik orthodoxy was quickly established. The economist Georgii Piatakov, for example, excoriated Spengler's philosophy as "a flat, idealistic mish-mash" and "wholly anti-scientific, pretentiously mystical balderdash."46 An article by Lenin written for the tenth anniversary of Pravda and published on 5 May 1922 contained only scathing references to Spengler, a fact which surely contributed to the rapid diminution of interest.47 In deploying an account of the history of mathematics derived (without acknowledgement) from Spengler, Lissitzky is careful to point out that he is not proposing that art is merely an instantiation of mathematical theories of an epoch. He wishes to defend himself against the possible and prevalent accusation that advanced artists such as himself were emulating scientists and engineers. He suggests that he sees mathematics only as an analogy to art; both are expres­ sions of the same culture, though they may not move in

46.

G. Piatakov, "Filosofiya sovremmenogo imperializma (Etiud o Shpenglere)," Krasnaya N o v ' no. 3 (7) (May 1922), pp. 182-187, at. p. 182. Piatakov was responding especially to the previous issue of Krasnaya N o v ' , which had contained three, not always wholly dismissive essays on Spengler, by Karl Grasis, V. Bazarov and Sergei Bobrov. In their introduction to this issue, the editors had in turn pointed to an essay by Deborin in the journal Pod Znamenen Marksizma r (no. 1-2, 1922), as being a noteworthy Marxist evaluation (Krasnaya N o v ' , no. 2 (6) [March-April 1922], p. 196)

47.

V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobraniye sochinenii. fifth ed., vol. 45, (Moscow: Gos. izd-vo polit. lit-ry, 1964), pp. 173-177. For an English translation, see V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, fourth edition, vol. 33, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1966), pp. 349-352

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157 parallel. This strategy, however, has a deeper meaning.

In

distancing his argument from too close a reliance on mathe­ matics as a paradigm by arguing that "art creates "numberlessly,"" or that it creates "living forms that cannot be measured by number," Lissitzky is in fact only rejecting the applicability of an obsolete view of number, one that Spengler is arguing has anyway been superseded by the modern view of number, focussed precisely on the non-concrete, the living, the dynamic, the Faustian. Modern number is precisely not limited, specific or rigid. It is transforma­ tional, and creative - morphological,

in the sense of

Spengler's intellectual mentor, Goethe. Spengler aligns modern number theory (which he also deals with quite precisely and concretely) more generally with Goethe's view of nature as growth, change, and transformation.

It is at

this level that the mathematics which Lissitzky borrows from Spengler meets the latter's interest the language of organic "becoming."48

48.

Moreover, it is important to realize that Lissitzky is picking and choosing from Spengler only those points which he needs for his purposes. His use of Spengler's ideas is notably pragmatic. A striking case in point comes when, at a passage in his lecture after the bulk of his discussion of mathematics, Lissitzky addresses the current debate among the Moscow avant-garde and dis­ tinguishes between construction and composition. "Con­ struction means the effort to create special and con­ crete things, objects. In contrast to composition, which only discusses various formal possibilities, construc­ tion confirms and underlines. The pair of compasses is the chisel of construction, the paint brush the tool of composition" (Cologne 1976, p. 69, translation adapted). For these definitions, Lissitzky silently quotes and borrows, again, directly from Spengler's equivalent formulations in the opening paragraph of section 14 of

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158 Lissitzky's interest in Spengler may have been only an interlude, in that most, if not all, of his immediately identifiable borrowings from the German sage are expunged from his writings very soon after 1921. It is difficult,

for

example, to find any specific trace of Spenglerian formula­ tions in the essay on Proun published in De Stiil in mid1922 (though the history of mathematics deployed, for example,

in "K. und Pangeometrie" seems still dependent in

part on Spengler). In a broader context, however, this interest in Spengler's world view is emblematic of a deeper concern for biology and the organic which soon resurfaces in Lissitzky's thinking in the form of borrowings from another hugely popular writer in Germany, the biologist and cultural critic, Raoul Heinrich France. Equally, the popularity of France and Spengler reflects a widespread tendency in European and Russian culture between the wars to find new applicability of biological thinking to modern civilization.

the chapter on numbers CU nteraana. pp. 115-116): "Con­ struction. .. is the A and 0 of ancient mathematics: the production of a single and visibly present object. The pair of compasses is the chisel of this second visual art. The method of investigations in function theory, whose goal is not a result in the form of a quantity, but rather the discussion of general formal pos­ sibilities, can be described as a sort of theory of com­ position, closely related to the musical k i n d .... Every construction affirms, every operation denies appearance...." (my translation). In using this source, Lissitzky conveniently overlooks the fact that Spengler explicitly assigns construction to mathematics of the ancient world, and composition to mathematics of the modern era. This is, in a sense, precisely the opposite of Lissitzky's intentions.

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159 In particular, attempts were made to integrate modernity's commitment to the machine with an acknowledgement of nature, the body and the organic (and, by extension, the irra­ tional). This tendency had many valencies in the arts, and, although Lissitzky was among the earliest to explore the world of biology in this context, it will be helpful to review some of the comparable instances in order to clarify the extent of Lissitzky's uniqueness and commonality within these trends. In the context of intellectual history, Spengler was himself but one of a number of conservative thinkers who conceptualized technology in support of a ’’reactionary" political viewpoint, drawing on a philosophical tradition extending back to German Romanticism.49 Moreover, within the European avant-garde, one can find many artists and writers

49.

For a detailed and important study of this, see Jeffrey H e r f , Reactionary Modernism. Technology. Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Herf dis­ cusses Hans Freyer, Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt, Werner Sombart, and Oswald Spengler, examining their various "reconciliations of technics and unreason" (p. 42). These conservative revolutionaries "viewed themselves as representative of all that was vital, cosmic, elementary, passionate, willful, and organic, of the intuitive and living rather than the rational and the dead" (p. 27). "By elevating the idea of beauty over normative standards, linking this concept of beauty to an elitist notion of the will, and finally interpreting technology as the embodiment of will and beauty, Weimar's right-wing intellectuals contributed to an irrationalist and nihilist embrace of technology" (p. 30). Herf's third chapter, "Oswald Spengler: bourgeois antinomies, reactionary reconciliations" (pp. 49-69), is especially useful.

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160 who "associated technology with a new antibourgeois vitalism, masculine violence and eros, and the will to power; a new aesthetics, and creativity rather than commer­ cial parasitism; and a full life lived to the emotional limit that contrasted with bourgeois decadence and boredom."5° The responses to the machine in European and Russian culture after the First World War were indeed many and various. The range of reactions ran the gamut from ecstatic acceptance to willful rejection, with ironic deflation, com­ petitive besting, and cautious alliance in between.51 Among 50.

Herf, Reactionary M odernism. p. 47, including in his list of examples: Marinetti and the Italian Futurists, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound, Georges Sorel, and Drieu de la Rochelle. However, Herf goes on to explain the uniqueness of the cultural climate and historical preconditions in Germany, which explain why "reactionary modernism became part of German nationalism while elsewhere in Europe it remained one of the fads and fashions of the avant-garde" (p. 48).

51.

The best survey of modern art and the machine is still Rayner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Aae (New York: Praeger, 1960 and many subsequent edi­ tions) . For a multifaceted investigation focussing primarily on France and the United States in the 1920s, see Leger et 1 'esprit moderne (1918-1931). Une alterna­ tive d 'avant-garde h. 1/art non-obiectif. exh. cat. (Paris: Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1982). It is important to stress that the present discussion is leaving to one side the enormously strong wholly antitechnological trend within modernism. Recent research has begun to illuminate the richness of the commitment to the organic within that trend. See, for example, Romy Golan, h. Moralized Landscape: The Organic Image of France between the Two World W a r s . Ph.D. thesis, Courtauld Institute, University of London, 1989. Golan devotes a chapter to the shift to organicism in the 1930s, extending beyond Surrealism and its influences, as prompted by a disenchantment with technology in the work of such major former champions of the machine as L6ger, Le Corbusier, and Ozenfant. The extent to which

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161 the attempts to "naturalize" and "domesticate" technology, one may find readings of the machine as the equivalent of archaic art; as embodiment of economic imperatives; as emblem of rational principles; as expression of ideal forms; and, in the sense most relevant for this discussion, as in some way allied to the organic - that is to say not essen­ tially opposed to nature or, more abstractly, to the irra­ tional . In Russia, the desire to marry man (the organic, physi­ cal body) and the machine emerged in the early 1920s espe­ cially in the form of a rationalizing approach to human labor and, more specifically in the arts, in Vsevolod Meyerhold's development of a system of so-called "bio-mechanics" for theatrical training and production. One of the most politically committed of the artists supporting the Bol­ shevik government (committed to the point of joing the party in 1918), Meyerhold in January 1921 proposed to start a theatrical training school in Moscow, which envisaged prac­ tical instruction in speech and movement "based on the general physical laws of technology, as expressed most clearly in physics, mechanics, music and architecture."52

the "Constructivist" discourse of the organic in the early and mid-1920s is related to the later Surrealist investigation of the darker side of the man/machine equation has yet to be studied. 52.

Edward Braun, The Theatre of Meverhold (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1979), pp. 164-165

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162 When he was appointed director of the newly founded State Higher Theater Workshops in autumn 1921, he revised and expanded this programme, propagating it under the name "biomechanics.11 In a lecture of June 1922, Meyerhold explained the thinking behind the technique, beginning with an analogy to Constructivism, which, with its parallel con­ cern for the organization of material, has forced the artist to become both artist and engineer. This means that art should be based on scientific principles, and that the entire creative act should be conscious. The actor must train his material, i.e. the human body.

"Since the art of

the actor is the art of plastic forms in space, he must study the mechanics of the body. This is essential, because any manifestations of force (including the living organism) is subject to constant laws of mechanics (and obviously the creation by the actor of plastic forms in the space of the stage is a manifestation of the force of the human organism)...."53 Meyerhold's approach postulated a common ground in "the constant laws of mechanics" underlying the organic and the inorganic. Meyerhold's system, which, as was pointed out at the time, had many sources stretching back many decades, was nevertheless explicitly related by its founder to the con­ temporary theories of Alexei Gastev, the leading Russian proponent of Frederick Winslow Taylor's rigorous and ruth-

53.

Braun, Meyerhold. p. 165.

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163 less ideas of "scientific management." Meyerhold "drew directly and self-consciously from Taylorism," including the very term biomechanics.54 A long-time friend of Gastev, Meyerhold developed a school of body motion which was strikingly similar to Gastev's Central Institute of Labor. Although the dominant tendency in the Soviet cult of machine efficiency, as exemplified by Gastev's organizational activities, was the urge to "fit the rhythms, sensibilities, and creative dynamics of the human body to those of the machine" as part of a wider effort to achieve a wholly effi­ cient and rational organization of work, life-tasks, time, and society as a whole, there was undoubtedly an element which stressed less the subordination of the body to the machine55 (or the transformation of the body into a machine,

54.

Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 161. For an excellent survey of the utopian contexts in Rus­ sia for Meyerhold's and Gastev's glorification of the machine (including the Soviet infatuation with "Americanism" as embodied in the writings, career and products of Henry Ford), see Stites's chapter seven, "Man the Machine" (pp. 145-164) and his cited sources, to which the present discussion is indebted.

55.

The tendency towards the mechanization of the body is reflected also in the greatly increased status of organized sports in Russian and European culture of the 1920s. Whether from a left-wing or right-wing perspec­ tive, the goals of health, efficiency, hygiene and achievement could find cultural expression in the cultivation of athletic prowess. An aesthetic of the athletic, so-to-speak, may be found in avant-garde artists as diverse as Gustav Klutsis (in his photomontaged postcard designs for the 1928 "Spartakiade" sports festival in Moscow) and Willi Baumeister, to name only two.

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164 as in the ideology of robotry), and more the countervailing notion of seeing the body and the machine in terms of each other. Gastev expressed this exaltation of animated machinery in his poetry and prose written before the Revolu­ tion.56 Parallel to these cultural manifestations, a strand of constructivism was developing in Russia, plausibly dubbed "organic constructivism.1157 Drawing on the ideas of Mikhail Matiushin and Velimir Khlebnikov, this strand of Russian aesthetic thinking encouraged the exploration of design work based on "organic forms and the world of nature, rather than from mechanical forms and the world of contemporary technol­ ogy. While rejecting mechanical work with the already established geometric forms of technology,

[Petr Miturich

and Vladimir Tatlin] preserved the basic principles of Con­ structivism (the principles of tectonics, faktura and con­ struction)

and extended them to investigate the underlying

substances of technological form itself, the very bases of technology."58 Miturich explored the principles of undulat­ ing motion and wave technology (based on a study of snakes

56.

On Gastev's life and work, see Kurt Johansson, Aleksej G a s t e v : Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1983)

57.

Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), chap. 7 ("Organic Construction: Harnessing an Alternative Technology), pp. 205-223, at p. 205. This brief summary is indebted to Lodder's exposition.

58.

Lodder, Russian Constructivism. p. 205

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165 and other natural phenomena)

in an attempt to solve the

problem of flight without a motor. Starting as early as 1914 and continuing throughout the 1920s and long thereafter, he invented, patented and experimented with various forms of moving machines, designed with the aesthetic intuition of the artist. Similarly, Tatlin's interests in organic form grew stronger in the decade after the completion of the "Monument to the Third International." While his work had always been marked by "a constancy of curvilinear formal vocabulary which indicated an underlying intuitive sympathy for the natural world and with the organically evolved relationships of material and form that characterize it,"59 the work of the later 1920s, such as the child's nursing bottle and the human-powered solo flying machine (the socalled "Letatlin"), is much more overtly based on the study of natural and organic forms. Such developments occur either independently of, or sub­ sequent to Lissitzky's most explicit immersion in the organic in the mid-1920s.60 As attempts in Russia to recon­ 59. 60.

Lodder, Russian Constructivism. p. 210 Although Tatlin's flying machine was only built and tested at the end of the decade, it should be neverthe­ less be stressed that Tatiin began his researches into the "Letatlin" already in the mid-1920s. A notation in the diaries of Nikolai Punin for 5 June 1924 (Austin, University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center) records a con­ versation with Tatlin about a bird-like flying machine and his hostility to modern, "inorganic" technology, as mentioned in my "Tatlin: A Review [of Larissa Alekseevna Zhadova, ed. Tatlin (New York: Rizzoli, 1988)]," Draw­ ing , vol. XI no. 3 (September-October 1989), pp. 52-54. As for Lissitzky, he certainly continued his interest in the organic after his return to Moscow in 1925 (when he

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166 cile technology and nature, however, they are important con­ tributions to a wider cultural agenda of the 1920s. In Germany, the cultural context in which Lissitzky's renewed enthusiasm for biological thinking emerged, the stress on the organic was also not unknown among the avant-garde.61 was a Tatlin's close colleague at VKhuTeMas). This side to his work would need to be considered in a full treat­ ment of the later evolution of the Russian avant-garde position, though it falls outside the limits of this discussion of the relationship of the Prouns to the organic. For some details and comments on the per­ sistence of the organic as metaphor and as criterion in Lissitzky's oeuvre as a whole, from a pen-and-ink draw­ ing of a tree in ca. 1912 to images of infants and skulls (birth and death) in 1941, see Nisbet, "An Intro­ duction to El Lissitzky," p a ssim. 61.

The pervasiveness of "organic" thinking throughout the intellectual world should again be stressed at this point. One example would be the "science" of geopolitics, developed by Rudolf Kjellen and elaborated by Karl Haushofer, among others, in the mid-1920s and beyond (though, of course, drawing on a long heritage of such thought). Geopolitics was based on seeing the state as a living organism (cf. the title of Kjellen's book, Per Staat als Lebensform. published in a second edition in 1917 and in a fourth in 1924) with "biological" needs, including, infamously, "Lebensraum" or "space for living," of which Haushofer was an active proponent (See H. A. Jacobsen, Karl Haushofer. Leben und W e r k . 2 vols. [Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1979]). The conservative, sometimes even proto-Fascist trend within such thinking would be part of any full story of the "organic" metaphor in inter-war culture. However, such left-right distinctions are not easily drawn. Significantly, one prominent and prolific left-wing cultural critic, a friend of Lissitzky and very reliable guide to the changing currents in avant-garde thinking, listed "geopolitics" as one of the manifestations of modern cultural, social and political thought which con­ temporary art paralleled. In his review of Lissitzky and Arp's Die Kunstismen, Adolph Behne compared the new art to Kjellen's geopolitics, Max Wertheimer's gestalt theory, Einstein's theory of relativity, Salomo Friedlander's theory of creative indifference, Max Planck's quantum theory, and the teachings of "social hygiene" (Adolph Behne, "Von der formalen zur funktionalen Kunst-Revolution," Fa u s t . vol. 4 no. 3

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167 Paul Klee, to take the most prominent example, repeatedly deployed metaphors (in his writings) and imagery (in his visual works) derived from the world of plants, and growth, though he seems not to have been much concerned with finding ways to meld this arena of interest with a strategy of responding to the pervasive presence and challenge of the machine as a symbol of industrialization and modernity.62 [1925/1926], pp. 11-20, at p. 18). Already in 1917, Behne had argued for a profound cultural link between the new art and the new science of modern biology (represented in Behne's view, by Jacob von Uexkiill), in his "Biologie und Kubismus," Die T a t . vol. 9 no. 8 (November 1917), pp. 694-705. 62.

For a detailed treatment of this topic, see Richard Verdi, Klee and Nature (New York: Rizzoli, 1984). There are occasional signs of an ironical, quasi-dadaist engagement with the machine in Klee's oeuvre, as, for instance, in the 1921 watercolor "Apparatus for the Mag­ netic Treatment of Plants" (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Har­ vard University Art Museums). Klee's interest in science in general is well attested. See, for example, Sara Lynn Henry, "Form-Creating Energies: Paul Klee and Physics," Arts M a g a z i n e , vol. 52 no. 1 (September 1977), pp. 118121. Moreover, Lynn writes that "there was a great interest at the Bauhaus in the basic sciences as a source for practical, visual, and philosophic wisdom. The 1921 'Statutes of the Bauhaus' called for lectures on the sciences as part of the curriculum, in 1923 a local gymnasium teacher was contacted to teach mathe­ matics and physics, and by 1925 physics, mathematics, mechanics and chemistry were all part of the basic cur­ riculum" (p. 119). In 1925, the vitalist philosopher Hans Driesch lectured at the Bauhaus on "The Unknown." However, the extent to which teachers and students at the Bauhaus - before the late 1920s and the advent of Hannes Meyer as director - were interested in the "biological" as adumbrated in the present discussion, is as yet unclear. An important clue, however, is the fact that the original announcement in 1924 of the series of Bauhaus Books included among the 31 titles only one volume on science, Martin Schafer on Konstruktive Biologie i.e. "Constructive Biology" (see the flyer reproduced in Hans Maria Wingler, Das Bauhaus. W e i m a r . Dess a u . Berlin [Bramsche: Gebrtider Rasch, 1962], p. 141, there dated 1927, but definitely of 1924/1925).

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168 For Weimar artists concerned with this latter topic, the point of reference seems to a surprising extent to have been the writings of the now neglected, but then hugely popular science writer, Raoul Heinrich France.

e) Raoul Heinrich France

France (1874-1943) was a multilingual biologist, born in Vienna and educated in Budapest. After early scientific studies of freshwater algae and other protoplasma, he became disenchanted with the academic life and settled in Munich. He gained a large and enthusiastic readership for his prolific and much-translated popularizing writings on plants, ecology, evolution and culture. He did important experimental work on the relationship of soil fertility to microorganisms in the earth, as well as becoming a leading proponent of neo-Lamarckian thought on evolutionary teleol­ ogy and the inheritability of acquired characteristics. After 1919 he withdrew to the small town of Dinkelsbiihl, where he developed his "objective philosophy," a kind of biological pragmatism (borrowing from Hume, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Leibniz and Plato), based on the inventiveness, efficiency and perfect coordination of nature, a state of affairs which man should try and emulate. This he then

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169 applied to all areas of human activity in the belief that he had found the key to proper living. After extensive travels in his later years, Franck, who had never enjoyed robust health, died of leukemia in Budapest.63 In particular, Lissitzky drew in 1923-1924 from two books by France, Die Pflanze als Erfinder (The Plant as Inventor) of 1920 and Bios of 1923.64 The first, a 76-page popularization, elaborated in abbreviated form some of the ideas that Francd grouped under the heading "biotechnics." Francd concluded that the law of the world required that the technology of the organic realm be identical to the technol­ ogy of the human sphere.65 The "inventiveness" of plants set 63.

For information on France and a brief bibliography of his multitudinous writings, see the entry by Martin Miillerot in Neue Deutsche Bioaraphie. vol. 5 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1961), pp. 313-314. Interestingly, Miillerot notes that F r a n c e s "objective philosophy" has been dubbed "biological Taylorism."

64 .

Die Pflanze als Erfinder (Stuttgart: Kosmos, Gesellschaft der Naturfreunde, 1920) and Bios. Die Gesetze der W e l t , Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie, Teile IV und V, second edition (StuttgartHeilbronn: Walter Seifert, 1923)

65.

For France's position within the rich and ancient tradition of thinking about design through organic and biological analogy, see the invaluable study by Philip Steadman, The Evolution of D esigns. Biological Analogy in Architecture and the Applied A r t s , Cambridge Urban and Architectural Studies 5, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), especially chapter 11. Some of Steadman's chapter headings provide a quick introduction to the multiplicity and range of this tradition: "The Organic Analogy," "The Classificatory Analogy: Building Types and Species," "The Anatomical Analogy: Engineering Structure and the Animal Skeleton," "The Ecological Analogy: The Environments of Artefacts and Organisms," "The Darwinian Analogy: Trial and Error in the Evolution of Organisms and Artefacts," etc. For the Englishspeaking world, an influential classic in relating biol­

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170 an exemplary model for the fundamental processes of nature. "The biological emphasis is on discussion of the mechanical forces which govern the growth processes and structural forms of plants, with some additional account of their hydraulic and metabolic mechanisms, and of the reproductive systems of flowers. The greater part of the book, however, is devoted to a theoretical argument about design. All forms in organic nature...because they are the product of selec­ tion, are the necessary outcome of the functions served; and for any given biological problem there is a u n i q u e . optimal form which provides its solution.1,66 The law of economy (the least expenditure of energy) governs the development and selection of these forms, which underlie all processes in the world.

ogy to structural mechanics and mathematics was D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Of Growth and Form (1917), ed. John Tyler Bonner (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Thompson cites many of the same sources as Franck. 66.

Steadman, The Evolution of Designs, p. 162. Steadman points out the extraordinary closeness of France's thinking about design to the French "Purist" architects and theorists associated with the French magazine L'Esprit Nouveau in the 1920s. There is, however, no direct evidence of influence from France on Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. For a summary of the latters' ideas as expressed in the journal, see L'Esprit Nouveau. A r t . Architecture. M u s ic . S p o r t . F i l m . Theatre. D a n c e . Modern Life (Cambridge, England: Kettle's Yard Gallery, 1978), especially the essay by Virginia Spate on the treatment of the machine and the "correlation between natural order and human order, in particular between natural and 'mechanical' selection" (pp. 5-12, at pp. 10-11).

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171 In the second book, a two-volume work that itself con­ stituted the fourth and fifth parts of a multi-volume exposition, these and other notions were fully developed into the 7objective philosophy7 which asserted the primacy of understanding and living in total harmony with nature7s laws. Nature had already established the fundamental environment to which everyone and everything must adjust. Evolution was a process for overcoming periodic disturbances in this adjustment, as every form (creature, ecosystem, object, system of ethics, whatever) had to find its optimum functionality, which in turn was its essence. Happiness, France believed, lay in achieving this complete balance and integration with the functioning of the world. Lissitzky7s allusions to Francd are many. In his published work, they are most noticeable in the double issue of the magazine M e r z . which he co-edited and designed in 1924 with its founder, Kurt Schwitters (Typ. Cat. 1924/15). The organic orientation of this issue was proclaimed immediately on the cover, which consisted of an encyclopedia definition of the German word "Nature:" "Nature, from the Latin NASCI, i.e. to become or to develop, means everything which develops,

forms and moves itself out of itself by its

own power."67 This formulation, reminiscent of Lissitzky7s 67.

It has not been possible to identify the exact source for this definition, which is cited as coming from the "Kleiner Brokhaus [sic]," i.e. the small edition of the famous Brockhaus encyclopedia. In one edition, we find the following first sentence: "Natur (von dem lat. nasci, d.i. werden Oder entstehen), im weitesten Sinne alles, was nach eignen Trieben und Gesetzen, ohne

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172 definition of Proun as "autogenous" in his catalogue state­ ment for his early 1924 solo exhibition in Berlin (discussed above) is programmatically intended to apply to the work of all the artists illustrated and quoted in the subsequent pages, who include Malevich, Mondrian, Schwitters, Archipenko, Arp, Oud, van der Rohe, L6ger, Tatlin, Braque, Man Ray and, of course Lissitzky himself. The significance of the connexion of these artists to a definition of "nature" is revealed by the additional illustrations: a quartz crystal,

a cross-section of a thigh­

bone, a flower, and a "abstract" circular photograph which is surely an image of the planet Mars with its so-called canals. Common to all these "comparative" illustrations is

fremdes Zuthun, sich gestaltet" (Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon. 14th. edition, vol. 12 [Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1894], p. 119) which is perhaps close enough to Lissitzky's version to have served as the source, subsequently amended. Within the magazine, Lis­ sitzky appropriates the word "Nasci" (almost as incomprehensible to the contemporary reader as Lis­ sitzky's coinage, "Proun") to stand for "the square root of endless activity oscillating between plus and minus" (alongside a visual representation of this formula, reproduced in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 348 and in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 351), thereby once again balancing his interest in the organic with his evocation of mathematics (of a distinctly idiosyncratic kind), as he had done with his examples from Spengler's writings three years before. When challenged on this formula, Lissitzky replied, in typically elusive but evocative fashion blending poetry and practicality, that "it is not a mathematical formula. It is a graphic way of depicting a relationship. Instead of the square root s y m b o l , I could instead take the curves of the shadows of a cylindrical spiral, but then one would have to order a new illustration plate" (Letter to Sophie, 6 March 1924) .

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173 their close relationship to the writings of Franck. Lis­ sitzky captions the photograph of the quartz crystal with text from France which identifies "the crystalline, the sphere, the plane, the rod, the strip or band, the screw and the cone" as the seven "basic technical forms of the entire world. They are sufficient for all the processes of the entire world system to be led to their optimum. Everything that exists is surely combinations of these seven fundamen­ tal forms. They are the be-all and the end-all of architec­ ture, of mechanical elements, of crystallography and chemistry, of geography and astronomy, of art, of technol­ ogy, indeed of the whole world."68 The illustration of the thigh-bone is also borrowed from France (in this case, from Bios6 9 ), who uses it to point out the essential similarity of its structure with that of a crane, as part of an argu­

68.

69.

Merz, vol. 2 no. 8/9, p. 75, quoting France, Pf l a n z e . pp. 18, 20. Lissitzky here combines two separate pas­ sages in France's book (omitting such unappealing phrases as "...but the total never exceeds the holy num­ ber seven.") The chapter from which Lissitzky's quota­ tion derives had already been reprinted by Das K u n s tblatt. vol. 8 no. 1 (January 1923), pp. 5ff., with an editorial note expressing the hope that France's ideas might help to simplify and rationalize ["versachlichen"] current aesthetic discussion. Lis­ sitzky may have first heard of France from this source, or from a colleague such as Raoul Hausmann, who that same year wrote an article about France, an albeit very scathing review of his Der Kultur von Morgen ("Intellektualismus, Gesellschaft und Gemeinschaft," Die A k t i o n . vol. XIII no. 25/26 [15 July 1923], col. 347351). As France published an astonishingly wide range of articles in many places, it is probably futile to try to pinpoint Lissitzky's initial point of contact. It appears in vol. II as fig. 16, after p. 72

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174

ment about the teleological functionality of nature. Lis­ sitzky places this illustration on the same page as the photographs of two buildings (by Oud and Mies), thereby transferring the interpretation to buildings in general.70 The illustration of a flower is accompanied by a text which reads:

"You cry out: How beautiful nature isl But why is it

beautiful? Would the flower be beautiful,

if another form

were not next to it? If within itself there was not a manifold structure of forms?"71 Though neither photograph nor caption yet have identified sources in France's writ­ ings , the appeal to the flower and the expressed sentiment (that beauty is subordinate to issues of formal structure and multiplicity) are very much in the spirit of France's thinking. The final page of the magazine shows nothing but the circular photograph of the planet Mars. This image, with its schematic representation of canals, may have been prompted by a similar one in France's 1923 book.72 70.

71. 72.

The photographs of the Mies building (a skyscraper proposal) and the thigh-bone are placed in association, almost to underscore the vertical, leg-like com­ monalities. Of course, in his own architectural project of these years, the "Wolkenbiigel," Lissitzky did in fact raise an office building on three "legs." M e r z . p. 86 Bios, vol. I , fig. 47, after p. 148. Moreover, Lis­ sitzky's illustration does not correspond exactly to any of the famous set in G. V. Schiaparelli, Osservazioni astronomiche e fisiche s u l l ' asse di rotazione e sulla topoqrafia del planeta marte, vols. I-VI (Rome: Salviucci, 1878-1899), though it bears some resemblance to vol. VI, pi. I and pi. VI, no. X. That the image is definitely of Mars is proved by Lissitzky's letter to Sophie of 6 March 1924, naming the image and giving instructions for its printing with a circular, not a

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175 Certainly, this image evokes France's sentiment that Mars, along with Mercury, have reached a stage of evolutionary development yet to be attained by Earth.73

square border. 73.

Bios, vol. I, p. 253. Admittedly, this was a com­ monplace idea in popular writing about Mars in the early years of the century. Lissitzky had himself used an illustration of Mars and its canals at the end of his 1920 essay "Suprematism of Creativity" in the Unovis Almanac, as part of an argument about symbols and the semiotics of the unknown. In the penultimate paragraph of the essay (inexplicably omitted from the translation in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 15-20, at p. 20, but known from a photograph of the relevant page from the Almanac, kindly made available by Andrei B. Nakov, per­ sonal interview, 25 May 1982), Lissitzky accompanies drawings of Earth and Mars with the following statement: "Here are signs of Earth and Mars. The savage does not understand the content of the first. We do not understand the content of the other. Is it not the result of the creative activity of the inhabitants of Mars. In any case, we must reconstruct the sign of Earth, its map, so that its form comes into cor­ respondence with the creative growth of its humankind." This meaning and placement of the image parallels those in this issue of M e r z . For a classic and influential example of widespread writing about Mars, see Percy Lowell, Mars as the Abode of Life (New York: Macmillan, 1908), with indicative chapter titles ("Mars and the Future of the Earth," "Proofs of Life on Mars") and the argument that Earth will follow Mars into progressive desertification (p. 135), that Martian life is more advanced in evolution and nearing its end, with the canals being the Martians' means of contacting Earth, evidence of mind "mutely communicating to us across the far reaches of space" (p. 215). It was sentiments such as these and the relatively recent publication of Schiaparelli's photographs that led the Marxist philosopher, Alexander Bogdanov to write two science fiction novels, Red Star (1908) and Engineer Menni (1913), about "a Martian-Marxist society that was about three hundred years in advance of Earth in technology, ideology, and human behavior" (Stites, Revolutionary D r e a m s . p. 33).

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176 It is in the light of images inspired by

this constellation of texts and

France that Lissitzky's famous intro­

ductory text, beginning "We have had ENOUGH..." can be reconsidered.74 When Lissitzky writes that "modern art has arrived by wholly intuitive and independent paths at the same results as modern science [and]

like science, has dis­

sected form into its basic elements,

in order to reconstruct

it according to the universal laws of nature," he is clearly relying on the authority of Franck. This becomes unequivo­ cally clear when he declares that modern art and modern science have "come

to the same formula: each form

frozen snapshot of a process." In a sentence that

is the has become

emblematic for the artist's thinking about dynamic process as a whole, Lissitzky is here simply quoting Francd.75 By adopting France's identification of the fundamental processes underlying art, nature and the machine, Lissitzky is able to reject the one-sided invocation of the machine in discussions of modern art, arguing instead that the machine is but a primitive tool, and that, like all tools,

it exists

merely to mobilize forces aimed at crystallizing amorphous nature - the goal of nature itself. The artist's work

74.

Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 348; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 351

75.

France, Pflanze. p. 68. France ecstatically continues: "With this formula, everything is comprehensible, attractive, worthy of imitation, and fruitful; without it, the gates crash closed, the light, which illuminated us all, is extinguished,11 etc. etc.

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177

thereby becomes not an epistemological system for studying nature, but rather a part of nature itself (and thus an object of knowledge, not a means of knowledge). Lissitzky is using the biological analogy to achieve, albeit only by assertion, that closer integration of art and life that was such a widespread goal amongst the avant-garde, especially among Lissitzky's contemporaries in the Soviet Union.76 Lissitzky choice of works of art and texts by artists for inclusion in this issue of Merz is aligned closely with these theoretical issues.77 Under a reproduction of Malevich's programmatic "Black Square," respectfully placed by Lissitzky as the first illustration and preceding even the extensive quotation from France, the reader finds a text (presumably by Malevich) concerning the unity of purpose amongst nature, the artist and any creative human being. Just as nature knows no eternal beauty, but is rather con­ stantly creating new forms, so too does the artist, as a part of nature, create (by restructuring nature's visual appearance). A photograph of a painting by Mondrian is

76.

This line of argument suggests that studies of Russian Constructivism (beyond those who are concerned with Tat­ lin and similar figures) should pay closer attention to the word "life" in the programmatic slogans of the move­ ment, urging a fusion of art and life. There may be a range of associations evoked by the word that go beyond the (social) meaning "everyday life" and touch on vitalist thinking, "life" in a biological sense.

77.

A close study of the contents of the Nasci-issue of Merz has yet to be undertaken. The sources of the various artists' statements are not identified

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178

accompanied by a text asserting that modern man knows only the balance between nature and spirit; Arp, Braque, and Leger are all quoted on the subjects of the laws and prin­ ciples of the organization of art, nature and creativity. Schwitters is twice quoted on the close relationship of "forming" to "deforming," and Archipenko on creativity's essence as an eternal search for new means of expression, not the fabrication of finished works of art. Man Ray con­ tributes a paragraph on the photogram, distinguished as a democratic medium which anyone can use for creating form and art, provided the creator follows the example of nature and eliminates blind and arbitrary chance. Most interestingly of all, perhaps, Lissitzky himself contributes an illustration of one of the lithographs from the Kestner portfolio, the doubled image of vertical forms balancing on a horizontal line, and a caption:

"[The] work of art is balance. However,

this balance must be the result of maximal counterweights, in order to bring that which is statically formed to a dynamic effect."78 Prominently placed on the page opposite the photograph of the quartz crystal and the extensive quotation from Francd, this combined statement presents Lis-

78.

That this is an statement by Lissitzky and not a quota­ tion from another writer is indicated by his letter to Sophie of 25 March 1924 requesting a change in his word­ ing. This statement should therefore be added to the bibliography of Lissitzky's writings. The awkwardness in Lissitzky's combination of "statically formed" and "dynamic effect" reflects the difficulty of assimilating his compositional approach to France's stress of harmony and equilibrium.

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179

sitzky's attempt to render his own understanding of his art in a language derived from the biologist's writings on systemic harmony and equilibrium.79 It is precisely these larger notions of harmony and equilibrium which Lissitzky also derived from France's writ­ ings, alongside the ideas about nature, technology and func­ tional form. This is most graphically expressed in the fact that the book on which Lissitzky was ostensibly working in 1924 was at one point to be titled 1=1. In his letter of 6 March 1924 to Sophie, Lissitzky writes that the entire "Nasci” issue gives just theses and hints of what he proposes to cover in his book, 1=1, if he gets well. This was an equation to which France ascribed fundamental sig­ nificance, as it expressed a perfect state of identity, balance, integration and harmony. He cited it in both the books Lissitzky is known to have consulted at this time. In the last analysis, all being - every form of experience, both inner and outer - is nothing other than the formula 1=1. In the identity proposition, it finds its perfect expression. Everything is identical with itself. Everything must therefore have its identity form, i.e. necessarily only one form, which alone cor­ responds to the essence of the matter, and which, if changed, prompts not identity, but processes, movements, systemic shifts of the complex system. These processes inevitably work through the repeated destruction of transitional form, until the original form is reachieved, a form that is the state of rest. These

79.

Importantly, Lissitzky is not speaking of the rendering of three dimensions in two, or of the dynamic effects of unresolved spatial and compositional tensions - the primary models used by subsequent writers for interpret­ ing his works.

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180 destructions, i.e. all processes, continuously and inevitably select the forms of the world. World selec­ tion is a consequence of the identity proposition itself. It proceeds in a manner by which all processes gradually come to rest selectively by the shortest pos­ sible path.80 Lissitzky invoked this almost magical equation and other language from France in the closing paragraphs of his essay "Element and Invention," which he wrote in 1924 for the first issue of the Swiss architectural magazine A B C . After asserting that art (unlike technology) has for several centuries no longer experienced any pressure from life's demands and has therefore become parasitic in its "free" state, Lissitzky explains that the modern designer is forced, as he waits for new life tasks, to set them himself. That is why today the most important work is still undertaken in the laboratory. There the mastery of "number," the logic of construc­ tion, is developed. That does not mean that the inventor has to calculate - he knows only that 1=1 - but his essence contains within itself this clear and simple formula. Thus, modern design comes to universal achieve­ ments, such as, for example, the aeroplane, which is not

80.

France, B i o s . vol. 1 p. 88. (France's invocation of the "state of rest" finds expression in Lissitzky's state­ ment in "Nasci" that "we want to create rest, nature's rest" (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 348; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 351). On "1=1," compare also France, P f lanzef pp. 9-12, for similar thoughts expressed in a more ecstatic and religious language: "1=1 is the content of a great book. 1=1 says that everything is identical with itself, that everything, in order to fulfill itself, must always return to itself. If you subtract or add something, then it can no longer be one. Instead there now begin mathematical, calculable, and hence regular processes. Being becomes action, which lasts until one is one again. Therefore, everything must have its best form, its optimum, which is at the same time, its essence...." (pp. 11-12).

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18.1

only German, only French, only American. Invention is a universal power, a bicvriechanical power, which forces everthing forwards to the overcoming of the hindrances on its path.81 This programmatic statement, which addresses the fundamental necessity of a functionalist approach to all deisgn problem, draws on France's thinking to confirm the relentless, inevitable progress of creativity in the modern world.82 It is, of course, difficult to know whether Lissitzky's views were changed by reading France, or were simply rein­ forced by finding confirmation and eloquent, richly illustrated expression in the writings of a respected scientist.83 Certainly, Lissitzky was not alone in submit81.

Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 347 (my translation). Cf. Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 350.

82.

It is not clear whether or not the earlier part of this essay also derives from France. Here Lissitzky establishes as the elements available for solving any design problem: the cube, cone, and sphere; open and closed structures; material elements (both resistant and malleable, and both load-bearing and demarcating) and color (the pure colors of red ["beating with a full pulse"], white ["the color of space and hygiene"] and black ["destroying volume"]). The form results from the task, a form that seems "obvious," but the "obviousness" is the product of invention. The centrality of invention is then argued by Lissitzky in terms derived from France, as described.

83.

It is vital to note that several of Lissitzky's socalled "Thoughts on Art" (preserved on various pieces of paper in various places, including TsGALI and a private archive, and published in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 13-14) are in fact paragraphs or phrases copied from France, clearly as notes for his writing. For example, the two last paragraphs on Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 13 (commenting on the human reaction to the new and making a joke about the nervousness of oxen whenever something new is discovered, since Pythagoras had sacrificed oxen

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182 ting to France's influence.84 The biologist and cultural on discovering his theorem) are copied from France, B i o s . vol. II, p. Ill; the statement from the "Thoughts on Art" on the following page (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 14) - that the Rumplertaube aircraft was constructed according to the design of a plant seed - was copied from the same source (France, B i o s . vol. II, p. 112). These two references are on one sheet of manuscript notes (private archive) together with the phrase "Nicht Welterkenntnis, sondern Orientierung in der Welt" which strongly echoes sentiments in the biologist's writings (see, for instance, France, B i o s . vol. II, p. 122 or vol. I, pp. 208-209). The verso of this manuscript sheet cites two of France's bibliographical references (not transcribed in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977); "Kapp Philosophie der Technik (Leipzik [sic.]" copying France, B i o s . vol. II, p. 128, n. 34 (where France criticizes Kapp for "leading biotechnics down the dead end of the metaphysical concept of 'organ projection'"); and "J. Petzold Die Stellung der Relativitatstheorie in der geistigen Entwicklung der Menschheit Dresden 1921" citing Francd, Bios, vol. II p. 131, n. 47 (where France praises Petzold for supporting the idea that modern physics is approaching physiology and thereby being "biologized" and for concluding that this development will overcome the unfounded opposition of natural and social sciences, an idea of great appeal to Lissitzky). Other statements (all on one sheet of paper in TsGALI [2361/1/31/6] and published in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 14), which derive from France's book are: "Die Mechanik regelt die Beziehungen zwischen Form und Funktion" (from France, B i o s . vol. II, p. 132); "Mathematik ist die Mechanik der Zahlen" (p. 135); "Sechs Zustande: Empfinden, Vorstellen, Denken, Fiihlen, Triebe und Wollen" (p. 140); and a very important case in which Lis­ sitzky altered one of the sentences he copied from France, discussed below. Many of the other "Thoughts on Art" not specified here, on yet another piece of paper (private archive), probably are copied from another source), relating to Lissitzky's reading for the essay "A. and Pangeometry," discussed below in Chapter V. 84.

While Franck was apparently well-known to such avantgardists as Lissitzky and Hausmann already in 1923 and early 1924, his popular prominence was both reflected and enhanced by the many printed celebrations of his fiftieth birthday in mid-1924. Even the leading novelist Stefan Zweig, for example, contributed to a ceremonial volume published on this occasion, R. H. France. Festschrift zu seinem fiinf ziasten Geburtstaa (StuttgartHeilbronn, Seifert, 1924), as listed in Randolf J. Klawitzer, Stefan Zweig: A Bibliography (Chapel Hill:

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183 critic seems to have developed quite a following among the constructivistically inclined avant-garde of the inter-war years, including Schwitters, Moholy-Nagy and Frederick Kiesler.85 Among architects, a passion for France affected both the now famous (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) and the now obscure (Siegfried Ebeling).86 University of North Carolina Press, 1965), no. 1322, p. 67. Francd was described as "one of Germany's leading minds" in a mass-circulation monthly of the period (Ewald Banse, "Raoul France, ein deutscher Denker," Westermanns Monatshefte. vol. 136:11 no. 814 [June 1924], p. 385). 85.

For Schwitters, see John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), p. 133-140. Focuss­ ing on Schwitters, Elderfield examines the currents of thought relating organicism to abstraction, including the Bergsonian belief in reality as flux; Malevich's writings; the interpretation of abstraction as a "natural" (i.e. "primitive") rather than a cultivated style; and the sociological tradition of skepticism about "civilization" as opposed to "culture" (Ferdinand Tonnies). For Moholy and Kiesler, see especially Stead­ man, Evolution of Designs f pp. 163-167.

86.

According to Fritz Neumeyer, France was "represented in singular near completeness with over 40 titles in Mies's library" [The Artless W o r d . Mies van der Rohe on the Building A r t , trans. Mark Jarzombek [Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991], p. 102). France's system and the biological parallel answered Mies's search for an absolute order. Neumeyer also documents Mies's indebted­ ness to the little-known, Bauhaus-affiliated architec­ tural writer, Siegfried Ebeling (pp. 171-176), whose book, Der Raum als Membran was published in 1926, precisely at a time when the dominant tendencies of Bauhaus architectural thinking were leaning strongly towards the mechanistically rational. Ebeling in turn called on France's authority. Reviewing it in 1927, Bruno Taut wrote that it could have been titled "Biological Architecture" in contrast to the static tor­ pidity of the "crystalline." On these points and Ebeling in general, see Wulf Herzongenrath, "Gegenbilder - wie sieht der Bau der Zukunft aus?" in bauhaus utopien Arbeiten auf P a pier. exh. cat. (Stuttgart: C a n t z , for the Kunsthalle Cologne, 1988), pp. 265-277, especially pp. 267, 270-274. Furthermore, in this context, it is

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184

In the case of Lissitzky, however, there are some very important indications that he not only invoked the authority of France's biological and cultural writing, but also attempted to revise the popular scientist's theories in a manner that was more consistent with Lissitzky's priorities. The evidence comes in the form of two easily overlooked manuscript notations. First, while making notes on his reading of France's B i o s . Lissitzky came to the sentence: "It is not 'the world' which is mechanics, but rather mechanics is simply the regulation of the world functions from the smallest to the greatest at all levels of integration.1,87 France is here making the argument that mechanics (in his sense of "biomechanics" and the full range of associated hypotheses) explains nothing about the essence or origin of the noumenal world, but is instead the all-encompassing inner principle under which everything is experienced and created. France's (rather solipsistic) laws of life are ubiquitous (all­ regulating) because they are the terms in which humans must

noteworthy that Mies was also heavily influenced by his reading of Oswald Spengler, as documented in Franz Schulze, Mies van der R o h e . & Critical Biography (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 90-94. 87.

Bios, vol. II, p. 140 ("Nicht die 'Welt' ist Mechanik, sondern die Mechanik ist nur die Regelung der Weltfunktionen vom Kleinsten bis ins Grosste auf alien Integrationsstuf e n .11)

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185 and should organize their knowledge and existence.

In copy­

ing this sentence, Lissitzky makes some minor changes to the second half, but a major one to the beginning: he adds the word "art" and writes that "Art and the world are not mechanics; mechanics is just the regulation of the functions of the parts within the whole."88 Lissitzky is asserting that art too exists somehow beyond the reach of France's seamless system. This directly contradicts the author, who had asserted that no work of art had ever come into existence which had not been created in exact accordance with the laws of the world.89 The second piece of evidence has the same thrust:

in

manuscript versions of the article "A. and Pangeometry," Lissitzky gave his proposed book (of which the essay was to be but one chapter) the revealing title,

"The Amechanics of

Art."90 The term "Amechanics" is clearly directed against France, exempting art from "objective philosophy." Over­ whelmingly, France's writings tried to persuade the reader of the value of frictionless integration of the human being into the environment. Proun, while it could be, and, as men­ tioned above, was, described in terms derived from France,

88.

"Die Kunst wie die Welt sind nicht Mechanik; die Mechanik ist nur die Regelung der Funktionen der Teile im Ganzen" (TsGALI 2361/1/31/6, reprinted in LissitzkyKuppers 1977, p. 14)

89.

France, Bios, vol. II, p. 220

90.

"Die Amechanik der Kunst"

(TsGALI 2361/1/28/9, 15 etc.)

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186 was, on the other hand, inherently disruptive, an "alien" element in society designed not to accommodate to the environment, but ultimately to change it.91 At the same time as appearing to adopt much of France's thinking, Lissitzky is reserving a special role for art, in much the same way that he had "protected" art (in the form of creative work) from the threat of dissolution posed by radical con­ structivism or productivism in 1921 (as discussed in the previous chapter), or that he had been careful to avoid too close a parallelism of art and mathematics in his borrowings from Spengler, for fear that the former might be reduced to the latter. In short, while there was a great deal in France's publications that could and did appeal to Lis­ sitzky, his borrowings, allusions and enthusiasms were, in the final analysis, a temporary phenomenon, representing not wholesale conversion, but rather a tactically useful adop­ tion of evidence, formulations and a style of thinking. Lis­ sitzky's privileging of art's prerogatives is the sig­ nificant outward manifestation of his consistent reluctance

91.

In his discussion of Mies and France, Neumeyer points out a development in Mies's thinking which seems to echo Lissitzky's reservations: "The ascetic ideal of an education to humility demands that one subordinate oneself to a larger absolute lawfulness [as France taught] as opposed to a self-assured attitude towards a hypothetically changeable world. Only in the second half of the twenties was Mies willing to accord rights to both nature and idea in an attempt to complement his original position with the possibility of allowing people their own existential self-realization" (Artless Word, p. 105).

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187

to adhere to any theory or ideology, preferring to judge only the results of creative work (art). This circumstance helps to explain why few, if any, of Lissitzky's own Proun works can be interpreted as illustrat­ ing or embodying France's ideas directly. For example, Lis­ sitzky did not respond to France's identification of the seven basic technical forms of nature (as described above) by incorporating one or more of them programmatically into a Proun work.92 Neither has it proved possible to find any illustrations in France's many books and articles which might have served as model or stimulus for one of Lis­ sitzky's late compositions of the period 1924-1925. The effect of France is rather to be found in the ambivalence which Lissitzky displayed towards his own Proun works in this time. On the one hand, he strongly felt the temptation to give up creating works of this kind in favor of utiltitarian production. France's praise of economy in nature, of maximum efficiency achieved with the minimum effort by the perfectly adapted organism clearly appealed to

92.

While it may be tempting to see the work listed by Lis­ sitzky as "conical” in the Proun Inventory (fig. 58, Proun Inventory no. 93, in the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle, now known with the misleadingly incorrect title, "Free Floating Spiral") as related to one of France's forms, it is close in conception to Proun Inventory no. 92, which was listed by the artist as "Pyramidal." The pyramid was not one of France's seven forms. Actually, both works investigate the means by which a three-dimensional form projecting into the viewer's space may be created by the repetition of cog­ nate linear forms of increasing length, circular in the former case, rectilinear in the latter.

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188

the functionalist side of Lissitzky. This stress on the frictionless integration of all aspects of life certainly resonates with many aspects of Lissitzky's career.

In this

sense, his reading of France may, in a way, have hastened the decision to stop painting and start designing, to move (to use an old-fashioned language), from the fine to the applied arts, to the realm of the immediately useful responses to the needs and stimuli of the environment, in short: to architecture.93 However, Lissitzky's response to Francd was more complicated and ambivalent. While he may have approached exhibition possibilities in a retrospective mood and expressed doubts about continuing to paint, he nevertheless did assert the value of the kind of inventive creativity which he associated with the production of Prouns. In many ways, the essay "A. and Pangeometry" is a declaration of continuing faith in the value of art as a sensual, physical expression of expanded consciousness (expanded perhaps even to a utopian point beyond conscious­ ness).94 More specifically, Lissitzky did affirm the "amechanics of art" through the Proun works he created in 1924 and 1925, a set of works of which he was in fact quite

93.

This was the thrust of the argument in my earlier treatment of Franck and Lissitzky (Nisbet, "An Introduc­ tion to El Lissitzky," pp. 29-30), where some of Lis­ sitzky's borrowings from the biologist were first identified and interpreted.

94.

This aspect of the essay is discussed in detail below, in Chapter V.

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189

proud, calling his recent work a demonstration of his ability to produce strong, beautiful, dynamic pictures (which were also delicate and shimmering).95 In his encounter with France's thought, as the most extended episode in his engagement with the discourse of the organic throughout his career, Lissitzky is playing out the pattern of challenge and response, the tension between sub­ mitting to the demands of an external reality on the one hand, and creatively asserting independence of that reality on the other, which is a constant theme in his work. Lis­ sitzky 's exploration of the issue of the relative autonomy of the work of art had in fact already reemerged in 1922 and 1923 in the acute form of the problem of illustrating the literary work of others, and in the form of experiments in relating his creative activity to the external realities of space (in the problem of whether a three-dimensional, architectural form could embody the visual principles of Proun) and light (in the new medium of the photogram and photograph). The next two chapters return to this moment, as it bears strongly on this investigation's theme of the various ways in which Lissitzky related his abstract work to the physical,

intellectual, cultural and social realities

surrounding it.

95.

Lissitzky's attitudes towards his work at this time, as expressed in letters to Sophie, are further discussed below, Chapter V.

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Chapter III Reassessing the Role of the R e a l , I : Image and Illustration,

1922

Lissitzky continued to make and show his Proun composi­ tions well into the mid-1920s. Although they may have been theoretically distinguished from the more conventional products of his contemporaries, in effect they by and large had the same status. They resembled easel paintings, draw­ ings and prints in many of their features, and the artist's exhibiting and marketing practices differed little from the

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191

norm, either in Russia or in Western Europe.1 Moreover, within these parameters, Lissitzky continued to explore the rich tensions in the symbolism, reference and representationalism latent within the Proun works, using the balance between assertion and denial of meaning (or figura­ tion) as a way in which to generate meaning itself. Alongside this activity, however, Lissitzky came to undertake a multifaceted investigation which, so to speak, reopened some of the issues which had been suppressed around 1920, when the concept of Proun was first introduced. This and the next chapter will examine four exemplary instances in which Lissitzky returned to the issue of the role of reference and reality in his work, balancing the assertion of the autonomy of the work of art (as described in the previous chapter) by projects in which the work's links to external determinants are acknowledged and explored. Common to all four examples is the investigation of the ways in which meaning could perhaps be generated through incorpora-

1.

As the discussion in the previous chapter has stressed, Lissitzky was as much concerned to intervene within the ’’conventional" art world (where the "debate" with other artists and their conception of abstraction could be engaged) as he was to evade it. In fact, the only docu­ mented case of Lissitzky showing his work outside the traditional network of museums, "Kunstvereine," and com­ mercial dealers, is his contribution of Prouns to the installation of modern art at the Hellerau educational institution, near Dresden, arranged by Alois Schardt in 1924 (see my comments under Proun Inventory no. 6). It is noteworthy that, during his years in Europe (late 1921 to mid-1925), Lissitzky made little effort to play a role in Soviet culture (beyond editing Veshch). He became very focussed on his current milieu.

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192 tion into the work in question of elements of external reality, either by allusion, by symbol, or by their actual presence. The first two cases both date from 1922 and involve creation of images to accompany the literary work of others: the typographic design for the volume of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, For the V o i c e ; and the illustrations for II'ya Ehrenburg's book of stories, Six Tales About Easy Endings. Following this, two instances from 1923 will be examined: the so-called "Prouns Space," an exhibition room constructed in Berlin in summer 1923; and the photogram created with Vilmos Huszar and published in Kurt Schwitters7 journal Merz in the autumn of the same year. These four works are dis­ parate in form and medium and have received very unequal treatment from subsequent scholarship. The design of the Mayakovsky booklet and the Berlin "Prouns Space" have been heralded as icons of modernist achievement, while the illustrations for Ehrenburg and the 1923 photogram occupy a peripheral position in writing on Lissitzky, not yet seriously studied. Nevertheless,

it is valuable to consider

them as loosely related undertakings, as the consecutive study of the four projects reveals the extent to which Lis­ sitzky 's work was conducting a debate about the terms on which it would deal with actuality, a debate that affected the status of the Proun works themselves, and ultimately, I suggest, contributed to the decision to stop producing them.

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193 Beginning soon after his arrival in Berlin, Lissitzky returned to a consideration both of expressive design (whether pictorial or typographical) and to the larger, related question of the relationship of creative invention (including his Proun compositions) to the real world of objects and humans. The former project (investigating the expressive, sym­ bolic potential of abstract design elements) can be seen most clearly in his reviving the suprematist story Of Two Squares r designed already in Vitebsk but published now in Berlin, and in his experimental typography for Vladimir Mayakovsky's selection of poetry For the V o i c e . published in 1923. In this landmark volume, Lissitzky used type-case ele­ ments to create "pictures” which emblematically or otherwise refer to and illustrate the themes of the individual poems. The latter concern (relating Proun to the real world of objects and humans) was elaborated through illustrations to Ehrenburg's short stories. Although this is a work which the scholarly literature on Lissitzky has hitherto largely con­ sidered minor and marginal,

it is revealing and important.

This activity in. illustration encouraged the artist to revisit his earlier practice of having his abstract composi­ tions allude to specific objects (or concepts), thereby reinforcing their power to symbolize, to represent, or even to illustrate. Concretely, it also led to experiments in introducing references to actuality into a nominal Proun

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194

space, in combining Proun elements with direct, legible allusions to reality, and in exploring the possibilities of collage generally.

In addition to crucially questioning the

autonomy of the Proun works, these procedures raised the problem of adequately responding to external stimuli, in this instance, the narrative and symbolic content of the texts.

a) Expressive Typography, 1920 and 1922

Lissitzky returned to a narratively and symbolically rich typographical design with his work on Of Two Squares, the suprematist children's book which had been designed in Vitebsk by May 1920 (Typ. Cat 1922/7). Perhaps his prepara­ tion of this slim volume for the German printer in winter 1921-1922 revived his interest in the potential for a sym­ bolic language of design. As the expressive typography of 1922-1923 in some ways represents a return to concerns of 1920, it is useful to begin with an partial assessment of the two major typographic design projects of that period, the agitational poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (fig. 59) and Of Two Squares (figs. 60 and 61) in the light of this issue. Lissitzky's picture book Of Two Squares was announced as

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195 ready for publication in the Unovis almanac in mid-1920.2 It was very shortly thereafter that he produced his agitational poster for the Western Front in the Russo-Polish War. This was probably issued in Summer 1920.3 Common to both printing 2.

According to Aleksandra Shatskikh, the project was listed as "Suprematist Ornament. Of Two Squares. Suprematist Becoming in Six Structures (In All Languages)" ("K. Malevich v Vitebske," Iskusstvo. no. 11 [November 1988], p. 43, n. 19). I acknowledge that my discussion of this project assumes that the book published in Berlin in early 1922 is essentially the same as the version prepared in 1920. This cannot be proved conclusively, but the congruence of the published pages with several preparatory studies make this likely. One likely change was the substitution of the more con­ ventional word "Tale" ("skaz") for the Malevichian con­ cepts of "ornament" or "becoming" in the title. Perhaps Lissitzky used the word "skaz" is response to literary theoreticians of Russian Formalism such as Boris Eikhenbaum, who had in 1918 identified the "skaz" as a particular genre of short story in which the narrative point of view incorporates the lively unpredictability of the oral tradition (including the folk tale). See Eikhenbaum's essay in Jurij Striedter, ed. and intro., Russischer Formalismus. Texte zur allaemeinen Literaturtheorie und zur Theorie der Prosa (Munich: Wil­ helm Fink, 1969), pp. 161-167. Although some of Eikhen­ baum's colleagues disagreed with him, this interpretive approach might be fruitful for Lissitzky's "tale," given its mode of addressing the reader. Moreover, it has been usefully pointed out that the Formalists saw the folk tale as a particularly powerful form of universal narra­ tive, and that this may be a link to Lissitzky's universal tale or s k a z . dedicated as it was "to all, to all children (Mark Roskill, K l e e . Kandinsky and the Thought of Their Time. A Critical Perspective [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992], pp. 92-93).

3.

For my arguments supporting this date, see Typ. Cat. 1920/5 and Appendix. That the poster was designed for this specific occasion does not, of course, limit its significance in the history of modernism. It is now established that the poster was issued in 2,000 copies (Stephen White, The Bolshevik Poster [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988], p. 40 and n. 7, citing the official report of the military agency under whose auspices the poster was produced). Significantly, Lissitzky was responsible not only for the visual

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196 projects is Lissitzky's deployment of the visual language of Suprematism, supported by a clear text, to create symbolic statements with narrative content.

Importantly, both

projects are focussed around exhortations and commands. The text of the poster is just such a slogan, and the picture book begins with the encouragement to the reader not to read, but rather to take paper and building blocks and con­ struct actively. In both cases, the recipient of the message is to emulate the visual drama, for the poster actually shows the red wedge penetrating and disrupting the white area and the children's book enacts the story of the reconstruction of the world. The Russian population was urged to take action in the real world, while the children were not merely to make their own copies of the book, but, significantly, to create in three dimensions: folding paper, coloring columns, building blocks. In both cases, the text is an amplification and echo of the image, and vice versa. Indeed, the text and the image in both works are individually self-sufficient: the texts make sense as a command or as a story on their own, and the

design, but also for the wording of the slogan. See his emphasis on this point, and on the importance of the literary formulation of the slogan itself, in his letter to Jan Tschichold of 17 July 1925 (Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities), also reproduced in El Lissitzky. Konstrukteur. D e n k e r . Pfeifenraucher. Kommunist. exh. cat. (Mainz: Hermann Schmidt, for the Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt, 1990), pp. 112-113.

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197

images too are as close as possible to self-evident con­ structions, exploiting the symbolism of color, the dynamics of visual language, and the v i e w e r 's expectation of a leftto-right sequence within one or more images.4 On the one hand, these two works established the pos­ sibility that printed abstract forms characteristic of Suprematism could "stand for" such known quantities as "the world" or "the Red Army"

(much as the abstract paintings of

this period "represented" a bridge, a town, an arch). On the other hand, the text in both works was itself rendered as

4.

It must be admitted that the Story of Two Squares has not proved completely transparent in its narrative symbology, as some interpreters have seen it as the con­ flict between the old (the "black") and the new (the "red"). Typical for this point of view is Alan C. Birnholz, £1 Lissitzky. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1973, p. 220. Birnholz does, however, give a good over­ view of the avant-garde typographical innovations to which Lissitzky is most fruitfully compared. I believe that the work compels us to see the black and red squares as collaborating in the Suprematist reconstruc­ tion of the world (Peter Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky" in Cambridge 1987, p. 25), though this view still leaves some room for disagreement over the specific political value (if any) to be assigned to each square. Yve-Alain Bois, for example, holds to the pos­ sibility that the black square in some way represents the anarchist movement, suppressed after contributing to the success of the Revolution ("El Lissitzky: Radical Reversibility," Art in America, vol. 76 no. 4 (April 1988], p. 168). Bois provides extensive discussions of this book in "EL L . , didactiques de lecture," Soviet Union, vol. 3 prt. 2 (1976), pp. 233-252, and in "Lis­ sitzky, Mondrian, Strzeminski. Abstraction and Political Utopia in the Twenties," in Cadences. Icon and Abstrac­ tion in Co n t e x t . exh. cat. (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991), pp. 81-103. A detailed treat­ ment of the book is now also given by Patricia Railing, More About Two Squares (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991).

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198

expressive visual form. The placement and orientation of the words and letters often responds to (and reinforces) the placement and orientation of the abstract visual forms being described (with, say, the word "wedge' in the military poster being placed adjacent to and "backing up" the visual wedge, or the words "flying to earth" in scene 2 of the childrens' book [fig. 60] paralleling the diagonal placement of the flying squares). Sometimes, the typographical form, shape and density of each word or its letters are adjusted to correspond to the word's meaning or function in the nar­ rative (as with the word "izdaleka"

["from afar"] also in

scene 2, rendered as a small sliver on the "distant" horizon). It is important to contrast this approach to words and letters with Lissitzky's own design of, say, the cover of the brochure for the Committee on the Struggle against Unemployment (fig. 9, Typ. Cat. 1919/13), in which the let­ ters of the text are rendered as decoratively Suprematist elements (close to Malevich's example) with no regard for their specific semantic meaning.5 Both the children's book 5.

Lissitzky's brochure cover stands in marked contrast to a cover design by Natan Altman for a similar occasion of the same year, 1919. Altman's cover for the brochure for the Congress of Female Workers and Peasants of the Northern Region renders the word for female workers on a straight diagonal in solid sans-serif type, and the word for female peasants in a descending curve of decora­ tively fragmented and shadowed letters in "folkloric" style (illustrated in Michail German, ed. and intro., Die Kunst der Oktoberrevo1ution (1917-1921^ [Diisseldorf and Vienna: Econ, 1979], fig. 261). The choice of letter design carries ideological significance. In 1921, Alt­ man, an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution, struc-

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199

and the poster a r e , at one level, investigations of the extent to which form and letter can carry illustrational meaning of a readily decipherable kind. In this, they differ from those works of the period in which Lissitzky deployed a modern graphic and letter design more for its generalized associations with dynamism and a new vision, divorced from the immediate occasion of its use.

(Another example of this

"arbitrary" approach would be the cover for the Unovis Almanac [Typ. Cat.

1920/4]). Around 1920, both approaches to

the design of word/image combinations could exist side by side in Lissitzky fs oeuvre, as they did again in 1922.

tured paintings in mixed media purely around abstract forms and politically charged words, such as "Work" ("Trud") in State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and "Petrocommune" ("Petrokommuna" [i.e. Petrograd Commune of the Russian Federation]) in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. (Both paintings are illustrated in The Great U t o p i a . The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde. 19151 9 3 2 . exh. cat. [New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1992], pi. 107 and 108.) Although, as discussed in Chapters I and II, Lissitzky attempted to "incorporate" meanings into his paintings in several ways, he never made an abstract painting built around a recognizable word in the manner of Altman (or of Sergei Sen'kin, who made a similar painting in 1921 using the word "Rabis" ["Art Workers7 Union"]. Lissitzky confined texts and language to graphic design and illustration. In this regard, Altman, also a Jewish artist with very close ties to Chagall, was perhaps closer in spirit to the latter's strategy of including texts within paintings, as analyzed by Ben­ jamin Harshav, "The Role of Language in Modern Art: On Texts and Subtexts in Chagall's Paintings," Modernism/Modernity r vol. 1 no. 2 [1994], pp. 71-76, an article that also discusses Chagall's "multi-cultural play" with typefaces (pp. 76-82). Bearing this range of more or less simultaneous approaches to letter design in mind helps to clarify Lissitzky's individual approach.

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200 b) Reading Mayakovsky: For The Voice

Certainly, by the summer of 1922, Lissitzky was produc­ ing, alongside such non-referential covers as the designs for the tri-lingual art journal he co-edited with II'ya Erenburg, V e s h c h . O b i e t . Geaenstand and various book covers for the Skify (Scythians) Publishing House (such as Typ. Cat. 1922/8 and 1922/9), a cover design such as that for Aleksandr Kusikov's Ptitsa bezymyannaya. Izbrannve stikhi 1917-1921 (Nameless Bird. Selected Verse 1917-1921), also published by Skify. Apparently non-objective, this design can be read as a stylized representation of the anonymous grey bird mentioned in the title poem.6 Slightly later in the year, this same tendency can be seen in the unused design for the cover of the catalogue for the "Erste Russische Kunstausstellung" at the Galerie van Diemen, in which the symbolic potential of the red star, as the emblem of the Russian Federation,

is exploited (Typ. Cat. 1922/16).

However, the most significant example of Lissitzky's attempts to use the elements of abstract design in an illustrational manner was of course his pioneering layout

See Typ. Cat. 1922/11 for full details. In his design, Lissitzky has rendered an image from the title poem, dated June 17 1922, in which the author looks back over his past: "It's as if a nameless grey bird/ Had flown out of the mist/ And fallen near/ Me" (as translated in Gordon McVay, "The Tree-Stump and the Horse: The Poetry of Alexander Kusikov," Oxford Slavonic Papers. N.S. vol. XI [1978], p. 123).

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201 for the small selection of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, For The Voice (figs. 62-76, Typ. Cat. 1923/3). This volume, not published until 1923, was conceived during the poet's visit to Berlin in late 1922.7 According to Lissitzky's own recol­ lection in an interview in 1939, it was Mayakovsky himself who suggested to Lissitzky that he might provide a design for collection of the poet's selection of his most recited poems.8 This publication has since become acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of modernist typographic design. Even in its own time,

it was recognized as such. By Lis­

sitzky's own account,

it won him election to membership in

the prestigious Gutenberg Society. It was entirely understandable that a selection should be made of Mayakovsky's verse especially for the purpose of public reading. Throughout his career, the poet was known for his booming, effective voice and declamatory style. To quote one assessment written by a knowledgeable associate,

7 . Mayakovsky was in Berlin from early October until 13 December, with the exception of one week's visit to Paris from 18 to 25 November. He took part in several literary evenings, most notably the contentious meeting at the House of Arts on 3 November, at which Ivan Puni read a lecture on modern Russian art, in conjunction with the First Russian Art Exhibition at the Galerie van Diemen. See V. Katanyan, Mavakovskii. Khronika zhizni i devatel'nosti. fifth, expanded edition, (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel', 1985), p. 234. 8.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pp. 203-204. The text of this interview, conducted by L. Feigelmann, is in the Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow. It was conducted shortly after the Museum's founding, as part of a program to gather reminiscences of the poet.

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202 II'ya Ehrenburg, in the very year of the making of For the Voice: Mayakovsky's self-advertisement is not a caprice but an absolute necessity. For his poems to reach one, they must reach thousands and thousands. This is not vanity, but a peculiarity of his poetic organism. ... [A]n 'intimate Mayakovsky is pure nonsense. One must shout his poems, trumpet them, belch them forth in public squares. This is why the size of his audience is a ma t ­ ter of Mayakovsky's survival. ... Mayakovsky has a voice of extraordinary strength. He knows how to articulate so that his words are thrown like stones shot from a sling. He speaks monumentally. His strength lies in his strength.9 The majority of the selected poems (eight of thirteen) were written or published between mid-1917 and late 1920, and so are closely related to the actuality of the Revolu­ tion. Two others derive from the poet's pre-revolutionary period, and three had been published earlier in 1922. A wide range of Mayakovsky's creative oeuvre is thereby represented, with agitational,

futurist, lyrical, erotic and

celebratory verses all included. All the poems were included in the two-volume anthology of the poet's work to date, Thirteen Years of W o r k , which was in press shortly before he left for the West. The importance of the spoken performance for these poems is underscored by the fact that Mayakovsky had recorded four (of the nine that had been written by then) in early December 1920 at the Petrograd Institute of

9.

Portrety russkikh poetov (Berlin, 1922), as translated in Andrew Field, compiler, The Complection of Russian Literature (Harmondworth, England: Penguin, 1973), pp. 202-203

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203 Living Sound. Another was read in a radio concert broadcast live on Red and Sverdlov Squares in Moscow on 2 May 1925. Many of the poems were often read at Mayakovsky's frequent public appearances,

including, for example, four of these

thirteen compositions at a reading in Kiev on 12 January 1924.10 The success and status of the volume is surely due on the one hand to its overall clarity and forcefulness, and on the other (though this has been less recognized), to the very variety of differently conceived typographical devices within a unifying conception. A full analysis of the volume would have to account for all these features, relating them to this overall conception.

In our context, it is Lis­

sitzky 's use of typographic elements to illustrate the themes and subjects of the poems which is of interest.11 This means giving only brief attention to the introductory sequence (always so important for Lissitzky) of the cover, followed by the title page and the dedication.

In many ways,

the richness of For the Voice derives from the contrasting

10.

Information in this paragraph is derived from Katanyan, Mayakovskii.

11.

This approach to appreciating the achievement of Lis­ sitzky in his design of For the Voice has recently resulted in two valuable articles, to which my discus­ sion is indebted: Martha Scotford Lange, "Verbal and Visual Translation of Mayakovsky's and Lissitzky's For Reading Out Loud," Visible Language, vol. XXII no. 2/3 (Spring 1988), pp. 195-222; Philip B. Meggs, "For The Voice," Print, vol. XLIV no. 5, (September-October 1990), pp. 112-119, 148-149.

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204 approaches to design taken by these opening pages, espe­ cially as they in turn contrast to the design of the poems themselves. The cover of the book deploys Lissitzky7s repertoire of techniques: it emphasizes an initial letter (here the M of the p o e t 7s name); it shares letters between words (the "ya" of Mayakovsky" and "dlya"); it incorporates letters within the form of other letters in the same word (the k of Mayakovsky); and it arranges the words in varying orienta­ tions. This textual arrangement is then balanced and rein­ forced by two abstract forms: the black and red circle, and the three diagonal parallel lines. Neither of these con­ stellations has any recognizable referent or symbolism. The cover fits well into the set of such abstract designs. The title page of the book (fig. 62) introduces a very different design position. Using photographic reproduction on a glossy paper (different from the rest of the v o l u m e ) , this page illustrates one of the characters Lissitzky designed for the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun, the so-called "Announcer", whose title in Russian (chtets) would be better translated as "reciter."12 This figure is wittily 12.

While it is usually said that this figure is the lithographed sheet from Lissitzky7s portfolio of his designs for this opera, the so-called "Figurinen-Mappe. Sieg uber die Sonne", this cannot be so, as these prints were not produced until the second half of 1923. Moreover, there are differences in detail and proportion between the lithograph and the image reproduced in the Mayakovsky book. Equally, Lissitzky did not use the watercolor original of this design, which he exhibited at the First Russian Art Exhibition, (illustrated in color in Moscow 1990, p. 77). It appears that Lissitzky

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205 speaking the title of the book from its mouth/horn, with the letters curving away diagonally downward.13 Finally, the volume's dedication page (fig. 63) offers a graphically elegant and condensed arrangement of the dedicatee's initials, L. Yu. B. (i.e. Lily Brik, Mayakovsky's lover and the editor of this volume)

in a

broken circle containing a hollow triangle, solid dot and shaded square. The three geometric forms subtly echo the cyrillic shape of the three letters.14

created a version of this figure especially for this volume, taking into account the proportions of the page and other circumstances. 13.

While the author's name is conventionally set in cyril­ lic at the lower left of this page, the name El Lis­ sitzky (the "constructor of the book", as the text on the facing page tells us) is placed in Roman type adjacent to the "torso" of the figure, suggesting that the artist is here the reader/declaimer of the Mayakovsky poems. In a sense, as we shall see, Lissitzky is "giving voice" to some of the poem's meanings. Alan Birnholz sees this figure as the poet, which is also plausible, and deepens the iconographic reading of the figure: "Like the plate in Victory over the S u n , there is an unmistakable reference to a piano in the black portion of the design, recalling Lissitzky's analogy of the book to a grand piano or violin because of their common concern with sounds" (El Lissitzkyr p. 232). The connexion of this piano form to the figure's loud­ speaker/trumpet via a belt and pulley invokes overtones of the mechanical reproduction of music or poetry, a topic of much interest to Mayakovsky in particular and to the international avant-garde in general.

14.

This emblem is very rich in allusion. Resembling an eye in section (the lover's eye? the reader's eye?), it also evokes the word "lyublyu" ("I love") through the three letters included in the design. This is the title of one of Mayakovsky's earlier poems for Lily.

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206 It is only after traversing these three pages (one each devoted, in a way, to the three major contributors to the project, Mayakovsky, Lissitzky and Brik), that the reader reaches the poems themselves, or, more accurately, the thumb index to the poems, constructed of die-cut tabs. In his own published comments on this feature, Lissitzky stresses its usefulness for the reader of these poems in public, as a quick and easy way to find the next poem for reading out loud. In this sense, it is a feature which belongs with a discussion of the striving for efficiency and utility in modern design.15 For our purposes, however, it is less the fact of the thumb index which is important, than the presence on each tab of both an abbreviated form of the poem title and an abbreviated form of the typographic design which ''illustrates" the poem on the respective page-opening (though the relationship of the "abbreviated" typographic design to the full "illustration" is sometimes rather arbitrary). Here, in n u c e . is the relation of text (con­

15.

It is also worth noting that implicit in the use of this thumb index is a non-linear use of the book. The reader was expected to move around from poem to poem as circumstances demanded. This activation of the reader involves a liberation from the traditional sequencing of experience which might be seen as analogous to the freedom of the visitor to the Dresden and Hanover demonstration rooms to choose the art works to be seen. For a discussion of these rooms, see now Beatrix Nobis, "Das Abstrakte Kabinett in Hannover und andere Demonstrationsraume," in Hanover 1988, pp. 220-229, and Kai-Uwe Hemken, "Pan-Europe and German Art: El Lissitzky at the 1926 Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden 1926," in Eindhoven 1990, pp. 46-55

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207 tent/narrative) to abstract form, which had been the central design issue of Of Two Squares (though not the central mes­ sage or content) and which now returns in a different guise in For the V o i c e . Basic to any understanding of this book is the fact that Lissitzky has not "designed" the entire volume. For all but one of the thirteen poems, the full text of the verses has been left untouched, set in conventional type and layout.16 By and large, Lissitzky designed only the title of each poem, and an accompanying "illustration".17 In the large 16.

There are only a few, not very significant exceptions to this. Sometimes Lissitzky will emphasize chorus-like lines in heavier type or in red ink (such as pp. 8, 9, 13, 20, 21, 23, 32, 53). These are usually parts of the poem's text to which he has alluded in his design. Only in one case (p. 18) does a pictorial typographic design element intrude into the text itself, probably to ensure that the poem, "Garbage" then ends on a right-hand page, thereby preserving the double page opening for each new poem. Perhaps significantly, it is also in this poem that we find the one case where the poem's actual text has been typographically manipulated: the opening four lines are rendered in thick red capitals underlines by heavy black rules (p. 17). Only one poem ends on a left hand page ("Our March", p. 12), forcing the illustration of the next poem ("My May") onto the right hand page (fig. 66). The length of some poems would seem to be responsible for a number of design decisions, such as the single-page illustration and title combination for "Rumor" (fig. 73, p. 44) and "Naval Love" (fig. 74, p. 50).

17.

Alan Birnholz also addresses the issue of the unillustrated text, writing for example of "Third Inter­ national": "Yet how unimpressive is the poem itself small in scale, unvaried in color or composition. Though working at Mayakovsky's invitation, Lissitzky hardly considered his role subservient to the poet's. Indeed, while Mayakovsky's poems were close to Lissitzky's art in spirit and vigor, one wonders if other texts could have been substituted with the same results." He believes that "Mayakovsky's poems are repeatedly eclipsed by Lissitzky's designs" (El Lissitzky. p. 234)

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208 majority of cases, Lissitzky's "illustration" was on the left hand page, and the designed title of the poem on the right. Importantly, however, there are exceptions to these procedures.18 These deviations highlight the way in which Lissitzky's creative decisions are here dictated - or at least heavily conditioned - by the given circumstances such as the length of the poems, the format of the page, and other real situational constraints. This flexibility of response to the demands of the context is in fact the key to the design as a whole. In this commission, Lissitzky is also accepting external discipline in two further ways: by wishing to illustrate the theme or content of each poem, and by ostensibly restricting himself to using pre-fabricated elements from the printer's

This may be true visually, but of course the point of this volume is that the visual does not stand alone. Compare now Susan Compton's assessment: "...the book can be criticized for the undistinguished traditional typography of unillustrated text..." (Susan Compton, Russian Avant-Garde B o o k s . 1917-1934 [Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993], p. 96). I doubt whether criticism is appropriate, as the artist's intention was surely always focussed on the issue of illustration and abstraction, not on delivering a typographical tour-deforce Gesamtkunstwerk. 18.

In addition to the minor exceptions noted above (n. 16), there is the outstanding case of "Good Relations with Horses" (fig. 75) which slightly rearranges this distribution, placing the illustration along the top half of the double spread, and the title in the left hand side of the lower half (pp. 52-53). Given Lis­ sitzky's flexibility and abhorrence of rigid system, these variations are not weaknesses, but signs of the artist's open-ended freedom to experiment.

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209 type-case.19 The artist is accommodating "reality" in both his medium and his message.

Indeed, these accommodations are

in a sense the message of this project of re-investigating the role of that which already exists. The illustrational strategies adopted by Lissitzky are, as we would expect, heterogeneous. Some illustrations are simple and directly referential: Hat"

"The Tale of the Little Red

(fig. 72) presents a stick-figure in black wearing a

little red hat, the "Cadet" (i.e. member of the liberal democratic party, whom Mayakovsky is here accusing of insincere adoption of revolutionary airs when circumstances dictate). A similar approach to building a picture is seen in the ship flying the banner of the Russian Federation (fig. 64), though here the image is not directly cited from the poem, but inferred from the poem's dedication to the sailors ("Left March"). A different relationship of image to text is deployed in the case where Lissitzky creates a political emblem, itself an abstraction, from his repertoire of shapes: the hammer and sickle together with the Roman numeral III (for "Third International," fig. 68), implicitly contrasted in its abstract modernity made up of composite geometric elements, with the pictorial double-headed (but

19.

This was the claim (not strictly accurate, as we shall see) which the artist made in the caption to illustra­ tions from this volume, published in his article, "typographische tatsachen, z.B." of 1925. This caption is quoted, separately from the reprinting of the article itself, in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967 and 1980, at pi. 95.

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210 decapitated) eagle (surely not a standard element of the type-case) which Lissitzky uses as the center of his mock coat of arms for a poem about the White counter­ revolutionary, General Wrangel

(fig. 73).

Referentiality can encompass witty allusions to the theme of the poem, as in "Naval Love" (fig. 74) for which Lissitzky created a black anchor overlaid with a red heart to accompany an amusing poem (itself full of double­ entendres) about the love of two torpedo boats. Lissitzky can play purely with letters, words and punctuation marks on pages that seem conceptually distant from the pictorialism of the stick figure and the ship (figs. 72 and 64).20 Lis­ sitzky's response to "What About You?", Mayakovsky's famously incomprehensible early futurist poem probably ack­ nowledges its unillustratability by concentrating on the title and emphasizing the difficulty of reading by repeating the question mark some 20 times (fig. 71). Another page using only letters and type case forms has a different relationship to its poem: Lissitzky cites the consonants "r," "sh," and "shch" from the poem "Order To the Army of the Arts" where they are recommended as useful sounds for composing the new marches and anthems to inspire and accompany revolutionary activity. Lissitzky arranges them as

20.

The artist of course often deploys his linguistic wit by combining words and letters in evocative ways in the designs for the poem titles (the right hand pages), such as the emblem for "My May" (fig. 66) where the two words share first and last letters, and many other cases.

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211 quasi-architectural elements in a Suprematist/urban scene of abstract forms (fig. 69). Similarly, Lissitzky quotes from "Order No. 2 to the Army of the Arts"

(in which Mayakovsky had warned all tradi­

tional and conservative artists - including the partisans of proletarian culture and many others - to give up the old ways and "give us the new art/to haul the Republic out of the mud") the repeated "To You," once with a hand pointing to a red cross (perhaps one of the new forms) and once, with letters reversed, with a hand pointing to a black cross (perhaps canceling the old)

(fig. 70).

Three of the most impressive of Lissitzky's illustra­ tions are also three of the most exceptional.

In most of his

illustrations, Lissitzky attempted to capture something of the most important thematic focus of the poem (a focus usually evident in the title as well). So too, for the final poem in the book,

"An Unusual Occurrence"

(Mayakovsky's

masterpiece about the poet calling the sun into his dacha for a discussion), Lissitzky boldly placed just an offcenter red circle, a pure Suprematist device, symbolizing the sun, the focus of the poem (fig. 76).

(On the opposite

page, Lissitzky arranged the long title in a way that sug­ gests , p e r h a p s , the room into which the poet invited the sun.) In "Good Relations with Horses," however, Lissitzky has quoted Mayakovsky's onomatopoeic evocation of the sound of horses hooves across the top of the page opening,

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inter-

212 spersed with printer's marks underscoring the rhythmic progression (fig. 75). For the content of the poem, these are surely the least important lines, but their abstract visual and aural qualities made them the focus of Lis­ sitzky's design. The only case where Lissitzky has added to the content of the poem by including extraneous elements not readily and easily inferable from the text comes in his design for "Gar­ bage ,11 a poem about the apparent involvement of the capitalist West in the famine in Russia in 1921-1922 (fig. 67). For this polemical poem, Lissitzky links red circles marked with the names of the Western capitals (in stereotypically appropriate type-faces), London, Paris and Berlin (he omits Washington, which also features in the poem) to three skull-and-crossbones, marking the death occurring by the millions in, as Lissitzky here adds, Samara. This Volga town stands here for the entire affected Volga region, though curiously the word diminishes with each repetition on the page: the second version combines all the "A"s into one, the third one omits all the consonants. Is this a visualization of progressive emaciation and eradica­ tion of a region? This page is narratively the most complex and full of all Lissitzky's illustrations.21 21.

That this page had some special significance for Lis­ sitzky is shown by the fact that portions of it appear in the "background" of one of his photomontaged selfportraits of 1924 (along with a portion of "Order No. 2 to the Army of the Arts"), with quite specific iconographic meaning, as discussed in Chapter V below.

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213 In conclusion,

it can be said that For The Voice is a

tour-de-force of variations on the problem of responding to the constraints of content and medium.22 By and large, Lis­ sitzky begins from the premise of accepting as given Mayakovsky's poems as intellectual and material facts (in their meaning, their length), the book format, and the resources of the type-setter's case. Crucial of course is the artist's creative response to these external determinants, even to the extent of now and then avoiding them, as when he introduces ideas or words not in Mayakovsky's text, when he invents the tab-index system to qualify the book format, when he incorporates visual images not necessarily part of the printer's standard equipment. Earlier in 1922, he had shown an equally flexible and varied range of responses when illustrating stories by his friend and colleague, Ehrenburg. Less adventurous in dealing with some of the external givens discussed here, this project, however, adopts the contrary strategy of opening

22.

Johanna Drucker has underscored the way in which this circumstance puts the Mayakovsky volume into a sig­ nificantly different category from those works of avantgarde graphic design in which the artist and designer are one and the same (such as in the case of Ilya Zdanevich). In the latter, "the design derives from the text, evolves simultaneously with its writing, so that the corpus of the typographic and format elements are already present within the literary composition: the design is formed with the text" ("Typographic Manipula­ tion of the Poetic Text in the Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde," Visible L a n guager vol. 25 nos. 2-3 [1991], p. 253).

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214 the illustrational project to any and all sources of external imagery in Lissitzky's engagement with the collage aesthetic so prevalent in Berlin in the early 1920s-23

c) Reading Ehrenburg: Six Tales about Easy Endings

Although the cover design for EhrenburgJs Six Stories about Easy Endings is essentially non-referential and resists any "iconographic" reading, playing as it does entirely with juxtapositions of scale and typeface (fig. 77), the six individual illustrations for the short stories themselves reveal an entirely different agenda, the attempt to introduce fragments of reality into spatially complex compositions, sometimes derived more or less directly from Proun works.24 While some of these illustrations have become

23.

For this, see the general survey by Dawn Ades, Photomontage. revised and enlarged edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), and the focussed studies by K. Michael Hays, "Photomontage and its Audience: El Lissitzky Meets Berlin Dada," in Gail Harrison Roman and Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt, e d s . , The Avant-Garde Front i e r : Russia Meets the W e s t . 1910-1930 (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1992), pp. 169195, and Manfredo Tafuri, "U.S.S.R - Berlin 1922: From Populism to 'Constructivist International,'" in Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture. Criticism. Ideology (Prin­ ceton, New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 1985), pp. 121-181.

24.

For details of this book and Lissitzky's contribution, see Typ. Cat. 1922/12. Although in my earlier publica­ tions, I followed the accepted translation of this book's title as Six Tales with Easy Endings, I now believe that substituting "about" for "with" is more accurate, and directs attention to the themes of the stories more effectively.

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215 relatively well-known (especially in the form of the original maquettes, which have survived for two of the images), they have rarely been studied either individually or as a group,

in relation to the stories which they

accompany.2^ Ehrenburg's stories all, in one way or another, deal with Russia. Drawing deeply on his own life experience, they reveal his deep ambivalence about his homeland. The epigraph Ehrenburg chose for his Six Tales comes from Ovid's lament: "This is the land chosen to serve as my punishment!" (Tristia, III, x, 78: "Haec est in poenam terra reperta meam").26 His life and political career in Russia had been turbulent indeed. In the years immediately prior to his departure from Moscow for Paris in Spring 1921, Ehrenburg

25.

In his section on Ehrenburg's book, Alan Birnholz (El L issitzky. pp. 236-245) discusses only the illustrations for "Shifs-karta" and "Vitrion," though without any reference to Ehrenburg's stories. He also analyses two further works, the so-called "Footballer" and "Black Sphere", though it is not clear that either is directly related to the Ehrenburg project. For my assessment of these works, see n. 43 and n. 45 below. He is correct, however, to write in general that this book "is sig­ nificant for the insight it provides into the develop­ ment of Lissitzky's views on art and into his relationship to avant-garde currents in Berlin at the time" (p. 237). Birnholz also stresses the importance of photomontage in this context.

26.

Although it is tempting to see Ehrenburg's invocation of Ovid's complaint, which refers to the land where he spent his exile, as pertaining to Western Europe (where Ehrenburg may have felt himself something of an exi l e ) , the focus of the stories on Russia makes it clear that the author is here bewailing the confused and compli­ cated status of his homeland.

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216 had been associated with both the revolution and the counter-revolutionary forces.27 This changeability combined with his fiction, marked at the time by pervasive irony and carnivalesque grotesquerie, to make perfectly intelligible the critic's comment in Izvestiya in October 1923 that, characteristically, the Reds consider Ehrenburg a White and the Whites condemn him as a Red.28 There are a number of reasons for Lissitzky to have been the illustrator for Ehrenburg's stories. Almost exactly the same age, the two were both creative intellectuals from Jewish backgrounds who had travelled widely in Europe before

27.

He moved to Kiev, where he had been born in January 1891, in November 1918 after the death of his mother. After the Bolsheviks occupied Kiev in February of the following year, Ehrenburg took an active part in the group of leftist artists gathered around the poet Osip Mandelshtam and his wife. Lissitzky was in Kiev at the same time. Although pogroms were unleashed in the area after the White Army retook the city in August 1919, Ehrenburg wrote in 1922 that he had greeted the arrival of the counter-revolutionary army "with hope." By October, the pogroms had become too fierce, and Ehren­ burg went south, only to decide the next year to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. Returning to Moscow, he worked for the theatrical section of the Commissariat of the Enlightenment (Narkompros), but was briefly arrested by the Bolshevik secret police. This biographical information is derived from Anatol Goldberg, Ilya Ehren­ b u r g . Revolutionary, Novelist. P o e t . War Correspondent. Propagandist; The Extraordinary Epic of a Russian Sur­ vivor (New York: Viking, 1984) and Eva Berard-Zarzycka, "Ilya Ehrenbourg. Juif, Russe et Europeen, 1891-1928," Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique. vol. XXVI no. 2 (April-June 1985), pp. 219-242.

28.

Quoted in Holger Siegel, Asthetische Theorie und kunstlerische Praxis bei I I 'ia Erenburg. 1921-1932. Studien zum Verhaltnis von Kunst und Revolution (Tubingen: Gunther Narr, 1979), p. 9.

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217 the First World War.29 They had probably known each other in Kiev and in Moscow in the years after the Revolution. By late 1921, when Ehrenburg arrived in Berlin, his current enthusiasm was the most advanced art of the time, on which he published influential articles and an important book.30 This passion and Ehrenburg's extensive contacts with the leading Western European artists and poets had made him an ideal collaborator with Lissitzky on the journal V e s h c h . Obiet. Geaenstand. which promoted international cross­ fertilization amongst advanced artists of constructivist inclination (broadly defined).31 Although, as we shall see, Ehrenburg harbored some skepticism about the more extreme forms of this movement, Lissitzky too adopted something of a moderate position in cultural debates.

29.

Ehrenburg had been in Paris from 1908/09 until 1917. He knew many poets and painters of the avant-garde, writing extensive newspaper and journal articles about the modernist movement in France. He had left Russia to avoid prosecution for revolutionary activity

30.

See for example, the article which Ehrenburg published in Paris, "L'art russe d'aujoud'hui," L /Amour d'art, vol. 2 no. 11 (November 1921), pp. 367-370. As no ear­ lier mention has so far come to light, this article may be the first published comment on the Prouns, though the Proun Portfolio had been listed as a new publication (received, or just announced?) in the Hungarian magazine, MA, vol. VI no. 8 (August 1921), p. 116 (as a portfolio of 10 lithographs, Moscow 1920)

31.

For a discussion of this journal, see Kestutis Paul Zygas, "The Magazine Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet. Com­ mentary, Bibliography and Translations,11 Oppositionsf no. 5 (Summer 1976), pp. 115-128.

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218 Moreover, Ehrenburg's radically ironical stance towards the communist government in Russia would not have been wholly alien to Lissitzky.

If the book covers which Lis­

sitzky designed in his early months in Berlin are any clue to his political associations, he can hardly be charac­ terized as either violently anti- or violently pro-Soviet. He quickly linked up with the group of emigres that was most sympathetic to the revolution without showing any great enthusiasm for an immediate return to Russia. By and large, his colleagues in Berlin in the first half of 1922 were drawn from those who had initially been inclined to support the revolution but had then fallen afoul of the Bolsheviks. In the main, these were members of the Scythians, an intellectual grouping

which had many close connections with

the populist Left Socialist Revolutionary party. V e s h c h . O b i e t . Geaenstand. though committed to the exchange of information between East and West, was by no means an unequivocal supporter of the Soviet rdgime.32 Several That the journal may, nevertheless, in some way have been officially sponsored, is indicated by the fact that contributors may have been paid in (wildly inflated) rubles, as documented in Ehrenburg's letter of 29 July 1922, asking whether to Harold Loeb had received the cheque for 1,850,000 rubles for his article (Princeton, University Library, Selected Papers of Harold E. Loeb). However, in his own memoirs, Loeb recalls this as a pay­ ment in German marks (The Way It Was [New York: Criterion, 1959], p. 119). For criticism of the Soviet government, see the editorial comments in the second issue/s section devoted to "Art and the Public," which attack Lunacharsky and the notion of state involvement in the arts, approvingly quoting Lenin's recent admis­ sion of non-competence in questions of poetry (V e s h c h . O b j e t . Geaenstand. no. 3 [May 1922], p. 2).

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219 writers for whom Lissitzky designed book covers also had their differences with the Soviet regime. Ivanov-Razumnik (Typ. Cat 1922/9) was intellectually associated with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Alexander Kusikov (Typ. Cat. 1922/11) was a member of the Imagist group of poets, a particular target of the angry disdain of Anatolii Lunacharsky, the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment who had very severely restricted publication of their work in Rus­ sia. Andrei Bely (Typ. Cat. 1922/6) also felt that the Bol­ sheviks were alien to him.33

33.

For useful information on the Russian emigration in Berlin in general, and on the Scythian group in particular, see L. Fleishman, et al., eds., Russkii Ber­ l i n . 1921-1923 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1983) and Robert C. Williams, Culture in Ex i l e . Russian Emigres in Ge r m a n y . 1881-1941 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972) pp. 252-258 and pass i m . A contemporary survey of the Russian-language publishers in Berlin indicates that the Scythians publishing house, which published Lis­ sitzky's Of Two Squares and several books with his cover designs, was the most left-wing and closest to support for the Soviet state than any other (Arthur Luther, "Der russische Verlagsbuchhandel in Deutschland,” Borsenblatt fur den deutschen Buschhandel. vol. 18 no. 133 [1922], pp. 821-824). On the Imagists and their problems, see McVay, "The Tree-Stump and the Horse," and Vladimir Markov, Russian Imaaism. 1919-1927. Bausteine zur Geschichte der Literatur bei den Slaven, Band 15,1 (Gies­ sen: Wilhelm Schmitz, 1980). On the Berlin "House of the Arts" as a center of Russian literary activity in these years, see Thomas R. Beyer, Jr., "The House of Arts and the Writers' Club, Berlin 1921-1923," in Thomas R. Beyer, Jr. et al., eds., Russische Autoren und Verlaae in Berlin nach dem Ersten Weltkrieq (Berlin: Berlin Verlag Arno Spitz, 1987), pp. 9-38, which puts into very w e 11-documented context Lissitzky's participation in this organization, discussed in my "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," p. 26 and n. 48.

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220 Ehrenburg's Six Tales was, of course, not exclusively anti-Bolshevik. Like the novels which Ehrenburg published at around the same time, these short stories present an everchanging kaleidoscope of viewpoints, undercutting most, if not all, authorial intention with their enigmatic, allusive and ironical strategies.34 In their multi-faceted approach to reality, there is some parallel to Lissitzky's illustrational technique, which employs collage and equivalent devices to combine "quotations" from the world of Proun or analogous avant-garde statements, with "quotations" from the real world (in the form of newspaper fragments, photographic elements,

figurative drawing, etc.).35 A methodical review

of each story and its associated illustration will allow a cumulative picture of the Lissitzky's strategies to emerge.

34.

I acknowledge substantial help from Alexander Gefter of Harvard University's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, in providing me with a precis of Ehren­ burg 's stories. The author's style and vocabulary are very difficult to comprehend without expert assistance.

35.

Given that recent scholarship has neglected these illustrations, it is perhaps also significant that the critics in the Russian emigre literary community in Ber­ lin paid little or no attention to them at the time of publication either. The reviews in Novaya Russkava Kniga, vol. 1 no. 9 (September 1922), pp. 12-13 (by F. Ivanov), R u l ', (8 October 19 22), and Dni (12 November 1922), p. 12, make no mention of Lissitzky's contribu­ tion. The last mentioned concludes of the author: "But pity him: his entire talent is pitiful; it leaves the impression of a dissociation of consciousness, unable to understand Russian life."

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221 It is important to gain an understanding of which aspects of Ehrenburg's stories he responds to and which he ignores.36

i) Vitrion

Told in Ehrenburg's typically telegraphic and allusive style,

"Vitrion" is a multi-layered, complex account of a

character named Vassili Byelov.37 As the story opens we are introduced to Byelov sitting alone in a gloomy room: "Queer things in room: Boards and, attached to them sockets, for electric lamps, a horse-shoe, cords all around, tin disks, glass, rusty wheel from clock, cigarette box, trash. All this not discarded rubbish piled up by accident, but carefully picked collection full of significance. Byelov was not a freak, not a rag-picker, but an artistic con­ structor ." In spite of the harsh daily grind of everyday life, Byelov can invoke "[c]ompass. Quantity. Circle great and splendid." "Existence" was "cabbage-1i k e , crinkled, rotten

36.

Rather than structure this analysis around themes, I have chosen to summarize each story and illustration in turn. This is not only clearer, but may also be of use to future scholars, who may want to make use of the story summaries (unavailable elsewhere) for a more detailed investigation of this period in Lissitzky's career, from other points of view.

37 .

For my summary and quotations from this short story, I have drawn on Louis Lozowick's translation into English, which appeared in the American ex-patriate monthly magazine Broom (Berlin), vol. 3 no. 2 (September 1922), pp. 83-94.

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222 [and]

jaw of compass could seize it, measure it, reconstruct

it" leading to an "object" which could be constructed "so that it should revolve alone above the earth, a new heavenly body among other heavenly b o d i e s ." Byelov, we are told, has for two years been engaged in making a "monument to new era", a "new form" with cylinders, spheres, and interlocking triangles,

"all revolving" and

"walking". The monument could "not stand still like a scarecrow" but would promenade through Moscow inevitably attracting attention and converting people to faith in the new era. The constructor has named this object Vitrion "as if some romantic trash were still active under the cylinder of B y e l o v 's vitals." However, there is an other object in Byelov1s life, the woman Lidiya Stepanova Barykova, whom he loves but cannot understand why.

"One could construct an object that would

revolve in the air - big, steel, unique. But nothing could be done with love: put it down and up it jumps; say "fly!" and it drops like a stone and kills you." Lydia does not return Byelov's feelings, complaining that he never portrays love in his work. Vitrion is rejected by the State, as it irritates a "big Communist." Instead, a representative of the Circus Section of the State Theatre suggests to Byelov that Vitrion might be a successful circus act, as people are tired of elephants. Lidiya attends Vitrion's first performance at the

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223 Circus, significantly in an act celebrating the Third Inter­ national. Vitrion immediately makes straight for Lidiya. Vitrion and Lydia leave abruptly and spend the night together at her apartment.

In the morning, Byelov arrives

and furiously destroys Vitrion in a fit of jealous rage. After weeks of sickness, he learns from Lidiya that she is pregnant by Vitrion. This drives Byelov mad and into an asylum, where he eventually consoles himself with the thought that he is the progenitor, the patriarch of a "great tin tribe" of Vitrion's descendants. All around him are "not bodies, but tin warmed to perspiration." Byelov is happy to have engendered this new race, but is also happy not be a part of it, but rather to be separate,

"in a cot near the

window." At this point - and with an hint that Byelov dies the story ends. The original maquette for the illustration for this story has survived, and since the 1960s has been often exhibited and reproduced under the title,

"Tatlin Working on

His Monument to the Third International."38 The maquette and 38.

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick; watercolor, ink, graphite and collage on paper, 29.2 x 22.8 cm. The collage was first exhibited in 1962: Two Decades of Experiment in Russian Art (1902-19221. exh. cat. (London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1962), cat. no. 37, there dated 1917 and titled "Tatlin Working on 3rd. Interna­ tional Statue." In many subsequent appearances, the date has been corrected to 1921-1922, and the title sometimes abbreviated to "Tatlin at Work." It is worth noting that the illustration as it appeared in Ehrenburg's volume (fig. 78) is a faithful line-drawing after Lissitzky's collage. The only discrepancy occurs with the addition, to the right of the nonsensical algebraic symbols, of a dense column of figures, apparently from a newspaper (perhaps a stock-exchange report?). Various kinds of

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224 the resulting illustration (fig. 78), as the foregoing brief exposition of the narrative events makes clear, should really be titled "Byelov at Work on His Moving Construction, Vitrion." The traditional reference to Tatlin derives from the figure of a man, standing on a low table in work clothes, holding a strut of wood. This figure is actually drawn in graphite in the maquette, though it seems to be an alien, almost photographic element. It was indeed copied from a now famous photograph of Tatlin at work with his assistants, building the model of the "Monument."39 This figure is superimposed on a configuration of geometric planes and complex lines. This elaborate, teasingly threedimensional abstract composition is very close to Proun works by Lissitzky, notably the composition now commonly known as "Interpenetrating Planes" (fig. 79, Proun Inventory nos. 20 and 68). This forms the background and walls, so to speak, of the space in which the Tatlin-figure is working. A further Proun form, based loosely on the circular composi­ tion known as "Proun 6B" (fig. 28),40 a cylindrical element, and an elongated, triangular form are inserted into this

crude hatching are used to render Lissitzky's colors. 39.

Lissitzky's source for the photograph was almost certainly Nikolai Punin's monograph on the artist, published in 1921, the year before the Lissitzky made his collage.

40.

Also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, pp. 90-91, pi. 2728 (the lithograph and the watercolor version).

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225 framework at the right, establishing a configuration which appears to be the main focus of the standing man. A open pair of compasses replaces the man's eyes. The allusion to geometry and mathematics introduced by this is reinforced by the inscription on several of the Proun planes of diagrams and formulae of no readily apparent intelligibility: for example, the prominent symbol for infinity superimposed on the cube root of minus zero clearly makes no mathematical sense. Hovering above this conjunction of man, science and abstract art is the only actual collage element in the work, the photograph of a woman's head, partly cropped on the right side and at the neck, with her mouth covered by a white rectangular form. The illustration is clearly related in detailed, specific ways to the story. The standing figure is Byelov, working on an abstract construction whose walking, revolving cylinders, spheres and interlocking triangles are rather literally rendered. The ability of the constructor's "jaw of compass" to "seize," "measure" and "reconstruct" existence is directly illustrated. The fragment of a woman's head in the collage is clearly an allusion to Lidiya Stepanova, the complicating love interest for Byelov in this story. The many allusions in this story to Tatlin hardly need to be spelled out. Indeed,

it is surely not going too far to

say that this comic tale draws on the model of Pygmalion and Sorcerer's Apprentice to satirize many of the pretensions of

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226 the "artistic constructors" in the Soviet Union. There are sufficient persuasive points of resemblance between Tatlin and his "Monument," on the one hand, and Byelov and Vitrion, on the other, for Lissitzky's decision to insert a direct allusion to Tatlin to be plausible and justified. The con­ tent of the story reveals that Lissitzky's use of a photograph of Tatlin, while not part of the primary frame of reference for this book illustration, is in fact not coin­ cidental or meaningless.

It adds another dimension to

understanding the avant-garde response to Tatlin and his works in the early 1920s.41 It also provides some clues to Lissitzky's wished-for context for his abstract Prouns. Nevertheless, given how closely this image is bound to Ehrenburg's fictional story, can it reveal very much about Lissitzky's own view of the real Tatlin? Certainly, the insertion of Tatlin's image into this less than flattering context forms part of Lissitzky's continuing competitiveness with Tatlin.42

However, it cannot be sufficiently stressed

41.

Thus, this illustration extends the discussion of the impact of Tatlin on Lissitzky in Moscow, presented in Chapter I. For a detailed treatment of this topic, focussing on Lissitzky's illustration for the Ehrenburg story, see my "Lissitzkys Tatlin" in Jurgen Harten, e d . , Vladimir T a t l i n ; L e b e n . W e r k . W i r k u n a . Ein internationales Symposium (Cologne: Dumont, 1993), pp. 196203, where some of the material presented here was first published.

42.

A more overt example of this rivalry in later years emerges in Lissitzky's letter to Adolph Behne of 20 May 1924 (private archive, Berlin, now reproduced in Hanover 1988, pp. 64-65), concerning his so-called "Lenin Tribune." Lissitzky is careful to stress that the idea for this project was developed by himself and his stu­ dents in Vitebsk before Tatlin's "Monument" was finished

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227 that

although the human figure here is indeed that of Tat­

lin, the constructor is, as described above, working on and in Lissitzkian forms (Prouns). While Lissitzky may have sub­ scribed publicly to the notion that his Proun art was objec­ tive, supra-individualistic and in some way anonymous, there is clearly a sense in which Lissitzky is here using the Tatlin-figure as a kind of self-portrait, standing in for the artist himself. At this level, this collage exemplifies Lissitzky's exploration of the problem of inserting the human into his abstract art, fusing constructivist configurations and figurative reference. As his career progressed, Lissitzky was to pursue this issue into the fields of architecture and design of the environment, enclosing and accommodating the human being. However, this was not a concern of Lissitzky alone. It can surely be argued that this was precisely the issue for Tatlin after he had finished with his reliefs and counter­ reliefs. The '’Monument,” on one interpretation,

is an

abstract sculpture containing human beings. Much of Tatlin's subsequent work of the 1920s engaged the problem of relating the human factor to questions of design and engineering (whether social or mechanical). Indeed, more often than not, this problem was addressed by Tatlin in the form of studying

or became known.

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228 the ways in which designed elements could and should envelop or surround the human: whether as suit of clothes or as skeletal flying machine. From this perspective, it is sig­ nificant that Lissitzky, in this collage, does not just show the Tatlin-figure at work on a separate construction, but actually envelops him in an encompassing environment of Proun-like forms.43

43.

Another collage and watercolor composition by Lissitzky has been regularly associated with the works for Ehren­ burg 's volume in general, and with the story "Vitrion" in particular, since it was published in LissitzkyKuppers 1967, pi. 74 with the title "Footballer." This work, which does carry an inscription from the mid-1920s on the verso with explicit reference to "Vitrion" (as recorded in Moscow 1990, cat. no. 48), is close to the illustration actually used, in the combination of photographic figure with Proun compositions very close to the ones in the "Tatlin-based" work. However, the figure of a footballer nowhere appears in Ehrenburg's story, and it is impossible to connect this composition with any other of the Six Tales about Easy Endings. Per­ haps it is a maquette for a proposed illustration for another story by Ehrenburg which was then not included in the collection. However, the "Footballer" was first reproduced in the catalogue for an exhibition book design and illustration work in Leipzig in 1927 (Internationale Buchkunst Ausstellunq Leipzig 1927. Amtlicher Kataloq [Leipzig: Insel, 1927], n.p.). Could it be that, this sport-related image, using a manipulated photograph, is actually related to Lissitzky's work for a photo-mural in the sports complex in the Lenin Hills, for which he did make his "Runner in the City" photogram in 1926 (as discussed below, in Chapter V)? Until the circumstances of creation of this work are clarified, it should probably not figure prominently, as it has done, in discussions of Lissitzky's photomontaged work in 1922.

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229 ii) 24 Hours

This story recounts the experiences of a French com­ munist journalist, Paul-Louis,

in Moscow over a twenty-four

hour period. It emphasizes the enormous contrast between Russia and the West, with bitter satire about the former. Even before his train arrives in Moscow, the main character is confronted by comic scenes of crass Russians who put on cultured airs in front of the Frenchman, even as he is thinking that he has crossed the threshold into the new world. In Moscow, he is first thought to be a Tsarist counter-revolutionary, then mistaken for an escaped forced labor convict and made to shovel snow. When he finally gets to the People's Commissariat, he is harangued by a zealously dogmatic female Bolshevik, who ignores his hunger (which he attempts to satisfy with disgusting rationed meal and in a bread-line). The central action of the story gets under way when he meets Will, a shady adventurer who has traveled the world as a bohemian revolutionary. At the famous Poets' Cafe with Will, Paul-Louis encounters a motley array of parodically described communist avant-garde poets, each outdoing the other in the pointlessness of his verse. There is an ample supply of prostitutes, wine and cocaine. Will assures the disturbed Paul-Louis that the art of the cafe walls ("squares, rhombuses, orange sticks, a green, unusual rash")

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230 are the work of new art movements, which disturbs Paul-Louis even further.44 After a nineteen-year old, cocaine-using, neo-futurist poet, Nina Solveig, flirts with Paul-Louis, he and Will set off with her and her rejected former lover, the nationalist poet Kuchin, to find more alcohol. They drink a bottle of vodka at a bootlegger's apartment, and then persuade a coachman to take them to his pitiful dwelling. The coachman leaves to work, and his disgruntled wife seduces Will, who then leaves after borrowing money from Paul-Louis. PaulLouis also gives money to Nina, with whom he then has violent, crude sexual relations.

"He knew how to love a

woman...but now it was something altogether different — darkness, an g e r . To grab h e r , torment her (...), show her that he is not a Frenchman, a wimp, but rather a native, he's gotten drunk here for a hundred years, breaks glasses and beats women, forcefully, with a smirk, bluntly he strikes from tenderness and sorrow." When she screams, Kuchin is prevented from attacking Paul-Louis by the coach­ man who has returned. Paul-Louis leaves and stands alone outside,

44.

lost in thoughts of never escaping this place, of

This description calls to mind interior designs for such Moscow literary cafds of the revolutionary years as the "Caf6 Pittoresque,11 (German Karginov, Rodchenko [London: Thames and Hudson, 1979], pp. 91-92) and the "Stall of Pegasus," frequented by the Imagist poets (Markov, Russian Imagism. pp. 13-14). In addition to Georgii Yakulov, who worked on both interiors, Tatlin, Rodchenko, Udal'stova, and others, contributed to the former.

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231 being no longer himself but rather Kuchin, the native poet who had earlier scorned Paris and praised the Scythians, the mythic race of "primitive" Russians invoked by Alexander Blok. The coachman drinks the last bottle of vodka, and, after being thrown out by his wife, loses his temper with Paul-Louis who can only smile in reverie over Paris in response to his curses. The coachman beats Paul-Louis to death, and yells to his wife to call the police. Thematically, the story focuses on the irreconcilable gap between Russia (even under socialism) and the West, with the savage and irrational squalor of the former contrasted with the complete inability of the civilized Western European to comprehend it. Lissitzky's illustration for this story, perhaps the most straightforward of all in this volume, addresses this duality, but in a remarkably blood­ less way (fig. 80). A tumbling or flying headless figure is shown poised between two curved type-case elements, forming an s shape which links stereotypical images of traditional Moscow (Red square, with the Kremlin walls and the oniondomed cathedral), and modern Paris (the Eiffel Tower and adjacent Ferris wheel). The city skylines, drawn thinly as if to stress that they are mirage-like symbols rather than concrete representations, are placed in opposite orienta­ tions, the one being the inverse of the other. The headless man with arms helplessly outstretched,

is clearly Paul-

Louis. When the Frenchman sees the anarchic confusion and

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232 mayhem at the train station on arrival, the narrator com­ ments:

"It seemed like his head separated [from his body]."

The story is of a man who loses his head, his previous identity, indeed his life in the miasma that is modern Rus­ sia. The implication of the image is that this man is trapped helplessly between the two abstract force-lines of "Paris" and "Moscow," destroyed by this dual dynamic.45

iii) Joint Stock Company: Mercure de Russie

This story, like the previous one, treats the rupture between Russia and the West, this time in a wider socio­ economic context than provided by Paul-Louis's experiences in the Moscow underworld. The plot revolves around the attempts of a Belgian multinational company, van der Meer and Sons, to exploit a mercury mine in central Russia.

45.

If the composition now known at "Black Sphere" showing a diving man with arms outstretched, descending between Supremtist forms towards a black circle, was intended for use in Ehrenburg's book (as is proposed by the cap­ tion to the illustration in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967 and 1980, pi. 71), then it can most closely be related to this story. The tumbling man (with a head, in this instance) would be Paul-Louis approaching destruction in the black circle. However, the use of a dark ground and presence of the initials "EL" carefully written at the lower left of the composition are unique. Neither of the surviving maquettes for actual illustrations has these features, and this encourages caution about including this work in any discussion of the Ehrenburg project. Eventual clarification of the work's proper context and date will be important, as its underlying composition is very reminiscent of paintings by Alexander Rodchenko, and it may represent some response by Lissitzky to his "rival" constructivist.

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233 Divided into three parts and subdivided into numbered sec­ tions, the narrative of this story is extremely convoluted, with interwoven and juxtaposed themes. Khalchak is a sleepy town where nothing happens.

In

1912, some drunken peasants discover rich mercury deposits. A Belgian mining engineer arrives to survey the site on behalf of the company, Mercure de Russie, based in Brussels, which owns it. The miner Egorich and his son Andriusha also arrive to work the mine. The Belgian tycoon, Franz van der Meer, orchestrates the take-over of this company through manipulation of the stockprice via disinformation in the newspaper he owns, one of over twenty businesses in his empire, including a bank, an arms factory, a company manufacturing religious objects for evangelists in Africa, an art school, and so on. Van der Meer's luxurious life style in Brussels (dinners, his mistress, his friendship with socialists) is contrasted to Egorich's and Andryusha's happy-go-lucky drunken life. When Andryusha is killed in a mining accident, his father has a dream of foreigners as demonic spirits. He goes out of his mind, declaring that he has seen the devil and that the Last Judgment is nigh. With the outbreak of World War I, Egorich's madness progresses and, seeing signs everywhere, he vows to smash all foreigners with a cross. Khalchak remains untouched by the outside world. Van der Meer spends the war enjoyably and

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234

profitably as an arms dealer in Monte Carlo. The news of the Revolution shakes Europe. Van der Meer's son Emile returns to Brussels, while Franz remains in Monte Carlo with his pipe-smoking man-servant, Jacques.

In the wake of the Bol­

shevik seizure of power, the Khalchak mine is taken over by the local government. During the four terrible years of the Civil War, the town changes hands sixteen times. Egorich is the only inhabitant left, continuing his crusade. While Emile van der Meer remains in Brussels as a cur­ rency speculator, the other son, Franz returns from Togo, in Africa, and decides to restart the mining enterprise. After negotiations with Soviet officials (Lenin's New Economic Policy has by now been introduced), he sets off for Russia with his enormous Togolese bodyguard, Usu, and several min­ ing engineers. He hires workers from a neighboring town, but after a while the barren, eternal landscape begins to dis­ concert him. While Usu sleeps, Egorich sneaks in, dis­ heveled, dirty, bearded. He decides that Franz cannot be the devil, as he too much resembles Egorich's own son, Andryusha, and runs away, muttering unintelligible words. Thirteen days later, Franz falls into a fever, and a thermometer records his ever rising temperature, until his heart gives out. The Belgians and all their equipment return to Brussels via Riga. Egorich becomes a pseudo-saintly figure about whom legends begin to circulate. The story con­ cludes with an evocation of the timeless impenetrability of

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235 the village.

"And in Khalchak— nothing. Again, not months,

but time. Emptiness. Full circle. They ripped apart the land, it gave, then took away, and finally fell asleep. Spring. Plaintive grass. Neither birds, nor sheep. The end looks just like the beginning— the most difficult, the easiest, end of ends, non-existence." Lissitzky's illustration for this tale (fig. 81) assem­ bles several identifiable elements in an apparently random juxtaposition which in some ways reflects the prose and com­ positional style Ehrenburg's employs. The name of the vil­ lage, Khalchak (for no clear reason, rendered as "Kholchak" by Lissitzky) appears at the lower left, opposite the Van der Meers' Brussels address,

17-19 Avenue d'Art,

in a

garbled transcription. Two large planar areas are occupied by fragments of printed material, a detail of a photograph of a mine installation below, and a clipping giving "money and exchange" news, in particular for mining stocks,

from

the financial page of an English language newspaper, dated 20 April 1922 (thereby conveniently providing a plausible date of composition for these illustrations). Portions of two heads are shown, one a jovial, pipe-smoking, top-hatted figure, the other a bald, bearded caricature on an exotic type, perhaps Asian or African. Holding all these disparate elements together is a vertical, cross-like form with alternating light areas and dark shading. The floating rec­ tangle to the right may belong to this cross form, as it

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236 parallels the lower beam.

The stylized s shape with double

cross bars may also relate to the central c r o s s , or it may be a symbol with allusions to the sign for the American dol­ lar, or to mathematical symbols. It is notable that it links the top-hatted face above with the mine installation below, traversing and canceling the second face. It is difficult to make a certain identification of the two heads in this illustration. Surely the upper one in some sense stands for the Western capitalists.

It is placed on

the same side of the central divider as the Brussels address, and its elegant attire and convivial demeanor must allude to the van der Meers. The presence of the pipe might make one think of the pipe-smoking man-servant Jacques, but that may be too specific. The other figure could be either the Togolese bodyguard, Usu. However, it seems much more likely that Lissitzky would have balanced the reference to Van der meer on the Brussels side of the sheet with a figure from Khalchak on the left. Thus, the figure is probably meant to be Egorich, the embodiment of the primitive peasant religiosity and xenophobia. This in turn would make the abstracted cross form into an allusion to Egorich's use of a cross in his campaign against foreigners as Judgement day approaches. As designed by Lissitzky, this cross is remarkably evocative of some of Malevich's compositions. It does not seems to copy any known Suprematist design, but it is close to a painting such as

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237

"Suprematist Cross" (also known through a woodcut printed posthumously [fig. 82]) and to one of the lithographs in Suprematism. 34 Drawings (fig. 83).46 Given the religious, sometimes apocalyptic tenor of much of Malevich's writings on art, it may have seemed appropriate to Lissitzky to invoke Suprematist forms in this story of the triumph of peasant Russia and its landscape over outsiders. As with many of the other stories in Ehrenburg's book, this one ends with death.

Indeed, it makes it clear, in an

allusion to the title of the volume, that non-existence is the easiest of all endings.

In this case, not only do the

West's intervention and investments come to naught, with its representative killed, but Russia too "survives" only to return to nothingness, with both Andryusha and Egorich dead.

46.

The painting is listed as no. 67 in Troels Andersen, M alev i c h . Catalogue Raisonne of the Berlin Exhibition 1 9 2 7 . including the Collection in the Stedeliik Museum A m sterdam, with a, General Introduction to His Work (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1970). For the woodcut and lithograph (figs. 82 and 83), see Donald Karshan, Malev i c h : The Graphic Works, 1913-1920. A Print Catalogue Raisonne, exh. cat. (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1975), nos. 36 and 61. Drawings of these two compositions were also included in Malevich's 1927 book in the Bauhaus Books series (Kasimir Malewitsch, Die gegendstandslose W e l t . Bauhaus Bucher 11 [Munich: Albert Langen, 1927], pp. 94-95, figs. 88, 89). The captions to these illustrations can be translated as "Suprematist Composition (Sensation of the Mystical Will. Unwelcome" and "Suprematist Composition (Sensation of NonObjectivity).11 Given the context of Ehrenburg's story which deals with the hostility of a religious mystic to foreign incursion, the invocation of "mystical will" and "unwelcome" is very appropriate thematically. Did these compositions already carry these associations for Malevich in 1920-1921, and did Lissitzky know this?

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238 Lissitzky does not render this outcome in his illustration; just as he shows Byelov in the process of building Vitrion and dealing with Lidiya Stepanova (and not in despair at the conclusion of the s t o r y ) , and Paul Louis suspended (though already headless and by now doomed) between Moscow and Paris, so too he here stresses the conflicted interaction of East and West. Through a subtle series of contrasts, Lis­ sitzky develops this theme: the rough and ready collaged letters of the Russian village name contrasted to the elegantly stencilled and hand-written Brussels address; the concrete actuality of the photographic fragment of the mine in Khalchak contrasted to the abstraction of the financial tables, unreal in their abbreviations and in the foreignness of the language; the modelled face of the van der Meer con­ trasted to the linear transparency of the Asiatic head. Even the "Suprematist" cross alternates in tone.

iv) "Schifs-karta"

The story opens with a listing of the number of pogrom victims in various villages in the Ukraine. Only Berdichev has been spared, apparently because it contains 36 pious people, not ordinarily religious inhabitants but those who "smile at God," like Girsh Ikhenson, the watchmaker. Girsh lives with his granddaughter, as his wife and daughter were killed and his son emigrated to America. The son has begun

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239 to lose touch with his heritage and rarely writes, though his letters contain the word "shifs-karta:11 "in a little while, everything will be good. You will receive a shifskarta ." Girsh does not understand that this means a ticket for ship's passage to America, but this mysterious word bec­ omes a consolation, a "smile from God" in times of anguish and sorrow. Lia, Girsh's granddaughter, brings him a palm leaf and a lemon from Palestine every year. Zalik, a clumsy barber who later becomes a Communist official, is in love with her. Girsh believes all his troubles are ordained so that God may smile on Beridchev. As the tensions of the Civil War increase and soldiers of various armies pass through, Girsh has increasingly bad premonitions that a pogrom must be near. A group of Bol­ sheviks invade the synagogue, disperse the worshipers and declare that it is to be turned into a club, named for Trotsky. Girsh loses his smile, sits at home and does not even notice Lia. Evil has taken control and Jews are subject to fierce religious persecution. In response to a rabbinical students recounting of an enigmatic parable about evil being "the folds in God's clothing, Girsh stands up, looks around, sees God's forgotten smile, begins to address Him, smiles and runs away. The others think he is mad. Girsh stops working as none will need watches as the final hour approaches. Trouble mounts, but Girsh's messianic

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240 convictions remain firm. Apparently a pogrom is impending. While the other inhabitants collect money to pay the marauders off, Girsh and Lia conduct a Sabbath service. Girsh prays, and goes outside to the gate proclaiming "He's arrived! He's arrived!" Girsh is referring to the "shifskarta." A band of officers appears and treat him roughly, searching his shop. The next morning finds the town silent and deserted, with Girsh lying dead by the gate, his yellow beard stroked by the wind, and on his face - a smile. Hitherto, this story has been the most studied of the six in Ehrenburg's collection. As it and Lissitzky's illustration (fig. 84, for which the maquette has survived47 ) treat the theme of Jewish life and identity, they have become a touchstone for scholars concerned with the artist's relationship to his Jewish heritage, both cultural and religious.48 As research on this question has also 47.

See Ruth Apter-Gabriel, ed., Tradition and Revolution. The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde A r t . 19121928., exh. cat. (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1987), cat. no. 105, p. 191. This collage and subsequent reproductions of the illustration as published in the volume by Ehrenburg, have come to be known as "A Journey to America." As the summary of the story makes clear, the story deals precisely with those who did not make the journey to America. Though understandable, in the light of the emphasis which the illustration puts on aspects of a possible journey, this title (much like the one ascribed to the other extant collage, "Tatlin at Work on His Monument to the Third International," - dis­ cussed above) is misleading, and should be abandoned.

48.

See especially Chimen Abramsky, "El Lissitzky as Jewish Illustrator and Typographer," Studio International vol. 172 no. 882 (October 1966), pp. 182-185; Alan C. Birnholz, "El Lissitzky and the Jewish Tradition," Studio International no. 186 no. 959 (October 1973), pp. 130136; Ruth Apter-Gabriel "El Lissitzky's Jewish Works" in

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241 identified many of the specific elements in Lissitzky's col­ lage, I shall incorporate these findings into my inventory of the references here. Lissitzky's assemblage of elements is structured around a diagonally inflected five-pointed star ( an allusion to the Jewish Star of David). Broadly speaking, the lower half of this scaffolding is replete with images of the tradi­ tional Jewish world, whereas the upper half contains references to modernity, the future, and release. At the centre, we can read an arc of a circle as a fragment of a clock face, virtually the only direct reference to a narra­ tive element in the story (in which the central character Hirsh is a watchmaker). The symbols in the upper half are specifically of the New World. We see flags of the United States, of the United American Lines (U.A.L.), of the H.A.P.A.G.

(the Hamburg-

Amerikanische Paketfahrt Aktien-Gesellschaft, a major ship­ ping line for emigrating from Eastern Europe) and one with a ship emblem. These flags are in themselves visual signs and emblems.49 They surround the silhouette of a steam-ship, Tradition and Revolution. pp. 101-124; and, particularly useful for my discussion as it to some extent summarizes and corrects earlier scholarship, Judith Wechsler, "El Lissitzky's 'Interchange Stations:' Jewish Identity in Textual Design," in Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb, eds., The Jew in the Text (forthcoming). 49.

In this context, it is perhaps worthwhile to remember Malevich's conception of Suprematism as a "semaphore," the system of geometric colored shapes on rectangular grounds used to communicate messages at sea (as, for example, in April 1919: "At the present time man's path lies through space, and Suprematism is a color semaphore

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242

seen dynamically from in front and below. Just under this cluster of images, along two sides of the star which are almost vertical, are the phrases "[New] YORK-HAMBURG" and "[H ]AMBURG-NEW YORK" - the sailing routes of the H.A.P.A.G. ships and, in the latter case, the potential escape route for Jews persecuted by pogroms. The symbols of traditional Jewish culture inhabit the lower half of the illustration. Under the imprint of a hand with two Hebrew letters inscribed on the palm, Lissitzky has placed two diagrams of the ancient Temple and a description in Aramaic (the script used by Sephardic Jews) concerning the construction of the Temple. The texts reproduce a por­ tion of the Midrash (the pre-Talmudic commentary of the Torah) dealing with the measurements of the Temple, while the inverted pyramid in the lower right is a diagram in cross-section of the lintels of the gateway to the Hall of the Temple. The Hebrew letters on the palm of the hand are pei and nun, the standard abbreviation for "po nigbar", i.e. "Here lies Buried". This was commonly found on gravestones. Here

in its infinite abyss" [K. S. Malevich, Essays on A r t , vol. 1 (1915-1928), ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968), p. 121].) The possibility of some analogical con­ nexion between actual semaphoric practice in Russia and Malevich's compositions has yet to be explored. Throughout the 1920s, moreover, the Bolsheviks deployed the slogan "Under the Banner of ..." as an agitational rallying-cry.

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243

it clearly indicates that the old world of the synagogue is buried, destroyed. Lissitzky deploys a rich series of con­ trasts between the old and the new, with the heavy, static nature of the diagrammatically represented synagogue architecture in the lower half balancing the lightness and movement of the ship and flags. The largely illegible jumble of fragments of texts and diagrams below contrasts with the clarity of composition above. But whose hand is here represented? Within the context of the story, the hand is most likely to be that of the pogrom-instigators - that i s , both the counter-revolutionary Whites and the Communists, both of whom wish to eradicate the culture of the shtetl.50 In the context of our discussion, however, it is less important to establish the precise meaning of this illustra­ tion, than to emphasize two other factors. Firstly, the dis­ tance of Lissitzky's illustration from Ehrenburg's text is

50.

In a sense related to this interpretation, the handimprint may be an allusion to the satirical illustration in the first issue of Pulemet (Machine G u n ) , a humor journal of 1905, in which a blood-red print of a right hand was superimposed over a copy of Tsar Nicholas I's famous decree of the "four freedoms", issued on 17 October 1905 as a response to the agitation and unrest in St. Petersburg. The caption to this "cartoon" added that "His Highness, Major-General Trepov, has put his hand to this document." Trepov was the aggressive military commander of the capital, terrorizing the nas­ cent revolutionary movement. The hand-print is here the emblem of the forces of reaction. For a reproduction of this image, see David King and Cathy Porter, Blood and Laughter. Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), p. 89.

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244

noteworthy. More than in the other illustrations, Lissitzky here departs from the tone and import of the story, to recast its themes into a relatively straightforward medita­ tion on the positive and negative, utopia and dystopia (plus and minus, in his own later formulation). Secondly, the range of referential devices is here also very wide. Printed text from books, commercial advertising and trademarks, a hand imprint, abstract and symbolic geometric forms, numerals - a broad spectrum of collaged sign fragments is here coordinated and constructed into Lissitzky's image.

v) Experimental-Demonstrative Colony 62

The title of this story parodies Soviet bureaucratic language. It refers to a home for "defective” children set up near the village of Korenovka. The theme of the story is the tension between the home and the local villagers, whose pettiness, hypocrisy and primitive superstitions are stressed. In the end, a gang of villagers, led by a crackpot religious zealot, Silin, burn down the home, killing everyone except one child, Balabas, whom they had thought to be the devil. Lissitzky's illustration (fig. 85) again com­ bines elements from his avant-garde oeuvre (in this case a version of a page from his Suprematist tale, Of Two Squares [fig. 61]) with contrasting modes of allusive representationalism (here the crudely drawn figure and house, reminiscent of children's art).

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245 At the beginning of the story, the village is introduced as being beset by rumors of many different kinds. They amount to an absurd list of religious myths (such as that someone in the nest village has turned to dust and it rained for three days) and anti-communist superstitions (such as that communist babies are born with stars for belly buttons, or that communists shoot Austrian cannons at the sun all day and have no need for rain), and so on. Some of the rumors refer to the children's home, where the inhabitants are said to all be the offspring of prominent Bolsheviks, feed on endless milk, and speak inhuman languages. The director is thought to be a Jewish woman, who combs her animal fur with a stolen golden comb. The ninth rumor turns out to be the most important: someone has witnessed the delivery of a thousand pounds of flour at the "colony” while the village is short of bread. Gnedov is introduced as the head of the village soviet, he is a mindless, superstitious sycophant. He dispatches Egorka, a simple lad, to investigate. In conversations with Berta Samoilovna Goldberg, the director, Egorka interprets everything he hears as confirmation of the rumors, and he reports that all is true, even claiming that Balabas, a red­ headed boy, is the devil. Gnedov calls a village meeting to discuss the situation. At the "colony" itself, life is very difficult, with the children never getting enough to eat. The director dreams of

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246 her past life as a governess and of escaping to Italy, with her favorite child, Polia, who will surely become a great poet. A vignette describes Balabas sneaking out to the fields at night with Polia, who tells him of her dream of being in heaven with a little horned goat in a waistcoat. Silin overhears this conversation and runs to church to ward off the evil he suspects. The village priest and his corrup­ tion is described in some detail. At the village meeting, it is decided to burn down the "colony" and get the flour. When the villagers arrive, Berta has been writing in her diary about her yearning for the beauty of Italy, about her concern for the ever-hungry children, about her fear of the peasants, about her wish to tell Lenin that, for all his idealism, he is mistaken. She hands over the flour but refuses to give up Balabas. Every­ thing goes up in flames. Balabas is the only survivor, wait­ ing for Polia with memories of their imaginative fantasies together. Silin sees Balabas emerging from the fire, and calls on the priest to perform the last rites as he dies wheezing in his delirium. As morning comes, nothing remains except Balabas, who too will soon die. Lissitzky bases his illustration on the fourth "scene" from his abstract children's book, Of Two Squares (fig. 61), which, as briefly described in the previous chapter, tells the story of a red square and a black square together over­ coming the old and establishing the new. In the book, this

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247

page shows the two squares scattering with one blow the haphazard beams of the confused past. Lissitzky has retained the text from this page. He has, however, eliminated the red square from its dominant position, replacing it with the two drawn elements,

including a religious figure who is surely

either the village priest or the fanatic Sirin. In addition, he has added a circle next to the drawing of a village hut with thatched roof and smoking chimney, and two larger cir­ cles in the lower half of the composition. By contrast with the children's book, where it is the old order which is dispersed by the blow, in this case it is the old order (the vengeful, rampaging, ignorant villagers) which destroys the humanitarian children's home and its inhabitants (including Natasha, an idealistic communist). Greed and religious mania appear triumph, as in other stories in this collection.

Is Lissitzky simply reversing

the value of his scene of destruction, implying that the priestly figure in his church vestments and the village hut are actively dissipating the constructive elements? Is his Proun-language so malleable that the design elements which in the children's book stand for the traditional world, can here so easily become signs of the progressive? The pos­ sibility that symbols derived from Proun could be so radi­ cally bi-valent would surely have serious implications for their deployment as pure signs,

instruments in themselves of

some form of revolution.

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248 However,

it would also be possible to read this

illustration as implying that the priest and the village hut as on the receiving end of the destructive blow, that they are part of the old world being dissipated. Ehrenburg's story gives only the slightest support for such a reading, but the three prominent circles which Lissitzky has added to his composition could be read as the active elements dis­ persing the old. Progressively diminishing in size, these three circles appear to be entering the composition from the lower left and scattering the old world as they proceed towards the upper margin. The diagonally off-kilter position of the house and priest, apparently flying away along with the rectilinear beams, would in this reading indicate that they too are overcome. After all, in the story, the religious fanatic Sirin also dies - another example of death as the all-pervasive "easy ending." In this case,

just as

the innocent child Balabas is promised the taste of heaven in the story's closing lines, thereby triumphing over the catastrophe of the narrative, so too would the three circles represent some form of promised utopia. Importantly,

if this reading is correct, Lissitzky is

not making use of any difference in valency between the geometric abstraction and the drawn elements. Both visual devices can stand for the negative forces in Ehrenburg's

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249 story. Lissitzky is here again undograatic is his deployment of visual strategies.51

vi) A Ruined Film

The sixth and final story in Ehrenburg's collection is compositionally the most experimental. The narrative is presented as if it were the performance of a film, screened scene by scene. Each scene includes a text, typeset in a line box on the page, which would appear to be intertitles for the film. Before the screening, the narrator declares that the actors, director and audience must be reminded of three things: firstly, that, according to the Petit Larousse encyclopedia, Edison invented the cinematograph, Los Angeles is the center of film production in North America, and in France, Pathe and other companies have produced a series of significant films; secondly, that, according to a multi­ volume published history of the Revolution, certain events occurred during the Civil War in 1919-1920 in Southern Rus­ sia; and thirdly, purportedly relying on a book by a certain Julio Jurenito on sexual life, that Russians have peculiar

51.

Of course, he does not explicitly use Proun elements to depict the ostensibly positive actors in the story - the children, the director of the colony, or indeed the colony itself. Admittedly, Ehrenburg's relentless irony does not even spare these forces in his narrative, and they too are implicitly or explicitly criticized.

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250 sexual habits.52 Unlike the civilized Europeans love-lives, the Russian is intimately bound up with vodka, religion, nihilism, poetry.

"Often such excesses end in voluntary or

involuntary death, either from the unbridled consumption of alcohol or the exclusive battles of the Lord God with Satan, who for this reason sow love in Slavic hearts, and from other things as well." The screening begins. In a wealthy aristocratic home on a normal Soviet morning, we meet Prince Dug-Dugonovsky. He falls asleep and experiences a surreal dream sequence involving nannies, a parade of illuminated manuscripts, flying portraits of the Tsar, butterflies, roses, a woman with watermelons for breasts, a strange scaly creature, half-vacuum cleaner, half robot. He flees this procession into the sunset.

In a vegetarian restaurant the Prince gets

drunk with an old bearded man, who then removes his disguise and reveals himself as a White general in charge of recruit­ ing officers for the counter-revolutionary army. The scene changes to a train compartment, where the Prince is seated opposite a young lower-class couple. He is entranced by the girl, who turns into a smiling Gioconda. The narrator com­ ments that she is played by a film-star with a significant salary. The Prince falls into a reverie of love.

52.

Ehrenburg's self-referential joke is that Jurento is the central character of his eponymous major picaresque novel published in the early 1920s.

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251 In the next scene, the French prime minister is joined in his opulent office by the English and Italian ambas­ sadors. A man wearing many military decorations enters; he offers the assembled company all of Russia and they tease and play with him. The three Westerners divide up a map of Russia and throw a few pennies to the dancing and bowing Russian.

The action moves to the office of the director of

Pathe news reels, where a film crew is being dispatched to record the Civil war. The following scene sees the film crew and the Russian military gentleman (here described as "nearly Paul" for his resemblance to Tsar Paul I) glut­ tonously eating in a shipboard restaurant. The Prince, who has a postcard of the Gioconda, and "nearly Paul" meet in a fashionable hotel. Some arrested prisoners,

including some Chinese, some Jews and a pagan

princess, are ordered executed, the film crew films every­ thing. The Prince sees apparitions of the Gioconda face in the window, and in his cigarette smoke. As the red Army is approaching, his reverie ends. The Prince and all the Whites make a frantic escape on a rain, ejecting several peasants to make room for themselves. The smiling Gioconda face is in the last compartment window.

In the Crimea the Whites are

evacuating. The film crew is filming everything, though the director is unhappy to have missed the torture of the blood­ thirsty Bolshevik Cheka agent, Dora. The ship sets sail, and the Prince espies the Gioconda on board. He falls at her

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252 feet, entreating her to join him in Constantinople. Everyone,

including the film crew, anticipate a happy

ending. Suddenly, the Prince jumps up and declares that he has found Dora and will throw her into the sea. With a final smile, Gioconda goes flying overboard, closely followed by the prince. The film crew is in a state of shock, with the cinematographer anxiously worrying what the director will say, now that the film is ruined. Ehrenburg's parody of spy and

action films, where

romantic drama is played out against world-historical events is wholly in line with the sarcastic tone of the book as a whole. The death that is the easy ending in this story is both a political act (the White killing the Cheka agent) and a form of modern Liebestod. an unhappy ending which frustrates the demands of the entertainment industry (here masquerading as a news documentary m a k e r ) . For his illustration, Lissitzky avoids any reference to the political and military background of the story. Ehren­ burg's strong interest in the machinations of the Civil War reflected his personal experience on both sides of the

con­

flict, whereas Lissitzky decides to focus exclusively on the theme of the cinema and ideal love. His illustration (fig. 86) shows a film projector at the base of the page pointing upwards.

It is projecting a faint line-drawn image of

Leonardo da Vinci's famous image of the Mona Lisa, whose enigmatic smile provides a central motif for Ehrenburg's

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253 story. Lissitzky had added a crown, perhaps an ironic reference to the prince's infatuation. Inscribed within the circular, halo-like projection in which the Mona Lisa sits, is a five pointed star, shown in perspective. Here Lissitzky is surely alluding both to the status of the actress playing this character as a star.53 At the top of the illustration, at the end of the long "base" on which the projector stands, is a label-like element, showing a smiling face perhaps in clown make-up, above the printed word "FILM." The collaged photographic element of the projector and this explicit label with the word "FILM" underline Lis­ sitzky's understanding of the mechanical, material and marketing reality of film as a medium. This is effectively contrasted with the evanescent immateriality and fantasy of the Leonardo "mirage." This image carries a certain weight in the light of Lissitzky's growing interest in film as the medium of the future, as discussed below in next section. In a sense, the entire volume of illustrations for Ehrenburg's stories is an anomaly in Lissitzky's work. Only many years later would he return to illustration in such a conventional manner. Some of his exhibition design projects of the late 1920s and, of course, much of his propaganda work in periodicals and other media in the 1930s are use­ fully understood as illustrating the texts (in these cases,

53.

There is the possibility that Lissitzky is also allud­ ing to this character's implied secret life as a Bol­ shevik agent. Perhaps the star is implicitly a red one.

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254 political and commercial) provided by others. However, the illustrations for Ehrenburg, while representing a path which Lissitzky chose not to follow any further in these Proun years, are rich evidence of his search for ways to incorporate fragments of external reality into an evocative synthesis. Although Lissitzky's illustrations may owe some­ thing to the tradition of vignettes comprising an accumula­ tion of symbols and references to the text, it is in fact difficult to find precedents for an illustrational practice which employs collage in such a modern, experimental manner to produce images as individual accompaniments to specific pieces of creative writing.

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Chapter IV Reassessing the Role of the Real, II: Space and Light as Material,

1923

The experiments of 1922 discussed in the previous chap­ ter had grappled with the implications of accommodating creative work to the literary texts of others by using preformed pictorial and typographic elements (collage frag­ ments and type-case equipment).

In 1923, Lissitzky undertook

two further analyses and evaluations of the problems of responding to pre-existent reality: firstly, the architec­

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256 tural embodiment of the Proun concept in real space, the socalled "Prouns Space" of mid-192 3 (where Proun was con­ fronted with the reality of human beings in a built environ­ ment) , and secondly, the investigation of the possibilities of photography, the medium which most immediately raises the question of the relationship of the artist's creation to reality.

In 1923, this shift of attention to photography

found expression in a photogram which Lissitzky created together with the De Stijl artist Vilmos Huszar and published in the pages of Kurt Schwitters'

journal, M e r z .

This section will primarily address these two works, seeing them as dual manifestations of the renewed pressure to renegotiate Proun's relations with the physical world of space, humans and objects. Again, Lissitzky's projects are inseparable from cognate investigations being undertaken by his avant-garde colleagues

a) The "Prouns Space"

In the years around the end of the First World War and the attendant social upheavals, there was a strong urge among many progressive artists to fuse the utopian clarity and apparently anational universality of geometric non­ objective art with the social usefulness and threedimensional reality of architecture. For aesthetically and politically radical artists, abstract interiors could func­

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257 tion as "proposals for the future, when a new kind of harmonious environment would be needed to reflect a reintegrated social structure."1 Allied to this trend was a parallel investigation of the issues surrounding exhibition design and installation: what was the most effective and appropriate way to present modern art? The most famous example of these concerns is surely the room built by El Lissitzky for the Great Berlin Art Exhibi­ tion in the summer of 1923. This room is documented by a lithograph from the Kestner Portfolio (fig. 34), and by a panoramic photograph accompanying the publication, in the first issue of G (July 1923), of the artist's explanatory text, written in The Hague during his visit to Holland and dated May 1923

(fig. 87).2

With this room (fig. 88), Lissitzky tried to demonstrate his new conception of a real space adequate to modern con­ sciousness. The walls were dissolved into a sequence of planes, raised wooden elements and three focal reliefs. Lis­ sitzky's German title for his article about this project is

1.

Nancy J. Troy, The De Stiil Environment (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1983), p. 3. Though focussed on the contributions of the Dutch artists associated with the avant-garde journal De St i i l . this book is an excellent introduction to the topic in general.

2.

This text is translated in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1980, p. 365. Drawings for the wall arrangements of the room are in the State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. nos. Arch. Gr. 3551, 3599, 3601, 3610, 3611). The panoramic composite photograph in G is made up of three photographs, not four as is commonly stated.

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258 "Prounen-Raum," with the word "Prouns" clearly in the plural. Although the normal English translation of this text is "Proun Space," implicitly using the word "Proun" as a conceptual adjective, it would be more accurate to render Lissitzky's German as "Prouns Space" or "Space for Prouns." This translation would direct more attention to the fact that Lissitzky considered these reliefs as objects (or works of art) with a certain autonomous status within the room as the most important components of the installation. He listed them individually in the Proun Inventory (nos. 80, 81, 82), and wrote to Sophie in a letter of 7 August 1923 that his "reliefs"

(i.e. in the Prouns Space) were attracting great

attention in Berlin. Visitors were to be guided in an anti-clockwise direc­ tion around the walls by these elements, exiting by the same door through which they entered.

(The ceiling also carried a

low relief designed to encourage this route, though Lis­ sitzky's design for the floor could apparently not be executed for practical reasons.)

Never really conceived as

an all-encompassing or simultaneous environment, the Prouns Space was more a planned progression through a number of visual and implicitly tactile events, to be assimilated on their own,

in pairs - Lissitzky wrote that each relief, in

addition to being the crystallization of the compositional activity of its wall, was also related to the one on the

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259 adjacent wall - or cumulatively.3 Lissitzky explained that his goal was neither simply hanging paintings on a wall nor the treatment of an entire wall as a painted surface to be decorated.

Instead, he was transforming and even dissolving

the wall, while activating the visitor and the experience of the space. The Prouns Space amounted to a pure demonstration of the principles of spatial organization which Lissitzky would want applied universally, though here, with Lis­ sitzky's characteristic sensitivity to the specific occasion for which he was creating, they were adapted to the peculiar requirements of an exhibition setting.4 Although the expansive instability of the Proun concept itself made an eventual "extension" into real threedimensionality likely, the concrete historical circumstances

3.

Revealingly, Hans Richter recalled Lissitzky's own tour of the space, given "half-dancing" around the room, explaining the sequence of the wall elements (Hans Richter, "Begegnungen in Berlin," in Avantaarde Os teurooa. 1910-1930, exh. cat. [Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, for the Akademie der Kiinste, 1967], p. 15).

4.

In the concluding paragraph of his text, Lissitzky demands that the new spatial organization must be flexible enough to accommodate the addition of useful objects (a telephone, standardized office furniture), and must be sufficiently unified to allow adaptability to the varying needs of domestic life (an open plan that can be temporarily subdivided to suit the ever-changing human activities of sleep, work and social life). This latter principle was eventually realized by Lissitzky in his apartment design of 1929, shown at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1930, as illustrated and explicated in Das neue Frankfurt vol. IV no. 11 (November 1930), reproduced in my "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," in Cambridge 1987, p. 42, fig. 34.

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260 surrounding the moment of this experiment bear considera­ tion. On the one hand, as discussed in the previous chapter, the composition of an illustration such as the collage for Ehrenburg's story,

"Vitrion" (fig. 78), raised the challenge

of inserting the human form into a virtually abstract,

"con­

structivist” environment. At a deeper level, this had in fact become the theme of much of Vladimir Tatlin's work (and would continue to be so in the future) and the "Prouns Space” is Lissitzky's literal attempt to grapple with the problem.5 Perhaps Lissitzky was confronted with these issues through the practical experience of installing his first solo exhibition, at the Kestner Society earlier in the year.6 One review of that exhibition strongly suggests that it was installed in a manner which reflected serious atten­ tion to the spatial and environmental implications of the work on view. Eckart von Sydow, who was the organizer of the exhibition and therefore probably a well-informed observer,

5.

Lissitzky often wrote about the various positions in which the spectators of his Prouns could find them­ selves, from observing the Proun from all sides (includ­ ing above and below), to, so to speak, observing it from the inside, by penetrating its inner spaces.

6.

This exhibition ran from mid-January to early February 1923. It was first listed in the Hannoverscher Anzeiaer on 21 January 1923, where the following exhibition (by Kandinsky) was first listed on 11 February 1923. Lis­ sitzky's exhibition was reviewed by, among others, Alexander Dorner (Hannoverscher Kurier, 9 February 1923, evening edition) and H.W. Thies (Niederdeutsche Zeitunaf 30 January 1923).

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261 wrote that the meaning of the works would be comprehensible even without Lissitzky's writings: Because there are no frames or the resulting visual delimitation, the pictures are hung not as a partition­ ing of the wall, but instead so as to allow a dynamic force to develop from their inter-relationship. This dynamic force, in its rising and its falling, resembles the curved flight of an aeroplane. The result here is a wholly new sensation when one is immersed [in the work j .7 If von Sydow is accurately describing an installation designed by the artist, then the Prouns Space can be seen as a dramatic extension of this experiment. The use of unframed works (in the reliefs) and the diagonal rhythms of the hang­ ing both seem prefigured in this installation. Furthermore, exposure to similar efforts at forming an abstract environment on the part of his avant-garde col­ leagues may have inspired him. It has been suggested that just such a stimulus may have come from discussing the pos­ sibility of an abstract environment with his De Stijl col­ leagues.8 However, evidence points to the Prouns Space having been designed before his visit to Holland in Spring 1923, when he was introduced to all the leading members of

7.

Eckart von Sydow, "Hannover," Per Cicerone. vol. XV no. 4 (February 1923), pp. 156-157. Unfortunately, no installation photographs of this exhibition survive. Von Sydow acutely observes that this work is "ultimately unsatisfied simply with visionary presentation" ("Veranschaulichung"), and strives towards "the con­ structive re-ordering of world reality itself."

8.

On this, see especially Troy, Dg Stiil Environment. pp. 124-129.

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262 the De Stijl group. The "Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung" opened on May 19, 1923. Lissitzky's "Prounen-Raum" was accurately listed in the catalogue, and mentioned in at least one early review.9 As Lissitzky did not arrive in Hol­ land until early May at the soonest, one can surmise that the "Prounen-Raum" was already designed. Whatever general motivation may have been prompted by Lissitzky's association with De Stijl artists (and he had, of course, known Theo van Doesburg since early 1922),

it

also seems very likely that Lissitzky's Prouns Space was a direct and pointed response to the painted environment that Vassili Kandinsky had installed in the Unjuried Exhibition in Berlin the previous autumn. As this "source" has not been discussed in the literature, and as it provides an excellent instance of Lissitzky's work deriving meaning from the con­

9.

P.W. [Paul Westheim] "Grosse Berliner Ausstellung" Frankfurter Zeitungf 9 June 1923, p. 3. For another review, see Willi Wolfradt, "Berliner Ausstellungen," Per C i c e r o n e . vol. XV no. 16 (August 1923), pp. 760-761.

10.

The exact dates of Lissitzky's visit to Holland are not established. On 28 April 192 3, he sent an express letter to J. J. P. Oud asking for help in getting a visa, as the Dutch consulate in Berlin had told him that day that it would have to consult head office in The Hague, where a personal appearance by the sponsoring organization ("Opbouw") would expedite the request (Eindhoven, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Archives). He was in The Hague on 2 2 and 29 May, as documented by two postcards to Antony van Kok, written on 22 and 29 May 1923 (J.L.Beyers Auction, Utrecht, 26 November 1968, no. 1135). He seems to have been back in Germany by early June, to judge by the sequence of events implied by his letter to Oud of 1 August 1923 (Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Archives).

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263 trast and "argument" with the work of other a r tists, it is worth examining in detail.11 Kandinsky's room was octagonal in shape, with entrances in three of the longer walls (two in the middle, one offcenter). His designs (figs. 89-93) completely covered these walls, with the exception of a white band at the base and around the entrances. With no framing devices, the composi­ tion's black background flowed uninterruptedly across the corners, although each wall was treated as a defined unit, with no painted form actually crossing a corner.12 The 11.

I mentioned Kandinsky as a possible stimulus for Lis­ sitzky in 1987 (Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lis­ sitzky," in Cambridge 1987, p. 50, n. 73), but mistakenly identified Kandinsky's environment as a proposed Music Room. Though Kandinsky did design a ceramic mural for a music room as part of an architec­ tural exhibition directed by Mies van der Rohe in 1931, the 1922 project was apparently intended as a "reception room" or "foyer" for an art museum. The following dis­ cussion of Lissitzky's "response" to Kandinsky extends and builds on the discussion in Chapter II concerning the "dialogue" amongst set of related compositions by Lissitzky, Kandinsky, Malevich and Moholy-Nagy.

12.

For information on this project, the surviving evidence and documentation of the reconstruction made in the 1970s in Paris, see Le Salon de reception congu en 1922 par Kandinsky (Paris: Musde national d'art moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, 1977) and K a ndinsky. Russian and Bauhaus Y e a r s . 1915-1933 , exh. cat. (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim, 1983), pp. 156-161. Assump­ tions about the height of the doors in Kandinsky's preparatory gouaches led to the dimensions of the reconstruction measuring 4.1 meters in height and, for each long wall, 7.14 meters in length, for each angled "corner" wall, 1.6 meters. Also using assumptions about the height of the door in the Kestner Portfolio lithograph, the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum arrived at the following dimensions for its 1965 reconstruction of the Prouns Space (fig. 88): a square ground plan of walls 3 meters long, and a height of 2.6 meters. These figures mean that Kandinsky's room was just over 9 times the size of Lissitzky's (by floor area) and just over 15

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264 finished murals were executed by the artist's students at the Weimar B a u h a u s , where Kandinsky had been appointed teacher, not only of the Preliminary Course, but also in the mural painting workshop. The room as exhibited attracted a certain amount of attention in the German art periodicals, with Per Cicerone judging it to be one of the artist's best works.13 Importantly, the room was intended for a museum of modern art to be created with works from the exhibition. In other words,

it was not conceived as a domestic interior,

but as a statement for display within the context of other works of art. Lissitzky cannot but have been acutely aware of this piece. On view at the same time as the First Russian Art Exhibition (at which Kandinsky also figured prominently, both in the exhibition hanging, the catalogue and the criti-

times larger (by cubic volume). The difference in scale may have been determined by the exhibition circum­ stances, but it can only have underlined the dis­ similarity between the two rooms, discussed below. The authoritative grandness of Kandinsky's must have strongly contrasted with the experimental intensity of Lissitzky's. 13.

Curt Bauer, "Berliner Ausstellungen," Per Cicerone, vol. XIV no. 21 (November 1922), p. 868. Others were less enthusiastic, with one critic perhaps sarcastically remarking that the "chinoiserie" of the room is evidence of a fundamentally decorative talent finding its way home (Pas Kunstblatt. vol. VI no. 12 [Pecember 1922], p. 543). Per Kunstwanderer provides the important informa­ tion about the plan to create a museum of contemporary art with works from this Unjuried Exhibition, though it is less than enthusiastic about Kandinsky's contribution to such an institution (vol. IV no. 20 [October 1922], p. 83).

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265 cal reception), this room showed that Kandinsky was himself prepared to confront the spatial and environmental implica­ tions of advanced abstract art as much as were his younger rivals in the Russian avant-garde. Lissitzky had already published critical thoughts about Kandinsky twice in 1922, once in his survey of recent exhibitions in Russia, and again in his review of the older artist's exhibition at the Wallerstein Gallery in Berlin. In the former, Lissitzky had remarked on Kandinsky's alien, un-Russian presence in the exhibition landscape around 1919, an antediluvian monster in the current climate of organizing, clarity and precision of planning. This harsh assessment is echoed in comments on the more recent exhibition, comments which not only criticize the older Russian's disorganized infatuation with color, but also, significantly, understand the challenge of the implicit extension of Kandinsky's work beyond the confines of the traditional picture plane: ’’Clear geometric forms are in fact worked into the vegetation which proliferates over the edges of the square canvas."I4 In offering this critique, Lissitzky was doing little more than continuing the rejection of Kandinsky initiated by his colleagues in Moscow. Already in 1919, the leading

14.

Both of these reviews appeared in V e s h c h : "Die Ausstellungen in Russland" in nos. 1-2 (March-April 1922), pp. 18-19 (signed "Ulen," probably a pseudonym for Lis­ sitzky), and "Vystavki v Berline" in no. 3 (May 1922), p. 14. The closing quotation is from the latter review, translated in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1980, p. 346.

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266 critic of Lissitzky's generation, Nikolai Punin, had reviewed Kandinsky's Tekst khudozhnika ("Artist's Text") vehemently:

"I protest in the strongest terms against

Kandinsky's art....all his feelings, his colors are lonely, rootless and reminiscent of freaks. No, no! Down with Kandinsky! Down with him!"15 Kandinsky nevertheless went on to play a very significant role in the post-revolutionary arts administration. He then became the target for ever more committed opposition, most notably in the debates within the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) in late 1920 over his proposed research program. Resistance from a group of artists claiming a more scientific and rational orientation towards questions of research into art, led by Alexei Babichev, resulted in Kandinsky's withdrawal from InKhuK. Nevertheless, he was a prolific and influential contributor to theoretical thinking about the arts during 1921, when Lissitzky would have been most aware of the issues absorbing the energies of the Moscow avant-garde. Given Lissitzky's loyalty and indebtedness to Malevich, he would not have shared the "productivists" more extreme grounds for wishing to marginalize Kandinsky. Perhaps it was

15.

Nikolai Punin, "O knigakh," Iskusstvo k o m m u n y . no. 9 (1919), p. 3, as quoted in John E. Bowlt, "Vasilii Kandinsky: The Russian Connection," in John E. Bowlt and Rose-Carol Washton-Long, eds., The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian A r t . A Study of 'On the Spiritual in A r t ' (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1980), p. 33. Punin had already formulated this attack on Kandinsky in similar terms in 1916 (p. 29).

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267

more as a defense of his mentor's own claims to primacy in the field of pure abstraction,

intuition, and spirituality,

that Lissitzky conducted his critique of Kandinsky. Moreover, as the older artist had arrived in Berlin at the same time as Lissitzky (in December 1921), there was perhaps a certain rivalry over status as the representative of Rus­ sian non-objective painting in the West.16 On this reading, Lissitzky was driven by an urgent need to clarify the dif­ ference between himself (and Malevich) and Kandinsky. In what ways, then, did Lissitzky's Prouns Space respond to Kandinsky's challenge? Where Kandinsky had decorated only the walls with eight relatively separate mural compositions, Lissitzky not only considered his four walls as one con­ tinuous event, but incorporated the ceiling and floor as well. All of Lissitzky's design elements were focussed on encouraging the visitor to move around the room on a cumula­ tive trajectory, while Kandinsky's encompassing environment was much more oriented toward the viewer concentrating on the middle of the room, where the central axes of each wall intersected. Cutting off each corner with a panel made the

16.

Kandinsky's status in the art world of Central Europe at the time is well indicated by the fact that he was chosen to contribute the incantatory introduction to the catalogue of the "First International Art Exhibition" held in Diisseldorf in May 1922 (Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky. Complete Writings on Art [New York: Da Capo, 1994], p. 497), and that, according to one newspaper report, he was scheduled to give an opening address, though was not able to do so (Diisseldorfer Freie P r e s s e . 29 May 1922, p. 3).

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268

shape of the Kandinsky's space tend towards the circular, reinforcing the importance of the center (where the viewer found a large-scale figurative sculpture). The axonometric projection of the Prouns Space which Lissitzky included in his Kestner Portfolio underscores this point, as it lays out a progression from the entrance at the lower right margin of the sheet, to the exit at the upper left. The dark square intended for the floor was to be placed not in the center of the room, but immediately at the entrance/exit, a "platform" from which to survey the three major walls with their respective reliefs, and a means of creating a "corridor" of plain floor around the three walls.17 Lissitzky's three-dimensional reliefs (presumably 17.

As my discussion has stressed, there is an important sense in which Lissitzky's room is less about enveloping space than it is about wall-scale relief compositions and the sequential experience of them in t i m e . This neglect of the truly spatial was acutely noted by both the reviewers cited in note 9 above. Paul Westheim argued that Lissitzky ignored the fact that space is to be developed from spatial and cubic elements, while Willi Wolfradt argued that the spatial is essentially centralized. In the original German, their comments are as follows. Westheim: "Ein Raum von Lissitzky macht evi­ dent, dass konstruktivistische Dekoration letzten Endes nicht mehr besagt als Rokoko-Dekoration. Ob man Wande mit Muschelornament Oder mit viereckigen Holzlatten tapeziert, ist fast das gleiche; wiederum nur eine Verschleierung der Tatsache, dass der Raum aus den Elementen des Raumlichen und Kubischen zu entwickeln und - zu begreifen ist." Wolfradt: "Sie [the constructivist radicals] hatten mindestens in deren [of the exhibition] Rahmen Versuche der Wandorganisierung und Raumlosung vorgefuehrt, in denen alles blosse Experiment und alle Harmonisierungsattitiide einmal nach Hause hatte gelangen konnen. Die einzige Probe, die El Lissitzky hier gibt, ist freilich von ausserster Blasse und Kahlheit: ein nackter / Kasten, an dessen Wanden geometrische Flachen, Holzrahmen, schiefe Leisten allenfalls eine Fiihrung von Wand zu Wand und eine gewisse Bewegungsbalance bewirken,

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269

in his reduced palette of blacks, grays, whites and some red highlights) starkly isolated on a light ground stood in polemical contrast to Kandinsky's exuberant mural color on spatially indeterminate and atmospherically mystical black. Even Lissitzky's massive black square adjacent to the exit can be seen as a reproach to the small square next to one of Kandinsky's doorways. Lissitzky continued this debate in his portfolio of lithographs published by the Kestner Society in mid-1923. Just as there is substantial iconographic overlap between Kandinsky's mural decorations and the individual sheets of his print portfolio,

"Small Worlds"

("Kleine Welten")

published by the Bauhaus at the same time as he was working on the Unjuried Exhibition room1 8 , so too did Lissitzky establish strong links between his Prouns Space and the Kestner Portfolio. Not only does the Kestner Portfolio con­ tain the axonometric plan of the room, as described above (fig. 34), but it also translates one of the relief composi-

ohne jedoch das Raumliche irgend zu beriihren. Das Raumliche ist wesentlich zentriert; beim Zimmer heisst das: es lebt vom Menschen, vom drin Hausenden aus. Auf Emanzipation vom Ornament kommt es an — hier aber ist das Ornament in aller geometrischen Schroffheit und Hasslichkeit erst zum Zerstorer des Raumlichen gemacht. Dies ist Nonsens." 18.

For these prints, see Hans Konrad Roethel, Kandinsky. Das qraphische Werk (Cologne: Dumont Schauburg, 1970), nos. 164-175.

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270 tions into a lithograph (fig. 35).i9 Moreover, Lissitzky's portfolio is almost deliberately pluralistic in its approach, compared to Kandinsky's rendering of twelve very similar "Small Worlds" in varying print media.20 What of Lissitzky's reaction to the finished Prouns Space? Any interpretation that assumes Lissitzky's primary interest in the dynamic treatment of volumetric space, must suspect that the result cannot have been wholly satisfying, as the carefully-tuned irrationalities of the space and con­ struction of the Proun paintings could not survive the process of literalization and actualization.21 In designing the Prouns Space, Lissitzky would perhaps have realized that no smooth transition from the imaginary space of the Prouns to the real space of fully three-dimensional architecture was fully possible. This work could have acted as a test for the applicability to the real world of the visual devices

19.

The constant tendency of Lissitzky to assimilate three dimensional work into two-dimensional Prouns (rather than move from the planar Prouns into three dimensional architecture, as other commentators have stressed), is at work again here, as it was in the translation of another component of the Prouns Space into a painting in oil on canvas, "Proun G.B.A." (Proun Inventory no. 4), surely created after the Proun Space itself.

20.

For a discussion of the programmatic diversity of Kest­ ner Portfolio, see Chapter II, above.

21.

During the same summer as his "Prouns Space" was presented, Lissitzky visited the exhibition of Interna­ tional Architecture, organized by Walter Gropius in Weimar as part of the Bauhaus celebrations. The many examples of real building which he could have studied there may have reinforced this point.

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elaborated in Proun. It could count as an experiment in the translation of these devices from the freedom of the twodimensional plane into the constraints of real volume. On these terms, the Prouns Space could have been evidence for Lissitzky of the difficulty - perhaps the impossibility - of achieving such a translation successfully. However,

if Lissitzky was just as interested in explor­

ing the effects of sequential relief compositions (i.e. the unfolding in time of essentially planar abstract forms), then the Prouns Space becomes less an architectural environ­ ment and more a constructed abstract film in which the viewer moved from frame to frame in an uninterrupted progression, rather than remaining static in front of the succession of "filmic" images. In any event, the experience of the Prouns Space could have encouraged him to see the future of Proun more in the 'dematerializing' media of film and photography than in any material embodiment or real building.

Excursus: The "Room for Typo-Lithography" Berlin 1923

While Lissitzky's Prouns Space was stirring controversy, he was invited to create a second room for a Berlin exhibi­ tion in the autumn. While the Prouns Space was shown at the "Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung"

(Great Berlin Art Exhibi­

tion) , this second room, which has hitherto not been

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272

identified or discussed in the literature, was intended for the "Juryfreie Kunstschau,11 the Unjuried Exhibition of autumn 1923, the same exhibition where Kandinsky had a year earlier presented his abstract room. The circumstantial evidence for this second commission can be laid out as follows. On 1 July 1923, Hermann Sandkuhl, one of the organizers of the Unjuried Exhibition, wrote to the artist Erich Buchholz inviting him to con­ tribute "a room with your art" to the exhibition, offering him $3.00 for expenses. Sandkuhl wrote that it would be "especially interesting and stimulating for the Berlin art world that [this exhibition] will present four different room solutions ["Raumldsungen"], i.e. by four serious modern artists. A massive competition of ideas. In addition to you: Baumeister, Lissitzky and Huszar."22 There is no trace of any realized proposal by Willi Baumeister, though his earlier designs made him a logical choice for such an undertaking.23 Buchholz himself indicated 22.

This letter is transcribed in Mo Buchholz and Eberhard Roters, eds., Erich Buchholz (Berlin: Ars Nicolai, 1993), p. 105 (my translation). There was apparently also a sketch of the room being made available, but this is not reproduced. This evidence strongly reinforces the suggestion by Troy that mention of the three artists other than Lissitzky in connection with the summer exhibition (the "Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung"), is a misunderstanding (De Stiil Environment. p. 129, cor­ recting previous w r i t e r s ) .

23.

In Spring 1922, Baumeister had created mural-reliefs for the modernist exhibition rooms designed by Richard Docker at the first "Werkbund" exhibition in Stuttgart [Willi Baumeister. exh. cat. [Stuttgart: C a n t z , for the Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 1989], pp. 24-25).

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that a lack of coordination prevented the realization of any space by him. However, despite some doubts to the contrary, there is strong evidence that a room designed by Vilmos Huszar in conjunction with his De Stijl colleague Gerrit Rietveld was exhibited. While no catalogue for the 1923 Unjuried Exhibition seems to have been published and all surviving photographs related to the Huszar/Rietveld project appear to have been made from a small maquette, one photograph does carry an inscription stating that it was realized in Berlin in October 1923 (the time of the Unjuried Exhibition).24 t o this slight indication that at least this room was con­ structed can also be added the mention of the room in at least two reviews.25 As for Lissitzky, there are two concrete pieces of evidence for his intentions with this second opportunity to

24.

These facts are drawn from Troy's discussion of the room (De Stiil Environment. pp. 129-134). See also Sjarel Ex and Els Hoek, Vilmos Huszar. Schilder en Ontw e r p e r . 1884-1960. De qrote Onbekende van De Stiil (Utrecht: Reflex, 1985), pp. 75-78.

25.

Although Troy (De Stijl Environment. pp. 131 and 217, n. 18) writes that no mention of the Huszar/Rietveld room appears in the reviews, at least two references have come to my attention. Paul Westheim makes a nega­ tive comment about the room as an attempt to stylize squares according to a misunderstood Russian model (P.W., "Kunst in Berlin," Frankfurter Zeituna. 3 Novem­ ber 1923, first morning edition, p. 1). Ludwig Hilbersheimer also criticizes the room, arguing that it car­ ries the new formalism to absurd ends (Sozialistische Monatshefte. vol. 30 no. 1 [22 January 1924], pp. 6465).

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design an exhibition space in 1923. First is his letter of 7 August 1923 to Harold Loeb in New York, the editor of the cultural journal Broom for which he provided cover designs. Loeb had asked Lissitzky to produce another design, and most of the letter concerns the practical details of this commis­ sion. Concluding with news of his current activities, Lis­ sitzky writes:

"I now have a room designed at the Grosse

Berliner Kunstausstellung. For the autumn I have been invited again to make a special room in a Berlin exhibition. I am making a room of typo-1ithooraohy."26 In all likelihood, Lissitzky decided to use this invita­ tion to design a space at the Unjuried Exhibition to present a room of typographical and printed work. And in fact there has survived among the holdings of the Tretyakov Gallery a design by Lissitzky for exhibiting typographical designs (fig. 94).27

26.

Princeton University Library, Selected Papers of Harold A. Loeb ("Jetzt ist bei mir ein Raum gestaltet in der Grosser Berliner Kunstausstellung. Fur herbst bin ich wieder eingeladen ein extra Raum zu machen in Berliner Ausstellung. Ich mache ein Zimmer Tipo-Litoaraphie111.

27.

Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. no. RS 1908; gouache and graphite on paper; 21.5 x 29.2 cm. This drawing has now been published in Moscow 1990, cat. no. 236, ill. p. 110. The note to the catalogue entry seriously misreads some of the artist's inscriptions and suggests that this is a design for one of Lissitzky's solo exhibitions, either in Hanover in 1923, Berlin in 1924, or in Dresden in 1925. As we shall see, the design in fact includes only work of 1922 and 1923 (up to the s ummer). This circumstance contributes to my certainty that this design relates to the Lissitzky's intention to make a room of "typo-lithography" for the Unjuried Exhibition of autumn 1923.

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275 Once again, Lissitzky arranges an implicit counter­ clockwise circuit around the four walls of the room. His proposal emphasizes not the spatial volume of the room, but the availability of the walls to act as a ground for a series of two-dimensional, or at most low-relief, visual and informational events. Items of his own typographical design production are laid out in broadly chronological order in a series of display modules which create a continuous pattern of vertical and horizontal framed elements, set against dif­ ferent wall colors of gray, black, red and white. The wall colors are contrasted in each case with another color on the baseboard, running around the entire room. Lissitzky's cap­ tions and his sketchily rendered indications of the various items to be shown allow most of the proposed objects to be identified. Starting at the right of the drawing, we find two stag­ gered horizontal display rows set against a black back­ ground. These contain the two covers for V e s h c h . Objet. Gegenstand together with two unidentifiable page openings; below and to the left of these are placed four pages from Of Two S q u a r e s . Next, presumably on the adjacent wall, comes the indica­ tion of the book of Mayakovsky's poems, For the V o i c e . to be shown open (as Lissitzky clearly believed the design of the interior pages to be far more significant than the cover) in a glass vitrine mounted on the wall, at the far left hand

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276

end of a horizontal strip.28 Alongside this, against a dif­ ferent wall color, in three frames on either side of a vertical strip, were sheets from the Kestner Portfolio: two copies of the sheet with the appliqud black circle, and the portfolio cover at ground level. The portfolio had been published that summer. The next wall was apparently also to hold sheets from this portfolio, as two adjacent frames seem to hold versions of one of the sheets, the so-called "Oscil­ lating Body"

(fig. 36),29 paired on a colored wall.

The final wall is shorter than it should be, assuming that the corners occur as here described and that it would have been opposite the wall with the Mayakovsky vitrine. This implies that the other,

"missing" part of this wall was

to be taken up by an entrance/exit. Lissitzky proposed plac­ ing his two most recent printed works on this half-wall: to

28.

Immediately below the right hand end of this strip (i.e. almost abutting the pages from Of Two Squares at ninety degrees), Lissitzky has marked three small squares, but not identified any further as typographical objects. Also, to the left of the Mayakovsky book, Lis­ sitzky has indicated a wide vertical area running from the baseboard to the ceiling, with a pattern of watercolor flecks. This is also not further identified, but I will speculate that the artist intended a vertical dis­ play of page openings (perhaps from proof sheets) of the Mayakovsky book. In this way, he could show each innova­ tive design, as well as the book-as-object (with special emphasis on the thumb index) in the glass vitrine to the right.

29.

Lissitzky7s inscription here reads "Kachalka," which means "rocking chair" or, more generally, a rocking thing. In the 1924 Proun Inventory, this image is referred to as the "Schwingungskorper" (the "oscillating body"). Cf. Proun Inventory no. 24.

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277

the right, two pieces from his lithograph portfolio of costume and stage designs for Victory over the S u n , on which he was then working: the portfolio cover (with its dramatic capital F in black on a red ground) and the last sheet, the emblematic figure of the "New Man" (fig. 30). Adjacent to the presumed exit, in a vertical row of six stacked frames, Lissitzky wanted to place copies of the new magazine G. Zeitschrift fur Gestaltuna. on which he was collaborating with Hans Richter and Mies van der Rohe.30 Below the sketch, Lissitzky has schematically rendered the layout in thin graphite lines, with the notation that these are thin lamellar strips. Lissitzky's design is revealing on a number of levels. The choice of works for inclusion is highly selective, reflecting both his opposition to overcrowded, confusing exhibitions, and his preferences among the many the pieces of typographical design which he had completed since arriv­ ing in Berlin from Moscow in late 1921. His selection gives a sense of what he considered his major achievements up to late summer/early autumn 1923. It is useful to note that he omits a large number of his c o v e r s , such as his designs for MA, Wendinqen. B r o o m . the catalogue of the "Erste Russische Kunstausstellung" and the many books published by the

30.

See Typ. Cat. 1923/7. The inclusion of this column of 'G's in the exhibition design reinforces my suggestion there that Lissitzky was surely responsible for the typographic design of this journal.

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278

Scythians publishing house. Lissitzky chooses two periodical covers fVeshch and G, implicitly suggesting that the one is the successor to the other), two books (Of Two Squares and For the V o i c e . unquestionably his most radical designs3 1 ) and two print portfolios (the "Kestner-Mappe" and the "socalled "Figurinen-Mappe"). The inclusion of the Kestner Portfolio allowed him to display "pure" Proun works along­ side typographic design (including the portfolio cover), thereby keeping open the question of Proun 's relation to typography as well as the issue of its relation to the space of this exhibition room. Moreover, this room is a precursor in many respects to his later exhibition rooms for the international art exhibi­ tion in Dresden in 1926 (figs. 94 and 95) and for a permanent installation in the Provinzialmuseum in Hanover. There is, however, one crucial difference. In the designs of 1926, there were a variety of ways in which "frames" holding the works of art could move horizontally or vertically,

31.

Radical not only in their means and layout, as dis­ cussed previously, but also in their revolutionary con­ tent (broadly defined). They are also the books in which the interior design is important, not just the cover. Understandably, Lissitzky would regularly emphasize these two books. In a unpublished letter to Jan Tschichold of 12 November 1925, he refers to them both in the context of his wish then to make a "third standard work" (Chicago, Newberry Library, Wing/MS/fZ/ 311/.L772. I thank Jennifer Ehrenberg for bringing this letter to my attention). These two volumes are also the only ones illustrated and commented upon in Lissitzky's article, "typographische tatsachen, z.B." published the same year.

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279

introducing a dynamic element and demanding an active spec­ tator in a very literal fashion.32 In the Berlin proposal of 1923, there is no indication at all that any of the dis­ played objects could actually move. As with the Prouns Space of the summer,

it is the spectator/visitor who was to be

guided around the room by the rhythmic arrangement of the forms and objects on the wall. The printed material is provided with an environment designed to heighten the viewers appreciation of the achievement. While, as we have seen, it is instructive and not inappropriate to see the Prouns Space as one work of art (enveloping the viewer as a total d e s i g n ) , the artist also considered it a suitable frame and platform for the presentation of the three dis­ crete reliefs on which attention was focussed. The second 1923 room was, understandably, also designed to allow for the presentation of discrete objects, though their deploy­ ment across the surface of the wall itself typographical,

(a deployment that was

in a sense) was, of course, designed

to fuse the disparate pieces into an experiential whole. Important in our context is that this proposal represented Lissitzky's attempt to spatialize his printed typographic work in a new way. Typographic design here bec­

32.

This revolutionary feature and its implications have well discussed by Alan C. B i r n h o l z , "El Lissitzky and the Spectator: From Passivity to Participation," in The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930. New Perspectives. exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980), pp. 98-101.

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280 omes part of an architectural ensemble, extending the metaphor of the designer being the constructor of the book (as in the Mayakovsky volume). This extension of twodimensional planar printed design into three-dimensional space was to have enormous significance for Lissitzky's practice in the subsequent years. It is revealing that this first, rather tentative venture into what one might term environmental typography, should occur in 1923, the year when Lissitzky was, in the Prouns Space, attending to the relationship of his Proun work to the real world of three dimensions. The other thrust of this investigation, deriving from his work in 1922 with collaged photographic elements, concentrated on the role of photography and film to which we must now turn our attention.

b) The Turn to Photography

The circumstances of Lissitzky's developing interest in photography can be summarily reconstructed as follows. In late 1921, he devoted only a few dismissive sentences to the topic in an important essay about his art. "The [painted] picture fell apart together with the old world which it had created for itself. The new world will not need little pic­ tures. If it needs a mirror, it has the photograph and the

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281

cinema.”33 Then, in 1922, he had confronted the use of photography in some of the collaged elements for his illustrations for Ehrenburg's Six Tales about Easy Endings (as discussed in the previous chapter), though it is all but certain that none of these photographic images were produced by the artist himself. It is only in the course of 1923 that concrete evidence of a major concern for photography emerges. On the one hand, Lissitzky faced the challenge of recording his Prouns Space in a montaged set of three photographs which were published in G as if they were one panoramic view with a constantly shifting perspective (fig. 87).34 On the other, in autumn 33.

El Lissitzky, 'The Conquest of Art,' Rinaen [Warsaw], no. 10, 1922, pp. 32-34, translated from the Yiddish by Michael Steinlauf in Cambridge 1987, pp. 59-61, here p. 61. This essay was surely delivered to its Polish publishers during Lissitzky's journey to Berlin in late 1921.

34.

Again, there is no conclusive evidence that Lissitzky was himself responsible for these photographs. It is hard to imagine, however, that he did not take charge of their layout, their juxtaposition and captioning, thereby being exposed to the relationship of photographs to three-dimensional space in a way that would not have applied to, say, the photographs of his two-dimensional works which appeared in the Unovis Almanac in mid-1920. (However, one should take into account the sophisticated spatial message of the photograph of the 1920 "Propaganda Board," discussed in Chapter I, above). It is, however, significant that an enlargement of the "Prounenraum-panorama" photographs was exhibited with photographs by Lissitzky at the 1929 film und foto exhibition (as seen in the installation photograph reproduced in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967 and 1980, pi. 211). Perhaps Lissitzky did indeed take these photographs. The complex question of Lissitzky's orchestration of the relationships between architecture and photography (and between both of these genres and typography) is taken up in Chapter V.

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282

1923, he published a curious photogram of two glasses, a light bulb and other unidentified materials in the pages of Kurt Schwitters' periodical, M e r z .35 The caption indicates that the work was co-created with Vilmos Huszdr (in the Dadaistic spirit of the journal, the artists' names were given as Vilmos Lissitzky and El Huszdr3 6 ), and entitled "4 /i/ Lampe Heliokonstruktion 125 Volt." The title can be translated as "4 /i/ Light Bulb Light-Construction 125 Volts"

(fig. 97).

When was this piece actually made? As Huszar visited Berlin in autumn 1923 in connection with the construction of the abstract room which he and Rietveld had designed for the Unjuried Exhibition, the photogram may have resulted from a collaboration at that time. Alternatively, Lissitzky and Huszar may have worked together in the Spring, when the Rus­ sian visited Holland for the first time. When he delivered his lecture on New Russian Art at the Hague in late May, he stayed with Huszar. It is interesting that, in his notes for the delivery of this lecture, Lissitzky added a few sentences dealing with

35.

Merz no. 6 (October 1923), p. 62. This work is reproduced with its caption in Ex and Hoek, Husza r . p. 97.

36.

Although the formulation of the joint authorship was Dadaist in feel, the idea of collaborative works of art is just as closely linked to the Constructivist ethos. From time to time in his career, Lissitzky would actually create works jointly, a modest fulfillment in practice the widely held goal of collective creativity.

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photography and film, subjects which are otherwise not present in the text of the lecture. Although his remarks gloss the commonplace observation that the invention of photography has relieved the painter of the obligation to record reality, they may be evidence of a growing interest in the question.37 "The development of new painting in Russia coincides with the time of the blossoming of photography and the beginnings of cinematography. / What was the painter around 1900 - a journalist. / The representational power of photo-mechanics. What is the painter who is pure (of representationalism)? A human being through whom the stream of colors flows, and who materially constructs a path and a form for this stream. [...]" These notes are on a single sheet of paper together with the prefatory remarks he prepared for introducing his lecture, includ­ ing his apology for speaking in German (TsGALI 2361/1/31/9). These prefatory remarks are reprinted with corrections, along with only the first sentence from the passage quoted above, in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 14. Although Lissitzky/s lecture is usually dated 1922, I believe that it was written for delivery in Holland, while the First Russian Art Exhibition was on view in Amsterdam from 28 April to 28 May 1923. It was also given in Hanover, on 16 June 1923, as announced by the poster (Eindhoven, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, as illustrated in Hanover 1988, cat. no. 143 [listed erroneously as an exhibition poster, and surely not designed by Lissitzky himself], fig. 194). There is no evidence that it was delivered in Berlin in autumn 1922 in conjunction with the First Russian Art Exhibition at the Van Diemen Gallery, although it should be noted that there is substantial overlap between the lecture text and the contents of an article written by Lissitzky with Ehrenburg for the special issue of Zenit on modern Rus­ sian art ("Ruska nova umetnost," Zenit [Belgrade/Zagreb], vol. 2 no. 17/18 [September/October 1922], pp. 50-52). The only other mention of photography and film in the lecture relates to Lissitzky's observa­ tion that there are no photographs or films of the mass agitational demonstrations in the early post­ revolutionary years (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 338; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p 341). At one level, this remark probably amounts to an apology for not illustrat­ ing these points with slides in his talk. On another l e v e l , the absence of photographs of these events underscores the ephemerality and transience of the

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284

Moreover, it was also in the Hague in May that Lissitzky wrote his text about the Prouns Space. Towards the end of this text, Lissitzky makes a revealing comment about includ­ ing pictures within the space. Of

course, he rejects any

paintings to be hung on the wall.

Instead, he writes, if

one

does want to create for oneself the illusion of life in a closed room,

[one should] hang on the wall a sheet of glass,

behind which there would not be a picture, but rather a periscope device showing ... at every moment real events in their real color and actual movement."38 This evocation of the camera obscura (or, more tenuously, of television) has been little remarked upon in the critical literature, but surely represents a significant statement of Lissitzky's willingness to accept "representational" images that have a direct, almost unmediated (i.e. indexical) relationship to reality, to life.39 It is not far from Lissitzky's periscope demonstrations and festivals, a quality that Lissitzky stresses: "These are the works created by the new Rus­ sian art; this is the great monumentality of our time, emerging together with the great day, and disappearing with it. This is not 'eternal' monumentality, like the Pyramids; this is the time of the fluid monumentality of continual life" (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 3 38 [my translation]; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 341). 38.

Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 361 (my translation); Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 365.

39.

On one of the surviving drawings for the Prouns Space, a rectangle drawn to the right of the sketch for the first long wall (and therefore perhaps referring to the wall immediately to the right of the entrance door) is tantalizingly captioned "window" ("okno") (Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. no. Arch. Gr. 3601). The illustration in Moscow 1990 (cat. no. 233, ill. p. 110) crops this side of the sheet. Was Lissitzky planning a real window in the space, allowing views of the "out­

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285 device to the light-transmitting and capturing capabilities of the camera, whether for still or moving pictures. Sig­ nificantly also, Lissit 2k y /s and Huszar's photogram is an example of camera-less photography, as, in a way, would have been the Prouns Space device. One further piece of evidence for correlating the new interest in photography and the writing of the text on the Prouns Space in Holland in May 192 3 has recently come to light. Sophie Kiippers inscribed a photogram double-portrait by Lissitzky of himself and Huszar "Holland 1923" (fig. 98) As this image also contains the shadow image of two light bulbs, it is highly likely that it was created at the same time as the photogram published in Merz

(fig. 97).40

side" (probably just of other exhibition rooms) into the space? In the lithograph axonometric plan of the room in the Kestner Portfolio, this area is rendered in a subtly different shade of gray from other forms. The reconstruction of the room made in 1965 for the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, does not include a window. Furthermore, would this rectangle have been the site, ideally, of Lissitzky's proposed glass screen projection device? 40.

The Lissitzky/Huszar double portrait was first published in New York 1991, pp. 8-9, pi. 1. It is typi­ cal for Lissitzky that this early experiment with the medium should involve a portrait of a friend and crea­ tive colleague. Many of his photographic works would deal with this subject, notably the portraits of Schwit­ ters, Arp and, of course, himself in 1924. For some com­ ments of this consistent aspect of Lissitzky's work with the photographic medium, see my "Lissitzky and Photography," in Eindhoven 1990, pp. 66-70.

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286

The wider context for Lissitzky's turn to photographybased creativity is given by the multiple examples of inter­ est in camera-less photography amongst Lissitzky's circle of friends in the Berlin avant-garde in 1922-1923. The debate over the invention of the photogram has been intense and inconclusive. Nevertheless, it has not been pointless, as the evaluation of contending claims has led to a wealth of information about experiments being conducted at the time. Specifically,

it seems likely that the American

expatriate journal Broom could have provided the impetus for Lissitzky's experiments. The issue for March 1923 contained illustrations of camera-less photographs by Man Ray and by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, as well as a text by the Hungarian entitled "Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression."41 The materials and the title of the Lissitzky/Huszar photogram in Merz point to its central concern being the

41.

It should be pointed out that Lissitzky himself protested vehemently against Moholy-Nagy's claims to importance in the development of this medium. He expressed his opinions in a letter of 15 September 1925 to Sophie, for whom the issue had probably arisen in connexion with the work of Man Ray, whose work she was about to include in an exhibition together with Mondrian and Lissitzky (Cf. Typ. Cat. 1925/7). Lissitzky claimed to have introduced Moholy to the importance of photography during discussions with Raoul Haussmann in winter 1921/1922 about a new art journal, and in general he - convincingly, in my view - laid out the arguments for Moholy's epigonal status and deceitful self­ promotion. See the discussion in Eleanor M. Hight, Pic­ turing Modernism. Moholv-Naav and Photograph y in Weimar Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995). This quarrel does not affect the possibility that Moholy's work prompted Lissitzky's first actual engagement with the medium.

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concept and use of light. The presence of an electric light bulb (manufactured by the Dutch firm Philips, appropriately) and two transparent glasses makes light and its properties the theme of the photogram. The medium, of course, too is light, in that the photogram would have been made by laying the objects onto light-sensitive paper and then exposing the ensemble to light (probably to artificial light from a light bulb not unlike the depicted object4 2 ). The sophistication of the work lies in this parallelism of medium and message, a witty self-referentiality which lifts it out of the realm of marginal dada joke to which subsequent scholarship seems to have confined it. This experimental exploration of the medium itself (a kind of "faktura" of the photographic process) is echoed in the extended caption appearing under the reproduction in M e r z . There is no way of knowing whether this was written by Schwitters or by the creators of the photogram, but given that Lissitzky was living in Hanover in autumn 1923 in very close contact with Schwitters,

it is hard to believe that he

did not approve of this explication.

42.

"The technique of this

Careful inspection of the printed image shows that the wording on the light bulb, in addition to identifying the manufacturer, also includes the letters "PROJECT...". Was his perhaps a light bulb for a film projector? Or is this a trade name on whose associations with "project" (as noun) and projection Lissitzky and Huszar are playing, thereby increasing the play of selfreferentiality? It should be noted that the precise method by which this image was made has not yet been explicated.

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light construction is grammatical. The rectangle in the upper left corner is developed through the rotation of a circle." Surrounding this enigmatic pronouncement is a sequence of numbers, probably an experimental poem by Schwitters. The numbers are derived from the page number on which the image is printed, 62. The sequence increases to 67, via a series of intermediary steps including fractions. At the bottom of the inverted pyramid which these numbers create is placed a hollow square. The numbers perhaps allude to some hypothetical (imagined?) procedure for generating mathematical sequences from the numbers themselves,

just as the reference to the

rectangle being generated by a circle also expresses the poetic notion of an autonomous, self-engendering geometry. Moreover, the quest to "square the circle"

(i.e. to find a

square of the same area as a circle) had been attempted for centuries with Euclidian means, using a straight edge and a pair of compasses.

In 1882 it was proved to be impossible,

and so the allusion in the caption is not only to nonEuclidian geometry, but also to the possibility for art to accomplish impossible, un-real tasks. Underlying both the use of numbers and the invocation of a geometrical problem is the commitment to analysis, as seen in the breaking down of the number sequence into its com­ ponent parts, and in the identification of common elements in geometric figures (the generative link between square and

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289

circle). Perhaps this is the sense in which the technique of this light construction is "grammatical,11 to quote the explicatory text. It undertakes an analysis of the com­ ponents of the visual language of the medium, much as gram­ mar traditionally studies the various elements of written and spoken language. This discussion does not hope to clarify the surely deliberate mystifications of the caption. The combination of the Dada context of these remarks and Lissitzky's oft repeated unwillingness to allow his thoughts to be defini­ tively confined to words, make it unlikely that a coherent meaning was intended by this caption. Instead, these inter­ pretations should suggest the associations, sometimes quite specific, evoked by the photogram. Lissitzky's first venture into creative photography shows his acute sensitivity to the medium's intimate connec­ tion to the material world of light and objects.43 This aspect of the work registers even the title of the photogram, which includes the invented word "Heliokonstruktion." This "Construction" in, of, and about "light" was

43.

In exploring this indexical relationship of the image to its referent, Lissitzky is repeating a procedure also evident in his typographic design of Mayakovsky's For the V o i c e . The illustrations for that volume, as dis­ cussed in the previous chapter, make as much reference to the images and symbols of the poems, as they do to the medium of their own construction, the elements of the typographer's type-case. Lissitzky's photogram, too, presents an image with a certain (if limited) expressive content of its own, rendered with self-reflexive means.

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290 conceived by artists for whom the word "construction" carried the full weight of literal and metaphorical meanings of building reality. Common to the Prouns Space (figs. 34 and 87) and the photographic experiments of the same months (figs. 97 and 98) was the exploration of the potential within the real conditions of the media. In the one case, this involved "abstract" elements such as space and movement, embodied in the concrete actuality of paint, wooden strips, relief objects, and so on. In the other, Lissitzky addressed the abstract element of light, embodied in the concrete actuality of the light-bulbs that were his motif, and in the chemical reactions of the photogram. Moreover,

just as the Prouns Space implied the active

presence of human beings, so too did Lissitzky's other photograph of 1923, the double-portrait of himself and Huszar, meld human form (both faces) into the symbols of light, the light-bulbs (fig. 98).44 The points of intersection between photography's figurative power and the spatial dynamism of a Proun-based architecture (together with a third aspect from one of Lissitzky's experiments of 1923, the introduction of typography and typographic design into

44.

That this overt figurative reference became important to Lissitzky is indicated that he exhibited precisely this photograph (significantly under the title "In the Light Bulb" ["V lampe"]) at the 1927 All-Union Printing Trades Exhibition in Moscow, as documented at the begin­ ning of the next chapter. The photogram from Merz was apparently not exhibited.

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291

an architectural space) were to play decisive roles in Lis­ sitzky's move away from his non-objective painting towards more hybrid forms of creative work, and towards the moment when he would cease producing Prouns altogether.

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Chapter V Mixing the Modes: Photography, Architecture, Graphic Design

In autumn 1927, at the All-Union Printing Trades Exhibi­ tion in Moscow, mounted to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Revolution, Lissitzky exhibited a wide range of work.1 His contributions included a significant number of 1.

The significance of this understudied exhibition for Lissitzky can hardly be exaggerated. He not only exhibited extensively there, showing 28 items, but also designed the exhibition layout, the poster, the official bulletin, the invitation card, and the catalogue (Typ. Cat. 1927/4-7). Furthermore, he published a major programmatic statement in the catalogue ("Khudozhnik v

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photographic compositions, evidence of the steadily increas­ ing importance of this medium to Lissitzky since his experi­ ments of 1923, described in the previous chapter. In one section, he showed two pieces with the titles "Photogram: Equipment of the Architect" and "Photogram: Equipment of the Typesetter."2 In this constellation of subjects and media, proizvodstve" [The Artist in Production] in sec. II, pp. 3-8, translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 113-117). All of Lissitzky's exhibited work, and his essay, were in Section II ("Section of Graphics in Production" [Otdel' proizvodstvennoi grafiki]). 2.

Cat. nos. 1014 and 1015. Unfortunately, neither photogram can now be identified. This section of the catalogue lists nine items by Lissitzky, as follows, by catalogue number. 1012: Portrait Arp; 1013: Portrait Meru [sic]? 1014: Photogram "Equipment of the Architect;" 1015: Photogram "Equipment of the Typeset­ ter;" 1016: Negative-Positive; 1017: In the Light Bulb ("V lampe"); 1018: Self-Portrait; 1019: Theatrical Project; 1019: Record (Multiple Exposure). In one sur­ viving installation photograph (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967 and 1980, fig. 197), a wall in the middle-distance is visible with eight photographic works, of which many are, with careful scrutiny, reliably identifiable as being by Lissitzky. With some confidence, this wall can be identified as this section of the exhibition. In the left hand column, from top to bottom, the following identifications (with reference to illustrations in the present study) can be made: "Portrait of Arp" (1013 [fig. 99]); unidentified (but probably the pair of small positive-negative images exhibited side-by-side [1016]; "In the Light Bulb" (1017, surely the 1923 double portrait of Lissitzky and Huszar, discussed in the previous chapter [fig. 98]). In the right-hand column, there are three neatly aligned images: "Record" (1019, now known as "Runner in the City" [fig. 100]); "Theatri­ cal Project (1018, just discernible as a late version of the stage machinery for "Victory over the Sun," illustrated in Halle 1982, p. 84 [but erroneously identified as a lithograph in the State Tretyakov Gal­ lery], presumably Proun Inventory no. 86); and, in the lower right corner, "Self-Portrait" (1018, the so-called "Constructor" [fig. 101). The two photographs in the center column are unidentified, but could therefore well be the pair (devoted to the architect and the type­ setter) under discussion (1014, 1015). Unfortunately,

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294

Lissitzky brings together the three main foci of his atten­ tion in the mid~1920s: photography, architecture and (typo­ g r a p h i c design. Moreover, this 1927 exhibition was also the last occasion on which Lissitzky himself arranged to show his Proun works.3 In a sense,

it marked the effective end of

his engagement with abstract art. The inclusion of a handful of Proun works at the All-Union Printing Trades Exhibition amounted both to an acknowledgement of their importance in his development, and a recognition that their role had in some way been superseded by work in photography, graphic design and architecture.4

they are not sufficiently legible to permit iconographic or formal analysis. This would omit only the "Portrait Meru," surely a catalogue misprint for "Portrait Merz" (1013, i.e. the double-exposure portrait of Kurt Schwit­ ters [fig. 102]), perhaps not exhibited (or not in this installation photograph). Many of these photographs are discussed below. 3 . As discussed later in this chapter, he had made his last Proun in 1926, for exhibition in Europe. 4 . The Prouns are listed under "autolithography" in the second section of the catalogue, after no. 26a (Poster 1920, "On the Polish Front"): "26: Proun with black 'stamped' circle and tangent; 27: Double Printing with Turned Stone; 31: Proun with Collage; 32: Proun 1919. Tusche, graphite, spraying." (Nos. 28, 29, and 30 were sheets from the "Victory over the Sun" portfolio.) Apart from no. 32 (which appears to be an original drawing), the other three pieces seem all to derive from the 1923 Kestner Portfolio of lithographs, including the two sheets with collage (black circle and red quadrilateral, respectively [figs. 38 and 33]), and the sheet with the sphere and vertical forms, balancing on a horizontal, printed twice (fig. 36). For a printing trades and graphic design exhibition, it would, of course, be appropriate to exhibit lithographic work.

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295 This chapter will assess Lissitzky's work in these fields, not simply each for its own sake, but rather from a point of view which highlights the inventive (and innovatory) manner in which he combined them: photography with graphic design, graphic design with architecture, and architecture with photography. This "mixing of the modes" relates closely to the circumstances of the decision to cease making Prouns, a decision which in turn must be related to the artist's decision to return to Moscow in mid1925 and resume work in the context of Soviet culture of the period. The period 1923 to 1927 encompasses Lissitzky's resolution of the problems and pressures (aesthetic and ideological) facing the Prouns, which have been elaborated in the foregoing chapters. The "abandonment" of Proun is a step which resonates strongly with the decision five years earlier by many members of the constructivistically-inclined Moscow avant-garde to "abandon" art (even in its most advanced,

"laboratory" form) in favor of useful work in

design. Lissitzky made his decision under different politi­ cal and cultural (and, indeed, personal) circumstances, but, in doing so, rejoined many of those artists in active com­ mitment to modern design as a suitable sign of support for the Soviet state. The passage to that position began with a turn to photography.

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a) Photography as the Future of Art

During his convalescence in Switzerland, Lissitzky worked on the publication The Isms of A r t . At first, Lis­ sitzky and Hans Arp had the idea of mounting an "interna­ tional exhibition of post-Cubist art production" in the Kunsthaus Zurich in autumn 1924.5 Then, Lissitzky wanted to edit the last issue of Kurt Schwitters'

journal Merz for the

year 1924, devoting it to a historical survey of recent art movements, or, in Lissitzky's words in his letter to Sophie of 30 March 1924, "last troop-review of all the isms of the period 1924-1914." The final incarnation of this retrospec­ tive impulse was the publication around May 1925 of the volume Die K u n s tismen. a tri-lingual picture book issued under the joint editorship of Lissitzky and Hans Arp by the Zurich publishing house of Eugen Rentsch (Typ. Cat. 1925/2).6 Lissitzky had spent most of the second half of 1924 working on this project.

5.

Lissitzky mentioned this to Sophie in a letter of 13 February 1924. The plan was still active in October, when he reports sending Arp "material for Kunsthaus," which Arp has in turn delivered (Letter to Sophie, 20 October 1924).

6.

The contract between Lissitzky and the publisher was signed on 27 August 1924, committing Lissitzky to deliver the manuscript by the end of September (Zurich, Central Library, Eugen Rentsch Papers). I thank Kai-Uwe Hemken for bringing this document to my attention. Lis­ sitzky's correspondence indicates that the preparation of the manuscript and the collecting of the illustra­ tions took significantly longer.

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It was in this volume that Lissitzky gave his now famous, and oft-cited explication of Proun as the "inter­ change station from painting to architecture" (the "Umsteigestation von der Malerei zur Architektur"). This phrase is too often uncritically cited to cover all of Lis­ sitzky's career, and too often interpreted simply to mean that Proun was an intermediate step on the way from painting to architecture, from art to utility, from Suprematism to Constructivism. A closer reading of this statement would and should stress the phrase "interchange station," with its clear meaning of a railway station at which one must change train s . To explicate rather literally: Proun is the place where one alights from the painting train, crosses to another platform, and gets on to the architecture train. The ultimate destination of the painting train is here left undecided. This reading is reinforced by comparison to Lis­ sitzky's earlier formulation of a related, but crucially different point. In his writings about Proun in 1921, the year of the concept's concretization, Lissitzky had written of it as a "halt on the way to the construction of new form."7 Strictly read, this railway metaphor implies that 7.

In the published German translation of this sentence, as it appeared in De Stiil in mid-1922, this is rendered as "Haltestelle auf dem Aufbauwege der neuen Gestaltung" (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 344), translated from the Russian "stantsiya po puti sooruzheniya novoi formy" (TsGALI 2361/1/25/13). The manuscript German translation gives "...Aufbauwege der neuen Form" (TsGALI 2361/1/25/6). The word "Form" is even further from necessarily implying three-dimensional design than is "Gestaltung," which was probably suggested by Theo vam Doesburg or Max Buchartz during their editing of the

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298

Proun is simply a stopping place, a station, on the line to the construction of new form (itself, a significantly vaguer and broader goal than "architecture"). This shift in meaning (which is more than a shift in formulation or emphasis) reflects Lissitzky's consistent view that, in important ways, Proun itself could also lead (and perhaps was leading) in a direction that was not necessarily architectural in the practical sense which he had in mind in 1924/1925. To arrive at this approach to architecture, Lissitzky is acknowledg­ ing, one must transfer from one path to another. This is further borne out by the agenda for modern art implicit in the arrangement and selection of artistic move­ ments, artists and works in The Isms of A r t . The historical sequence of art movements in The Isms of Art is reversed (in that the book begins with the most recent, advanced, move­ ments of around 1924, and ends with the roots of this avantgarde in the movements of around 1914). Thus, the book opens with a page carrying simply a question mark to indicate the unknown future development of art (though art will definitely have a future). The stage before this speculative "conclusion"

(which in its open-endedness is typical of Lis­

sitzky) deals with Viking Eggeling and the "discovery" of abstract film. This implies that art (as documented by all the previous "isms" in the book)

is tending towards

translation for publication in De Stiil.

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299

photography and film in a way that makes Lissitzky's emphasis on architecture in his own work around 1924-1927 less than self-evident. Another theoretical text written during 1924 also gave a privileged position to photography (and, more broadly, to the exigencies of lenses and optical phenomena generally). The essay "K. und Pangeometrie," published in the EuropaAlmanach in early 1925 was primarily a survey of the development of perspective in analogy to the development of mathematics and systems of numeration.8 In order to understand the role of photography and vision in Lissitzky's scheme, a brief discussion of the essay's argument is neces­ sary. The various forms of spatial representation (planimetric, perspectival, irrational and then imaginary) are laid out as relating in some way to the sequence of sym­ bolic number systems, from arithmetical progression (1,2,3,4, etc. with a related stage including fractions), through geometric progression (1,2,4,8,16), to irrational numbers (the square root of 2, i.e. a number with an infinite number of digits after the decimal point) and, finally, to imaginary numbers

8.

(the wholly conceptual number,

The article is reprinted in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, pp. 349-354, and translated into English in LissitzkyKuppers 1980, pp. 352-358.

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300

such as the square root of -l).9 Lissitzky assigns Suprematism to the "irrational space"/"irrational number" phase, arguing that the space in Suprematist paintings was generated not by measurable distance or devices, but by the intuitive reaction to the varying intensities of colored planes and their orientations. In his discussion of "imaginary space," Lissitzky argues that the obvious spatial equivalent of an imaginary number (such as the square root of -1) would be the n-dimensional geometry as elaborated by such mathematicians as Lobachevsky and Gauss. However, he realistically points out that our real space is not alterable, that this n-dimensional space is not available to us through the senses (and, as a prac­ ticing artist, Lissitzky is unwilling to abandon the

9.

This is another example of Lissitzky's extraordinary fondness for setting up analogical illustrations of quasi-historical developments in art. This case is, of course, an adaptation of the mathematical analogies he borrowed from Spengler and first deployed in 1921, as discussed in chapter I. This manner of thinking, however, can also be seen in his essay of 1923, "Wheel Propeller and What Follows," in which emblematic architectural forms are matched to methods of locomo­ tion: static pyramids to walking; modern construction to the use of the wheel; utopian, anti-gravitational struc­ tures to the propeller (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 346;. Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 349). Furthermore, in his essay "Our Book" of 1927, he again used methods of locomotion as the yardstick against which to measure and identify cultural developments, this time progress in verbal communication: upright gait/articulate speech; wheel/writing; animal-powered cart/Gutenbergian print­ ing; automobile/?; aeroplane/?. The question-marks in the final two analogizations orient Lissitzky's think­ ing, as always, towards future, as yet unknown pos­ sibilities (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, pp. 357-360; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 360-363).

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senses). He then responds to the common suggestion that time is actually a fourth dimension in addition to our normal three, and that time is felt or recognized indirectly through movement. He surveys the history of attempts to incorporate or render movement in art, both in representa­ tion (Futurism, and, interestingly Suprematism1 0 ) and in actuality (as in the mobile sculpture of Boccioni, Prusakow and Gabo1 1 ) . Having implicitly rejected these attempts to use time as a way of going beyond three-dimensional space and thereby find an spatial equivalent adequate to the "imaginary num­ bers," Lissitzky returns to speculation about how art might render a new expression of space. The terms in which he couches his tentative formulations are significant. He restates a basic theme of the essay, that objects and space are mutually dependent and mutually defined. Therefore, if

10.

"Suprematism formed the dynamic tensions of forces. The achievements of the Futurists and Suprematists are static planes which designate dynamism. They are tabula­ tions of the curves of dynamism and speed, transposed into the irrational and rendered sensate. This did not satisfy" (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 352 [my trans­ lation]; Lissit 2ky-Kiippers 1980, p. 356). It seems likely that Lissitzky is here including his own Proun works in the assessment that these attempts to incorporate movement, time, dynamism, had failed.

11.

Lissitzky also mentions modern advertising and its use of moving elements. This he exempts from the accusation of failure, because it alone was responding to an explicit need and demand. In this judgment is reflected both his own work for the Pelikan Company, discussed below, and his absorption of France's ideas about optimum integration into a functionally balanced whole, discussed in Chapter II.

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elementary bodies at rest form a normal, three-dimensional object in our normal three-dimensional space, then an elementary body in movement can form a new body, and there­ fore also create a corresponding new space. In an echo of his earlier belief of the necessary impact of the Proun painting on its surroundings (space, spectator, society), Lissitzky here argues that we

can approach the new space

through the agency of the new

object.

The availability of this new object to our senses remains crucial for Lissitzky. It is here that the role of photography and vision emerge as central. Lissitzky's examples of the new objects are illustrated by photographs of spinning rods which, for the duration of their spinning, create the visual illusion of a solid. This temporary materiality is captured by the lens of the

eye or camera

(fig. 103).12 Lissitzky underscores the material nature of the primary object (the material line of the rod), in con­

12.

The temporariness or ephemerality of the effect is important to Lissitzky. He ends his essay with an emphasis on overcoming monumentality, giving the example of the Eiffel Tower whose open, punctured form is some­ how equivalent to its role as a temporary edifice, meant only for the duration of the World's Fair. (The ephemerality makes it both material and immaterial, at the same time.) The only monumentality Lissitzky will countenance is the ever-expanding range of human achievement. According to Lissitzky, it is this attack on old notions of monumentality which an art of the new "imaginary space" can best achieve, in addition to its possible application in "everyday use ("Tagesverbrauch") and other potential benefits, notably the instrumentalization of the optical capacity to respond to light effects, described below.

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trast to film which deals only in dematerialized planar projection (though he acknowledges the achievements of Eggeling and his followers in using film to incorporate real movement into art's agenda). Also, film only exploits one aspects of our optical capacities (presumably the fusion of episodic images into continuous motion), whereas the new art of "imaginary space" will, among its "infinitely various effects," engage a whole series of our optical capacities, including the stereoscopic effects of movement in colored media; the color effects from the overlapping of colored rays formed by polarization; the transformation of acoustic into optical effects; and so on. While these examples may not be fully comprehensible, vision,

it is clear that they focus on

light and the eye. Moreover, although these concerns

are common to all visual cognition, it is precisely the photographic medium which engages most directly and overtly with the fact and function of light, not least in the medium's material ability to fix and show these processes.13 If the future of art was, therefore, to be located some­ where other than painting or architecture, what then did Lissitzky himself do? In fact, beginning in 1923, Lissitzky

13.

In this context, it is significant that Lissitzky included the following passage in his 1926 autobiographical "Life Film": "My Eyes: Lenses and eyepieces, precision instruments and single-lens reflex cameras, the cinema with its slow and fast motion, xrays and X, Y, Z rays have placed an additional 20, 2,000, 2,000,000 highly accurate, polished, searching eyes into my forehead" (Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 325 [my translation]; Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 329).

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did begin to devote serious time and effort to making photographs. Building on the results of his photogram created together with Vilmos Huszar and published in late 1923 (fig. 97), Lissitzky went on to explore photographic work first in a more private sphere of experiment, and then, more publicly,

in portraiture and commercial advertising

work during 1924 and into 1925.14 14.

In reviewing Lissitzky's practical engagement with photography in particular, it should be remembered that there is evidence that he was also thinking about film (often as a metaphor, more than as a project) in the years 1924, 1925 and, especially, 1926. In addition to instances mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the following can be adduced. He wrote a moving, and laudatory obituary for Viking Eggeling, who had died in May 1925, published in mid-1926 (Izvestiya A S N O V A . no. 1 [1926], p. 6, translated into German in LissitzkyKuppers 1977, pp. 205-206). In this brief notice, Lis­ sitzky recalled that there had once been the idea that he and Eggeling might collaborate on a film project (this is also mentioned in his letter to Sophie of 14 January 1925). Secondly, in an article about his typographic design, "typographic facts, e.g.," written in early 1925, he described his six-panel children's' book Of. Two Squares as "film-like" and arranged for the abstract scenes to be laid out accordingly (see Bibliography and Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 356, which, however, omits the illustrations). Lissitzky signed and dated the corrected proofs of this article on 2 May 1925, immediately prior to his return to the Soviet Union (see Typ. Cat. 1925/8). Furthermore, he opened his review, published in early 1926, of Erich Mendelsohn's book of photographs of America by noting that "leafing through its pages thrills us like a dramatic film" (El Lissitzky, "The Architect's Eye," translated by Alan Upchurch in Christopher Phillips, ed. Photography in the Modern E r a . European Documents and Critical W r i t i n g s . 1913-1940 [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Aperture, 1989], p. 221). In his letter to Sophie of 6 March 1926, Lissitzky expresses the desire to buy a movie camera and film architecture. Again, when asked by Katherine Dreier to send a biographical statement to the United States for use in a catalogue for an exhibition mounted by the Societd Anonyme, Lissitzky wrote an episodic treatment, headed "Up To 1926. The Life-Film of El." The autobiography was included with a letter of 26

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305 One of the earlier, more experimental works makes direct reference to the issues raised in "A. and Pangeometry.11 A virtually indecipherable photograph (fig. 104) from the mid­ twenties (probably 1924) is inscribed by Lissitzky with the evocative equation which alludes both to his multiple sources (in technological, biological and aesthetic think­ ing) and to his wish to transcend them: "N2ature + T e c h n o l o g y + A 2rt = /-I = El Lissitzky.1,15

The iconography

of this enigmatic work is difficult to establish. The light form in the left hand and upper portions of the image could be derived from the outline of a plant, flower or other organic object (and hence represent abstracted,

"squared"

nature). The rest of the image is dominated by fragments of blurrily rendered open-work girders, approximately arranged in a quasi-spiralling motion around the pale "flower" and centered at its center (perhaps referring to "squared" tech­ nology) . The fragmentation, silhouetting, overlaying and

July 1926 (New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Societe Anonyme Archives). A carbon copy is in TsGALI (2361/1/58/1-2), transcribed in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, pp. 325-326 (with the words of the heading rearranged). The translation into English in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 329-330, misdates the text to 1928, an incorrect date cited by many subsequent writers. 15.

Collection of Thomas Walther, New York, also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, pi. 79, p. 142. The status of this work is not clear, in the sense that it has not proved possible to determine whether this was a private image, or one intended for wider circulation, or even exhibition. For whom the inscription was added is also not clear.

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306

multiple other devices would then be the "squared" art of the caption. This inscription, by including "= El Lis­ sitzky,11 indicates that this is in some way a conceptual self-portrait. At the very least, it identifies the creative personality of the artist as equivalent to the imaginary reality of the square root of minus 1 (and of its component parts), still in the spirit of Malevich's subjectivism. At one level, then, this abstract multiple-exposure or multiple-negative photograph is evidence of photography's potentially greater ability to evoke that indefinite,

irra­

tional, complex and dynamic space at which the Prouns had been aiming.16 At the same time, it can be seen as belonging in the series of portraits (of other artists and of himself) which was the thematic focus of Lissitzky's work in photography at this stage.17

b) Photography and Graphic Design

Lissitzky's interest in portraiture culminates in the three photomontage portraits of Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters

16.

This is also well argued by H. A. Schuldt, "El Lissitzkys Photographische Arbeiten," in Eindhoven 1965, pp. 29-32.

17 .

In addition to the double portrait of Lissitzky and Huszdr (fig. 98) discussed at the end of the previous chapter), the photograph "In the Studio" of around 1923, showing Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Kiippers, Kathe Steinitz and other Hanover friends (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Cambridge 1987, pi. 80, p. 143) also belongs among the earliest examples of this series.

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and himself (in several versions), of late 1924. These go beyond being simply portraits of friends; they are portraits of artists. As such, they are an integral part of Lis­ sitzky's reflection on the status of art, a reflection that was particularly intense in 1924.18 They fulfill this func­ tion alongside their role as explorations of the medium of art. Moreover, besides being more conceptually rigorous than the earlier experiments, these three works introduce a new, crucial element into the iconography: they each incorporate, as a backdrop, an item of graphic design with direct rela­ tion to the portrayed. To take the portraits of Arp and Schwitters first: Arp (fig. 99) is presented in front of a page from the Parisian Dada magazine 391 of late 1920.19

This page was composed by

Tristan Tzara as an advertisement for a forthcoming sale of Dada publications, including Arp's La pompe a nuaaes (i.e. Die Wolkenpumpe. published in Hanover in 1920). The small section of the advertisement dealing with this work bears

18.

It may be that the need to collect photographs of the artists for the pages of Die Kunstismen prompted reflec­ tion on the question of the self-representation of the artist. Curiously, none of Lissitzky's three images were used in this book, which included no portrait of Schwit­ ters, another photograph of Arp (and also a manipulated one, in which his head was replaced by a sculpture), and a photograph (fig. 105) of Lissitzky seated, in coarse clothing, carrying a rolled-up canvas (signifying the architect's plans, or the end of painting?). See Typ. Cat. 1925/2, pp. 8 and 18.

19•

391 no. 14 (November 1920), illustrated in Dada and Surrealism Reviewed. exh. cat. (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978), p. 138

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the words "Voigi le c616bre Arp/le voigi venir/voigi le cdl^bre Arp/le voigi venir venir venir" and it is precisely these words which are bleached out in the photographic process, but which lie implicitly just below the sitter's chin in the photograph. Lissitzky's image (whose doubling may echo the repetition in the line of text) absorbs this verbal announcement into its signifying strategy. The image and the text announce the presence of Hthe famous Arp." As this was the first issue of 391 to publish work by the surely not-so-famous Arp, there may have been a certain Dadaist irony in this appellation, an irony which may have carried over into Lissitzky's perhaps not wholly respectful depiction of the collaborator who caused such problems with the editorial process of The Isms of A r t .20 For Schwitters (fig. 102), Lissitzky chose pages from M e r z . including the front page of the "Nasci" issue which Lissitzky and Schwitters jointly edited, together with an illustration from another issue, this one devoted to advertising designs for the "Pelikan" writing supplies and office products firm.

As in the case of Arp, the head of

the artist is here again associated with something which that head produces, with the results of its creativity.

20.

Those who have seen a comment on Arp's "two-facedness" in this double printing can certainly find support for this suggestion in Lissitzky's use of the photograph on the cover of II'ya Sel'vinskii's Notes of a P o e t . T a l e . where it represents Evgenii Ney, a dubious character in the eponymous poem included in the volume (cf. Typ. Cat. 1928/1).

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Embedded in the social world by affiliation with a typographic product, each artist is presented via a twodimensional printed image with an two-dimensional "attribute" from the world of printing. The conceptual level at which this strategy of portraiture operates,

is

underscored in these two cases by the doubling of the artist's image through the superimposition of two images the subject's head, in different positions. Although this may relate to Lissitzky's interest in movement and time (by implying that the artist's head has shifted position, thereby making the photograph a kind of virtual fi l m ) , the artist is also using photography's power to present an image that appears both alludes to known reality and, at the same time, dematerializes or "abstracts" it. An iconographic reading of the Schwitters portrait could relate almost everything to Schwitters's famous performances of his "nonsense" poems, the "Ursonate." One of the incorporated photographs of Schwitters shows him with hooded eyes and his mouth open (and having moved slightly during exposure), against the identifying typeset words "MERZ/KUR [T SCHWI] T [ERS]." Covering his mouth is a suitably dadaistic photograph of a parrot in a hoop, clearly a reference to "parroting," reciting, singing. To the left of this combination has been added another photograph of Schwitters (noticeably larger, with his mouth and eyes much more actively open, and leaning forward rather than back-

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ward), set against the pages from M e r z .

The "Nasci" quota­

tion about becoming and nature can be related to the parrot (and to the status of the "Ursonate" as creative work), while the advertisement for Pelikan typewriter-ribbon is carefully placed so that a curved arrow points into Schwit­ ters's ear, close to a question-mark. This latter configura­ tion of ear, arrow, question-mark, and text succinctly sum­ marizes the question of the transition from typed words to oral language (the relationship between text and per­ formance) which is central to Schwitters's poetic work. The fragments of printed text (from a newspaper?) at the lower right also relate directly to the question of the status of the mechanically rendered language and its relationship to expressivity (either in visual design or spoken sound). The portrait, in fact, stages questions about personal and public language, individual creativity and mass communica­ tion, "abstract" art (poetry) and graphic design. These are questions close to Lissitzky's own reassessment of his work at this point. More than this, it stages questions about the appropriate role of the artist, for the double image of Schwitters also carries meaning. Lissitzky has placed the two photographs of Schwitters so that they share an eye (much like the drawing of the heads of his two sons as two overlapping circles with a shared eye, sent on a postcard to Sophie on 2 3 March 1924, i.e.

just before he was working on

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311

this portrait).21 The Schwitters portrait brings together an active, alert, aggressive artist and a more withdrawn, reserved, retiring one.

(To a lesser extent, the contrast

can be seen in the Arp portrait as well.) Similarly,

an

undated photograph (fig. 106) of the period shows two views of the same man against the same (as yet unidentified) skyline, one with the man thoughtful, absorbed, hunched over, facing left, looking down, the other with him poised for movement, upright, facing right,

looking into the dis­

tance.22 Is this a contrast between the vita contemplativa and the vita ac t i v a . two sides of the figure (the artist?), whose own superimposed head straddles the two in this photograph? If the Schwitters portrait and related works used this doubling to explore the tensions between various sides of the artist and his work, it is notable that Lissitzky eschews such direct doubling of the image in his work on his own portrait in photography. The self-portrait now known at 21.

This design device reappeared in Lissitzky's poster of 1929 for the Russian Exhibition in Zurich (Typ. Cat. 1929/3), where he fused the heads of a male and female Pioneer Scout. This latter merging of male and female (two "opposed" but mutually dependent principles) is parallel to the staged comparison between two contrast­ ing human states under discussion. In 1929, the fused heads emblematize a utopian overcoming of individuality and gender in the perfect homogeneity of the USSR, whose initials appear as a banner on the figures' foreheads. This explicitly political meaning (in an iconographic sense) is not yet present in the works of 1924.

22.

New York, Museum of Modern Art, also illustrated Cam­ bridge 1987, pi. 82, p. 145.

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312

"The Constructor"

(fig. 101) uses but a single photograph of

Lissitzky's head, though it too is surrounded by emblems of his work, including an appropriate piece of typographic design. Before embarking on a detailed discussion of this key work, it will be useful to analyze another photographic self-portrait by Lissitzky from the same moment in his career (fig. 107), one that in a way may be seen as a preliminary study for "The Constructor." This earlier essay in the genre of emblematic self-portraiture apparently exists only in a unique example; it was not duplicated or distributed. As such, it can be seen either as a rejected "version," or as essentially a private meditation which dif­ fers sharply from the more public "Constructor." Either approach allows the viewer to use the unique image both as a clue to the methods Lissitzky used to explore the pressing question of the artist's role, and to focus on elements of the "final" image which, by contrast to the "study," con­ tribute most to defining its meaning. "Self-Portrait with Wrapped Head" shows Lissitzky facing left, with his head swathed in a white

c a p .

23 The sharp-

pointed arms of a pair of compasses extend from the pivot at the lower left to bracket this head, one arm vertically at the left, the other traversing the neck diagonally towards the upper right. Over the artist's face is montaged a metal-

23.

This description is indebted to the text (prepared with my assistance) published in New York 1991, p. 28, with some further identifications added.

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313

lie strip, the photographic illustration from his essay "K. und Pangeometrie" representing a line "at rest" (before it spins rapidly to produce the imaginary plane through rota­ tion). Along the bottom margin of the image (not unlike the interpretive text accompanying the image in an Old Master engraving) are barely legible fragments of typographic design from Lissitzky's illustrations for Mayakovsky's For The V o i c e . One fragment is a double exposure of the three circles marked with the names of three cities of the capitalist West from the poem "Garbage"

(fig. 67), with the

pivot of the pair of compasses placed to coincide with one of these circles. Also present, towards the left hand corner, is a faint double image of the phrase "Eto vam [This is to you]" from the poem "Order No. 2 To the Army of the Arts" (fig. 70).24 How is this aggregate of allusions to be interpreted? Lissitzky is here seemingly the invalid, the image of the wounded modern artist, his head bandaged.25 Threatened by 24.

Typ. Cat. 1923/3, pp. 16 and 34 respectively. For com­ ments on the content and design of these poems, see above, Chapter III. It is appropriate for Lissitzky to chose design elements from this volume, which he con­ sidered one of his most important and successful works to date. The poem "Order No. 2..." would have special significance, as it was first published in 1922 in the journal Lissitzky edited with Ehrenburg, Ve s h c h . Geaenstand. O b i e t .

25.

Cf. the valuable essay by Margarita Tupitsyn, "Between Fotoois' and Factography" in New York 1991, pp. 5-7, at p. 6. In this context, it is interesting to note that Picasso's drawing of Apollinaire, shown in profile with the top of his head completely bandaged from a war wound, was reproduced in the Europa-Almanach (in which Lissitzky's essay "K. und Pangeometrie appeared) on p.

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314

the arras of the pair of compasses, he is associated with the metallic strip "at rest." This passive and imperiled immobility of the self-critical artist is commented upon by the typographic elements below. The three circles/cities (Berlin, London, Paris) in Mayakovsky's poem represent the evil influence of the West in allegedly causing the famine in Russia in 1921-1922. In his design for the Mayakovsky volume (fig. 67), Lissitzky expressed this connexion by attaching the cities by dotted lines to various forms of the city name Samara (standing for the site of the famine), and to images of the skull-and-cross bones, the symbol of death. Translated to the context of the photomontage self-portrait, this configuration of forms implies that the West (Lis­ sitzky 's home for the previous three years) is causing Lis­ sitzky 's death (the skulls would be directly under his head in the photomontage). Is this death a personal or an artistic one? At one level, Lissitzky's precarious health condition makes an autobiographical reading plausible.26 Without denying the

141 (just before the section of Malevich's writings). Although Lissitzky's image was probably made before the almanac appeared, the drawing may have been reproduced elsewhere in 1924 (as had many of the illustrations in this compendium). 26.

Of course, much of the argument concerning the "organic metaphor" in Chapter II above is intended to underscore the extent to which Lissitzky could use a concept such as "death" to cover and link the entire range of his experience, from the personal to the political.

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315 validity of this dimension, it makes more sense for the present argument to locate this pessimism about his status at the level of a reaction to a crisis in his view of art. This emphasis is reinforced by the implications of the second borrowing from For the Voice (fig. 70).

"Order No. 2

to the Army of the Arts" is Mayakovsky's call to action to create an art that would be of direct usefulness to the young Soviet Republic. The repeated refrain "This is to you" introduces appeals to various creative talents (musicians, singers, dancers, poets, etc.) to "quit your rot/before you're debunked/with the butts of rifles! Quit it,/forget and spit/and spit on rhymes,/arias,/roses,/hearts,/and all other suchlike shit/out of the arsenals of the arts."27 Lis­ sitzky's graphic design in the book had taken the refrain "This is to you" and linked it to a hand with the index finger extended to point at a cross-like element. Here, in the photograph, the phrase seems directed at himself, a exhortatory reminder that (to quote Mayakovsky's poem again) "master-craftsmen/not long-haired preachers,/that is what we need." The hand element from For the Voice would coincide exactly with the pivot of the pair of compasses, as if the admonition to artists was not only pointing at Lissitzky, but even threatening him with execution (by the symbol of modern architectural planning)

27.

for his hitherto ineffectual

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg in Vladimir Mayakovsky, Selected Works in Three Vol u m e s . vol. 1, Selected Verse (Moscow: Raduga, 1985), pp. 83-85.

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316

work,

for his passivity. This is not the single-minded,

explicit message of this photomontage; rather, in this private image (whose privacy is underscored by the ways some of its meanings depend on the knowledgeable viewer filling in missing or obscured elements from the typographic frag­ ments),

it is an undertone, a cumulative impression of self-

reproach and self-criticism. Certainly, Lissitzky had been evaluating his career. This can be seen in his reading of Raoul Heinrich France, in his retrospective look at the development of the avant-garde in The Isms of A r t . in his growing interest in the immediately useful (and in graphic design and architecture, especially). Moreover, circumstances were encouraging him to give thought to his relationship to the Soviet state, his homeland. Thoughts of returning to Moscow and the demands of work in that context were common in 1924 and 1925.28 Many of these questions are embodied in this meditative, almost tragic self-portrait.

In a sense, the "Constructor” con­

stituted some of Lissitzky's answers to these questions.

It

certainly displays a different mood, and a different me s ­

28.

Two letters are especially relevant here. On 26 May 1924, Lissitzky wrote to Sophie of his pressing desire to undertake any creative task that was immediately use­ ful. On 14 January 1925, he wrote to her of his excite­ ment at seeing publications from the Soviet Union, where "everything is in gestation," while in the West, every­ thing is dying.

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317

sage, though it uses many of the same devices as the "SelfPortrait with Wrapped Head."29 In the "Constructor"

(fig. 101),

uncovered; the hand holding

Lissitzky's head is now

the pair of compasses

is no

longer an implied typographic element from an earlier work, it is Lissitzky's own hand;

the pair of compasses

(formerly

a negative form, now a more

concrete positive) no

longer

constricts the artist's head, it usefully describes a cir­ cle; the background is no longer a vaguely atmospheric space, it is the resolutely shallow and conceptual plane of graph paper; the typographic element is no longer made up of the politically charged, agitational fragments from Mayakovsky,

29.

it is now Lissitzky's own self-representation

It is important to note, before beginning the discus­ sion of this self-portrait, that the evocative and per­ haps limiting title by which it is currently known, "The Constructor," is almost certainly not Lissitzky's own choice. During his lifetime, Lissitzky regularly titled the work simply "Self-Portrait," even as late as the autobiographical notes he composed in 1941, the year of his death. His first reference to it comes in a letter of 12 December 1924 (the first to use his new letter­ head) , where he writes of working on "a Self-lightportrait." Sending it to Sophie on 20 December 1924, he writes, "Enclosed my self-portrait: my monkey hand." (The last three words, a running private joke in which Lissitzky often refers to himself as a monkey, are writ­ ten in red.) The title "Constructor" first appears in print in the caption to an illustration in an essay by Jan Tschichold of the early 1930s (Jan Tschichold, "Uber El Lissitzky," Imprimatur. Ein Jahrbuch fur Bucherfreunde, vol. Ill (1932), pp. 97-112, at p. 97: "der konstrukteur. selbstbidlnis. doppelkopie und fotogram"). This was probably the source for the title as used in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pi. 114. The present discussion retains this current title, partly because it is not inappropriate, but mostly for convenience.

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through his newly-designed letterhead with his own name, his own monogram ("el") and his own modernist rectilinearity in black and red lines (fig. 108, Typ. Cat. 1924/17, a letter­ head first used on 12 December 1924); the typographic ele­ ments in this case are not shadowy, blurred forms, but the neutral assertiveness of XYZ, plain and clear. The dif­ ficulty of assigning a meaning to this XYZ alerts the viewer to the fact that the "Constructor" is also significantly less anecdotal,

less narrative,

less definably political

that the attempt at self-portraiture which preceded it. Lis­ sitzky is making a more general statement here, a more public one. Much as his earliest "non-objective" works had moved from definable architectural reference to the more abstract realms of "Proun," so too here does Lissitzky move from decipherable reference to a vaguer allusiveness and symbolism. The "Constructor" has attracted a great deal of atten­ tion from interpreters.30 Already in Lissitzky7s lifetime, a writer offered a suggestive reading, which is worth quoting

30.

For example, see three recent essays by German scholars: Werner Hoffmann, "Sur un Auto-Portrait de El Lissitzky," Gazette des Beaux Arts, Vie per., vol. CVII no. 1404 (January 1986), pp. 39-44; Peter Rautmann, "Pladoyer fur ein neues Sehen in Kunst und Leben. Lissitzkys Selbstbildnis 7Der Konstrukteur,7" in El Lis­ sitzky. Konstrukteur, D e n k e r . Pfeifenraucher. Kommunist. exh. cat. (Mainz: Hermann Schmidt, for the Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt, 1990), pp. 44-61; and Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg, "El Lissitzky 7Der Konstrukteur7 (Selbstbildnis) von 1924. Kiinstlerbildnis zwischen Funktionalismus und Utopie," Pantheon, vol. L (1992), pp. 125-134.

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319

in full, in the slightly awkward English version of the bi­ lingual article of 1928: In all this [his varied work] there is more understand­ ing and will-power than feeling and intuition. According to this, Lissitzky, in comparison with the typical representatives of the Russian individuality, is not so much a mere Russian, but rather represents the type modern of the "good European." His self-portrait also indicates as much. The hand which seems to start from the brain between the eye and the brow, belongs, like the head, to an intellectual type. This hand holds a compass. Above to the left we se the letters X Y Z . The Y is pierced by a thin circle. A sheet of drawing-paper ruled in squares forms the background. These lines are also carried on over the entire face. The brows and cheeks [are] covered with thin horizontal and per­ pendicular lines. Or is it the lines of the head that have spread over the paper? In any case we discover right angles, squares and even a triangle accentuated in half-tone above and next to this countenance with the fascinating eyes and the pointed nose. X Y Z . The last things mean no more to this artist than three letters of the alphabet, through the midst of which he brazenly traces the circle of his speculations. Such is the character of this self-portrait; cool consideration, mathematic speculation, combined with geometrical mysticism.31 Later commentators have deepened this analysis through identifying the various sources on which Lissitzky could draw in this conceptualizing self-presentation. These include the traditional iconography of the eye, the circle, and the pair of compasses, which can add up to an image of the artist as the equivalent of the divine creator of the

31.

Traugott Schalcher, "El Lissitzky, Moskau" Gebrauchsarafik vol. 5 no. 12 (December 1928), pp. 4964, at pp. 50-51, 56. This is the only substantial com­ mentary on the photograph by a contemporary.

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320

world.32 Lissitzky has here treated the relationship between thinking and action, between mind and hand. The emblematic fusion of the artist's eye directly with his palm,

in turn

connected by the precise, objective tool of the pair of com­ passes drawing the perfect circle, all against the back­ ground of graph paper, summarizes the new image of the creator as a supra-subjective constructor of life. Lissitzky had in fact already used the configuration of an eye, a hand, and an instrument once before, in the final lithograph from the Khad Gadya portfolio of 1919 (fig. 109). There, the sword-wielding hand emerged from the eye of God to slay the Angel of Death.33 Now, five years later in the photomontage self-portrait, the possibility of a surprisingly similar meaning emerges. This becomes clearer when an additional source of Lissitzky's composition is identified. While in

32.

Lissitzky "emploie tous les dldments de la nouvelle divinisation sous une apparence r^solument moderne et d'avant-garde. La disposition des formes porte la marque du constructivisme....Mais en rdalite, c'est un ensemble des plus traditionalistes" (Hoffmann, "Sur un auto­ portrait," p. 40). Hoffmann refers to Phillip Otto Runge (for the circle), to the conceptual architecture of the French Revolution (for the eye), and to Christian iconography of the hand of God (for the hand). Other authors adduce other, equivalent "sources."

33.

Typ. Cat. 1919/1, also illustrated in Cambridge 1987, pi. 12, p. 75. For a rich explication of this image, and of the portfolio as a whole, as evidence of Lissitzky's understanding of the Revolution as the divinely guided fulfillment of the Day of Judgment and redemption of the Jews (and as Lissitzky's appeal to traditional Jewish youth to follow the life-saving path of the Revolution), see Haia Friedberg, "Lissitzky's Had Ga d i a ' ," Jewish Art v o l s . 12-13 (1987), pp. 292-303.

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321

1919, Lissitzky drew the hand emerging from the eye-socket and gripped

into a fist to hold the hilt, in 1924 the hand

is arranged

in a much more passive, open pose, so that the

eye and the

palm merge. Is this not an allusion to the dic­

tum promulgated tirelessly by Malevich in his Vitebsk days: "Let the rejection of the old world of art be traced on the palms of your hands"? For example, this slogan appeared at the beginning of both On the New Systems in Art (1919) and The Question of Imitative Art (1920).34 It adorned the cover of the almanac designed by Lissitzky and published by Unovis in mid-1920, and Lissitzky himself quoted it on a cover design of 1921.35 The activity of the eye, hand and pair of compasses is, by this account, as much directed towards the

34.

K. S. Malevich, Essays on A r t . vol. 1 (1915-1928), ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968), pp. 83 and 165. The sentence also appeared on the cover of the former book­ let (Typ. Cat 1919/12).

35.

For an illustration the cover of the almanac (Typ. Cat. 1920/4), see Andr6i B. Nakov, Abstrait/concret. Art non­ ob iect if russe et polonais (Paris: Transedition, 1981), p. 72. The cover design by Lissitzky for the publication of another of his lectures of late 1921 also quoted this maxim (Typ. Cat. 1921/6). The quotation in the lecture of September 1921 occurs on the title sheet of the transcript used by John E. Bowlt for his translation into English (Cologne 1976, p. 59). This, however, omits "of art" from "the old world of art," thereby broadening the reference to include all aspects of the old world, including the political and social. It must be admitted that, without being able to consult Lissitzky's original manuscript, this instance cannot be attributed to Lis­ sitzky with complete certainty. The report on Unovis activity from the journal Ermitazh quoted in Chapter I of the present study also includes a version referring only to "the old world."

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322

destruction of the old as towards the construction of the new. Can this account for the sequence of stencilled let­ ters, XYZ. Are these (as argued by the contemporary com­ mentator of 1928 cited above) a representation of the "last things," the end of the old order, canceled by the circle drawn by the pair of compasses? On a less religious level, the letters XYZ could represent the last of the conven­ tional, old alphabet. Lissitzky's ambition would then be the creation not just of the architecture implied by the draft­ ing instruments, but of a new alphabet, a new typography, a new visual language.36 In the self-portrait, after all, Lis­ sitzky is looking (to the future?) out of the image, to the right, with all the symbolic attributes "behind" him. In this reading, however, Lissitzky's recently designed letter-head (fig. 108), such a crucial element in his mode of portraiture combining photography and typographic design, would then also be associated with these "last things...through which the artist brazenly traces the circle of his speculations." Does the artist's identity, symbolized by this letterhead (present as a negative form in the

36.

Other readings of "XYZ" could point to the allusion to the title of the Swiss architectural magazine on which he was working, A B C : to the mathematical symbols for algebraic quantities, perhaps used by Lissitzky to represent modern, functional, unbounded mathematics, in a Spenglerian manner;and to modern "x, y, and z rays" standing for the precision and perspicacity of modern optics, as cited by Lissitzky in his 1926 autobiographi­ cal statement (Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 329). There may be an element of truth to all these suggestions.

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323

photomontage), belong to the past as well? Or is it merely his identity as a typographic designer (moving, as he thought he was, into architectural activity)? Or is it only his official name "El Lissitzky" which is canceled,

leaving

his monogram "el" (in script imitating a typewriter and using the Roman alphabet) at the forward-pointing end of the arrow-form in the letterhead?37 Is such a literalizing read­ ing of the typographic design of the letterhead even legitimate? When Lissitzky received a proof printing of the letterhead from the Swiss printer in early December 1924, he sent it to Sophie with a written note: "I have just received this proof from the printer. The typesetter has asked me to say whether he has understood the meaning correctly: Light (the red arrow) breaks through the darkness (the black). What answer should I give?"38

Not only does the anonymous

37.

It is worth noting that this monogram was very important to Lissitzky. He continued to use it regularly up to the year of his death (as in drawings in the Tretyakov Gallery for the design of pavilions and exhibition stands at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibi­ tion as late as February 1941 [inv. nos. Arkh. Gr. 36131698] and the design for the cover of an edition of Mayakovsky's works, dated April 1941 [inv. no. RS 1840]). This was surely not a meaningless gesture, given the monogram's Western, modernistic aura, in a decade of Stalinist chauvinism and repression.

38.

This note is illustrated in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pi. 7, p. 149 ("Eben habe ich diesen Probedruck aus der Druckerei erhalten, der Satzer bietet mich zu antworten ob er richtig den Sinn verstanden hat: Licht (roter Pfeil) durchbricht die Finsternis (Schwarzes). Was soil ich darauf antworten?"). Cf. Typ. Cat. 1924/17. If Lis­ sitzky is reporting the type-setter's question accurately, this is one of the very few genuine examples of a (presumably) working-class response to a specific item of so-called "high modernist" design. Lissitzky's (amused? exasperated? baffled?) response - "What answer

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324

typesetter's query encapsulate the problem of reading modernist, abstract graphic design (and by extension, paint­ ing) symbolically (a question that is at the heart of these investigations), it also resonates with possible readings of the photographic self-portrait into which this red and black emblem is incorporated. Does the self-portrait represent the breaking through the darkness (the "old world," the "last things") into the light of restructured consciousness? The awkwardness of pushing a detailed iconographic read­ ing so far in this way is instructive.

It reveals not only

the difficulties inherent in trying to assign a single coherent meaning to any of Lissitzky's works, but also the deep ambiguities embedded in this multivalent image itself. Commentators have repeatedly noted this ambiguity, even to the extent of arguing that Lissitzky has here resorted to "the smokescreen of photomontage" to hide the fact that he could hardly "lower his concepts from the ideal to the reality of today," as revealed most poignantly by the ges­ ture with which the artist holds the pair of compasses,

"an

elegant, affected gesture, hardly in accord with the 'proletarian artist' working for and with the masses [and] an impotent gesture, for the tool the artist uses to build

should I give?" - itself embodies the doubts and dif­ ficulties surrounding this kind of "interpretation."

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325 the new order appears as an effete symbol, not as a practi­ cal implement."39 While such an interpretation is surely extreme and one­ sided, others have consistently noted the mood of melancholy pervading the image, the aura of introspection and con­ templation which balances the implied activity of planning and construction. The image seems to integrate within itself the vita activa and the vita contemplativa noted above. This duality corresponds to a series of tensions within the image clustered around the twin poles of the geometric and the figurative, the abstract and the organic. Lissitzky corre­ lates and contrasts the perfect curve of the circle and the irregular form of the head, the precise regularity of the graph-paper grid and the uneven contours of the hand, the definition of the typographic letters and the immeasurability of the chiaroscuro effects.40 This range of paired reference (to the ideal and to the real, to produc­ tivity and to imagination, to the rational and to the arbitrary) reinforces the meditative, questioning air of the self-portrait, an air that seems to dominate over any tri­ umphant, proclamative gesture.41 The staging of the self as 3°.

Alan C. Birnholz, El Liss i t z k y . Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1973, pp. 316-317.

40.

These aspects of the image are well brought out by Rautmann, "Pladoyer fur ein neues Sehen."

41.

Compare Margarita Tupitsyn's view which stresses the "triumphant" quality of the image ("Between Fotopis# and Factography"). Similarly emphasizing the affirmative side to the image, Johanna Drucker uses it to explicate the model of the "artist as producer" proposed by Walter

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a melancholy artist has, of course, a long tradition in Western art. Indeed, Lissitzky's self-portrait can be read as an extraordinarily faithful modernization of Albrecht Diirer's canonical engraving of 1504, which also brings together a pensive figure, a pair of compasses, geometric figures, enigmatic written symbols in a multiple image reflecting on the nature of knowledge and activity. Combin­

Benjamin in his eponymous essay written ten years later. Drucker sees the image as denying Romantic subjectivity and any hint of transcendence. It presents "someone very much at the service of the various applications in which his abilities make him useful. [...] Artist as engineer, element in the machine of production - not unthinking but integrated and engaged" (Johanna Drucker, Theorizing Modernism. Visual Art and the Critical Tradition [New York: Columbia University Press, 1994], p. 126). Although my interpretation sees more self-reflexivity in the image of the artist associating himself with his own name and initials, amongst other symbols and references that are perhaps more inner-directed than explicitly social, this linking of Lissitzky and Benjamin is sug­ gestive, and not only for stimulating thought on Lis­ sitzky's view of cultural authorship. One might also point to their parallel commitments to both Marxist and Jewish traditions (though, in each case, to traditions of significantly different strengths and kinds), which could prompt intriguing analyses of the respective ele­ ments of materialism and mysticism (to put it broadly) in both of their oeuvres. Indeed, if Benjamin is seen as the quintessential "melancholic" figure (as is movingly and persuasively done by Susan Sontag in the title essay of her collection Under the Sian of Saturn [New York: Vintage Books, 1981], pp. 107-134), then Lissitzky's "melancholic" self-portrait could be linked to the Benjaminian universe in a rich diversity of ways. For a dense investigation of the ways in which various artists in Germany were using the self-portrait in the early 1920s as a device to question the status of the creative individual (including a rich discussion of the similarities of the "Constructor" to Paul Klee's selfportrait of 1919, "Absorption" ["Versunkenheit"]), see Heusinger von Waldegg, "El Lissitzky 'Der Konstruktuer' (Selbstbildnis)."

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ing the visual and literary traditions of melancholy, one of the four temperaments, with geometry, one of the seven liberal arts, Diirer presents the massive winged figure as immobilized, dejected,

lethargic - the (self-?) image of an

artist who has mastered practical skills, but who is aware of human limitations and therefore unable to act. The resonance of the mood and symbols in Lissitzky's image with Diirer's print is remarkable.42 What public role did this rich, powerful image play? A review of the various different arenas in which Lissitzky deployed this image can help further to locate its various meanings more precisely. First, it is clear that Lissitzky used the photograph as a personal gift to friends and col­ leagues, as a memento and sign of fellowship. Known dedicatees of inscribed copies of the photograph include

42.

This comparison has now been made in print in passing by Rautmann, "Pladoyer fur ein neues Sehen," p. 56. It may be only a coincidence, but it can be noted that the classic study of Diirer's engraving and its meaning as a self-revelation of the artistic temperament, was published in Germany only the year before Lissitzky made his photograph: Erwin Panofsky and Fritz S a x l , Diirers 'Melencolia' I, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 2, (Leip­ zig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1923). Even if Lissitzky did not directly know this essay and its argument, the publication may have led to a number of published reproductions of Diirer's print, increasing the likelihood that Lissitzky was prompted in some measure by the print. Furthermore, the speculation that Lis­ sitzky would probably have known the Diirer image anyway, given his education and experience as reflected in scat­ tered allusion to various Renaissance artists, is surely legitimate.

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Oud, Tschichold, and the Polish architect Syrkus.43 Copies deriving from the collections of such friends as Kathe Steinitz probably had a similar function.44 Beyond these relatively private uses, the example of Katherine Dreier's copy shows that Lissitzky was also prepared to send the photograph to those needing an illustration of the artist for an exhibition catalogue.45 43.

The copy for Oud, inscribed on the recto in ink at lower left "Gruss fur Oud. El Lissitzky. 25," is in a private collection, Holland (reproduced in Eindhoven 1965, cat. no. E2, p. 137); for Tschichold, inscribed on the verso "Fur Iwan Tschichold von El Lissitzky. Moskau 1. vii. 1925," is now in the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Department of Special Collections, Los Angeles, California; for Szymon Syrkus (a fellow student at the evacuated Riga Polytechnic Institute during the First World W a r ) , inscribed on the verso in Russian "For my colleague Syrkus in memory of our student days, El Lissitzky, August 1926," is in the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (acquired from the estate of Theo van Doesburg, though how it came from Syrkus to van Doesburg is not known).

44.

Kathe Steinitz's copy is monogrammed at the lower left of image in graphite "el" and inscribed on the mount, in blue ink but not in the artist's hand, "EL LISSITZKI / to Mrs Kate Steinitz," presumably transcribing and translating a dedication by the artist on the original mount. According to a letter from Steinitz to Jean Leer­ ing of 4 August 1968 (Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Archives), this was a red, gray, and black mat designed by Lissitzky, but later removed when the work was rematted. Inscribed on the verso of the current mount "For Lydia and Harry with/ love/ Rose," it was given by Rose Fried of the Rose Fried Gallery in 1949 to the Lydia and Harry Winston Collection (Mrs. Barnett Malbin), when the Winstons acquired Proun Inventory no. 95. It is illustrated in Cambridge 1987, p. 12.

45.

A copy, strengthened with ink retouching on the eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, lips, chin and in the neckfolds of the sweater, was sent by Lissitzky in July 1926 to Katherine Dreier, who illustrated it (in reverse!) in her Modern Art (New York: Societe Anonyme, Museum of Modern Art, 1926), p. 76, together with a rewritten ver­ sion of Lissitzky's autobiographical text, "Until

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The "Constructor" could also be exhibited as a work in its own right, as happened, probably for the first time, at the 1927 Printing Trades Exhibition in Moscow.46 After this, the image began to have a wide currency, being reproduced in the pioneering article on Lissitzky in a German graphic design journal in late 1928, quoted above.47 In 1929, its status as a modern icon was assured, not only through Lissitzky's

1926...." Both the photograph and Lissitzky's original text are now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Societd Anonyme Archives). 46.

See note 2, above. It is interesting that Lissitzky chose not to exhibit this work in Moscow in 1926. When he participated as a guest at the "4 Arts" artists' society exhibition in November 1926, he showed the photograms of the "Runner in the City" (cat. no. 383, as "Experiment for a Fresco for a Sports-Club") and the portrait of Arp (cat. no. 384). The rest of his con­ tributions were focussed on architecture or interior design and the representation thereof: the "Lenin Tribune" (no. 379, as "Tribune for a Square"), two views of the "Wolkenbiigel" (no. 381, as "Skyscraper for Mos­ cow"), and sheets documenting the designs for a room for contemporary painting in Dresden (no. 3 81) and Hanover (no. 382). For information about the "4 Arts" society (and about official criticism that it was a bourgeois grouping), see Myuda Naumovna Yablonskaya, Konstantin Nikolaevich Istomin (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1972), pp. 28-32, 169-175. In his letter to Chashnik of 6 November 1926, Lissitzky confessed that, in the con­ text of the exhibition, he "looked like a Martian amongst all the setting and rising suns" (Cologne 1976, p. 75). This exhibition, some 16 months after his return to Moscow, was apparently his first in Russia since 1921. In letters to Sophie of August (undated) and 8 September 1925, Lissitzky had, however, written of con­ sidering an exhibition in the autumn of a mixture of architecture, typography, lithographs, old Prouns, new works on card and photographs. Either he decided against this, or nothing came of the idea.

47.

Schalcher, "El Lissitzky, Moskau," p. 49 (as "Portrait of himself [Photo-Painting] 1923").

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decision to include it in the Soviet section of the "Film und Foto" exhibition, organized by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart (from 15 May to 7 July 1929) and subseguently toured through Central Europe, but also through its reproduction as the cover of the hugely influential compila­ tion of images from the exhibition, foto-auae. edited by Tschichold and Franz Roh (fig. 110).48 Four years before this public apotheosis, however, Lis­ sitzky had in 1925 "published" this image in two widely varying contexts. These appearances have hitherto not been adequately noted or studied.

In one case, the photograph was

reproduced with curious, enigmatic captions in the Swiss architectural journal ABC, on which Lissitzky was an active collaborator.

In the other, Lissitzky appears to have wel­

comed the opportunity to associate this photograph, enlarged

48.

Jan Tschichold and Franz Roh, eds. foto-auge. 76 fotos der zeit (Stuttgart: Dr. Fritz Wedekind, 1929), cover (captioned on p. [2] as "el lissitzky selbstbildnis"). For the 1929 exhibition, see Ute Eskildsen and JanChristopher Horak, e d s . , Film und Foto der Zwanziaer Jahre. Eine Betrachtuna der Internationalen Werkbundausstelluna 'Film und F o t o ' 1929, exh. cat. (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, for the Wiirttembergischer Kunstverein, 1979). Moreover, Lissitzky's photograph was illustrated in all the various versions of the 1929 exhibition catalogue (e.g. on p. 36 of the Stuttgart edition, as "Self-Portrait"). No doubt the "Constructor" would have been included in the collection of his own photographs which Lissitzky was planning to issue in 1929/1930, as announced in Franz Roh, ed. Laszlo Moholv-Naay. 60 Fotos (Berlin: Klinkhardt and Biermann, 1930), p. 73 as "El Lissitzky. 60 Fotos und Typofotos," though never published. The plans for this publication are discussed in letters to Tschichold (Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities).

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331 to poster-scale and in other formats, with an architecture exhibition of some kind being organized in Berlin by an as yet otherwise unidentified architect named Mahlberg. The latter case is tantalizing, but as yet very poorly documented. In a passage in her reminiscences of Lissitzky, Sophie writes that a "progressive architect in Berlin" named Mahlberg became so enthusiastic about Lissitzky's selfportrait photograph that he "requested it as a poster for his office," along with the "Lenin Tribune" and the eleva­ tions of the horizontal, three-legged skyscraper, the socalled "Wolkenbtigel" (Sky Hook).49 The only other evidence so far available derives from Lissitzky's letters to Sophie. Without her letters to him explaining the proposal, inter­ pretation is very difficult, but it seems as if Mahlberg's request was not just for an image to display in his office, but rather in some way for an image to advertise his architectural practice, in poster format, as print advertisment and in a brochure.

(In this context, the correspondence

shows Lissitzky's meticulous attention to the minutiae of reproduction quality and display circumstances.) The "exhibition" proposal may have also related in some way to a

49.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 55. The fullest account of Lissitzky's skyscraper project and its architectural and ideological context is now J. Christoph Biirkle, El Lis­ sitzky; Der Traum vom Wolkenbuael (Zurich: GTA Institut fur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, 1991).

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display at his office as a way of attracting clients or of promoting the new architecture generally.50 50.

As the passages in Lissitzky's correspondence relating to this incident have not been published, they are translated here: On 14 January 1925, Lissitzky writes to Sophie: "What is Malberg? I didn't make my head for Pelikan or for any other poster purposes, but it would be fun to [use it to] characterize architecture ["abstempeln die Architektur"] (which hopefully is not absolutely terrible). Afterwards you must send back the small sketch and on no account show it at Pelikan. I have no finished enlargement that I can send. It'll take a few days, then I will send it together with the LeninTribune to Malberg via you. The brochure interests me." Four days later, on 18 January, Lissitzky writes: "In a roll, I am sending (as registered mail) two large photos 1) Lenintribune. 2) Architecture-Poster for Mahlberg. In the haste and in bed, I could not myself go down to Buchi [the photographer's studio], that's why the enlargement of my headhand [sic] ended up a little flat, it should have stronger contrasts. But it isn't clear to me what purpose the poster is to serve (will it be printed, or will just the original be in the exhibi­ tion?) In any case I can have it made again when I have more exact information. For the print advertisement and brochure I will have it done differently. One must look at the poster from a distance of 7-10 paces." Two months later, the subject reappears in the correspondence. On 23 March, Lissitzky writes "This plan of Mahlberg's is not very inspired, but if they have the money to execute a model, then it'll work." Four days later, in response to a request from the November Group to participate in the summer exhibition, Lissitzky writes that they can have "my tribune (which is with Mahlberg)," if it is urgent. On 2 April, he congratulates Sophie, as "your efforts with Mahlberg are truly devilish." Then, travelling through Berlin on his way back to Moscow in May 1925, Lissitzky reports to Sophie: "Now. Mahlberg. I surprised him. Evening - lecture in the studio of the Berlin Director of Transport. He was kind and frightened. My poster was hanging on the w a l l . The damage at the bottom on the text was not lifethreatening. Cousin was really kind. Tomorrow we're going out to Tempelhof Field [airport]. Will get the 300 Marks for the watercolor. The poster question is still to be negotiated." (Sophie's reminiscences, clearly prompted in part by re-reading these letters, explain that Mahlberg had also bought a very beautiful watercolor.) When it came time for payment, however, Mahlberg had to enter bankruptcy and liquidate his office. Many later letters from Lissitzky to Sophie allude to her

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333

What do these clues amount to? It is surely significant that Lissitzky willingly converted his private self-portrait into a poster image and into other printed formats, with the general meaning "Architecture." Without knowing more about the nature of the exhibition and other proposed uses, it is hard to be more specific. However, the public meaning adum­ brated here accords well with the title of "Constructor" which the photograph has subsequently acquired. The other "public" presentation of this photograph in 1925 also had an "architectural" context, though one slightly different from the association with Mahlberg's architectural practice in the German capital. A slightly cropped version of the photograph was published in ABC in early 1925.51 Above the image is a graphic layout of the words "Atelier Lichtbilder Lissitzky [Lissitzky Photograph Studio]," arranged so that the letters ABZ (surely a punning reference to the title of the journal) appear capitalized in a vertical column. At this time, with his work on commercial

ongoing problems with getting payment from Mahlberg (ca. July 1925 [undated], 8 August 1925, 13 August 1925, 15 September 1925, 8 February 1926). 51.

A B C . vol 1 no. 3/4 (1925), p. 8. The exact date of publication is not known, but Lissitzky sent a copy of this issue to Jan Tschichold with a letter of 26 March 1925 (Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities), establishing a terminus ante quern. The composition is cropped mainly at the left margin, thereby eliminating the X of XYZ (making the interpreta­ tion of "XYZ" as a reference to ABC less likely, as the letters would otherwise surely have been retained intact in this context).

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advertising using photography, Lissitzky probably was serious about calling attention to his services in this announcement. Under the photograph, however, is a caption which was probably not written by Lissitzky.

It announces

that every artist who subscribes to ABC has the right to publish his photograph free of charge, with the guarantee of becoming instantly famous; and that every woman who sub­ scribes also has this right, but without any guarantee. This casually and mildly sexist remark, an exhortation to sub­ scribe, is surely owed to the official editors (though it has a commercial purpose similar to Lissitzky's "announce­ ment" of his studio).52 The final textual addition to Lissitzky's self-portrait is more puzzling.

In the empty rectangular space at the

lower left of the composition (where Lissitzky had, for example, written his dedication to Oud on another copy), there can be read the typewritten information:

"Pat. Brit. /

D.R.P / 169434." This is best interpreted as an abbreviated, rather cryptic reference to a British patent for "an improved tool for use in woodworking," issued in 1921 to

52.

In this sense, Lissitzky's self-portrait has the same function of attracting commissions through a demonstra­ tion of his skill, as did more traditional selfportraits (as described by Heusinger von Waldegg, "El Lissitzky 'Der Konstrukteur,' [Selbstbildnis]," p. 125). The texts of both the announcement of the studio and the subscription appeal are reprinted in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, p. 191.

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335 Alfred Richard of Thalwil, near Zurich, Switzerland.53 The tool was designed for repairing wooden articles by means of insets, especially for the purpose of filling up the cavities left by the removal of resinous pores, worm-holes and other flaws. Not dependent of the skill of the workman because the correct angle of the blade to the wood was automatically achieved, the tool was claimed to be quick, efficient and accurate. Was there a personal connexion between the inventor and Lissitzky, with both in Switzerland (Lissitzky had visited Zurich at the turn of the year, and Thalwil was nearby, close to the editorial offices of ABC)? Was this a private joke about the surgical procedures Lissitzky had undergone for removal of a lung during his stay in Switzerland? Did Lissitzky perhaps know already that he was to be appointed to the wood-working department of the State Higher Artistic Technical Studios (Vkhutemas) when he returned to Moscow? Did Lissitzky want to be associated with the elegant efficiency of this simple, "democratic11 tool? Was a more general association with the notion of invention intended? Invention and inventiveness were certainly key concepts for Lissitzky, though probably not under the aspect of the registering of patents as an expression of the personal ownership and protection of profit implied by the patenting

53.

Specifications of Inventions Printed under the Patents and Designs Act 1 9 0 7 , new series, vol. 695 (London, 1923), patent specification no. 169,434.

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process (unless expressing Lissitzky's unexceptional concern for correct attribution of inventive achievement, aimed against those such as Moholy-Nagy, whom he suspected of false claims). The difficulty of deciding among these (or other) pos­ sible explanations for this curious context in which Lis­ sitzky's "Constructor” was first "published," should not be an excuse to ignore them. The very fluidity of the image's meaning is, in fact, reflected in the multiplicity of con­ texts within which the image could plausibly play a role. Many of these contexts in 1925-1929 did exploit the image's potential to play a social role, intervening (in the West) in the cultural discourse of the architectural and photographic avant-garde and (in the East, at the 1927 exhibition in Moscow)

in the debate over graphic design,

printing technology and the use of new forms of text/image combinations to educational, perhaps even agitational ends. For Lissitzky himself, the "Constructor" was also an exercise in the problem of finding a form of portraiture adequate to the modern age. The device of associating the image of the "sitter" with some appropriate element of typography or graphic design was repeatedly used by him after 1925. For example, the portrait of his two step-sons, Kurt and Hans Kuppers, children from the first marriage of Sophie, who married Lissitzky in January 1927, shows their two overlapping heads, posed back-to-back against a back­

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ground of pages from the children's book on the "Four Arith­ metical Functions," which Lissitzky designed in 1928 (Typ. Cat. 1928/7)

(fig. 111).54 Other examples include the image

of himself surrounded by futuristically kaleidoscopic images of the mobile display belts from his design of the Soviet pavilion at the Pressa exhibition in Cologne in 1928, and the various versions of the so-called "Birth Announcement of the Artist's Son" of 1930, in which the infant is photographed lying on typographic designs by Lissitzky.55 Interestingly, it was precisely the possibilities for portraiture which Lissitzky singled out for special mention when he discussed the photogram and related new techniques (such as the spatial manipulation of the negative)

54.

55.

in an

Another print illustrated in New York 1991, pi. 17, p. 40. Here again, Lissitzky explores a psychological and visual duality, showing one boy with head down, but eyes looking up, the other with head up but eyes looking down, pensively. Furthermore, the Central Asian caps being worn by both boys have light on dark, and dark on light embroidery, respectively. The background sheet is actually the "title-page" from Lissitzky's design, chosen perhaps because the diagonal of the rotated "4"s interact rhythmically with the diagonals formed by the angles of the heads and the directions of the gazes. While the other pages of this design contain schematic figures made up of elements arranged to represent social and ethnic categories (soldiers, peasants, Soviet nationalities, etc.), the title page is politically neutral. The appropriateness of this background derives from its source in a children's book, and from the themes of addition and multiplication in this composite, additive portrait, a technique the Russians sometimes dubbed "multiplikatsiya" (multiple). See Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pi. 18 and pi. 20.

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essay published in the Soviet Union in May 1929.56 The examples of graphic design in the renderings of Arp, Schwit­ ters, Lissitzky, and the others are Lissitzky's preferred implementation of his recommendation advocating the inclu­ sion of "a series of objects which have productive associa­ tions with a given face" in exploiting new techniques. Lissitzky's practice and brief technical theoretical note were, in this sense, part of the general debate in Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1920s on the strengths and weaknesses of photography as a medium for portraiture. While in Germany, it was primarily the painters of the socalled New Objectivity movement who began reassessing portraiture (a reassessment than taken up by photographers such as August Sander),57 in the Soviet Union the debate was initiated by Alexander Rodchenko in 1924 with photographic portraits in series of his mother and of Vladimir Mayakovsky. When he in turn came to theorize his own prac­ tice in the late 1920s, Rodchenko, typically, adopted a more strident, polemical tone than Lissitzky. He argued that modern human beings (his example was Lenin) could never be adequately represented by one "synthetic" image, but rather

56.

El Lissitzky, "Fotopis'," Sovetskoe foto. no. 10 (15 May 1929), p. 311, republished in my English translation in Eindhoven 1990, p. 70

57.

For "Neue Sachlichkeit" portraiture, see especially Adam C. Oellers, Ikonoaraphische Untersuchunaen zur Bildnismalerei der Neuen Sachlichkeit (Meyen: Schreder, 1983) .

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by the cumulative, ever changing image generated by many "snapshot" photographs, by books, and by archival materials (recordings, manuscripts etc.)-58 Lissitzky's 1929 article is not presented explicitly as a contribution to this debate, though it must be read in the context of the more overtly disputatious polemics of the time. Lissitzky was implicitly differing with Rodchenko. While both might agree wholeheartedly that "there are no eternal truths"

(a leitmotif of both their thinking), Lis­

sitzky nevertheless does seem to be aiming at a version of the synthetic portrait, where representative objects combine with the photographic image (or the multiple photographic image, of which Rodchenko might have approved if it did not seem blurred and indistinct) to create a meaningful, single image. Lissitzky's praise for technical, expressive experimentation exploring the inherent nature of the photographic medium, as strongly advocated in his 1929 essay, is also at odds with the prevailing "factographic" ideology of some of his colleagues in the Moscow avantgarde .

c) Architecture: Typography and Photography in Three Dimensions

58.

On Rodchenko and photography, see in general Evelyn Weiss, ed. Rodtschenko: Fotoqrafien. exh. cat. (Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 1978).

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Whereas the previous section dealt with the combination of photography and graphic design which Lissitzky used to conduct his inquiry into the status of the artist's work at a moment of doubt about the efficacy of abstract art, this section will consider the implications of Lissitzky's increasingly pragmatic interest in architecture and the three-dimensional. Of interest here is less his attention to specific architectural tasks in planning, building or organization (important though this attention was, covering as it did everything from his links to the Moscow architec­ tural group ASNOVA and participation in the ABC journal to preliminary work for a private house commission in Switzer­ land and for a cinema to be dedicated to Lenin5 9 ); rather, this section is concerned with ways in which Lissitzky treated photography and typography as work on a public, environmental, architectural scale, one that involved ack­ nowledgement of three dimensions. For typography alone, the earliest evidence of Lissitzky conceiving of the printed letters of a word not only as planar forms but also as three-dimensional, material objects with weight and mass, comes in his second design for the cover of the American expatriate journal, B r o o m , used for the issue published in Berlin in November 1923

59.

(Typ. Cat.

For an documented overview of the architectural projects in 1924 and the following few years, see Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," pp. 32-35.

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1923/10).60 The sketches (figs. 112 and 113) for this and the finished version all use the letters of the journal's name rendered perspectivally to give the illusion that they have object-like presence.

It is surely no accident that

this "expansion" of his typographic design into depth coin­ cides exactly in date (summer and autumn 1923) with the "expansion" of the Prouns into the three-dimensional space of the "Prouns Space," and with the proposal for a threedimensional installation of his typographic design work in Berlin.61 Further examples of this can be found in 1924 and

60.

Very strictly speaking, earlier, tentative examples can be found. Part of one of the letters "k" in the proposed masthead of the Russian journal Vestnik kooperatsii i. kul'turv of 1920 is drawn to indicate depth (Typ. Cat. 1920/1), and Lissitzky's first published design for a Broom cover (Typ. Cat. 1923/2), commissioned in October 1922 and printed four months later, doubles the middle three letters of the name to suggest that they throw a shadow onto the plane behind (and therefore have real, if only planar, substance).

61.

Both these projects are discussed in the previous chap­ ter. This cover of Broom in its final version plays a role in the Yve-Alain Bois's argument that the rever­ sibility of the image (in which the magazine can be rotated through 180 degrees, rendering the repetition of the title Broom legible) is a key example of Lissitzky's radical aesthetic (Yve-Alain Bois, "El Lissitzky. Radi­ cal Reversibility," Art in A merica r vol. 76 no. 4 [April 1988], pp. 160-181, cover illustrated on p. 172). This multiplicity of positions was a particular interest in late 1923, the time also of "Proun 8 Positions" (fig. 44, Proun Inventory no. 1) and the multiple negative photograph "In the Studio," two other key examples in Bois's argument. Other examples of this literal rever­ sibility cited by Bois (who then associates them with other, sometimes metaphorical kinds of reversibility) cluster around the years 1920/21 and 1926, so that one should perhaps distinguish both the consistent underly­ ing interest and the particular manifestations of that interest as different times in Lissitzky's career.

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1925, as, for example, in the publisher's device he designed for the intended publisher of his translations of Malevich's writings (fig. 114, Typ. Cat. 1924/16, where the word "Venzky" is rendered with volumetric letter forms) or in the poster he proposed for

an early 1926 Munich exhibition of

his work, together with that of 115, Typ. Cat. 1925/7,

Mondrian and Man

in which letters from

the

Ray (fig. names of

the three artists cast shadows.62 This latter case is especially revealing, for not only did Lissitzky intend his composition to be reproduced as a poster (that is, on a public,

"architectural" scale,

just as

he had agreed for his self-portrait in Mahlberg's proposed architecture exhibition, if such it was, discussed above),

62.

Lissitzky was not alone in shifting to the treatment of letters as objects at this moment. Anton Lavinskii in Russia had introduced three-dimensional letter forms into his graphic design of two book covers in 1923 (Brik's Ne poputchitsa and Mayakovsky's Lirika, the lat­ ter also a design involving the rotation of text, marked in this case by an arrow). Both are illustrated in Claude Leclanche-Boule, Typographies et photomontages constructivistes en U.r.s.s. (Paris: Papyrus, 1984), pp. 58 and 80, figs. 72 and 124. In 1924 John Heartfield designed two photomontage book covers for novels by Upton Sinclair, 100% and Per S u m p f . See Wieland Herzfelde, John Heartfield. Leben und Werk (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1962), pi. 4 and 9, and Peter M. Grosz, intro., George G r o s z . John Heartfield and the Malik V e r l a g . Ars Libri Ltd. Catalogue 100 (Boston: Ars Libri Ltd, 1994), nos. 121-124 and 207. Both covers used letters rendered in three dimensions, receding perspectivally into depth. The cover of Der Sumpf renders the title in red monumental-architectural letters super­ imposed on a city-scape as if they were themselves buildings. In thanking Sophie for sending a copy, Lis­ sitzky notes that he finds Heartfield's Sumpf cover design good (letter to Sophie of 16 May 1924).

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but he also wrote, in a letter to Sophie of 18 December 1925, that, had he had the time, he would have preferred to make a "photo-poster," the artist's term for the fusions of manipulated image and text with which he had experimented in his advertising work for the Pelikan office supply company whilst he was in Switzerland. Alongside designing packaging and advertising for Pelikan which actually was threedimensional (as in the boxes for sealing wax [Typ. Cat. 1924/14], the wood-panel relief composition incorporating a typewriter ribbon package, an actual mirror and other ele­ ments [fig. 116, Typ. Cat. 1924/11],63 and the Englishlanguage advertisement for drawing ink using the image of the upturned hand from the "Constructor," printed on card and intended to stand upright on a counter [fig. 117, Typ. Cat. 1925/6]), Lissitzky worked on both printed and

63.

This relief is mentioned by Lissitzky in a letter of 6 December 1924 as being worked on, and in a letter of 6 January 1925 as being shipped. He also gives an explana­ tion of the thinking behind it. He writes that it could be enlarged to two or three times its present size; that a photograph of it (especially one where part of a woman's face showed in the mirror) would be very effec­ tive as a print advertisement; that the relief could be hung at eye-level in a vitrine, or incorporated into a display-window installation; that he is concerned that it be copyrighted; that it not shown to others until after it has been published; and that any reproduction, if the photograph is good enough, should have his monogram "el" added; and so on. He takes particular care to comment on the inadequate colors and quality of the photograph he is sending.

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photographic posters.64 Lissitzky produced three photograin advertisements for Pelikan (one each for ink, typewriter ribbon, and carbon paper: Typ. Cat. 1924/7,8,9), which he sometimes discussed in terms of reproduction on a poster s c al e . Each of these three advertisements used the dynamic cast shadow of the firm's name, together with the name of the product in stencilled letters. Each photograph also rendered the product itself in low, three-dimensional relief, especially the one for ink, which showed the shadow of an ink-bottle and stopper receding dynamically towards the upper right, whilst a pen was positioned so as to appear to be writing the word "Pelikan." On 4 January 1925, Lis­ sitzky wrote to Sophie with recommendations for material she should take to Berlin "for the advertising people" (presumably, potential clients interested in commissioning Lissitzky). He also asks her to tell them "that I have a series of ideas for kinetic and sculptural advertising.1,65 64.

For the proof printing, reworked with gouache, of a text poster advertising Pelikan ink, typewriter ribbon and carbon paper, see Typ. Cat. 1924/10. This design was executed before 21 May 1924, when Lissitzky mentions and sketches it in a letter to Sophie, expressing the wish that Pelikan print it. On 15 October 1924, he writes that he has sent a new sketch for this poster to Pelikan, and remarks that he has had a new idea for "the photographic ink poster." On 1 December 1924, Lissitzky writes that he delivered 11 large designs for posters to Pelikan in November.

65.

A number of rough sketches by Lissitzky for more elaborate advertising projects for Pelikan have indeed survived, especially for illuminated and moving displays for Pelikan's range of colored crayons (such as a sketch for a window display with a rotating color circle [TsGALI 2361/1/4/1]). In his letter to Sophie of 6 January 1925, Lissitzky mentions a design for "something

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345 He is also sending "a small design for Pelikan-ink, which has a great effect when the poster is large enough for the head to be larger than life-size," a poster which unfortunately remains unidentified. These commercial combinations of text, image and the three-dimensional found an architectural equivalent in Lis­ sitzky's contemporary reworking of the design for a speaker's rostrum, now known as the Lenin Tribune (fig. 105). Based on a design produced with students in his architectural class at Vitebsk in 1920, Lissitzky's version has a number of interesting features.66 While it shares with in polished glass for the pastel crayons...a free­ standing sculpture." These investigations of commercial kinetics were later used by Lissitzky in such designs as his proposal for a book-shop window display with rotat­ ing elements for the publishers "Land and Factory" ("Zemlya i Fabrika") of November 1928 (fig. 118, also illustrated in color in Moscow 1990, p. 94 [Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. no. RS 1907]) and some aspects of the Pressa exhibition from earlier that same year. 66.

Lissitzky wrote to Sophie on 16 May 1924 that he had received sketches from Russia of this earlier version. These he was reworking as an illustration for his friend Adolph Behne's proposed book, Der moderne Zweckbau (eventually published in 1926). He sent a photograph of the finished work to Behne with a letter of 20 May 1924 (private archive, Berlin, now reproduced in Hanover 1988, pp. 64-65). In fact the work was first reproduced in late 1924 as an illustration for Ernst Kallai's article on Lissitzky (see Bibliography), and then in Lissitzky's own Die Kunstismen (fig. 105, Typ. Cat. 1925/2, p. 9). The image was also exhibited in Vienna in autumn 1924 (in the form of the original collage, see Proun Inventory no. 85) and, probably as a photographic reproduction, at the architecture section of the Novem­ ber Group's section of the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in summer 1925. At the latter, Lissitzky exhibited "my four photographic works on card" ("meine 4 Photokartons"), as he referred to the works which he wanted Sophie to have delivered from the exhibition

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the 1920 version the basic design feature of a diagonally thrusting, extendible ladder-like girder structure, with platforms for speaker and guests, Lissitzky's variation not only spatializes the concept by rendering it in perspective in a delicately shaded abstract built environment, but also adds a massive projection-screen above the speaker's plat­ form.67 Lissitzky explained that this screen could be used to project agitational slogans to the (presumably vast) crowd attending the rally. Indeed, Lissitzky's drawing includes (in Russian), the single word "Proletarians" run­ ning across the top of this almost square screen (leaving

organizers (letter of 9 July 1925). The Berlin exhibi­ tion was reviewed by, among others, Willi Wolfradt, who laconically remarked, "Lissitzky's daringly highslanting tribunes and landmarks are well-known" ("Ber­ liner Ausstellungen," Der C i c erone. vol. XVII no. 12 [June 1925], p. 608). See also the reviews in Das K unstblatt. vol. IX no. 7 (July 1925), p. 218, and Sozialistische M o natshefte, vol. 31 no. 8 (10 August 1925), p. 524 (where Otto Bratskoven briefly mentions the speaker's rostrum and the "Wolkenbiigel"). 67.

For details on the Lenin Tribune and the early versions from Lissitzky's Vitebsk class, see Larissa A. Zhadova, "'Tribuna Lenina'. Stranitsa istorii sovetskogo dizaina," Tekhnicheskava e s t etika, vol. 14 no. 9 (Sep­ tember 1977), pp. 20-22, also translated into Italian in Casabella. vol. XLII nos. 447-448 (May-June 1979), pp. 58-60. A description in German, presumably prepared by Lissitzky is in TsGALI (2361/1/25/15), transcribed with some alterations in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1977 p. 186. It can be noted that the design stresses the temporary, as the structure can almost be packed away when not in use. The dynamism of the diagonal thrust (which Lissitzky intended as a reinforcement of the speaker's rhetorical gesture) is present also in the dynamism of the retrac­ table, dismantlable and transparent elements.

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most of the space for some more specific exhortation appropriate to some future occasion). This incorporation of text into an architectural design is then complemented by the two ways that Lissitzky envisaged incorporating the photographic image. First, he proposed that photographic images (film) could be projected onto the screen at night, as a substitute for the slogans of the daytime.68 Secondly, Lissitzky actually did incorporate a photographic image into his rendering: the cut-out photograph of Lenin, leaning out over the rostrum, cap in hand, orating. The figure of Lenin is appropriate for a number of reasons. First, of course, was the leader's recent death and Lissitzky's wish to acknowledge this appropriately. At the same time he was working on another idea that linked Lenin to the photographic image, a large cinema to be dedicated to

68.

Lissitzky's contemporaries were also experimenting with the possibilities of outdoor projection. See Alexander Rodchenko's 1923 design for a cinema-car, illustrated in Art into L i f e . Russian Constructivism. 1914-1932. exh. cat. (New York: Rizzoli, for the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, 1990), p. 226. It has hitherto not been noted that Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, too, was in early 1923 very enthusiastically pursuing the idea of patenting a device for projecting images onto walls, streets and the sky, from a mobile platform. He expressed great interest in the possibility that this invention, which could be used for commercial advertis­ ing, would make him enormously wealthy. See his unpublished letters to the Hanover publisher, Christoph Spengemann, of 14 January 1923 and 3 February 1923, in Hanover, Municipal Library, Kurt-Schwitters-Archive (SAH 75/L M - N ) .

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Lenin by being called "Lenin-Building .1169 A more specific reason for this photographic insertion emerges from an identification of the actual photograph Lissitzky used. The figure of Lenin is cut from a documentary photograph of Lenin speaking in Sverdlov Square in Moscow on 5

May 1920

to troops departing to fight on the front in the RussoPolish War.70 This campaign had particular meaning for Lis­ sitzky, as the course of the war had directly affected his home region and had threatened Vitebsk in the summer of 1920. It for the Western Front in this war that Lissitzky had designed his now-famous poster, the Red Wedge"

"Beat the Whites with

(fig. 59, Typ. Cat. 1920/5). To use a

photograph of Lenin rallying soldiers to fight in this, the Soviet Republic's first foreign war (and one that many saw as the beginning of an expansionist spreading of Bolshevik Revolution westwards to Germany and beyond) recalled not only the heroic, ecstatic mood of those years, but also made a reference to precisely the time when the speaker's rostrum itself was first designed. It is clearly no accident that Lissitzky used Russian for the slogan on the screen, or that he was careful to sign and date the piece "Unovis [written

69.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 55; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 58

70.

The photograph was originally published in Krasnava Niva no. 8 (1923). Later republications of the photograph (such as Sovetskoe foto, vol. 2 no. 11 [November 1927], p. 327) have erased Trotsky and Kamenev from their positions on the platform.

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349

in cyrillic] 1920." In all these ways, the piece is a retrospective, historical document.71 However,

in the

present context, it marks the first time in Lissitzky's work that his concern for architecture, photography and text design merge. This was an important and powerful combination for Lis­ sitzky. It is revealing that the very first book cover which he designed incorporating a photograph was for a publication precisely about architecture (fig. 119, Typ. Cat. 1927/2). His design for the cover of this 1927 volume illustrating works by the architectural faculty at Vkhutemas integrated the photograph of his hand holding a pair of compasses and the words "Arkhitektura Vkhutemas," with "Arkhitektura" printed twice, indicating a shift (not unlike the double printing in one of the Prouns from the Kestner Portfolio [fig.

71.

36]). The three words all pivot about the same shared

When he reproduced it in Die Kunstismen f he captioned it "Atelier Lissitzky 1920" (fig. 105). It belongs appropriately in the pages of the retrospective, historical Die K u n s tismen. alongside a reproduction of a Proun painting, also produced in 1924, but also based on a related composition of ca. 1920 and therefore cap­ tioned "Proun 1919" (see Proun Inventory nos. 90 and 71). The photograph of himself chosen by Lissitzky to complete the layout of these two pages is clearly from around 1919 in Vitebsk, showing him bearded, in ragged clothes, and carrying a rolled-up canvas as if it were a roll of architectural drawings. Given that the illustrated Proun and the Lenin Tribune share several topological features (both have structures of precariously balanced geometric forms arising from a flat plane of dark, geometric form, with a single, light-colored rectangular block "behind"), the layout itself represents a meditative exemplification of the interrelationships between Proun and architecture.

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3 50 letter "X" in cyrillic, not only an elegant demonstration of geometry and economy, but also an emphasis of another mean­ ing of "X," the Latin symbol for "10" and a reference, surely, to the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, on the occasion of which the booklet was being published.72 Lissitzky's concurrently increasing interest in photography and in architecture resulted in another point of intersection between the two "genres" or "media" which is revealing.73 Building on his explorations in expanding the Pelikan photographic advertisements onto a poster scale, and on his development of the projection screen high above the audience's head in the Lenin Tribune, Lissitzky in 1926 and 1928 investigated the use of photography on an architec­ tural, monumental scale.

72.

Compare the "X" on the front of the invitation card for the All-Union Printing Trades Exhibition of the same time (fig. 120, Typ. Cat. 1927/4), which explicitly relates to the ten years between the dates also printed, 1917-1927. The symbolic richness of the typographical layout on the cover of the Arkhitektura volume is per­ haps even stronger: do the three words (two at rightangles in red, one diagonally - receding? - in black) represent the three axes, the means of architectural drafting and the "real world" of spatial extension, to which the architectural projects aspire?

73.

The present discussion leaves out of account two modes by which the fields can come into contact, both of which seem to have occupied Lissitzky's attention: the use of the blue-print technique (the standard technique for copying architectural plans) in his work in photography and photograms in the mid-1920s, and his use of photography to document architectural work (and his interest in how others did the same). For comments on both topics, see the relevant passages in my "Lissitzky and Photography" in Eindhoven 1990, pp. 66-69.

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351 One of the first architectural projects on which Lis­ sitzky worked after returning to Moscow was the interna­ tional sports stadium planned for a site in the so-called Lenin Hills, above Moscow. Lissitzky designed a water-sports building to be incorporated into the overall design, on which his Moscow colleagues in the Association of New Architects ("Asnova") group had been working since March 1924.74 Probably for the interior of this building, Lis­ sitzky conceived a photographic mural in 1925-1926. As neither Lissitzky's building nor the stadium as a whole was constructed, the only surviving evidence of the mural project is a photomontage on the theme of urban sports. Lis­ sitzky montaged the photograph of a hurdler in mid-air, leaping over a hurdle, set against a background of a city at night (fig. 100). This image has now become known as "Runner in the City," exhibited by Lissitzky in 1926 as "Experiment for a Fresco for a Sports-Club. Photograph.1,75 The 74.

Finished presentation drawings and other sketches of this project are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (inv. no. Arkh. Gr. 3581, 3594, 3596, 3638). Lissitzky reports working on this scheme in his letters to Sophie of 1925. For further information on the overall undertaking, see Irina Kokkinaki, "Mezhdunarodnyi krasnyi stadion. K istorii proektirovaniya i stroitel'stva," Arkhitektura SSSR vol. 52 no. 6 (June 1985), pp. 100107.

75.

For the exhibition of this work in 1926, see above, note 46 (and for the exhibition in 1927, see note 2). For my arguments that this work, elsewhere dated 1930, must be from ca. 1926, see Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," p. 51 and n. 95 (though I have now improved my translation of the work's title as listed in the 1926 exhibition catalogue from "Sketch for..." to the more accurate "Experiment for...") and my "Lissitzky and Photography," p. 66 n. 5. The second half of the

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352 anachronistic, but effective use of the term "fresco" in this title alerts the viewer to the artist's intention to address an audience in a public forum on significant issues. The fact that frescoes would in earlier days have deployed religious or political themes would surely have been an association welcomed by Lissitzky for this public (and therefore political) dimension.

In his essay of the previous

year for the annual publication of the Gutenberg Society, Lissitzky had summarized examples of the new conception of typography adequate to the modern world. One paragraph asserts that the future belongs to photogravure printing and all photomechanical techniques (as opposed to traditional relief printing) and that "in this way former fresco paint­ ing is supplanted by modern typography." The examples Lis­ sitzky gives (introduced by the incantatorily repeated

catalogue listing for this work, here rendered as "Photograph,11 is actually the Russian word "fotopis'," which one could translate as "photo-painting." Lissitzky used this coinage as the title for his 1929 essay on photographic techniques (and their value for portrai­ ture) , discussed above. The view of the city is in fact taken from Erich Mendelssohn's book of photographs of America, which Lissitzky reviewed in early 1926, making precisely the comment that human beings were absent from the images. The addition of the hurdler rectifies the omission. In all likelihood from the same year as "Run­ ner in the City" is the similar photographic montage of footballers, including one leaping to head a ball (one of eight bright circles added to the composition). Examples of both images exist which have been cut into strips to emphasize dramatic movement. For "Runner in the City," see Cambridge 1987, p. 144, pi. 81, and for "Footballer," see New York 1991, p. 32, pi. 13 (a photograph of the collage).

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353 "e.g.") are the advertising column and the poster wall.76 These examples, given in an essay written and published in the capitalist West, bring to mind temporary commercial advertising (though, of course, not necessarily - political messages can also appear in these media); by the following year, after his reintegration into Soviet cultural life and the concurrent realignment of his cultural goals, Lis­ sitzky's proposal for a modern fresco concerns the presumably permanent presentation of a social theme: com­ munal sport as an integral element in the healthy function­ ing of mass, modern society.77 Two years after the sports club "fresco," Lissitzky returns to the theme of monumental, mural-scale photography, and once again signals this concern by transforming a tradi­ tional term from the language of architecture and ornament. For the pavilion of the Soviet Union at the 1928 "Pressa" exhibition in Cologne (for which Lissitzky was in charge of

76.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, p. 357 (my translation); Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, p. 360.

77.

A more extended analysis of Lissitzky's proposal would have to reconcile this message with the fact that Lis­ sitzky chose a view of capitalist New York (indeed, of Broadway and its theaters) for his background, and a single hurdler as the embodiment of sport. This would involve a review of the cultural status of "Americanism" (the passion for aspects of the New World as emblems of modernity) in 1920s Russia, and a reading of the single sportsman as the embodiment of both the "New Man" and Lissitzky's predilection for acknowledging the achieve­ ments of the individual, whether heroic or artistic. It is revealing that the photograph was exhibited in 1927 under the title "Record" (cf. n. 2, above).

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354

overall design [fig. 121]), he and his colleague Sergei Senkin created a "photo-frieze" (fig. 122). This large-scale photocollage, approximately 3.5 meters high by 24 meters in length, ran along the convex back wall of the pavilion, above the height of the doorways and thereby dominating the exhibition space. It had as its theme and title, "The Educa­ tion of the Masses in the Main Task of the Press in the Transitional Time from Capitalism to Communism." This fresco or frieze presents images and fragments of images of Lenin, the masses,

industrialization, the military, and related

topics.78 In a non-narrative fashion, these constellated photographs evoke a relentlessly dynamic interaction between propaganda and productivity, between pedagogy and the

78.

Compare the description of this element of the exhibi­ tion in the official catalogue: "Photographic Frieze / The upper part of the main wall of the large hall is filled with a frieze: "The Education of the Masses is the Main Task of the Press in the Transitional Period from Capitalism to Communism" was taken as the theme of this representation. From authentic photo material show­ ing the workers and peasants united with their leaders, a large photograph was montaged together (3.40 m x 3.80 m [sic - presumably the size of each of the seven or eight panels between the roof-beams]), which, mounted on a transparent mesh, stands in front of a wall, on which runs a colored text. / The frieze was executed by S. Senkin to a design by El Lissitzky" (Typ. Cat. 1928/6, p. 26 [my translation]). Lissitzky designed two further objects in the main hall, the "Transmission Belts" on which information about the Soviet economy passes by the viewer, and the "Large Star," representing with very literal symbolism the constitution of the Soviet union. For a translation of the catalogue description of the latter, commentary on it and on Lissitzky's achievements at Pressa in general, see Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," pp. 35, 38.

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press.79 While this frieze may be an example of Lissitzky's search for the means of creating the conditions of "simultaneous collective reception"

(i.e., in this case,

monumental photography as the medium appropriate for reach­ ing the mass audience of an industrial society),80 it is 79.

It is important to distinguish between this "photo­ frieze" and the fold-out photocollage in the exhibition catalogue. This latter "leporello" is actually best con­ ceptualized as a "visual index" to the catalogue, as it is made up of a sequence of installation photographs of the exhibition, each one overprinted with the theme of that section and a page number, guiding the reader to the often very detailed explication in the catalogue. This reassessment of the possibilities of the index and table of contents of a book is related to Lissitzky's experiments with the thumb-index in his design for the book of Mayakovsky poems (Typ. Cat. 1923/3) and the catalogue for the 1927 exhibition (Typ. Cat. 1927/7). This pictorial index-collage also relates in another way to the exhibition it "serves," this time by mirroring the form and effect of the "photo-frieze," the emblem of the exhibition. While the "photo-frieze" draws on the authority and presence of architecture, the catalogue "leporello" invokes the cinema, as explicitly mentioned in the caption: "Here you see in a typographic cinemashow the passage of the contents of the Soviet Pavilion" (Typ. Cat. 1928/6, p. 16 [my translation]). Here, in the terms of the present discussion, graphic design achieves not the status of the merely photographic, but of the filmic. In fact, the photo-frieze itself has something of the cinematographic: sections of the frieze were divided at intervals (determined by the roof-beams) by slim triangular banner-like pieces of material, creating a frame-like effect for the photo-collage (fig. 122).

80.

The "photofrieze" plays an important role in Benjamin Buchloh's powerful argument tracing the shift in the Soviet avant-garde from experimental Constructivism to the propagandistic deployment of iconic photography, or, to quote the title of the article, "from faktura to factography" (October 30 (Fall 1984), pp. 82-118). Buchloh sees the crucial step being taken by artists who realize that "the new society following the socialist revolution (in many respects a social organization that was com­ parable to the advanced industrial nations of Europe and the United States at the time) required systems of representation/production/distribution which would recognize the collective participation in the actual

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perhaps more a heroic homage to the process of creating that audience: the education of the masses by the activist, com­ mitted press (acting on behalf of the leaders of the party and the state).81 In both these cases of photography enlarged to an architectural scale, Lissitzky used pre-existing photographs, made by others.

In this, he is exemplifying the

stage in the history of photomontage and photocollage which he himself described in his essay of 1927 for the catalogue of the Printing Trades exhibition.

In this historical sur­

vey, intended to introduce the various groupings in the sec­ tion of the exhibition devoted to the artists working with

processes of production of social wealth, systems which like architecture in the past or cinema in the present, had established conditions of simultaneous collective reception. (...) With sufficient historical distance it becomes clearer that this fundamental crisis within the modernist paradigm was not only a crisis of representa­ tion (one that had reached its penultimate status of self-reflexive verification and epistemological critigue). It was also, importantly, a crisis of audience relationships, a moment in which the historical institutionalization of the avant-garde had reached its peak of credibility, from which legitimation was only to be obtained by a redefinition of its relationship with the new urban masses and their cultural demands" (p. 94). Although the present discussion, in attending to the details and intricacies of the case of Lissitzky, does not wholly agree with Buchloh's analysis, it is indebted to its forceful presentation of the problem and to the issues it raises in its concentrated pursuit of the specific aspects of the one strand in the paradigm shift chosen for discussion. 81.

For an analysis the role of the Soviet press, see Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda S t ate. Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization. 1917-1929 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), chaps. 1 and 10.

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the printing and publishing industries, Lissitzky gave a capsule history of photomontage, explaining that it now uses ready-made photographs for its elements.82 The next step 82.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, p. 117. In the essay cited above, Buchloh embellishes and thereby misrepresents this passage. He has Lissitzky writing of "finished, entire photographs" ("From Faktura to Factography," p. 102 [My emphasis of the added word]). Buchloh uses this to help construct his argument that stresses the Soviet avant-garde's shift to iconic representation using the homogeneous single print (exemplified by Rodchenko), from the earlier interest in fragmentation, faktura, and indexical materiality. That Lissitzky uses collaged fragments in his Pressa designs and also goes to argue for the manipulated photogram exploiting the inherent characteristics of the medium (a faktura-based approach permitting the indexical fixing of the object on the photographic paper and the foregrounding of that process of fixing) in this essay and in the 1929 essay cited above (n. 56) is underplayed in Buchloh's argument. Indeed, there are two other potentially misleading phrases in Buchloh's translation of this paragraph. Where Lissitzky writes that only in the Soviet Union did photomontage "pour itself" into "a clear, social, and aesthetic [or artistic] form," Buchloh has it acquiring "a clearly socially determined and aesthetic form." This adjustment of meaning reinforces Buchloh's theme that Lissitzky is extensively concerned with the determining effects of the new audience. Again, where Lissitzky wrote that the power of photomontage's expression "enthused the visual art-circles of the workers and of the Komsomol, and had a great influence on wallne w s p a p e r s ," Buchloh has it making "the workers and Kom­ somol circles enthusiastic for the visual arts and [having] great influence on the billboards and new­ spapers," a significant inflation of Lissitzky's view about photomontage's power and reach. These corrections to Buchloh's translation of Lissitzky's text do not by themselves undermine his focussed thesis about the Rus­ sian and Soviet avant-garde's transition "from faktura to factography," but they do lessen Lissitzky's participation in the mainstream of this theoretical and cultural transformation. Buchloh's quotations from Lis­ sitzky's other essay of 1927 about printing and publish­ ing, "Our Book," are also highly compressed and selec­ tive, overemphasizing Lissitzky's association of the class status of the new audience with the new medium of photography in the printing process. Buchloh omits Lis­ sitzky's key relativizing point that, while the masses remain motivated by materialism, the technical processes

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will be the direct manipulation of light, shadow, trans­ lucent objects and negatives on light-sensitive paper. Although Lissitzky had been using this technique since 1923, the beginning of his serious involvement with the medium, there is no record of an full-fledged attempt by him to develop the photogram technique on an "architectural" scale in the sense discussed here. However, the poster which Lissitzky designed for the 1929 Russian Exhibition in Zurich (Typ. Cat. 1929/3) deploys both photomontage (by combining the lower portion of the image, showing exhibition stands designed by him for the 1927 exhibition in Moscow, with the male/female children's double-head above) and a photogram-like technique in over­ laying two negatives so as to achieve the effect of the fused heads of the boy and girl. This composite image (which also seems to use some airbrushing and ink retouching in both halves of the image) is not only itself on a poster scale, but the implied scale of the fused heads (hovering above the abstract architecture below) is also monumental, almost like a film projection against the dawning sky. Lis­ sitzky adds typography to this photography/architecture

(including photography) are tending ever-more strongly towards the dematerialization characteristic of the age. Lissitzky's essay does address the question of mass or universal comprehensibility of the photograph and the book of the future, but the posited relationship of technology, society and artistic invention is more com­ plicated (and maybe less consistent) in this essay than Buchloh allows.

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ensemble, by emblazoning "USSR" in large letters across the double-forehead of the fused figures. By 1928 and 1929, Lissitzky had definitively given up making or even exhibiting abstract painting of a modernist kind. His melding of photography, typography and architec­ ture as described in this chapter, had attended and resulted from his "abandonment" of art in a manner that allowed him to transfer, from the Prouns to his new activity, many of his concerns for compositional dynamism, phenomenal immateriality, social utopianism, and public effectiveness. The process of this abandonment, however, had not been simple or quick. Lissitzky's doubts about the efficacy of abstract art and his questioning of the role advanced art should play were perhaps most dramatically presented in 1926, during his most active period of experimentation in mixing photography, typography, architecture (image, text, space), at the international exhibition in Dresden. For this exhibition, Lissitzky not only exhibited, alongside a Proun, a painting-sized

enlargement of a photograph, but also

designed the special room for the most advanced art.83 Both undertakings were significant. 83.

The most detailed treatment of this room, using recently accessible archival documents from Dresden, is now Kai-Uwe Hemken, "Pan-Europe and German Art. El Lis­ sitzky at the 1926 Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden," in Eindhoven 1990, pp. 46-55. Lissitzky of course also designed a similar room for the Hanover Museum, at the invitation of its director and his friend, Alexander Dorner. This commission was prompted by the experience of the Dresden room. The Hanover room was designed whilst Lissitzky was still in Germany in summer 1926, and was under construction by November (see

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Lissitzky had intended to paint two new Prouns for this exhibition, as he knew that he would be compared to his "rivals" Mondrian and the Bauhaus.84 Delays in reaching Germany, however, left him with the time only to complete one new work, a simplified version on wood of "Proun 6B," the circular composition from early in his painting career (fig. 45).85 For his second contribution, he made an

Lissitzky's letters of 9 August 1926 to Jan Tschichold [Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities] and of 6 November 1926 to II'ya Chashnik [translated in Cologne 1976, pp. 45-46]). Although there are some interesting differences between the two designs, they are, for the purposes of this discussion, similar enough to justify omitting reference to the Hanover room, for details on which see Artar Valstar, "El Lissitzky und der Raum der Abstrakten," in Magdalena M. Moller, ed. Sorenael Museum Hannover. Malerei und Plastik des 2 0 . Jahrhunderts (Hanover: Sprengel Museum, 1985), pp. 102-112, and Beatrix Nobis, "Das Abstrakte Kabinett in Hannover und andere Demonstrationsraume El Lissitzkys," in Hanover 1988, pp. 220-229. 84.

In his letter to Sophie of 27 February 1926, Lissitzky writes that he will be bankrupt if he has to pay the costs for the Dresden room himself, "especially con­ sidering the competition with two other champions Mondrian, Bauhaus." This perhaps implies that Mondrian and the Bauhaus had also been invited to design rooms, and Lissitzky guessed at the effort and expense involved in making a good showing against such "rivals." In the case of Mondrian, Lissitzky may have been referring to the Dutch artist's proposed interior design for a room in the house of Ida Bienert, a Dresden collector who also owned work by Lissitzky. He refers to the project in his letter to Sophie, 2 March 1926. For Mondrian's Bienert project, see Nancy J. Troy, The De stiil Environment (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1983), pp. 142-161. Alternatively, Lissitzky may simply have been aware that Mondrian and the Bauhaus artists would undoubtedly be exhibiting in the Dresden exhibition.

85.

Also illustrated in Nisbet, sitzky," p. 31, fig. 18.

"An Introduction to El Lis­

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appropriately scaled enlargement of his photograph showing his hand holding a pair of compasses and drawing a curve (fig. 123), an image he had used in his self-portrait photograph, the "Constructor," discussed above. Lissitzky offered a programmatic juxtaposition of a radical painted image (wholly non-representational, and without any reassur­ ing orientation) with a cool photographic image of a design­ ing hand, holding a pair of compasses which might have produced the circular painting hanging in the adjacent posi­ tion, but which has actually drawn an impossibly precise, non-circular geometric curve.86 That the photographic image was produced under pressure, in response to a lack of time underlines its greater efficiency, and therefore its appropriateness for the ever increasing tempo of modern (and, in Lissitzky's view, espe­ cially Soviet) life. In his 1927 essay for the catalogue of the Printing Trades exhibition, Lissitzky writes explicitly

86.

There is some evidence that this photograph may have been exhibited in a hand-colored version. In his caption to an illustration of this photograph published in 1932, Jan Tschichold, who is usually very reliable on matters of detail concerning Lissitzky, wrote: "In the original, blue in the lower right, yellow in the upper left, line red" ("Uber El Lissitzky," p. 112). If this color dis­ tribution applies to the photograph exhibited in Dresden (an exhibition Tschichold would undoubtedly have seen), then Lissitzky may have also been using the primary colors to conduct a debate of sorts with Mondrian and his use of the primaries (a debate in which Lissitzky would be aggressively using a curve to counter Mondrian's rigorous rectilinearity). Furthermore, if the photograph in this exhibition were hand-colored, this would soften, though not eliminate, the contrast between painting and photography described here.

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of the marginal status (as a necessarily luxury item) forced on the painted picture by the discrepancy between the effort expended in its manufacture and the audience it can reach. This inefficient imbalance implicitly does not exist in the case of the photograph.87 The inefficiency of producing painted pictures was, of course, not the only reason given by Lissitzky for their redundancy.

If the contention that the painted picture was

inefficient was an argument from the point of view of the producer, then another line of reasoning questioned the value of painting from the point of view of the consumer.

In

the mid-1920s, Lissitzky would write about the exhaustion of painted pictures, about the state of affairs when they no longer pose a challenge to the v i e w e r , whose routinated senses no longer respond to the art, whose effect has itself become automatic and mechanical. Lissitzky makes an argu­ ment, analogous to Viktor Shklovsky's theory that art's pur­ pose is the radical breaking of routine perception, that a new invention in art is then necessary for it to achieve

87.

Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pp. 113-114. When in his wri t ­ ings of around 1927, Lissitzky stresses the sheer number of people who can receive the modern book or the modern photographic image, he is returning to sentiments of the "statistical" conclusion of his 1919 essay on the "New Culture" (discussed in Chapter I), where the mass production of the modern book, compared to the limited editions of pre-revolutionary volumes, is a key factor.

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effectiveness again.88 While his choice of works for the Dresden exhibition may have reflected some of this doubt about the efficacy of his own painting and of painting (and equivalent arts) in general, his design of the exhibition space was in fact dedicated to maximizing the radical potential still inherent in the advanced art of his time. Alongside, indeed around this staged dialogue between painting and photography (which in some ways can count as Lissitzky's contribution to the debate carried on in essays and polemics by his con­ temporaries in Europe and Russia8 9 ), Lissitzky also made a 88.

See especially Lissitzky remarks in his 1927 essay, "Unser Buch," reprinted with some excisions in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pp. 357-360; Lissitzky-Kiippers 1980, pp. 360-363. At a more personal, autobiographical level, Lissitzky was also aware of the potential for the producer himself or herself to become routinated and automatic. In 1924-1925, he had asserted privately that he now knew how to make "beautiful, strong, dynamic" pictures and that he needed a new challenge, a new riddle (Letter to Sophie, 2 April 1924). Such statements were, however, made at the same time as parallel com­ ments about fearing that advanced art (including perhaps his own) was becoming routine, accepted, almost "academic" in the European art world of the 1920s (cf. letter to Sophie 12 December 1924). By September 1925, in Moscow, Lissitzky was stressing the importance of individual effort in pushing art on to the next stage, irrespective of public acceptance or resonance. Consol­ ing Sophie on the difficulties in dealing in modern art (her profession), Lissitzky writes, "It's all quite irrelevant, where the works end up to d a y .... They must only be well preserved. Then, for the vital ones, their time will come" (Letter to Sophie, 8 September 1925).

89.

The debate became most visible in Europe with the publication in 1927 by the Amsterdam magazine ilO of Ernst Kallai's essay "Painting and Photography," and responses from artists and critics such as Behne, Baumeister and Moholy-Nagy. The contributions, in trans­ lation by Harvey L. Mendelsohn, are excellently edited and introduced in Phillips, ed. Photography in the

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statement about the potential of modern art in general to affect the viewer. His design of the exhibition room (figs. 95 and 96), far from negating the power of advanced visual art, was focussed on revealing and enhancing its true poten­ tial for activating the viewer. The Dresden exhibition room was intended to create much improved conditions for viewing art, with less crowding of works of art, lighting and shift­ ing wall-colors which could amplify and optimize the w o r k s 7 aesthetic effect.90 Modern Era, pp. 94-103. 90.

Lissitzky's description of the Dresden room emphasizes that the three background colors available for each painting (depending on the v i e w e r s 7 position vis a vis the lamellar strips) gives each work "a triple life." This installation in effect multiplies the number of "lives" available for each work of art, an efficient "multifunctionality" which not only helps to neutralize the criticism of painting that it is inefficient (dis­ cussed above), but also looks forward to his interest in the multifunctionality of compact and combinable furnishings in 1929-1930. For an analysis of this highly important feature of Lissitzky7s design principles, see Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," pp. 42-44. Lissitzky explicated the thinking behind his two exhibi­ tion rooms of 1926 (for Dresden and Hanover) in a types­ cript statement, "2 Demonstrationsraume," now in the archive of the Sprengelmuseum, Hanover. It is trans­ cribed with some corrections and alterations in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967, pp. 362-363. The text, which reads like a commentary (prepared for an exhibition?) on Lissitzky7s collaged representations of these rooms, can be dated to mid-1926, as it refers to the lamellar strips in the Hanover room (designed in summer 1926 and in construction shortly thereafter), which "are to be executed in stainless steel." Moreover, the layout of the typescript is very close in spirit to the layout of "Bis 1926 / Der Lebensfilm von el," hi;5 autobiographical text of July 1926. Sophie Kuppers published an article about the "International Art Exhibition." Her comments about her companion7s "Schaukabinett" echo the "Demonstrationsraume" text quite closely (Sophie Kuppers, "Internationale Kunstausstellung Dresden," Hannoverscher K u r i e r . 17 August 1926, morning edition, p.

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These goals were then subsumed within the room's broader purpose of making the viewer active (perhaps accommodating the vita contemplativa within the vita activa?). This was achieved by having the optical effect of the wall change with the movement of the viewer and by offering the viewer the opportunity of selecting the works of art to be seen through adjusting the mobile screens.91 In a sense, this creation of an environment adequate to the works on view was an acknowledgement that the works by themselves would not achieve this activation of the viewer. The Dresden exhibi­ tion room maintained a subtle balance of belief in the validity of advanced art and an recognition of its limita­ tions . In 1927, Lissitzky again exhibited Prouns and photographs in a space which he had himself designed: at the

2-3) . 91.

For an analysis of this effect, broadened to support the thesis that the activation of the viewer was the common denominator among all Lissitzky's activities, see Alan C. Birnholz, "El Lissitzky and the Spectator: From Passivity to Participation," The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930. New Perspectives. exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980), pp. 98-101. One problematic aspect of the design of the Dresden room is revealed in Lissitzky's statement in "2 Demonstrationsraume" that the visitor "is physically forced to engage with the exhibited objects." A reading of Lissitzky's work that would like to read the activa­ tion of the viewer by analogy as a political and social liberation would have to deal with the tension in this sentence between empowerment and manipulation, autonomy and control. Birnholz deals well with this and other nuances of Lissitzky's position.

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Printing Trades exhibition in Moscow, discussed at the beginning of this chapter. The contrast in circumstances between 1926 in Dresden and 1927 in Moscow is instructive: one an international art exhibition, the other a trade show; one in a capitalist country, the other in socialist Russia; one showing only advanced art of a recognizably modernist slant, the other also showing not only other works by Lis­ sitzky (graphic design of several kinds) and his Soviet col­ leagues, but also printing machines and other technology. The juxtaposition of the two exhibitions illuminates not only the general path Lissitzky had taken in quitting work on the Prouns, but also the specific role that his interest in blurring the boundaries between photography, typography and architecture had played in effecting this decision. Com­ ing some five or six years after the decision by many of his colleagues in the Moscow avant-garde to turn their backs on abstract painting (even of a "laboratory” kind), Lissitzky's move took place under correspondingly different conditions. His transition was more complex, as it involved an intricate negotiation of the claims of photography, architecture and graphic design within the context of personal circumstances and the implications of the return to Moscow after an absence of four years. It is revealing that Lissitzky's transition was made alone and without manifesto, in contrast to the public declaration of twenty-five artists in Moscow in November 1921. By 1927-1928, the beginning of the end of

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367

the New Economic Policy and the start of Stalin's first Five Year Plan for the forced industrialization of the country, Lissitzky was fully engaged in tasks useful to the new regime: propagandizing its achievements abroad, creating architectural proposals for both interior design and largescale office and factory building, teaching a new generation of student designers at Vkhutemas. All the political, aesthetic, organizational and personal decisions necessary for Lissitzky's career over the coming decade of the 1930s had been made. Although the rejection of painting and of the Prouns was not definitive or absolute, it was clear to Lis­ sitzky that his primary preoccupation with the possibilities of a radically new, non-objective pictorial strategy with political and perceptual power, which had consumed so much of his energy since 1919, has passed.

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Conclusion

When Alfred Barr visited El Lissitzky in Moscow in January 1928, the young American saw architectural projects, typographic designs and photographs. To Barr's guestion whether the artist ever painted,

Lissitzky replied that he

"painted only when he had nothing else to do, and as that was never, never."1 Six years later, another American

1.

Alfred Barr, Jr., "Russian Diary, 1927-1928," O c t o b e r . no. 7 (Winter 1978), p. 19

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369

visitor to Moscow inquired of Lissitzky's activity as a painter. Matthew Josephson, the artist's friend and col­ league from the Berlin years when he edited the expatriate magazine B r o o m . recalled the meeting in some detail in his memoirs. After describing the train journey to Lissitzky's "simple rustic" house some 25 miles outside Moscow, Joseph­ son recounts the conversation: "But how could you bring yourself to give up your paint­ ing?" I protested. I was not the only one who regarded Lissitzky as one of the foremost abstract artists of his era. "No, the time for that has all gone by," he said with his fine, sad little smile. "Perhaps some day, after I am gone, we will come back to it." Meanwhile he had enlisted with all his artistic equipment in the battle for Soviet Russia's survival.2 2.

Matthew Josephson, Infidel in the Temple. A Memoir of the Nineteen-Thirties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 213. Immediately after returning from Russia, Joseph­ son published a more detailed account of this visit. "He [Lissitzky] spoke to me no more of easel painting.... It was as if he had put such interests aside for the present, or for a long time. I recalled what certain other young Russians had said to me in this connection: 'This has been a period of self-sacrifice and selfdenial, which we have borne voluntarily because we knew that it would be worthwhile.' For L-, who had always been an unusually versatile and accomplished technician, was sorely needed in specialized fields like engraving, design, illustration; thus, though a chronically ill man, he gave himself with his whole heart to the work of mass publicity that the socialist program demands in Russia just as surely as the sale of automobiles and deodorants demands it in America. (...) In L- as in others I felt the universal enthusiasm for the Russian adventure. He tells me: 'We are beginning to gather the fruits of so much effort and self-sacrifice; we are beginning to reap the dividends... You have no idea of how much better life goes on now, of what has been done for our people.' He speaks of the new cities, the canals of Tadjikistan and new Mongolia. But suddenly, with a wild light, almost of gloating passion, in his eyes, he exclaims: 'And we are beginning even to make wonderful papers, pure printing inks - just a little. Our techni­

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370

The notably undogmatic and flexible attitude towards painting in both responses should not be surprising. That Lissitzky could envision a tomorrow when there would be time to paint is a moving echo of his passionate belief in a utopian future: his work in the Soviet Union in the 1930s can be seen as one more adjustment to reality, necessary for the longer-term g o a l .3 Moreover, his abandonment of painting had not been absolute or abrupt.4 As the foregoing chapters have tried to show, Lissitzky's pursuit of non-objective painting had involved a complex, shifting network of tactics and strategies which are difficult to resolve into a unified trajectory. My account has stressed the extent to which Lis-

que is fast improving. Soon you will see what great work we'll do here'" (Matthew Josephson, "The Literary Life in Russia," New Republic f vol. LXXIX no. 1018 [6 June 1934], pp. 91-92). 3.

It is also typical of Lissitzky to place that future after his own death. In 1925, a decade before this remark about the return of painting after his death, Lissitzky had made a note about how he saw himself: "I want logically, analytically, and scientifically to prove the approach of a phenomenon, about which I, as a mortal, will only speak, but which future generations will create" (TsGALI 2361/1/31/11, reprinted in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, p. 13).

4.

There is perhaps some irony in the circumstance that an artist such as Rodchenko, who in 1921 had adopted a "maximalist" position in the rejection of painting and the turn to "Productivism," then did return to painting in his later career, while Lissitzky, more equivocal about the role and fate of painting in the years 19191927, did not.

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371 sitzky's Prouns can be interpreted as operating within a field of signification constituted largely by the con­ temporary work of other artists: the Prouns have meaning and force through their difference from the work of those con­ temporaries. Schematically, one could argue that in the years 1919-1921, Lissitzky's work thrived on the challenges posed by Malevich, Rodchenko and Tatlin.

In 1922 and 1923,

it could "take on" Kandinsky (and perhaps, though this has not formed a major part of the present discussion, Mondrian). By 1924-1925 in Europe, with the return to clas­ sicism and figuration of the "Neue Sachlichkeit,11 and certainly by 1925-1926 in Russia, there was little or nothing in the way of a vital culture of non-objective art with which Lissitzky's work could engage. It was then that his work began a creative dialogue with the developments in photography, which becomes perhaps its primary cultural point of reference in the years up to the early 1930s.5 That 5.

These developments in Lissitzky's work lie outside the boundaries of this study. The dialogue with the photographic may in fact continue into the late 1930s, if one construes Lissitzky's layout designs for official journals and albums of the decade as "cinematic" in their narrative and visual structure. For a reading of Lissitzky's work in his final decade from another per­ spective, see my "An Introduction to El Lissitzky" in Cambridge 1987, pp. 44-46. There I try briefly to assess his continuing commitment to the Revolution, his loyalty to his own family, his continuing attraction to biologi­ cal and organic themes and symbols, and his persistent ability to produce powerful design work. For a stimulat­ ing approach to this design work as essentially "ceremonial," see Victor Margolin, "Construction Work," P r i n t . vol. XLVIII no. 3 (May-June 1994), pp. 84-91. Lissitzky's contribution to the visual culture of the 1930s awaits detailed investigation.

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372 engagement with photography grew out, I suggest, of Lis­ sitzky's experiences of 1922 and 1923 in "reassessing the role of the real," an engagement with light and material which was interestingly paralleled by his experiences in illustration and graphic design in those years. Around these themes, my discussion has attempted to illuminate some of the various intellectual sources ("influences") which nourished Lissitzky's theoretical thinking of these years. The importance to Lissitzky of Oswald Spengler and Raoul Heinrich France is shown by the extent of his borrowings from these authors; equally,

I have

been concerned to underline that here too, Lissitzky's engagement with these thinkers was concentrated on short periods and on specific circumstances. Lissitzky seems to have approached such encounters with other thinkers in the same eclectic, transient manner as his engagement with other visual artists. However, the manner of thinking represented by these two men (the "biological metaphor")

is surely of

more fundamental appeal to Lissitzky. The other main constant in Lissitzky's work is the com­ plicated relationship to architecture, both practical and ideal. Sometimes close, at other times distant, this relationship changed substantially over the three decades of Lissitzky's creative life. In architecture and its problems are reflected the tension between the aesthetic and the

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373

functional, the utopian and the immediate, the exemplary and the n o r m a l , the lasting and the ephemeral - tensions that could form the leitmotifs of any discussion of Lissitzky. This study begins with an explication of the architec­ tural meanings of various kinds,

latent or overt, within the

Prouns, and it ends with Lissitzky's return to thinking on an architectural scale, now associating not his Prouns with that architecture, but his photography and graphic design. In this constant dialogue with architecture, Lissitzky was able to live out an attitude of wary fascination with the real world. Always reluctant to accept it as a given, he was concerned to be an active participant in overcoming the status quo (as it applied both to the genres and practice of visual creativity, and to the social order). This participa­ tion required working with and on the given material or he given situation, manipulating it, integrating it, transform­ ing it. It is this process as exemplified by Lissitzky's work and thought during the "Proun years" of 1919 to 1927 which this study hopes to have explicated.

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Appendix Addenda and Corrigenda to "An Annotated Transcript of El Lissitzky's Proun Inventory" and to "A Summary Catalogue of Typographical Work by El Lissitzky"

A.

Addenda and Corrigenda to "An Annotated Transcript of

El Lissitzky's Proun Inventory."

These entries supplement the annotated transcript published by me in El Lissitzky 1890-1941f exh. cat. bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums,

(Cam­

1987), pp.

155-176. For information about the circumstances under which the list of Prouns was produced in 1924-1925, see the intro­ duction to the transcript (p. 155).

3.

Lissitzky's letter to Sophie of 2 March 1924 indicates that the potential purchaser of this Proun was the Hungarian

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375

critic, Ernst Kallai, who wrote two important essays about Lissitzky in 1922 and 1924.

12.

For the inclusion of this work in the National Socialist exhibition of Degenerate Art in 1937, see Stephanie Barron, e d . , "Degenerate Art:" The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Ger m a n y . exh. cat.

(Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum

of Art, 1991), pp. 60 and 292. Documents in the archives of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, R.I., indicate that Alexander Dorner (director of that institution) agreed in October 1938 to purchase, from the New York dealer Curt Valentin, four modern pictures which previously belonged to the Provinzialmuseum in Hanover, including two gouaches by Franz Marc (which he did acguire), a painting by Mondrian (which he rejected after it arrived in March 19 39 as it had been on loan to the Hanover Museum from a private collection and was therefore a stolen picture) and Lissitzky's "Gray Cube," which may be this work (or it may be Proun Inventory no. 46, now in a Massachusetts private collection, as listed in the remarks to Proun Inventory no. 47). At all events, Dorner also rejected the Lissitzky work after inspection because its ruined condition made it unexhibitable. The subsequent fate of the picture, which was presumably returned to Valentin, is not known.

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376 51.

As documented in Chapter I of the present study, the Unovis exhibition referred to inthis entry probably took place in June 1921, not December.

56. This painting, emerged.

formerly believed lost, has now re-

It is held by the State Mustafaev Museum of Art in

Baku, to which the Museum Bureau of the Russian Federation presumably sent it after it was returned from exhibition in Berlin and Amsterdam in 1922-1923. The painting, measuring 47 x 63.5 cm., is in oil and sand on plywood.

It is

illustrated in color in The Great Utopia. Russian and Soviet Avant-Gardef 1915-1932. exh. cat.

(New York: Guggenheim

Museum, 1992), pi. 207.

57 This painting is now owned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. See John E. Bolwlt and Nicoletta Misler, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Twentieth Century Russian and East European Painting (London: Zwemmer, 1993), no. 36, pp. 198-203.

84. This number was mis-identified in the Annotated Trans­ cript. A documentary installation photograph shows that the

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377

"Relief" shown at the "Vienna International Exhibition" in 1924 (11 September - 20 October) was not the relief which I illustrated (in a photograph taken from Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967 and 1980, pi 123), but rather another lost relief. See Irene Nierhaus,

"Internationale Kunstausstellung 1924," in

Die Wiener Sezession I I ; Die Vereiniauna bildender Kunstler, 1897-1985 (Vienna: Bohlau,

1986), pp. 102-104,

showing a rectangular relief,

ill. B.II.2,

itself built up of rectangular

elements of differing colors and transparencies, set on the diagonal, hanging between a landscape by Chagall and a con­ structed "Head" by Gabo. The scale and structure of this relief are much clearer in another photograph (in the HansArp-and-Sophie-Tauber-Arp-Foundation, Rolandseck, and there­ fore perhaps taken by Hans A r p ) , which shows Lissitzky hold­ ing the same work in Switzerland, probably in summer 1924. The photograph is reproduced in Rainer Stommer,

"Von der

neuen Aesthetik zur materiellen Verwirklichung. Konzepte einer Raum-Zeit-Architektur," in Konstruktivistische Inter­ nationale Schopferische Arbeitsaemeinschaft. 1922-1927. Utopien fur eine europaische Kultur, exh. cat. Gert Hatje,

(Stuttgart:

for the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen,

Diisseldorf, 1992), pp. 139-146,

fig. 11 at p. 144.

87. This work re-emerged at auction in 1990 (Hauswedell and Nolte, Hamburg, auction 282/1, 8 June 1990, lot 47), and now

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378

belongs to the Ziersch Collection, in Munich. Measuring 44.5 x 44 cm., this work, titled on the verso "Proun 333H," is a gouache and collage with multicolored paper and airbrush on paper.

It is illustrated in color in The Great U t o p i a . pi.

224.

95. This Proun was sold at Sotheby's New York, 16 May 1990 ("The Collection of Lydia Winston M a lbin"), no. 35, though the color illustration was inverted, according to the orientation of this work indicated by Lissitzky in his Proun Inventory manuscript.

B. Addenda and Corrigenda to "A Summary Catalogue of Typographical Work by El Lissitzky."

These entries supplement the summary catalogue published by me in El Lissitzky 1890-1941f exh. cat. Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums,

(Cambridge,

1987), pp. 177-202.

The introduction to that list expressed the hope that it "will prompt its own expansion" and the following list represents an interim report on the ever-growing amount of information on this aspect of Lissitzky's career. There is no doubt that it will in turn have to expanded as new items, and new details on documented items, are uncovered. For

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379

example, the Jan and Edith Tschichold Papers, recently acquired by the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, await detailed evaluation from the point of view of this Summary Catalogue. Were I able to do so, I would want to emend the title of the Catalogue to refer to "Graphic Design Work," rather than to "Typographical Work," a narrower term which does not cover the diversity and breadth of work which I want the list to cover. Otherwise, the explanations and cautions in the original introduction apply equally to this list of addenda and corrigenda, which includes only substantive cor­ rections. New items are marked by an asterisk (*). Entries without the asterisk are corrections and/or additions to entries in the original catalogue. This is an opportunity to document two mistaken attribu­ tions to Lissitzky of cover designs, one long-standing, the other recent. In 1962, Camilla Gray illustrated Mayakovsky's 1929 volume of verse, Slony v komsomole (Elephants in the Comsomol) as a design by Lissitzky (The Great Experiment: Rus­ sian A r t . 1863-1922

[London: Thames and Hudson, 1962], fig.

228). While this attribution was questioned (with the name Anton Lavinskii suggested as an alternative) in Marian Burleigh-Motley's revised and corrected edition of this book (Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in A r t f 1863-1922 [New York: Thames and Hudson,

1986], p. 312, note to caption for

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380

fig. 251) , the book is listed in Knizhnaya letopis' without any identification of the designer (vol. XXIII no. 30 [30 July 1929], no. 13338, p. 2456). In fact, this design is by N. V. Il'na, as documented by its inclusion in an illustra­ tion in M. Sokol'nikov,

"Tekhnika sovetskoi knigi niz-

hepoligrafa i konstruktorsakaya rabota N. V. Il'ina," Poliaraficheskoe proizvodstvo. nos. 4-5 (1931), pp. 30-37, between p. 36 and 37. Two recent publications in Germany illustrate the cover of the design journal Die Form for vol.

4 no. 10 (15 May

1929) and attribute it to Lissitzky (Kai-Uwe Hemken, El Lissitzky. Revolution und Avantqarde [Cologne: Dumont, 1990], col. plate 24, p. 143; and El L issitzky. Konstrukteur. Denker, Pfeifenraucher. Kommunist. exh. cat. Schmidt,

for the Matildenhohe Darmstadt,

[Mainz: Hermann

1990], p. 60). This

occurred through a misunderstanding of the table of contents in this issue of the journal, in which "Umschlagbild von El Lissitzky"

[Cover picture by El Lissitzky] refers not to the

cover of the journal itself, but to an illustration on p. 263 of the journal, showing the cover design for the 1929 Russian Exhibition catalogue (Typ. Cat. 1929/3).

1919/1 Another set of the Khad Gadya portfolio with the rare, tripartite lithographic cover was sold at Christie's, London,

2 December 1987, no. 541 (with an autograph dedica-

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381

tion by Lissitzky to Alexei Alexeevich Sidorov, dated 23 June 1919). A complete set of the lithographs printed with the black stone only (as in Cologne 1976, nos. 12-22) was sold at Sotheby's, London, 12 and 13 December 1991, no. 402.

1919/4 Six drawings and a collaged cover by Lissitzky for Pi hun, vos hot qewolt hobn a kam, from the estate of Ben Zion Raskin (the author) are in the collection of Esther Givli, Ramat Shamon,

Israel.

1920/5 Stephen White has now established that 2,000 copies of this poster were printed (The Bolshevik Poster [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988], p. 40). Questions about the variant version of this agitational poster, which I discussed in the original entry, continue to be raised, as copies of this version continue to appear on the market. Evgenii Kovtun has now suggested that "two editions of the print were executed in the Unovis workshop in 1919-1920. Large numbers of the poster were required, and subsequently two matrices were used," quoted in Alice Adam, Chicago, Catalogue Number 1 5 : New Acquisitions (Fall-Winter 19901991), no. 35. I know of no documentary or other evidence to support this assertion, which seems unlikely. The catalogue entry concerning this poster in Hanover 1988, p. 84 intro­

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382

duces yet more versions and reprints of the poster for dis­ cussion. The resolution of questions about dating and attribution of the several versions which differ from the one identified in Typ. Cat. 1920/5 awaits more research.

1921/1 A copy of the journal IZO no. 1 (10 March 1921) has now been located (State Russian Library, Moscow,

inv. no. C XX

318/24) and it can be reported that Lissitzky's design for the masthead was not used.

*1925/9 (Not illustrated) Cover for Nikolai Berendgof, Bunt veshchei. f4-ya kniqa stikhov.1 1922-1925a. [Revolt of Objects. Poems.) 1922-1925] 1926).

(Fourth Book of

(Moscow: K-vo Moskovskogo Tsekha Poetov,

32 pages and cover. 19 x 13 cm. 1000 copies.

Knizhnaia L etopis' r vol. XIX no. 19 (October 1925), no. 17343. Although the book cover has the date "1926" printed at the lower margin, the listing in the bibliographic periodical indicates that the book appeared in October 1925. Lissitzky's design renders the author's name and the title of the book in blue, with red and blue two-dimensional geometric forms scattered randomly over the cover. The artist's name is printed in black at the lower right. A copy of the book was exhibited at the exhibition El Lissitzky. Konstrukteur. D e n k e r . Pfeifenraucher. Kommunist at the Matildenhohe, Darmstadt in 1990-1991.

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383

1931/1 It may be useful to elucidate the iconography of the cover of Briqada khudozhnikov. The numbers "518" and "1040" represent the statistical goals for the number of new fac­ tories and agricultural machinery stations, respectively, demanded by Stalinist planning in the era of the Five Year Plans. The numbers often appear in agitational posters and in titles of photographs around 1931. See, for example, Rosalinde Sartorti and Henning Rogge, eds. Sowietische Fotoqrafie. 1928-1932 (Munich: Carl Hanser,

1975), pp. 25

and 77. The background photograph of workers in a factory is actually a still from Dziga Vertov's newsreel film, "The Eleventh Year"

(1928) as reproduced,

for example, in Die

F o r m . Zeitschrift fur qestaltende A r b e i t . vol. 4 no. 14 (15 July 1929) , p. 371.

1934/2 An example of the slip-cover/stand for this album about the Red Army is now in the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles.

*1934/5

(Not illustrated)

Design for Na stroike MTS i sovkhozov. vol. 1 no. 2 (August 1934).

"Artistic construction of this issue - El

Lissitzky." Copies of this techical journal for the

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384

mechanization and collectivization of agriculture (a topic well suited to Lissitzky's interests) are in the New York Public Library. See also the following entries.

*1934/6 (Not illustrated) Design for Na stroike MTS i sovkhozov. vol. 1 no. 4 (October 1934). "Artist-constructor of this issue - El Lis­ sitzky. "

*1934/7 (Not illustrated) Design (with Sophie) for Na stroike MTS i sovkhozov. vol. 1 no. 5 (November 1934). "Artist-constructor of this issue - El Lissitzky. Montage - C. Lissitzkaya-Kiippers."

1935/1 An example of the dust jacket is now in Getty Center the

for

History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica.

*1935/4

(Not illustrated)

Design for Na stroike MTS i sovkhozov. vol. 2 no. (February 1935). Lissitzky."

"Artistic construction of this issue

2 by El

(Lissitzky had been a "consultant" on the design

of the preceding issue, vol. 2 no. 1 [January 1935].)

*1935/5 (Not illustrated)

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385

Design for Na stroike MTS i. sovkhozov. vol. 2 no. 6 (June 1935). Design of this issue by the artists Es and El Lissitzky.

1936/3 Two copies of the previously unlocated album Pishchevaia Industriia (Moscow: Izogiz, 1936) were with Howard Schickler Fine Art in 1993-1994 (Cf. Russia and the Avant-Garde. Catalog N o . 1993-1 [New York, Howard Schickler Fine Art, 1993], no. 40). 38 x 25 cm. 6,000 copies. The design, including an embossed cover with blue lettering and twelve medallions representing food types, was by Lissitzky and his wife, Sophie. The copyright page indicates the difficult gestation of the volume (already documented in the cor­ respondence between Sophie and Lissitzky in summer 1935). Production began on 15 June 1936, with the last sheet printed on 24 November 1936. Both copies inspected had several faces obliterated by subsequent ink erasures (by h a n d ) . Clearly a response to the purges of Stalinist repres­ sion in 1937-1938, these instances include such victims as Natalia Saks, the creator of the Moscow Children's Theater and former wife of Tukhachevsky; party leaders including Chubar, Unshlikht, and Chervyakov, and others; etc.

*1939/6 (Not illustrated) Illustrirovannaya Gazeta no. 5 (10 March 1939). Published by the newspaper Pravda thrice monthly. 45 x 30

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386 cm. Photomontage cover by El Lissitzky, showing a head-andshoulders photograph of Stalin, with his proper right shoulder encompassing a woman holding a basket of tropical fruit, and his left shoulder encompassing a miner holding a jack-hammer over his shoulder. Between them are arrayed the montaged heads of people in rows, with banners: Communism"

"Long Live

["Da zdravstvuyet kommunizm"] and "Welcome to

XVIII Party Congress"

["Privyet XVIII s'yezdy VKP(b)"].

Upper right of image shows Palace of the Soviets model surmounted by Lenin. Cf. Matthew Teitelbaum, ed. Montage and Modern Life, 1919-1942, exh. cat.

(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT

Press, for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1992), p. 203 (not illustrated). Lissitzky may have designed other illustrations for this publication.

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Select Bibliography

This bibliography is divided into three sections. The first section lists writings by Lissitzky; the second lists writ­ ings about Lissitzky; and the third lists publications cited in this study which have not already appeared in the prior sections. Each section is preceded by a brief note explain­ ing the criteria for inclusion and other aspects peculiar to that part of the Select Bibliography. Writings by, about, and around Lissitzky are so extensive that a comprehensive listing would be impossible.

I. Writings by El Lissitzky

This section is divided into two main parts: writings published during the artist's lifetime (i.e. up to 1941) and "Other Writings." The latter includes both texts which have been published since 1941 and ones which remain unpublished.

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388

Within "Other Writings" there is a sub-group of the artist's correspondence, listed alphabetically by recipient. Letters to Lissitzky by these recipients and others have not been included.

While every attempt at comprehensiveness has been made, both parts of this section must be regarded as provisional list­ ings. It is very likely that the entries for Lissitzky's published writings from the period 1920-1921 in particular will have to be expanded, especially when the full details of the 1920 Unovis Almanac become available. Lissitzky published there not only under his own name, but surely also as a member of the Unovis group's "organizational com­ mittee." The possibility of further publications may be inferred from fragments of evidence, such as a passage in Lissitzky's 1923 lecture "New Russian Art," when he quotes himself from an as yet unidentified source in a pamphlet of 1920 (perhaps the Unovis Almanac). Newspapers of the period carry reports of lectures by Lissitzky (some given together with Malevich), and it may prove possible to substantiate these reports sufficiently to warrant an additional listing in a future version of this Bibliography. Equally, various private and public archives (especially in the former Soviet Union) may hold more unpublished writing by Lissitzky, and it is very likely, given his widespread network of connec­ tions amongst artists across Europe, that more letters are

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389 yet to come to light. For example,

just as this study is

being completed but too late to be included in adequate detail, word has come of a hitherto unknown letter from Lis­ sitzky to his Unovis colleague Lazar' Khidekel, now (March 1995) on the New York art market.

Whenever possible, reference is made only to the most easily accessible translation into English. Otherwise, translations into German are listed. No attempt has been made to list all posthumous republications and translations. Very occasionally, remarks about the attribution of a piece to Lissitzky are made, but in general this is not a critical bibliography. Where Lissitzky's original title for a piece of writing, or the location of an original manuscript is not known, this is indicated.

A. Published during the Artist's Lifetime

Novaya k u l 'tura [The New Culture] Shkola i Revolutsiya (Vitebsk), nos. 24-25 (16 August 1919), p. 11. Translated in Chapter I of the present study.

Suprematizm tvorchestva [Suprematism of Creativity]

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390 Unovis. no. 1 (1920) Translated into German in Lissitzky-Ktippers 1977, pp. 15-20.

Suprematizm v mirostroitel'stve [Suprematism in World Construction] U n o v i s . no. 1 (1920), p. 13 Cited in Moscow 1990, p. 24 n. 17; translated in LissitzkyKtippers 1980, pp. 331-334

Unovis i ego obshchestvennoe tvorchestvo [Unovis and its Social Creativity] U n o v i s . no. 1 (1920), p. 34 Cited and briefy quoted in Aleksandra Shatskikh,

"K.

Malevich v Vitebske," Iskusstvo, no. 11 (November 1988), pp. 41 and 43, n. 20

[Russian title unknown] [Notes, Not About This Book] U n o v i s . no. 1 (1920), p. 51 Cited in Larissa A. Shadowa, Suche und Experiment. Russische und Sowietische K u n s t . 1910-1930 (Dresden; VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1978), p. 130, n. 223

Katastropha arkhitektury [The Catastrophe of Architecture] Izo, no. 1 (10 March 1921), pp. 2-3

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391 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 369-371

[Yiddish title] [The Conquest of Art] R i n a e n . no. 10 (1922), pp. 32-34 Translated in Cambridge 1987, pp. 59-61

Die Blockade Russlands geht ihrem Ende entgegen [The Blockade of Russia is Coming to an End] Vesch, nos. 1-2 (March-April 1922), pp. 1-2 With II'ya Ehrenburg For a reference to Ehrenburg's claim to have written this alone, see Cambridge 1987, p. 54, n. 1 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 344-345.

Die Ausstellungen in Russland [The Exhibitions in Russia] V e s c h , nos. 1-2 (March-April 1922), pp. 18-19 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 35-40

Vystavki v Berline [Exhibitions in Berlin] V e s c h . no. 3 (May 1922), p. 14 Signed "Ulen," probably a pseudonym for Lissitzky Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 345-346

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392 Pro 2 Kvadrata. Suprematicheskii skaz v 6ti postroikakh. [About Two Squares. Suprematist Tale in 6 Constructions] (Berlin: Skythen, 1922), also in Dutch translation in De St i i l . vol 5 nos. 10-11 (October-November 1922).

Deklaration an den ersten Kongress fortschrittlicher Kiinstler, Dtisseldorf [Declaration to the First Congress of Progressive Artists, Dtisseldorf ] De S t i i l . vol. 5 no. 4 (April 1922), p. 56-57 With II'ya Ehrenburg.

Erklarung der internationalen Fraktion der Konstruktivisten des ersten Kongresses der fortschrittlichen Kvinstler [Statement of the International Fraction of Constructivists of the First Congress of Progressive Artists] De St i i l . vol. 5 no. 4 (April 1922), pp. 61-64 With Theo van Doesburg and Hans Richter

Proun De St i i l . vol. 5 no. 6 (June 1922), pp. 81-85, also in Hungarian in MA, vol VIII no. 1 (October 1922), n.p. Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 347-348.

K.I. Konstruktivistische Internationale Schopferische Arbeitsgemeinschaft

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393 [C.I. Constructivist International Creative Working Group] De S t i i l . vol. 5 no. 8 (August 1922), pp. 113-115 With Theo van Doesburg, Hans Richter, Karel Maes, and Max Burchartz

Ruska nova umetnost [New Russian Art] Zenit, vol.

2 nos. 17-18 (1922), pp. 50-52

With II'ya Ehrenburg

Vystava ruskeho umeni v zahranici [Exhibition of Russian Art Abroad] Stavba (Prague), vol. II no. 2 (1923), p. 15

Vegen der mohilever schul [On the Mohilev Synagogue] Mjlq r o i m . no. 3 (1923), pp. 9-13, also in Hebrew in R i m o n . no. 3 (1923), pp. 9-13

Prounenraum. Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung 1923 [Prouns Space. Great Berlin Art Exhibition 1923] G. Material zur elementaren G e s t altunq. no. 1 (July 1923) Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 365

Rad - Propeller und das Folgende. Unsere Gestaltung - Unsere Bewegungssysteme

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394

[Wheel - Propeller and What Follows. Our Design - Our Systems of Motion] G. Material zur elementaren Gestaltuna. no. 2 (September 1923), also in A B C , vol. 2 no. 1 (1926), p. 3-4 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 349

Topographie der Typographic [Topography of Typography] M e r z . no. 4 (July 1923), p. 47 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 359

Figurinen: Die Plastische Gestaltung der elektromechanischen Schau "Sieg iiber die Sonne" [Figurines: The Three Dimensional Design of the ElectroMechanical Spectacle "Victory over the Sun"] Fiaurinen: Die Plastische Gestaltuna der elektromechanischen Schau "Sieg iiber die Sonne" Portfolio of lithographs (Hanover, 1923), text page Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 351-352

Aus dem Briefe an Herrn N. [From the Letter to Mr. N] El Lissitzky. M o s k a u . Schau der Arbeit 1919-23 (Berlin: Graphisches Kabinett J. B. Neumann,

1924), p.

[3]

Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 358

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395 Element und Erfindung [Element and Invention] A B C . Beitraae zum B a u e n . vol. 1 no. 1 (1924), pp. 3-4 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 349-351.

Die Reklame [Advertising] A B C . Beitraae zum B a u e n . vol. 1 no. 2 (1924), pp. 3-4 With Mart Stam.

[Untitled statement: Merz r nos.

"es ist genug immer Maschine..."]

8-9 (April-July 1924)

Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 351

[Untitled statement:

"Kunst ist Gleichgewicht..."]

Merz, nos. 8-9 (April-July 1924), p. 76

Die elektromechanische Schau [The Electro-Mechanical Spectacle] MA, vol. IX nos. 8-9 (15 September 1924), n.p. The manuscript of this variant of Lissitzky7s text for his portfolio of lithographs (Hanover 1923) is in TsGALI (2361/1/25/16-17). Another variant text is recorded in a manuscript which belonged to Henrik Berlewi (now Paris, Archives Nakov)

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396 Aus einem Briefe [From a Letter] Paul Westheim, ed. , Kiinstlerbekenntnisse (Berlin: Propylaen, n.d.), p. 357 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 348-349

K. und Pangeometrie [A. and Pangeometry] Carl Einstein and Paul Westheim, e d s ., Europa-Almanach (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer and Witsch,

1925), pp. 103-113

Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 352-358

SSSR7s Architektur [The Architecture of the USSR] Das Kunstblatt. vol. IX no. 2 (February 1925), pp. 49-53 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 371-373

Architektur Russlands [The Architecture of Russia] A B C . Beitraae zum Bauen, vol. 1 no. 3-4 (1925), pp. 1-2 Reprinted in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 187-191 (Other writings from ABC attributed to Lissitzky in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977 [pp. 187, 191-192] are, in my opinion, editorial statements probably not by Lissitzky.)

Stadte mobliert zu vermieten

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397 [Furnished Cities for Rent] A B C . Beitraae zum B a u e n . vol. 1 no. 3-4 (1925), p. 3 Attributable to Lissitzky on the basis of manuscripts and documents in TsGALI (2361/1/27/9-15)

Proun [Proun] Die Kunstismen (Zurich: Eugen Rentsch,

typographische tatsachen,

1925), p. xi

z. B.

[Typographical Facts, For Example] Alois Ruppel, ed., Gutenberg Festschrift zur Feier des 25 iaehriaen Bestehens des Gutenberamuseums in Mainz

(Mainz:

Verlag der Gutenberg-Gesellschaft in Mainz, 1925), pp. 152154 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 359-360

Amerikanizm v evropeiskoi arkhitektury [Americanism in European Architecture] Krasnaya Niva, vol. 3 no. 49 (29 November 1925), pp. 11881189 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 373-375

Arkhitektura zheleznoi i zhelezobetonnoi ramy [Architecture of the Steel and Ferro-concrete Frame] Stroitel.tnaya promyshlennost '. vol. 4 no. 1 (January 1926), pp. 59-63

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398 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 70-79.

Glaz arkhitektora. Erich Mendelsohn. Amerika. Bilderbuch eines Architekten [Eye of the Architect. Erich Mendelsohn. America. Picture Book of an Architect] Stroitel'nava promyshlennost'. vol. 4 no. 2 (February 1926), pp. 144-146 Translated in Christopher Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern E r a . European Documents and Critical W r i t i n g s . 19131940 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Aperture, 1989]) p. 221

Seriya neboskrebov dlya Moskvy [Series of Skyscrapers for Moscow] Izvestiya A S N O V A . no. 1 (1926), pp. 2-3 Illustrated in Hanover 1988, fig. 225, p. 217, and trans­ lated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 80-83

Viking Eggeling Izvestiya A S N O V A . no. 1 (1926), p. 6 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 205206

V zashchitu konkurentov [In Defence of Competition Participants]

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399 Izvestiva A S N O V A . no. 1 (1926), p. 6 Attributable to Lissitzky on the basis of manuscripts, typescripts, and galleys in TsGALI (2361/1/59/19-21, 22-24, 46) and translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 84-86

Chelovek mera vsekh portnykh [Man the Measure of All Tailors] Izvestiya A S N O V A . no. 1 (1926), p. 8 Attributable to Lissitzky on the basis both of the signature "el" on the page (see illustration in Hanover 1988, fig. 226, p. 217) and of the lay-out design in TsGALI (2361/1/59/47-51); translated into German in Elke Pretorius, e d . , Der Architektenstreit nach der Revolution. Zeitqenossische T e x t e f Russland 1920-1932 (Basel, Berlin, and Boston: Birkhauser,

1992), p. 24

Ploskiye kryshi i ikh konstruktsii [Flat Rooves and their Construction] Stroitel'naya promvshlennost' . vol. 4 no. 11 (November 1926), pp. 820-822

Kul'tura zhil'ya [The Culture of Habitation] Stroitel'naya promvshlennost'. vol. 4 no. 12 (December 1926), pp. 877-881

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400 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 55-63

Baukhaus v Dessau [The Bauhaus in Dessau] Stroitel'nava promyshlennost'. vol. 5 no. 1 (January 1927), pp. 53-54

Funktsional'naya arkhitektura [Functional Architecture] Stroitel'nava promyshlennost'. vol. 5 no. 1 (January 1927), pp. 55

Anketa arkh. Gropiusa. Eshche o ploskikh kryshakh [The Questionnaire of the Architect Gropius. More on Flat Rooves] Stroitel'naya promyshlennost' r vol. 5 no. 3 (March 1927), pp. 192-195

Unser Buch (U.D.S.S.R.) [Our Book (USSR)] Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1927 (Mainz: Gutenberg-Gesellschaft, 1927), pp. 172-178, also in Czech translation in typoarafia. vol. XXXVI no. 8 (August 1929), pp. 173-182 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 360-363

Khudozhnik v proizvodstve

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401 [The Artist in Production] Vsesoiuznaya Poliaraficheskaya V y s t a v k a . Putevoditel ’ (Mos­ cow, 1927), sec. II, pp. 3-8 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 113117

Idoli i idolopoklonniki [Idols and Idolatrists] Stroitel'naya promyshlennost'. vol.

6 nos. 11-12 (November-

December 1928), pp. 854-858 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 41-54

Fotopis' [Photo Painting] Sovetskoe Foto, vol. 4 no. 10 (15 May 1929), p. 311 Translated in Eindhoven 1990, p. 70

Oborudovanie zhil'ya mebel'yu [Equipping the Home with Furniture] V. Vel'man, ed., Tipovye proekty i konstruktsiya zhilishchoqo stroitel/stva rekomenduemye na 1 930a. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe tekhnicheskoe izdatel'stvo, for the Stroitel'naya kommissiya Ekoso, RSFSR, 1929), pp. 31-35 Attributed to Lissitzky by S. O. Khan-Magomedov, "L. Lisitstkii o sotsial7nykh problemakh perestroiki byta, novom tipe zhilishcha i ego oborudovanii,11 Teoreticheskie problemy

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402 d iz a i n a . Metodolicheskie aspekty sotsioloaicheskikh i istoriko-kul'turnvkh issledovanii. Trudy VNIITE Tekhnicheskaya estetika 22 (Moscow, 1979), p. 59

Der Innen-Aufbau des Theaters Meyerhold-Moskau fur Tretjakows "Ich will ein Kind" [The Interior Construction of the Meyerhold Theater, Moscow, for Tretyakov's "I Want a Child1'] Das neue Frankfurt. vol. IV no. 10 (October 1930), p. 226

Russische Wohnungsnot und ihre Losungen [Russian Housing Shortage and its Solutions] Das neue Frankfurt, vol.

IV no. 11 (November 1930), p. 245

Illustrated in Cambridge 1987, p. 42

R ussl a n d . Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowietunion [Russia. The Reconstruction of Architecture in the Soviet Union] (Vienna: Anton Scholl, 1930). Translated by Erich Dluhosch as Ru s s i a . Architecture for a World Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1970)

Ne otryvat'formy ot soderzhaniya! [Do not separate form from content!] Briaada khudozhnikovf no. 4 (1931), p. 23

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403 Translated in Cambridge 1987, pp. 61-62

Forum sotsialisticheskoi Moskvy [A Forum for Socialist Moscow] Arkhitektura S S S R . vol. 2 no. 10 (October 1934), pp. 4-5 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 87-91

B. Other Writings

i. Essays, Lectures, etc.

[Untitled mss. notes] ca. 1911, etc. Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 13

Ne mirovedenie - no miroreal'nost' [Not World Vision But World Reality] ca. 1921 Typescript in TsGALI 2361/1/25/13-14

Proun [Proun] Lecture of 2 3 September 1921 Location of manuscript unknown Translated in Cologne 1976, pp. 59-72

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404

[Untitled lecture] Lecture of 30 October 1921 Location of manuscript unknown Excerpt quoted in Nikolai Khardzhiev,

"El Lisitskii -

konstruktor k n i g i ," Iskusstvo kniai 3. 1958-1960 (Moscow: Iskusstvo,

1962), p. 148, and translated in Chapter I of the

present study

Proun. Nicht Weltvisionen, sondern Weltrealitat [Proun. Not World Visions, But World Reality ca. 1922 Annotated typescripts, with a sheet of additional manuscript formulations,

in TsGALI (2361/1/25/6-8, 9-11, 12)

[Original German title not known] [Theses on Proun (From Painting to Architecture)] ca. 1922 Location of typescript unkown Translated from a typescript in German in a private archive into Russian and published in part in M. G. Barkhin, et al., eds., Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitekture f vol. II (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1975), pp. 133-135. To judge by the Russian translation, these "theses" are very close in formulation to the German translations of a text about Proun in TsGALI (2361/1/25/6-8, 9-11)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

405

Neue Russische Kunst [New Russian Art] 1923 Typescript with manuscript notations in TsGALI 2361/1/26/130 Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp. 335-334

[Various manuscript notes] ca. 1924 TsGALI 2361/1/31 and private archive

Rednertribiine fur offentlichen Platz [Speaker's rostrum for a Public Square] ca. 1925 TsGALI 2361/1/25/15 Reprinted in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 186

[Answer to a Questionnaire] 25.2.1925 TsGALI 2361/1/58/3 Reprinted in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, p. 193

Bis 1926 / Der Lebensfilm von el [Until 1926 / The Life Film of el]

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406 Typescript in Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manus­ cript Library, Societe Anonyme Archives, and a carbon copy in TsGALI

(2361/1/58/1-2)

Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 3 29

2 demonstrationsraume [2 Demonstration Rooms] 1926 Typescript in Sprengelmuseum Hannover, Archives Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, pp.

366-367

Khudozhestvennye predposylki standartizatsiyi grazhdanskoi individual'noi mebeli [Artistic Preconditions for the Standardization of Civilian Furniture Items] Manuscript in TsGALI 2361/1/30/1-41 Undated, but probably 1928-1929 Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 92112.

Minutes of Meyerhold's Conversation with the Architect Lis­ sitzky,

11 January 1930

Location of manuscript unknown; transcript in private archive Translated in Cologne 1976, pp. 77-78.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

407

[Autobiographical Statement:

"Lissitzky Speaks"]

Dated 31.7.1932 in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967, p. 326 Location of manuscript unknown Translated in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 330

[Russian title unknown] [Lecture to the Organizing Committee of the All-Union Architecture Exhibition for the Architects' Congress of the USSR] 2.11.1934 Location of manuscript unkown Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 209213

Poyasnitel'naya zapiska k idee arkhitekturnokhudozhestvennogo postroeniya Vystavki po kommynal'nomu stroitel'stvy [Explanatory Note on the Ideas for the ArchitecturalArtistic Design of the Exhibition of Municipal Construction (in the Palace of Technology)] Date unknown, ca. 1937 Manuscript in the Tretyakov Gallery, Department of Manus­ cripts Cited in Moscow 1990, p. 128; translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 214-217

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

408 Khudozshestvennoe oformlenie glavnogo pavil'iona V.S.Kh.V [Artistic Design of the Main Pavilion of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition] 13 March 1938 Manuscript in TsGALI 2361/1/34/1-13

[Russian title unknown] [Report on the Preliminary Design of the Exhibits of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry at the Soviet Pavilion at the International Exhibition in New York 1939] 20 September 1938 Location of manuscript unknown Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 218219

[Russian title unknown] [Conversation with the Artist Lissitzky] 15 February 19 39 According to Lissitzky-Kuppers 1980, p. 401, n. 17, the transcript is in the Mayakovsky Museum Translated into German in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1977, pp. 203204

Svedeniya o tvorchestve khudozhnika mebeli [Information about the Creative Work of the Furniture Artist]

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

409 3 April 1940 Manuscript in Tretyakov Gallery; transcript in TsGALI 2361/1/58/12-13,

14-15

Cited in Moscow 1990, p. 128, and translated in Cologne 1976, pp. 79-80.

Svedeniya o tvorchestve khudozhnika knigi [Information on the Creative Work of the Book Artist] 13 April 1941 TsGALI 2361/1/58/14-15 Translated in Cologne 1976, pp. 81-82.

Khudozhnik Lisitskii, Lazar Markovich. Avtobiografia [The Artist Lazar Markovich Lissitzky. Autobiography] June 1941 State Tretyakov Gallery, Archives (76/9) and TsGALI 2361/1/58/17-20, 21, 22-23 Translated in Eindhoven 1965, pp. 33-35

ii. Correspondence

Baumeister, Willi and Schlemmer, Oskar 1 letter, 25.8.1924 (Stuttgart, Baumeister-Archiv)

Behne, Adolph

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

410 3 letters,

1924-1925 (Berlin, Archiv Conrads). Reproduced in

Hanover 1988, pp. 64-67 (omitting the end of one letter)

Berlewi, Henryk 1 letter, 16.3.1924

(Paris, Archives Nakov)

Brik, Osip 1 letter, 18.6.1924

(location unknown). Reproduced and

translated in Hanover 1988, pp. 68-69

Chashnik,

II'ya

1 letter, 6.11.1926 (location unknown). Translated in Cologne 1976, pp. 45-46, and into German in LissitzkyKuppers 1977, pp. 119-120

van Doesberg, Theo 4 letters and 1 postcard annotation,

1922-1924 (The Hague,

Dienst Versprejde Rijkskollekties, Van Doesburg Archive)

van Eesteren, Cornells 1 letter,

25.4.1924 (The Hague, Van Eesteren-Fluck and Von

Lohnizen Foundation). Reproduced in Konstruktivistische Internationale Schopferische Arbeitsqemeinschaft. 1922-1927. Utopien fur eine europaische K u l t u r . exh. cat. Gert Hatje,

(Stuttgart:

for the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen,

Diisseldorf, 1992), pp. 318-319

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

411

van Essche, Maurice 2 letters,

11.1.192 3 and 17.1.192 3 (locations unknown). Sold

at Sotheby's London 17.5.1979,

lot no. 121A-H

Delaunay, Robert 2 letters and 1 postcard, August-September 1924 (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Fonds Delaunay)

Dreier, Katherine 5 letters

(and some from Sophie),

1926-1927 (Yale

University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Societe Anonyme Archives)

Gropius, Walter 1 undated letter (Berlin, Bauhaus-Archiv)

Huszar, Vilmos 1 postcard,

jointly with Kurt Schwitters, 24.12.1923.

Published in Sjarel Ex and Els Hoek, Vilmos Hus z a r . Schilder en O n t w e r p e r . 1884-1960. De qrote Onbekende van De Stiil (Utrecht: Reflex, 1985), p. 265

Kestner Society 1 telegram,

28.2.1923, and 1 letter, 5.2.1924 (Hanover,

Kestner Society Archives)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

412

K o k , Anthony 2 postcards,

22.5.1923 and 29.5 1923, and 1 postcard jointly

signed with others,

31.7.1923 (locations unknown). Sold at

J.L. Beyers Auction, Utrecht, 26 November 1968, lot. nos. 1124 and 1135

Kuppers, Sophie Numerous letters and postcards, 1923-1935. Partially published in Lissitzky-Kuppers 1967 and 1980, and LissitzkyKuppers 1977

Le Corbusier 2 letters,

23.3.1924 and 15.5.1924

(Paris, Fondation Le Cor­

busier)

Loeb, Harald 1 letter, 7.8.1923

(Princeton, Princeton University Library)

Malevich, Kazimir 1 letter, 12.9.1919 (location unknown). Quoted Nikolai Khardzhiev,

"El Lisitskii - konstruktor k n igi,11 Iskusstvo

kniqi 3. 1958-1960 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1962), p. 154

M e yer , Hannes 1 letter, 18.9.1930 (Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

413

Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo 1 letter, 10.3.1924 (Berlin, Bauhaus-Archiv)

O u d , J .J .P . 20 letters and postcards, 1923-1928

(Eindhoven, Stedelik van

Abbemuseum). Published in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977

Posse, Hans Letters, March-May 1926 (Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstichkabinett, Archives). Quoted by Kai-Uwe Hemken, "Pan-Europe and German Art. El Lissitzky at the 1926 Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden," in Eindhoven 1990, pp. 46-47, n. 4-6

Renger-Patzsch, Albert 1 letter, ca. 193 0 (Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities)

Rodchenko, Alexander 1 letter, 23.3.1922. Quoted in A. M. Rodchenko, S t a t 'i . vospominaniva. avtobioaraficheskie zap i s k i . p i s /ma (Moscow, 1982)

Tschichold, Jan

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

414

14 letters and postcards,

1925-32

(Los Angeles, Getty Center

for the History of Art and the Humanities) and 1 letter, 1925 (Chicago, Newberry Library)

Tzara, Tristan 2 letters,

25.10.1922 and 12.8.1924 (Paris, Bibliotheque

Litteraire Jacques Doucet)

Unidentified 1 letter to "Vera," 4.3.1913

(private archive). Translated

in part in Lissitzky-Kiippers 1977, pp. 118-119. 1 letter to "Inya," 18.8.1911 (private archive)

Zwart, Piet 1 letter, letter,

19.4.1926 (New York, Private Collection) and 1

19.9.1930 (Los Angeles, Getty Center for the History

of Art and the Humanities)

II. Publications about El Lissitzky

This sections lists only those works which focus exclusively or predominantly on Lissitzky. A large number of more general articles in the cultural journals of the last three decades (often prompted by exhibitions of Lisistzky's work)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

415

have been omitted. A number of newspaper and magazine reviews from the period 1919-1927 have been included to reflect this study's attention to the reception of Lissitzky's work of these years.

(There are many published

reactions to Lissitzky's work of 1927-1941, especially to the trade exhibition designs and, in the 1930s, reviews in Soviet newspapers and journals of his design work for offi­ cial pictorial publications.) Although not exclusively or predominantly concerned with Lissitzky, several scholarly catalogues of public and private collections with sig­ nificant holdings of work by Lissitzky have been included for the importance of their critical or documentary con­ tribution.

a)

Published in the Artist's Lifetime

Arvatov, B . "Veshch". Berlin, No. No. 1,2 i 3. Str. 56. 1922g. Pechat' i revoliutsiia. vol. 2 no. 7 (September-October 1922), pp. 341-342

Dorner, Alexander El Lissitzky. Ausstellung in der Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannoverscher Kurier, 9 February 1923, evening edition, p. 2

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

416

Zur abstrakten Malerei: Erklarung zum Raum des Abstrakten in der Hannoverschen Gemaldegalerie Die F o r m . vol.

3 no. 4 (April 1928), pp. 110-114

Giedion, Siegfried Lebendiges Museum Der C i c erone. vol. XXI no. 3 (February 1929), pp. 103-106

Hilbersheimer, Ludwig Bildende Kunst: Tafelmalerei Sozialistische Monatsheftef vol.

30 no. 3 (26 March 1924),

pp. 199-200.

Kallai, Ernst Lissitzky Das Kunstblatt. vol. 6 no. 7 (July 1922), pp. 296-299

Kallai, Ernst El Lissitzky Der Cicerone, vol. XVI no. 20 (December 1924), pp. 10581063, also in Jahrbuch der iuncren Kunst, no. 5 (Leipzig: Klinkhardt und Biermann,

1924), pp. 304-309

Ktippers, Sophie Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

417

Hannoverscher K u r i e r . 17 August 1926, morning edition, pp. 2-3

Lozowick, Louis El. Lissitzky Transition. An International Quarterly for Creative Experi­ ment no. 18 (November 1929), pp. 284-286

Eliezer Lissitzky Menorah J o u r n a l . vol. 12 no. 2 (1926), pp. 175-176

Osborn, Max Kunst-Umschau Vossische Zeitung, 21 February 1924, evening e d . , pp. 2-3

Tschichold, Jan Display that has Dynamic Force. Exhibition Rooms Designed by El Lissitzky Commercial A r t . vol. X no. 55 (January 1931) 21-26

el: the "constructivist" el lissitzky Commercial A r t . vol XI no. 64 (October 1931) 148-150

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

418 iiber el lissitzky Imprimatur. Ein Jahrbuch fur Bucherfreunde. vol. 3 (1932), pp. 97-112

Schalcher, Traugott El Lissitzky, Moskau Gebrauchsaraphik. vol. 5 no. 12 (December 1928) 49-64

Von Sydow, Eckhart Hannover Der Cicer o n e . vol. XV no. 4 (February 1923), pp. 156-157

Westheim, Paul Grosse Berliner Kunstrausstellung Frankfurter Zeituna. 9 June 1923, p. 3

Wolfradt, Willi Berliner Ausstellungen Der C i c e r o n e . vol. XV no. 16 (August 1923), pp. 760-761

Berliner Ausstellungen Per Cice r o n e , vol. XVI no. 3 (February 1924), pp. 142-143

Berliner Ausstellungen

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

419

Per C i c e r o n e . vol. XVII no. 12 (June 1925) p. 607-608

b)

Published since 1941

Abramsky, Chimen El Lissitzky as Jewish Illustrator and Typographer Studio International. vol. 172 no. 882 (October 1966), pp. 182-185

Eliezer Lissitzky Jewish Q u a r t e r l y . vol. 9 no. 1 (33)

(Winter 1962), pp. 26-27

[Annely Juda Fine Art] El Lissitzky. 11 Original Gouaches for the 'Chad G a d y a ' and 8 Original Designs for the 'Four Mathematical Processes' . exh. cat.

(London: Annely Juda Fine Art, 1979)

Baljeu, Joost The problem of Reality with Suprematism, Constructivism, Proun, Neoplasticism, and Elementarism The Lugano R e v i e w , vol 1 no. 1 (1965), pp. 105-128

Birnholz, Alan C.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

420 "For the New Art": El Lissitzky's Prouns Artfo r u m . vol. VIII no. 2 (October 1969), pp. 65-70; no. 3 (November 1969), pp. 68-73

[Review of the English translation of Lissitzky-Kiippers 1967] Art Quarterly, vol. XXXIII no. 2 (Summer 1970), pp. 182-183

El Lissitzky's Writings on Art Studio International. vol. 183 no. 942 (March 1972), pp. 9092

El Lissitzky, the Avant-Garde, and the Russian Revolution Artfo r u m , vol. XI no. 1 (September 1972), pp. 70-76

El Lissitzky. (Book-lenath study of the art of El L issitzky. 1890-1941) . Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University,

1973

Notes on the Chronology of El Lissitzky's Proun Compositions Art B u l letin, vol. LV no. 3 (September 1973), pp. 437-439

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

421

El Lissitzky and the Jewish Tradition Studio International, vol. 186 no. 959 (October 1973), pp. 130-136

Time and Space in the Art and Thought of El Lissitzky The Structurist. nos. 15/16 (1975-1976), pp. 89-97

El Lissitzky and the Spectator: From Passivity to Participa­ tion In The Avant-Garde in R u s s i a . 1910-1930. New Perspectives. exh. cat.

(Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

1980), pp. 98-101

Bois, Yve-Alain EL L . , didactiques de lecture Soviet U n i o n , vol.

3 prt. 2 (1976), pp. 233-252, also trans­

lated into English in O c t o b e r . no. 11 (Winter 1978), pp. 113-128

Lissitzky, Maldvitch et la question de l'espace Suprematisme. exh. cat.

(Paris: Galerie Jean Chauvelin,

1977), pp. 29-46

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

422

Lissitzky censeur de Malevitch? M a c u l a . nos. 3/4 (1978), pp. 191-201

Metamorphoses of axonometry Het Nieuwe B o u w e n . De Nieuwe Beeldina in de architectur. De S t i i l . exh. cat.

(Delft: Delft University Press, for Haags

Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1983), pp. 146-156, also in an abridged version in Daidalos. Berlin Architectural Journal no. 1 (15 September 1981), pp. 40-58.

El Lissitzky: Radical Reversibility (Review of Cambridge 1987) Art in A m e r i c a , vol. 76 no. 4 (April 1988), pp. 160-181.

Exposition: esthdtique de la distraction, espace de demonstration Cahiers du Musde National d'A£t M o d e r n e . vol.

29 (Autumn

1989), pp. 57-79

Lissitzky, Mondrian, Strzeminski. Abstraction and Political Utopia in the Twenties

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

423

Cade n c e s . Icon and Abstraction in Context, exh. cat.

(New

York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991), pp. 81-103

Bojko, Szymon El Lisicki Fotoarafia (Warsaw) vol. XI no. 11 (November 1963), pp. 262266

Bowlt, John E. A Child's Topography of Typography Art N e w s .

vol. 81 no. 7 (September 1982) pp. 13-14, 17

and Nicoletta Misler The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

Twentieth Century Russian

and East European Painting (London: Zwemmer, 1993)

Brodsky, Boris El Lissitzky The Avant-Garde in R u s s i a . 1910-1930. New Perspectives. exh. cat.

(Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980),

pp. 92-97

Buchloh, Benjamin D. From Faktura to Factography O c t o b e r . no. 30 (Fall 1984), pp. 82-119

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

424 Biirkle, J. Christoph El Lissitzky. Der Traum vom Wolkenbuael (Zurich: GTA Institut fur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, 1991)

Corrada, Manuel On Some Vistas Disclosed by Mathematics to the Russian Avant-Garde: Geometry, El Lissitzky and Gabo Leonardo. vol. 25 nos. 3/4 (1992), pp. 377-384

Debbaut, Jan and Marielle Soons, eds. El Lissitzky. 1890-1941. Architect. Painter, Photographer, Typographer. exh. cat.

(New York: Thames and Hudson, for the

Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1990). Includes: Henk Puts, "El Lissitzky (1890-1941), his Life and Work;" YveAlain Bois, "From - °° to 0 to +