Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat

The Artist-Proletarian

1918

D6

Osip Brik

The art of the future is proletarian art. Art will either be proletarian or will not be. 

But who will create it? 

Those people who understand proletarian art as “art for proletarians” will not hesi-

tate to reply that this art, just like any other, will be created by artists, those who have 

“talent.” In their opinion, talent is universal. It can adjust easily to any consumerist 

environment. Today, this environment may be bourgeois, tomorrow proletarian, 

what diff erence does it make? Such people cannot get rid of their bourgeois, con-

sumerist attitude to things. They are trying to place the proletariat in the strange 

position of an art patron who lets himself be entertained with curious inventions. 

From here stem constant concerns about the ease of understanding, accessibility, 

as if this were the point. We have known for a long time that the more accessible the 

art, the more boring it is. However, the “talents” are quite afraid to anger their new 

consumers by a careless escapade and instead are boring them to death.

They are not the ones to build the art of the future. Soulless hacks, philistines, lack-

ing live revolutionary proletarian consciousness, they are doomed to peril, along 

with the out-of-control bourgeois element that gave them birth. 

Who then?

“Proletarians themselves.” This will be the answer of those people who understand 

proletarian art as “art by proletarians.” They think that it would be enough to take 

any proletarian, teach him art, and everything that he creates will be proletarian 

art. However, experience tells us that in these cases, instead of proletarian art, we 

would have a feeble parody of the long gone art of the past. It could not be oth-

erwise: art, like any production, does not tolerate amateurism. Proletkul’t forgot 

about this.

Proletarian art is not “art for proletarians” and not “art by proletarians,” but art by 

artists-proletarians. Only they will create this art of the future.

An artist-proletarian is a person who combines creativity and proletarian con-

sciousness. They are combined not temporarily, but permanently, in one undivided 

whole.

An artist-proletarian is distinguished from an artist-bourgeois not because he cre-

ates for a diff erent consumer, nor because he comes from a diff erent social back-

ground, but because of his attitude toward himself and his work.

An artist-bourgeois thinks that creating is his personal aff air, but an artist-proletari-

an knows that he and his talent belong to a collective.

An artist-bourgeois creates in order to realize his ego; an artist-proletarian creates 

in order to complete a socially important business.

An artist-bourgeois juxtaposes himself to the crowd as a foreign element; an artist-

proletarian sees his own people in front of him.

In his chase for glory and profit, an artist-bourgeois tries to cater to the tastes of the 

crowd. An artist-proletarian does not know personal gain. He struggles against its 

sluggishness and is led by art, incessantly moving forward.

An artist-bourgeois repeats clichés of past art for the thousandth time; an artist-

proletarian always creates something new, because herein lies the call of his social 

duty.

These are the basic principles of the art of the future. Those who are aware of them 

are proletarians, artists-proletarians, builders of the art of the future.

Originally published in Russian as Osip Brik, “Khudozhnik-Proletarii,” 

Iskusstvo kommuny 2 (Petrograd, December 

15, 1918): 1. For a German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und 

Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen (Co-

logne: DuMont, 1979), 45–47. 

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Natasha Kurchanova.

Fundación Juan March

“Futurism” and Proletarian Art

1918

D7

Natan Al’tman

Certain art circles and private individuals who not so long ago abused us in various 

“cultural publications” for working with the Soviet government and who knew no 

other name for us than “bureaucrats” and “perfunctory artists” would now rather 

like to take our place.

And so a campaign has begun against futurism, which, they say, is a millstone 

around the worker’s neck and whose claims to “being the art of the proletariat” are 

“ridiculous,” etc. . . 

But are they so ridiculous?

Why did it need a whole year of proletarian government and a revolution that en-

compassed half the world for the “silent to speak up”?

Why did only revolutionary futurism march in step with the October Revolution?

Is it just a question of outward revolutionary fervor, just a mutual aversion to the old 

forms, which joins futurism with the proletariat?

Not even they deny that futurism is a revolutionary art that is breaking all the old 

bonds and in this sense is bringing art closer to the proletariat.

We maintain that there is a deeper link between futurism and proletarian creation.

People naive in matters of art are inclined to regard any sketch done by a worker, 

any poster on which a worker is depicted, as a work of proletarian art.

A worker’s figure in heroic pose with a red flag and an appropriate slogan—how 

temptingly intelligible that is to a person unversed in art and how terribly we need 

to fight against this pernicious intelligibility.

Art that depicts the proletariat is as much proletarian art as the 

Chernosotenets

 1

 

who has gotten into the Party and can show his membership card is a communist.

Just like anything the proletariat creates, proletarian art will be collective: the prin-

ciple that distinguishes the proletariat as a class from all other classes.

We understand this, not in the sense that one work of art will be made by many 

artists, but in the sense that while executed by one creator, the work itself will be 

constructed on collectivist bases.

Take any work of revolutionary, futurist art. People who are used to seeing a depic-

tion of individual objects or phenomena in a picture are bewildered. You cannot 

make anything out. And indeed, if you take out any one part from a futurist picture, 

it then represents an absurdity. Because each part of a futurist picture acquires 

meaning only through the interaction of all the other parts; only in conjunction with 

them does it acquire the meaning with which the artist imbued it.

A futurist picture lives a 

collective life: by the same principle on which the prole-

tariat’s whole creation is constructed.

Try to distinguish an individual face in a proletarian procession.

Try to understand it as individual persons—absurd.

Only in conjunction do they acquire all their strength, all their meaning.

How is a work of the old art constructed—the art depicting reality around us?

Does every object exist in its own right? They are united only by extrinsic literary 

content or some other such content. And so cut out any part of an old picture, and 

it won’t change at all as a result. A cup remains the same cup; a figure will be danc-

ing or sitting pensively, just as it was doing before it was cut out.

The link between the individual parts of a work of the old art is the same as between 

people on Nevsky Prospekt. They have come together by chance, prompted by an 

external cause, only to go their own ways as soon as possible. Each one for himself, 

each one wants to be distinguished.

Like the old world, the capitalist world, works of the old art live an individualistic life.

Only futurist art is constructed on collective bases.

Only futurist art is right now the art of the proletariat.

Natan Al’tman: born Vinnitsa, Ukraine, 1889; died Leningrad, 1970. 1901–7: studied painting 

and sculpture at the Odessa Art School; 1910–12: attended Vasileva’s Académie Russe in 

Paris; 1912–16: contributed to the 

Union of Youth, Exhibition of Painting, 1915, 0.10, Knave 

of Diamonds, and other exhibitions; 1912–17: contributed to the satirical journal Riab’ in 

Saint Petersburg; 1918: professor at Pegoskhum/Petrograd Svomas; member of the Visual 

Arts Section of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (IZO Narkompros); designed 

decoration for Uritskii Square, Petrograd; 1919: leading member of Komfut; 1921: designed 

decor for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 

Misteriia-buff ; 1922: member of the Institute of Artistic Cul-

ture (INKhUK); 1929–35: lived in Paris; 1935: returned to Russia; 1936: settled in Leningrad.

The text of this piece, “‘Futurizm’ i proletarskoe iskusstvo,” is from the journal 

Iskusstvo 

kommuny.

2

 

Iskusstvo kommuny was the weekly newspaper of IZO Narkompros, and during 

its short life from December 1918 to April 1919 it published many radical articles by such 

artists and critics as Natan Al’tman, Osip Brik, Boris Kushner and Nikolai Punin.

3

 The futur-

ists—and, as Al’tman indicates in his note to the title: “I am using ‘futurism’ in its everyday 

meaning, i.e., all leftist tendencies in art,” the term is a general one here—considered them-

selves to be at one with the revolutionary government. Like many other avant-garde artists 

at this time, Al’tman believed, albeit briefly, that individual easel painting was outmoded 

and that art should have a collective basis; essentially this meant that the artist was to turn 

to mass art forms such as monuments and bas-reliefs, to social and cultural heroes, street 

decoration, and book, postage-stamp and stage design. Apart from Al’tman’s futurist pan-

els and his decorations for Uritskii Square, perhaps the finest example of his mass art was 

his album of sketches of Lenin published in Petrograd in 1920. 

— JB

1.

The 

Chernosotentsy, or Black Hundreds, were members of a secret-police and monarchist organization set up

to counteract the revolutionary movement in 1905–7. 

Chernosotenets soon became identified with the more

general concepts of “rightist” and “extreme conservative.”

2. 

Iskusstvo kommuny 2 (Petrograd, December 15, 1918): 3; the text is reprinted in Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let

(Soviet Art of the Last Fifteen Years), ed. Ivan Matsa (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), 167–68.

3.  See Ivan Matsa, 

Iz istorii sovetskoi esteticheskoi mysl (Moscow, 1967), 509, for some bibliographical details

Originally published in Russian as Natan Al’tman, “‘Futurizm’ i proletarskoe iskusstvo,” 

Iskusstvo kommuny 2 (Petro-

grad, December 15, 1918): 3. It is reprinted in 

Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let, ed. Ivan Matsa et al. (Moscow-Leningrad, 

1933), 167–68. For a German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente 

und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen 

(Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 47, 48. 

The version here has been reproduced by permission, with minor changes, from “‘Futurism’ and Proletarian Art,” in 

Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt, rev. and enlarged ed. 

(London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 161–64. 

Fundación Juan March

326

Communism and Futurism 

1919

D8

Viktor Shklovskii / Nikolai Punin

 “The people of the past were no wiser than themselves,

 assuming that the sails of state could be built for the 

mast of space alone.” 

The Trumpet of the Martians

Below we feature the article of Viktor Shklovskii “About Art and Revolution.” This 

article at the end is suff iciently strong in the accusations contained in it, and inter-

esting, if not in thought then in the arguments that accompany this thought. 

About Art and Revolution

Viktor Shklovskii

“ULLIA, ULLIA, MARTIANS!” (

The Trumpet of the Martians)

That which I now write, I write in the spirit of the greatest friendship with the people 

with whom I argue. 

Yet the mistakes that have been made are not just obvious to me but will be burden-

some for all art, so that it is impossible to remain silent. 

I consider that the most severe mistake of contemporary writers about art is the 

equation between social revolution and the revolutionary forms of art, which they 

now demonstrate. The Scythians, the futurist-communists, Proletkul’t—all pro-

claim and hammer one and the same: a new art should correspond to the new 

world, the new class ideology. The second premise is common: our art, particularly 

the new, expresses revolution, the will of the new class and the new world-view. 

Proof of this is usually quite naive: Proletkul’t argues for its own conformity to the 

given moment, as its poets and even their parents were proletarians. The Scythians 

display a purely literary method in the use of the “people’s language” in poetry, 

produced by the merging of old literary language with urban speech, and deriv-

ing their history from Leskov through Remizov, as an indicator of the earthiness of 

their writers. While the futurists produce as evidence of their organic hostility to 

the capitalist order that hatred which the bourgeoisie expressed from the day we 

appeared in this world. 

Not a very dense argument, a weak foundation for soliciting a place in the history of 

social revolution, for a place which we perhaps do not need any more than sunlight 

needs an apartment on Nevskii Prospekt with three rooms and a bath. 

All these proofs have one thing in common: All of their authors suppose that new 

forms of everyday life create new forms of art. That is, they suppose that art is one 

of the functions of life. This is the way it works: let’s assume that the facts of life are 

a sequence of numbers, then art will appear like logarithms of these numbers. 

Yet we futurists entered with a new banner: “

New form gives birth to new content.” 

We liberated art from everyday life, which in creation plays a role only in filling 

in forms, and may even be banished entirely, as Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh did, 

when they did not want to fill, à la Guyau, “the distance between rhymes with po-

etry” and filled it with willful marks that sounded thoughtful. But the futurists were 

only aware of the work of centuries. Art was always free from life, and it has never 

been reflected in the color of a flag over the fortress of a city. 

If everyday life and production relations influence art, would not the subjects be 

bound to that place, where they correspond to these relations? Yet subjects are 

homeless. 

If only everyday life were conveyed in stories, then European science would not 

puzzle over where in Egypt, India or Persia and when the stories of “One Thousand 

and One Nights” were created. 

If social and class factors were expressed in art, would it be possible that the well-

known Russian tales about the master would also include the tales about the priest? 

If ethnographic features were expressed in art, then tales about non-Russians would 

not be reversed, and any given people would not tell tales about their neighbors. 

If art was so flexible that it could depict changes in everyday life conditions, then 

the subject of abduction, which we see in the words of Menander’s slave in the 

comedy 

Epipetreponte would be a strictly literary tradition and would not have 

survived to Ostrovskii and would not have filled literature, like ants fill the forest. 

New forms in art are not only those that appear in order to express new content, but 

also in order to replace old forms, which have ceased to be artistic. 

Tolstoy had already stated that now it was impossible to create in the forms of Gogol 

and Pushkin because these forms had already been found. 

Aleksandr Veselovskii had already assumed the start of a free history of literature, 

as a history of literary form. 

Yet we futurists bind our creativity with the Third International. 

Comrades, after all this is a surrender of all positions, this is Belinskii-Vengerov and 

the “History” of the Russian intelligentsia. 

Futurism was one of the purest achievements of human genius. It was the bench-

mark—how high it raised our understanding of the laws of freedom of creation. 

Does it not off end the eye that we now attempt to attach to it this rustling tail from 

a newspaper article?

An answer

Nikolai Punin

The author’s basic proposition—the independence of artistic forms, art for art’s 

sake (idealism)—is rather widespread, particularly among a certain known part of 

our intelligentsia. Yet this is not the intelligentsia of Belinskii-Vengerov, to which 

comrade Shklovskii referred and who are undoubtedly already over and done with 

(not even a corpse, simply ashes). This is the intelligentsia of Briusov-Aikhenval’d 

that truly still stinks like a corpse. The fact that such a person as dear to us as V. 

Shklovskii could, even for a minute, come near to this intelligentsia saddens us, 

especially considering our friendly feelings towards comrade Shklovskii. Based on 

this article, we, of course, think that this convergence is the fruit of misunderstand-

ing, nothing more. 

In reality, comrade Shklovskii accuses us for that which we did not do and did not 

think to do, and reproaches us for that which essentially does not contradict his 

own argument. 

Speaking about the evidence of our closeness to the communist revolution, 

Shklovskii writes: “While the futurists produce as evidence of their organic hostility 

to the capitalist order that hatred which the bourgeoisie expressed from the day 

we appeared in this world.”

Never and nowhere did we advance this fact as evidence of our proximity to com-

munism. At best we pointed to it as a well-known aff irmation of our general creative 

preconditions. At present, the words of comrade Shklovskii sound even ironic. I 

am not sure whether he is familiar with the persecutions being carried out against 

futurism by several Moscow communists—they are known to us, and we are used 

to this. We were exiled and will be exiled, not because we are anti-bourgeois or, on 

the contrary, bourgeois, but because we possess the gift of creativity, and no me-

diocrity, even a super-communist one, may tolerate us. Concerning our “proofs,” 

they are of an entirely diff erent order and stem directly from of our world view; they 

are innumerous, they are our life, our hands, our work. 

Above all, we are materialists and in this regard comrade Shklovskii is correct, ac-

cusing us of hostility towards idealism. Yes, we do not recognize art beyond life, 

and equally we do not recognize art as one of the functions of life. We do not be-

lieve that in the beginning the Earth was created, and art in the form of God sped 

around the Earth, separating light from darkness and begetting terrestrial crea-

tures, to create the world. Art is form (existence), just as socialist theory and com-

munist revolution are forms. Furthermore, art is the most synthetic form and there-

fore, perhaps the most mighty. Speaking of futurism, we always spoke of might; 

moreover, we already indicated that futurism is an amendment to communism, as 

futurism is not only an artistic movement but also an entire system of form (see Art 

of the Commune). Now we are even ready to assert that communism as a theory of 

culture could not exist without futurism, just as yesterday’s evening does not exist 

without our remembrance of it today.

If it is necessary to search for some sort of objective evidence of our kinship with 

communism, then it is precisely in this materialist viewpoint with all its possible con-

clusions: the mechanization of life, collectivism, determinism, systematic organiza-

tion of culture and, most importantly, creativity—as we believe that creativity is the 

most essential foundation that currently binds futurism together with communism. 

At present there are no other movements, aside from the socialist and futurist ones, 

which have in mind the future, and there are no other methods, besides commu-

nism and futurism, which approach this future with full creative eff ort. 

This creativity, this unity of materialist approach, this collectivism, the very methods 

of invention—they essentially bring us closer to the communist revolution, exactly 

to revolution, I emphasize this, and not closer to the existing Soviet everyday life. 

Fundación Juan March

Concerning the latter (everyday life, not existence), we also have little to do with it 

as—according to the excellent expression of Shklovskii—sunlight has nothing to do 

with an apartment on Nevskii Prospect, and in this is our sharpest diff erence from 

the Scythians and Proletkul’t. The Scythians and Proletkul’t—I’m not sure who does 

it more—are typical intelligentsia and thus everyday life organizations. The former 

first appeared as the belching of the obsolete intelligentsia of everyday life of the 

nineteenth century. The latter are present day intelligentsia who have already man-

aged to forget that their parents are proletarians. 

Our battle boils down basically to a battle about everyday life. Did we not shout 

at and abuse the content-driven nature and passeism of several of our contempo-

raries? Did we not battle with various sorts of supposedly professional unions of 

artists, considering them—and we do not renounce this—typical counter-revolu-

tionary organizations? Isn’t it for this that they now hate us, that we ridiculed Soviet 

everyday life and battled against it, just as we have always battled against all every-

day life? For everyday life in its essence is diametrically opposed to art. Everyday life 

is a putrid poison, everyday life is dross, everyday life is a corpse that has left behind 

life, everyday life is that stagnant mortified fabric, which, like a footprint, lies across 

humanity and with thousands of hands pulls us towards yesterday. After this, how is 

it possible for us to think that “new forms of everyday life create new forms of art?” 

Not only we—how can any genuine communist think this? Despite everything, if 

such a person comes across our creative path, we will shout at him: “Comrades, 

after all this is a surrender of all positions, this is Belinskii-Vengerov and the “History” 

of the Russian intelligentsia.” It is all the same for us, communists as well as futurists: 

“New form gives birth to new content.” For form, existence determines conscious-

ness and not the other way around (K. Marx). Hence, comrade, Shklovskii’s argu-

ment does not contradict our position. Why, however, does Shklovskii mobilize this 

argument against us? Here is why. 

Comrade Shklovskii writes: “But we futurists unite our art with the Third Interna-

tional”—and Comrade Shklovskii sees a crime in this. A crime, as the International, 

in comrade Shklovskii’s opinion, is a form of everyday life, as is the revolution and in 

general the whole of socialism. As regards to socialism and revolution, we are ready 

to agree that in the hands of the Kerenskiis, Scheidemanns and Kautskys they prob-

ably really became everyday events, but only in these dead hands. In the hands of 

the communists and in the form of the International at present, while the features of 

everyday life are not yet evident, they already begin to take form in the communist 

consciousness. Being horrified before the act of the union of art with the Interna-

tional, Comrade Shklovskii only displays an ignorance of the International. 

The International is the same 

futurist form as any other creatively established new 

form . . . The workers movement is characteristic in that it strives towards the es-

tablishment of a classless culture, but it is this very striving that is least typical from 

the viewpoint of everyday life. All these examples of “subjects” that comrade Shk-

lovskii cites convince us that all previous political movements were to a greater or 

lesser degree movements of everyday life that stood in opposition to the nature of 

artistic creativity. However, the workers movement is the first political movement 

that has bypassed nationalism and along with it everyday life, and because of this 

is therefore not opposed to artistic creativity. 

Homeless subjects, but is not the proletariat homeless as well? Does not the com-

munist Third International have that form which will also produce its own content? I 

ask, what is the diff erence between the Third International and Tatlin’s 

Relief or Khleb-

nikov’s 

The Trumpets of the Martians? For me, there is none. The first, second and 

third are new forms, which are enjoyed, played and employed by humanity. The future 

belongs to them, the future belongs to everyone who is with them—this is futurism . . .

Moreover, the Third International, developing in the direction of the Second and es-

pecially of the First International, takes us away from those “masts of space,” upon 

which people of the past built their governments. Spatial-nationalist territories are 

being destroyed, territories of time under an integrated unified space arise, spread 

by the international proletariat. Is this not the new, 

our futurist form. 

At the same time, exactly this form, not apprehended by comrade Shklovskii, led 

him to attack us for a surrender of position. This accusation would be no joke if we 

really felt ourselves to be in diff iculty, if this accusation was not argued by proposi-

tions that in any way contradicted us. This last circumstance hints that the matter 

was a misunderstanding. Comrade Shklovskii was poorly informed about those 

arguments which we have concerning governance. He did not clearly conceive of 

the meaning of the words “everyday life” and “form” (existence) and did not know 

what the Third International is. With this, I hope, all has been settled. 

Originally published in Russian as “Kommunizm i futurizm,” 

Iskusstvo kommuny 17 (March 30, 1919), a spread con-

sisting of two texts: Viktor Shklovskii’s “Ob iskusstve i revoliutsii” (p. 2) and Nikolai Punin’s response (p. 2–3). For a 

German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und Kommentare. 

Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 

1979), 52–56.

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.