Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat
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- Aleksandr Deineka or the Bildungsroman of Art between the Avant-Garde and the Stalin Era
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FIG. 1. Kazimir Malevich Five Characters with the Hammer and Sickle, ca. 1930 Ink on paper, 7.6 x 12 cm Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art modern-CCI, Paris Liubov Popova Hail the Dictatorship of the Proletariat! 1921 Private collection [cat. 10] Liubov Popova Painterly Architecture no. 56, 1916 Private collection [cat. 9] Fundación Juan March
34 Domestic Crafts Exhibition in Moscow in 1923 [cat. 32], an exhibition on which Deineka also worked. The examples go on but what is perhaps more significant is the continuous use of constructivist and suprematist elements to illustrate political ideas, in many cases anonymous [cat. 16, 17], as seen in this graphic biography of Lenin [fig. 2], an eloquent example of how common this practice was.
This single authorship of dual iconography thus re- buts the widespread belief that avant-garde art and realism are contradictory terms. But its logic remains to be explained. This entails calling into question the radicalism of the pre-established dichotomy between avant-garde and kitsch and to examine the relation- ship between both styles beyond the simple frame- work according to which realism replaced avant- garde art and evolved into reactionary Soviet art. To this end, we must agree on a basic defini- tion of “avant-garde.” Given the commonplace use of the term, condensing its many meanings un- der one definition is a diff icult task. However, one might take a chance and say—based on Green- berg’s premises—that in what refers to tradition—to which the avant-garde was opposed—rather than representing reality through pictorial mimesis (and the nuances this entailed) the avant-garde aimed at transforming it.
Indeed, there is not a single avant-garde mani- festo that does not express the intention to radi- cally transform all aspects of life by replacing the old with the new and the past with the future. Tradi- tionally, the avant-garde put their aims into practice by challenging established methods in art (kitsch, on the other hand, simply employs traditional tech- niques to imitate reality with the purpose of caus- ing an eff ect on the spectator). With this definition as a starting point, we may pose the following question regarding art, and avant-garde art in particular: What would happen if, at a specific time and place in history, political power decided to “imitate the processes of art” (in the words of Greenberg) to call into question—as the avant-garde radically did with artistic tradi- tion—the processes of social reality? In a political context the answer seems obvi- ous: a revolution would occur, an uprising that may well be understood as a radical challenge to cur- rent socio-political processes and their subsequent elimination and replacement with others. In the past, revolution has been followed by totalitarian- ism, while art—and avant-garde art in particular— has taken diff erent paths under the various faces of this sequence of revolution and totalitarianism, as has been the case of revolutionary Russia, fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany or Maoist China. 17 In this sequence, avant-garde art and its own revolutionary and revolutionizing project tend be overshadowed by a more radical, ambitious, bi- ased contender; in short, an all-round competitor. In a brief passage, Greenberg seems to acknowl- edge this issue though he does not elaborate on it: “Whether or not the avant-garde could possibly flourish under a totalitarian regime is not pertinent to the question at this point.” 18 But the question may well be pertinent to Deineka’s oeuvre. What holds true is that when politics behaves like art, art, in addition to realizing that it was behaving like politics, 19 could be pushed into the background and relegated to a supporting Natan Al’tman Krasnyi student [Red Student], 1923 Private collection [cat. 24] Fundación Juan March FIG. 2. Graphic Biography of Lenin, after 1924 Letterpress, 22.8 x 25.4 cm Collection Merrill C. Berman role—that of illustrating the primary ideas of change in which political power now plays a ma- jor part. And the partial nature of art or its unsuc- cessful revolutionary intentions explains the usual accusations of “formalist” or “bourgeois” launched against art in those cases by the political power. And this is exactly what occurred in the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s and 1930s, when a broader and more radical revolution than that sug- gested by the avant-garde took place. Once the political conditions of the tsarist regime and Keren- skii’s parliamentary democracy were questioned and subsequently wiped out, a struggle broke out within the avant-garde movement, whose radical proposals had preceded those of the Revolution. From the 1920s to 1934, diff erent factions of the avant-garde clashed with each other and also con- fronted the political regime. 20 The eff ervescence of these debates can be perceived, for example, in the surprising number of magazines that were launched between 1923 and the 1930s, among them
Pechat i revoliutsiia [cat. 37–38], Lef [cat.
27], Novyi lef [cat. 66], Krasnyi student [cat. 24], Sovetskoe iskusstvo [cat. 42], Prozhektor [cat. 107– 108],
Za proletarskoe iskusstvo [cat. 145], Iskusstvo v massy
[cat. 146] and Tvorchestvo [cat. 229]. The struggles ended in favor of the political power in 1934, when Stalin rose to total power. However, it must be noted that before, in the early days of the revolution, political power was synchro- nized with art and art with political power. Because we are accustomed to confront art to political power, this connection between art and politics may seem foreign to us. However, one must remember that avant-garde movements in Europe shared these political, utopian and revo- lutionary ideals with the hope of transforming life and a society entrenched in tradition. Oftentimes, the utopian force of their art could be summed up in the dictum “bring art to life.” The antagonism between avant-garde art and established power has left us with the romantic im- age of the artiste maudit “suicided by society” (a phrase Artaud coined to describe Van Gogh), the primitive, antisocial genius; in short, traits that are now considered to be inherent in the demiurgic, Promethean character of the true artist. In spite of this muddled picture, the fact that the European avant-garde failed to transform society cannot be overlooked. The evidence of its failure has become institutionalized: museums are overcrowded with works of art that were initially intended to put an end to museums rather than to be displayed in them. 21
Avant-garde works originally created for real life are now kept in museums, institutions where society safeguards the heroes of our past (which, by definition, are dead). If the avant-garde had suc- ceeded in its purposes, society would have trans- muted into a “living museum,” a massive work of art arranged according to an artistic master plan made for the whole of existence. 22
the avant-garde’s failure (frequently associated to a loss of freedom), including social and economic in- terests, standards of established taste, petit-bour- geois habits, the market or, quite simply, political coercion. In what refers to the Russian avant-garde and its “liquidation” at the hands of Stalin, West- ern criticism tends to follow the simple framework outlined above, according to which the Russian avant-garde was an innocent and groundbreaking experiment exterminated by a totalitarian, “off icial,” academic and neo-traditionalist style of art that served the interests of the Party. Because the political (and artistic) avant-garde has never truly succeeded in Europe, we do not have the sensibility needed to identify the existing links between political power and the avant-garde. Utopian ideals have never been fulfilled in Europe. What we lack is the experience of a complete rup- ture with the past and the ensuing creation of a radically new social and cultural order (and hence lifestyle). In the West, each attempt to transform life and society has been succeeded by an alterna- tive attempt heralding its authenticity and claiming previous attempts were simply fleeting episodes. But all this occurs within an established tradition. In political terms, fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany were just as short-lived; hence the West has not experienced the victory of a revolution and the subsequent establishment of a long-lasting, to- talitarian cultural program. Similarly, just as West- ern society has never witnessed the triumph of the artistic avant-garde over tradition, it has never seen its political victory or the totalitarian principles ren- dered culture. In Europe, political forces and artis- tic movements have been contenders in a stable environment—made possible by a market—under- pinned by a common tradition (that of the modern museum and of parliamentary democracy) trying to expand its ideological aims. However, political and artistic discourses have not been able to per- meate everyday life and carry a revolution through to the end. Given the dearth of first-hand experience of revolutionary processes, an understanding of the aesthetic and artistic implications of revolutionary Fundación Juan March 36 ideologies and practices is uncommon. While there have been figures with extraordinary foresight such as Walter Benjamin—who described fascism as the “aestheticization of politics” and commu- nism as the “politicization of art” ( Ästhetisierung der Politik, Politisierung der Kunst ) 23
ary conclusions are not commonplace. (By the way, communism may be more accurately defined as an “artistification” of politics.) However, the radical changes described above did occur in revolutionary Russia and, on account of this experience, post-Soviet society is acutely aware of the close interface between artistic avant-garde and political power. As Boris Groys points out: The world promised by the leaders of the October Revolution was not merely supposed to be a more just one or one that would provide greater economic security, but it was also and in perhaps even greater measure meant to be beautiful. The unordered, cha- otic life of past ages was to be replaced by a life that was harmonious and organized according to a uni- tary artistic plan. When the entire economic, social and everyday life of the nation was totally subordi- nated to a single planning authority commissioned to regulate, harmonize and create a single whole out of even the most minute details, this authority—the Communist Party leadership—was transformed into a kind of artist whose material was the entire world and whose goal was to “overcome the resistance” of this material and make it pliant, malleable, capable of assuming any desired form. 24 The 1917 Revolution and its turbulent yet sub- sequently homogenous development imitated the processes typically associated to avant-garde art. Furthermore, the political power applied these pro- cesses in a broader, more radical manner (it was more eff icient, all-embracing, and in the end, to- talitarian) than the avant-garde had previously at- tempted. And, as expected, the eff ects of its ac- tions were felt by the avant-garde and what would come to be known as “socialist realism,” ultimately defining the logic articulating both phenomena. Aleksandr Deineka or the Bildungsroman of Art between the Avant-Garde and the Stalin Era In this context, the force of Aleksandr Deineka’s paintings coupled with the fascinating ambivalence —or ambiguity—of his work and career as a homo sovieticus (possibly the most intriguing of the fig- ures of socialist realism) represents somewhat of a Bildungsroman , a “coming-of-age novel” narrating the fate of the Russian avant-garde from its origins to its continuation under socialist realism. Deineka was a member of the last remaining groups of avant- garde constructivists (such as October) and actively participated in the revolution and construction of a new socialist state. In spite of his political com- mitment, he was accused of practicing formalism, which had been identified with avant-garde trends. He was nonetheless granted permission to travel to America and Europe and was commissioned major works by the Soviet state, whose utopian preten- sions found their most notable expression in some of Deineka’s compositions. For all of these reasons, his body of work can be read as a novel recounting the life of socialist realism and its avant-garde roots: its childhood and adolescence in an avant-garde en- vironment—Deineka attended the VKhUTEMAS [cat. 30]
25 —; its revolutionary youth, as seen in the radi- cal stance adopted by Deineka in drawings for the magazines U stanka and
Bezbozhnik u stanka [cat.
78, 84]; its adulthood in the 1930s under Stalin’s rule; and, lastly, its ambiguous old age spanning the years between the 1940s and 1969, the year of his death, once the country had been “destalinized.” This certain “ambivalence” of Deineka’s work is used here to explore the logic behind the relation- ship between avant-garde and socialist realism. It could be argued that in doing so we take the risk of paring two very diff erent pictorial and ideological endeavors. But that is precisely the aim of the pres- ent essay, to provide an alternative view to the dom- inant narratives of formalism—exclusively formalist in their analysis of the avant-garde and political in their analysis of realism (in formalism, when formal diff erences occur, all comparisons are inexorably inappropriate 26 ). But socialist realism viewed itself as a contemporary artistic/political avant-garde made for the proletariat, more synchronized with the political construction of the Soviet utopia than the artistic avant-garde—consequently frequently dismissed as decorative, abstract and formalist. As Deineka noted: 1920. It is cold in the Moscow art studios . . . They [stu- dents] accept the most astounding “isms” on faith. In classes, they sprinkle sawdust and sand on colored can- vases, paint squares and circles, bend shapes of rusty iron of various sizes, which convey nothing and are not good for anything . . . Artists also drew posters, de- signed stage sets and people’s festivals, and illustrated new books . Art found a general language with the revo- lution. This language gave it the feeling of modernity, of fresh originality. The tempo and forms found a unity. The people wanted a new life. That is why in the most diff icult periods of my life I tried to dream about better times, to paint pictures with the sun. There was never enough sun in those years. 27 So, in the case of Deineka, it is not a question of either avant-garde or kitsch. Instead, his work sug- gests there was a kind of alternative avant-garde that shared structural characteristics with both: like the avant-garde, it imitated the processes of art and, like kitsch, it was preoccupied with the eff ects it could cause, more specifically, the educational impact it would have on the masses. In this sense, Deineka’s oeuvre presents an an- swer to Greenberg’s question, a question he posed but did not consider relevant: the answer is yes, avant-garde could flourish under a totalitarian re- gime. When a totalitarian system views itself in ar- tistic terms it becomes an avant-garde eo ipso
and, thus, adapts art to its own conception of an avant- garde for the masses, which brings us to the birth of socialist realism. This style is indeed proof of the regime’s preoccupation with the revolutionary transformation of life and its eff ect on the masses; nonetheless, it also constitutes a certain form of avant-garde art, because far from simply imitating reality, socialist realism was—like the avant-garde— a mimesis of mimesis. Of course, it did not imitate the processes of total art but the processes of total power, which are in essence artistic. In what follows, Deineka’s work and historical context are described in detail by combining artis- tic, philosophic, and political analysis, underpinned by literature referred to in this essay and featured in the exhibition it accompanies. Foundational texts of the period are explored in conjunction with a close reading of some of Deineka’s works of art, together with a number of pieces and writings by the Russian avant-garde, revolutionary artists and leading figures of socialist realism, as well as Deineka’s own writings in which he reflected on his work. Furthermore, several illustrations featured in this essay come from an invaluable source of study, the magazine SSSR na stroike , which his- torians have long considered a reliable barometer of Soviet life and art. 28 This overview commences before 1917 and the first constructivist and produc- tivist poetics, with the beginnings of the Russian avant-garde in its first cubo-futurist and supre- matist manifestations—as well as bio-cosmic uto- pias 29
1953. Between those dates, particular attention is FIG. 4. Vladimir Tatlin Neither toward the New, nor the Old, but the Necessary, 1920 Poster. Gouache on paper 49.5 x 215 cm Bachruschin State Museum Moscow
FIG. 3. Varvara Stepanova The Future is Our Only Goal, 1919 Poster. Gouache on paper, 26.5 x 22.5 cm Rodchenko Archive, Moscow Fundación Juan March
paid to the works of art that permeated all spheres of life and accompanied and reflected a regime that represented itself in demiurgic terms in its ef- fort to radically transform reality. As an exhaustive study of the period would far exceed the purpose of this analysis, a metaphor is used as a common thread and argumentative guideline throughout the essay: light, the medium par excellence through which all reality is made visible. The analysis of light reveals how, in line with Marxist theory, the light radiated from the avant- garde grew into true matter, a condition needed for the utopian dream to materialize and take the shape of a new, Soviet reality.
One must look back at the avant-garde’s main goal— transforming reality in its entirety—and at the artistic nature of revolutionary praxis in order to perceive the intrinsic logic that governs the relationship between the two, as well as to obtain a coherent view of Deine- ka’s work. In the same way, the avant-garde must be examined beyond its most obvious antecedents and its interconnection with the revolution, in the first place, and with socialist realism, in the second. These antecedents are Deineka’s own life story —active only from the 1920s—and his relation with constructivism and productivism within the con- text of the polemics, manifestos and (sometimes violent) disputes that took place within revolution- ary art groups prior to their unification in 1932, mainly those concerning constructivism and what is referred to as Proletkul’t. Between 1928 and 1930, after abandoning OST—a platform including mem- bers of the like of Iurii Pimenov 30 [cat. 153] and others—Deineka joined October, one of the last remaining constructivist groups—that is, the avant- garde at the service of the revolution. 31 October’s manifesto was published in the third issue (1928) of Sovremennaia arkhitektura [cat. 134], a magazine directed by a leading theorist of constructivism, Aleksei Gan [cat. 132–136 and 33–35]. But the roots of the Russian avant-garde must be traced back a decade, to the time when Russian artists adopted elements from futurism and cub- ism, leading to the birth in the early 1920s of su- prematism, from which constructivism derived and subsequently split, as it was already commit- ted to the revolution. The general history of futur- ism is well known: Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto “Tuons le Clair de Lune!” in 1909 32 and
visited Russia in 1913. That same year, “the annus
mirabilis of the Russian avant-garde,” 33 saw the pre- miere of the futurist opera Victory over the Sun , a milestone in the history of the Russian avant-garde. This essay suggests there is continuity between the futurist Victory over the Sun and socialist real- ism in the Soviet Union between the late 1920s and early 1930s; continuity in the form of a consumma- tion. To some extent, futurism’s poetic visions of the future were fulfilled in the everyday prose of the Soviet system—a historical chain of events in which Deineka was a fundamental link. We have described the avant-garde from Green- berg’s viewpoint, according to which the represen- tation of reality is replaced by the transformation of reality, situating it on a par with revolutionary power. But it must be noted that the transformation of reality not only involves a constructive, creative force (to forge the future, the world anew) but also requires a destructive one (to destroy the past, tra- dition), in order to make way for the future. If the avant-garde signifies transformation, then it can only aspire to the future, as read in construc- tivism’s salutation to the revolution [fig. 3]. But its primary goal is in fact the past, a past that needs to be erased. In the end, it does not target the past, present or future, but the necessary [fig. 4].
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