The Royal Academy exhibition Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 coincides with the centenary of
the Bolshevik led uprising. The 1932 date relates to a particular exhibition
held in Leningrad during that year: Fifteen
Years of Artists of the Russian Soviet Republic. This brought together, for
the last time under Stalin, both the avant-garde and Socialist Realism, which
had coexisted since the 1920s (the RA aims to reflect this inclusive agenda).
Following the Leningrad exhibition, Stalin decreed Socialist Realism as the
only acceptable style for the Soviet Union, ending an era of vibrant creative
activity.
The RA exhibition is comprehensive in its approach, and the visual
arts it covers are painting, photography, film, graphics, ceramics and textiles.
There is even a full-scale model of El Lissitzky’s 1932 Design for an Apartment for Narkomfin (People’s Commissariat of
Finance), and a small room devoted to a reconstruction of one of Tatlin’s
eccentric gliders.
Two Russian avant-garde isms
—Futurism and Suprematism— predated the Revolution by a few years, but their
leading artists shared its ideals and contributed to its causes of equality and
justice. Early on, some of these avant-garde artists painted bright colours to
decorate trains taking the optimistic messages of the Revolution to small towns
and the countryside. This is a revolution we might still believe in, and I feel
the RA exhibition could have shown more of what must have been genuinely
exciting times. I remember once seeing and entering a mock-up of a carriage of
one of those agitprop trains, and the colours and designs of the propaganda
posters communicated the sheer energy and enthusiasm of those first
revolutionary years in a way the RA exhibition fails to achieve. By perhaps not
wanting to be too starry-eyed about a revolution that brought much cruelty and suffering,
the RA misses showing the exhilaration also present, and a more complete
representation of the time is lacking.
The exhibition of course has star names: Malevich, Kandinsky,
El Lissitzky, Popova, Tatlin, Rodchenko, and the Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Both experimental poet and graphic artist with his own bold and powerful style,
his 1921 poster series Enemies Surround
Us is exhibited. As satirical cartoons on the oppression of English workers,
they have at last found their way home. In the same room, Rodchenko’s
photograph of Mayakovsky presents him with eyes, one in half shadow, which
continue to stare at us with an almost frightening intensity of vision and
commitment. In 1930 he shot himself, at a time when he was disillusioned with turns
the Revolution had taken. The 150,000 who attended his funeral are evidence of
his popularity. To others, like the painter Marc Chagall, the revolution had
become sour much earlier than 1930. He
had founded an art school at his home city of Vitebsk, and was also its
Commissar of Arts. Nevertheless, disappointed, he left Russia for France in
1922.
In the late 1920s, the authorities were denouncing
Malevich’s work for not showing social realities. Despite this, he was given a
room of his own in the 1932 Leningrad exhibition. This is also the case at the
RA, and they have included those works exhibited 80+ years ago: Suprematist
abstractions alongside representational work attempting to conform. His
paintings of peasants, though, show blank faces, commenting, it seems, on loss
of identity under the communist system.
The RA’s Malevich room also includes work by one of his
Suprematist followers, Nikolai Suetin. His designs on coffee pot, cup, saucer,
plate, inkwell and vase, manufactured by the State Porcelain Factory in
Petrograd, are one of the exhibition’s highlights. Still looking fresh and
wonderful, they could also be labelled Constructivist, as might El Lissitzky’s
apartment design. Constructivism was the only avant-garde ism developed in the Revolution. It is basically an extension into
areas of design and production of Suprematist painting’s use of visual
fundamentals.
Aesthetically, some of the very best exhibits are graphics. The
Stenberg Brothers, Vladimir and Georgi, produced stunning theatre and film
posters using photomontage in Constructivist compositions with dynamic angles,
and space as an active element of the designs. The colours are also tremendous.
On a personal note, after completing a design degree I studied at a teacher
training college in 1981/82, and on a wall of my hall of residence room I
placed a few postcards of images that were touchstones for my own creative
aspirations. They included Russian Revolution film posters by the Stenberg
Brothers. I valued their work highly, and still do.
The final rooms are profoundly depressing. Stalin’s
centrally planned drive to industrialisation demanded images of heroic workers,
especially the ‘shock workers’ who were promoted as examples of those whose
productivity exceeded the official targets. The grim reality behind this propaganda
included strikers and slow workers being imprisoned or executed. The Union of
Soviet Artists suppressed the avant-garde, leaving only the dirge of Socialist
Realism. Artworks from one of the twentieth century’s greatest times for artistic
innovation were locked away in storerooms and cupboards. State terror claimed
victims from all walks of life, including the brilliant avant-garde theatre
director Meyerhold, who was tortured and shot. The exhibition ends with the emergence
of this ruthless and brutal tyranny.
About
the reviewer
Robert Richardson is a visual
artist and writer. His work is included in Artists’ Postcards: A Compendium (edited by Jeremy Cooper, published by
Reaktion Books, London). He has recently exhibited online with the Paris based
Corridor Elephant publishing project, and is a member of the Biennale Austria
association of contemporary artists. In
2014, his solo exhibition TextSpaces was
exhibited at Eugen Gomringer’s Kunsthaus Rehau in Germany. He is also the co-editor, with William Pratt, of Homage
to Imagism (AMS
Press, New York).www.bobzlenz.com
