El Lisitsky Novator photomontage. El Lisitsky

22.07.2020

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New Year's performance "Happy New Year, Luntik!

Uh Lisitsky - a sign figure of Russian avant-garde, architect, artist, designer, first Russian graphic designer, master of photomontage, engineer. Supporter of Suprematism actively worked on the transition of this direction to the sphere of architecture, and its projects ahead of several decades ahead.

Architect involuntarily

Lazar Lisitsky was born on November 22, 1890 in a small village of fixing the Smolensk region, in a Jewish family. His father was an artisan entrepreneur, a mother - a housewife. The family moved to Smolensk, where Lazar was graduated from the Alexander Real School. Later, they moved to Vitebsk, where the boy became interested in painting and began to take drawing lessons from the local artist Apuda Pan. He, by the way, was a teacher and stamp Shagal. In 1909, Lisitsky tried to enter the Art Academy in St. Petersburg, however, at that time, the Jews in higher education institutions were allowed very rarely. Therefore, Lazar was enrolled in the highest polytechnic school in German Darmstadt, which she successfully graduated from, receiving a diploma of an architect engineer. During training, he not only traveled a lot, but he had time to work as a mason. In 1914, Lisitsky defended the diploma, and when the First World War began, was forced by the near way - through Switzerland, Italy and Balkans - return to Russia. In 1915, he entered the Riga Polytechnic Institute, which at the time of the war was evacuated to Moscow, and in 1918 he received the title of architect engineer. While Lisitsky began working as a assistant in the architectural bureau of Velikovsky.

Acquaintance with Suprematism

In 1916, Lisitsky began to engage in painting. He participated in the work of the Jewish Society for the promotion of art, in exhibitions - in 1917, 1918 and 1920. In 1917, Lisitsky began to illustrate the books published on Yiddish - both children's, and adults - modern Jewish authors. Actively working with graphics, he developed the emblem of the Kiev publishing house "Idisher Folks-Farlag". With this publisher in 1919, he concluded a contract for illustrating 11 books.

El Lisitsky. Wedge red Bey White. 1920. Van Abbe Museum. Eindhoven, Netherlands

El Lisitsky. Geometric abstraction. Image: artchive.ru.

El Lisitsky. Central Park of Culture and Leisure Vorobyev Mountains. Image: artchive.ru.

In the same 1919, Mark Chagall, with whom Lisitsky had friendly relations, invited him to Vitebsk to teach graphics and architecture in the newly opened folk art school. There, again, at the invitation of Shagal, I came South Peng and Kazimir Malevich. Malevich was a generator of innovative ideas in painting, and in the school of his concept and enthusiasm adopted cool. Chagall and his "ball of like-minded people" were supporters of figurative painting, Avangardist Malevich at that time already founded his direction - Suprematism. Malevich's work led Lisitsky to admiration. At that time he was engaged in a classic Jewish painting under the great influence of Shagal, so, despite the interest in suprematism, Lisitsky and in teaching, and in his own creativity tried to adhere to classic forms. A gradually educational institution of a small town has turned into a battlefield between two directions of painting. Malevich fastened his ideas in a rather aggressive form, and Chagall left the school.

"Passentes" and Suprematism in architecture

Lisitsky was between two lights and as a result, in favor of Suprematism, but he brought some innovations. First of all, he was an architect, not an artist, so I developed the concept of the PRESOV - "project approval projects", which assumed the yield of plane suprematism into the volume. According to his own words, it was supposed to be "a transplant station along the path from painting to architecture." For Malevich, his creative concepts were phenomenon of purely philosophical, for Lisitsky - practical. His goal was to develop the city of the future, as functional as possible. Experimenting with the location of buildings, he invented the project of the famous horizontal skyscraper. Such a decision would allow maximum useful area with minimal supports - the perfect option for the city center, where there is little place to build. The project was never embodied in reality - like most of the architectural designs of Lisitsky. The only building built according to its drawings is the printing house of the magazine "Ogonek", erected in Moscow in 1932.

El Lisitsky. Proow "City" (Phenomena Square). 1921. Image: Famous.Totalarch.com

El Lisitsky. View. 1924. Image: Famous.Totalarch.com

El Lisitsky. View 19 D. 1922. Image: Famous.Totalarch.com

In 1920, Lazarar took a pseudonym El Lisitsky. He was engaged in teaching, lectured in Vhutama, Vhutein, took part in the expedition on the cities of Lithuania and the Penstandrals, on the impressions of which published a scientific work on Jewish decorative art: "Memories of Mogilev Synagogue". In 1923, Lisitsky published the reproduction of the painting of the synagogue in Mogilev and created sketches for the design of the Opera "Victory over the Sun", which, however, was not supplied. The talented graph of Lisitsky created several famous campaign posters: in 1920, "the Red Bay White Wedge", and after many years, during the Great Patriotic War - the most famous - "Everything for the front, everything for victory."

Since 1921, Lisitsky lived in Germany and in Switzerland, in Holland, where he joined the Dutch Association of Artists "Style", which were created in neoplasticism.

Working at the junction of graphics, architecture and engineering, Lisitsky developed radically new principles of exposure, representing the exhibition space in a single whole. In 1927, he issued the All-Union Printing Exhibition in Moscow for new principles. In 1928-1929, the projects of a functional modern apartment with built-in transforming furniture were developed.

El Lisitsky. Cover book by Vladimir Mayakovsky "For Voice." 1923. State ed. RSFSR. Berlin

El Lisitsky. International Journal of Modern Art "Thing." 1922. Berlin. Image: Famous.Totalarch.com.

El Lisitsky. Poster of the first Soviet exhibition in Switzerland. 1929. Image: Famous.Totalarch.com

Lisitsky was engaged in photograph, one of his hobbies was a photomontage: he created photocollages to decorate exhibitions, such as the "Russian exhibition" in the Swiss Zurich.

Family and destiny

In 1927, El Lisitsky married Sophie Cupperse. Her first husband was art historian and director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Hannover, she was actively interested in contemporary art: Vasily Kandinsky was in her collection of paintings, and Mark Chagall. In 1922, Sophie remained widow with two young children. At the exhibition in Berlin, in the same year, she first met the works of Lisitsky, a little later, their personal acquaintance occurred and correspondence began. In 1927, Sophie moved to Moscow and came out for Lisitsky married. The couple appeared and a common child - the son of Boris.

In 1923, Lisitsky was diagnosed with Tuberculosis. The fact that he is seriously ill, he did not know until he suffered pneumonia. A few years later he was removed, and until the death of the architect lived, giving a huge amount of time and forces for treatment, and at the same time it does not stop working. Lazar Lisitsky died in 1941 at the age of 51. His family during the war was in a terrible position. One of the sons Sophie Kurt was at that time in Germany and was arrested as Red and Stey Jewish. Second, Hans, arrested in Moscow as a German. Kurt managed to survive the Nazi camps, Hans died in Stalin's camps in the Urals. Sophie itself with Boris was sent to Novosibirsk in 1944. She managed to pick up documents, letters, drawings and paintings by El Lisitsky, and in the 1960s Sophie passed the archive of the Tretyakov Gallery and released a book about her husband.

That he was for man

Against the background of the notable provocateurs of the Russian avant-garde, El Lisitsky seems humble man: he did not paint his face and did not fit a spoon for a suit, he was not afraid that his suprematism was stolen, did not drive out other artists from her house - and did not fool over them. He phenomenally worked a lot, parallel all his life he taught and was friends not only with Russian artists, but also famous foreigners: in 1921 he was appointed by the cultural emissary of Soviet Russia in Germany and actually became connected between large artists of both countries.

Designer (self-portrait), 1924. From the meeting of the State Tretyakov Gallery

For Lisitsky, his Jewish origin was played great importance - and the Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance from the very beginning knew that it was about Lisitsky to prepare his first exhibition project about the Jewish artist for the anniversary. Lisitsky was born in a small Jewish city near Smolensky, he studied at Yu.M. Pena, as before him and walked, a lot traveled around the country, visiting the vintage synagogues - and illustrated the works of Jewish authors, combining "Miriskusnic" techniques with graphics of traditional scrolls, Jewish Lubk , old miniatures and calligraphy. After the revolution, he became one of the founders of Kultur-League - the avant-garde association of artists and writers who wanted to create a new Jewish national art. With "Kultur-League" he will cooperate for many years, which will not hurt the passion for Suprematism at all, and then the invention of its own style: even in its famous standings it will include letters on Eidis.

Tatyana Goryacheva

Art historian, specialist in the Russian avant-garde, curator of the exhibition

Not a single bad feedback about Lisitsky was: he was a wonderful and kind person, with an incendiary character, could light them all around him. Let him not be such a charismatic leader as Malevich, who collected around himself always a group of students. He was a perfectionist, all brought everything to immaculate - and in those of his later works, where, like any master in the Stalinist era, he climbed the problem of the entropy of creativity. Even in the installations and collages with Stalin and Lenin: if you distract from the character, then from the point of view of the photomontage they are made flawlessly.

Flying Ship, 1922

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Glove, 1922.

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CHIFS card, 1922

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Garden Eden, 1916. A copy of the decorative motive for the corona of the tori or tombstone

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A lion. Zodiac sign, 1916. A copy of the painting of the ceiling of Mogilev synagogue

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Triton and Bird, 1916. Based on the murals of the synagogue in

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Sagittarius. Zodiac sign, 1916. A copy of the painting of the ceiling of Mogilev synagogue

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Big Synagogue in Vitebsk, 1917

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Maria Nasimova

The main curator of the Jewish Museum and the Center of Tolerance

Lisitsky was a very pleasant and kind person, in no scandal, he was not seen. He was actually alolyuba: he had all two big love, and they both fantastically influenced his work. In Russian avant-garde among artists, eccentric behavior was considered among the artists, he didn't spend his strength at all. Lisitsky studied at Chagal and Malevich - and was a good student, and then a lot worked to create around himself. At the exhibition, we could not show his neighboring circle, but we will definitely tell about it in other projects: in Lisitsky's notebooks among Mayakovsky and Malevich's phones, Misa der Roe Roe and Gropius could be found. He was truly an international artist and was friends with large and great names.

How to understand the work of Lisitsky

Lisitsky traveled a lot in Europe, studied in Germany on the architect, and then continued to education in the Polytechnic Institute evacuated from Riga. The foundation of his works is that the architecture and Jewish roots, the attention to which he developed all his life, exploring the ornaments and the decoration of the ancient synagogue. In his early works, they reflections along with traditional Lubcom. Then - consistently - the mystical work of Shagal and Suprematism Malevich were strongly influenced on Lisitsky. Soon after the passionateness of Suprematism, he, according to his own statement, "pregnant architecture" - in his short period of life in Germany in 1920 he gets acquainted with Kurt Schwitters and is fond of constructivism and creates his famous "horizontal skyscraper", as well as many other architectural works, Which, unfortunately, remained on paper: He comes up with a textile plant, a house-communoy, yacht club, the complex of the Publisher "Pravda", but remains by and large with a paper architect: its only building has become the constructed printing house "Spark" in 1- m samotton alley.

Tatyana Goryacheva

"Suprematism Lisitsky was fond of very long - then he began working on the basis of constructivism and suprematism, synthesizing them in their own style: he created his system of protoov - projects of approval of the new. He came up with these works as a universal system of the structure of the world, from which it was possible to get anything - the composition of the architecture and book covers in which these motives may be guessed. In the Tretyakov Gallery, we show the architecture in which the drawing of the Podunov is also guessed, and in the Jewish Museum there will be many of its photographic works, installations and photograms. His exhibition design remained in some sketches and photographs, and it represents an important part of his work. "

Projects approval new

Skyscraper on the square in the Nikitsky gate. General top view. ProNE on the project

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ProNE 43, circa 1922

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ProNE 43, circa 1922

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ProNE 23, 1919. Sketch, option

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ProNE 1e (city), 1919-1920

5 out of 5.

It is the face - Malevich's supramatism and plastic principles of constructivism on the basis of Suprematism and plastic principles of constructivism - brought world recognition to Lisitsky. In them, the techniques of architectural thinking and geometric abstraction were united, he himself called them the "transplant station from painting to architecture." The ambitious name of the "New Approval Project" served as well in order to separate the works of Lisitsky from the mystical free-winning world Malevich (Malevich himself was very disappointed that his best student had a supramatism in the theory and practice of his experiments). Lisitsky, unlike Malevich, solved completely different spatial tasks - and described them as a "prototype of the architecture of the world" and in this sense understood them much more than just bulk suprematism - and the utopian and perfect relationship of space in the world: these ideas will continue To implement both its architecture and design.

"Lisitsky worked inside the tendency of the geometric abstraction of the beginning of the 20th century, and the main works of our big exhibition are his face and figure skimming, expectantly beautiful works and, perhaps, the most significant thing that Lisitsky did in life. It is difficult to allocate its main works: he worked so much and fruitful in different directions. But it seems to me that paintings should be particularly interesting - their viewer has never seen in Russia. I really like his figure: he came up with their electromechanical production, where instead of actors had to move puppets, which cited the director in the center of the scene - which, unfortunately, was never implemented. "

Printing design

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Registration of the collection of poems V.V. Mamikovsky "For Voice", 1923

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Lisitsky's books did a lifetime - from 1917 to 1940. In 1923, in the magazine MERZ, he published a manifesto, where the principles of a new book, whose words are perceived by their eyes, and not for rumor, expressive means will save, and attention will go to the letters. In this principle, its famous and reference edition of the Mayakovsky collection "for voice": on the right on the pages were cut, as letters in the phone book, the names of poems - so that the reader could easily find himself. Like such printing work of Lisitsky, it is customary to divide into three stages: the first is associated with the illustration of the books on Yiddish and the publications of the culture-leagues and the Jewish branch of the drug addict, then a separate stage is given to the constructivist editions of the 1920s and, finally, the most innovative photo books of the 1930s, which There were at a time when Lisitsky was fascinated by a photo montage.

Photograms, photo montage and photocollages

Photomontage to the magazine "USSR at construction site" №9-12, 1937

Moving Installation "Red Army" at the international exhibition "Press", Cologne, 1928

Photocollage in the 1920s and 1930s were interested in many artists of avant-garde. For Lisitsky, it was first a new artistic means of paperwork, but then the possibilities of photography for the artist are expanding, and in 1928, Lisitsky at its famous exhibition "Press" uses a photo as a new artistic agent in exposure design - with photoconduct and active photo montage. It should be noted that the experiments of Lisitsky with installation were more difficult than that of the same Rodchenko: he created a multi-layer image of several photos when printing, obtaining from the influx and intersection of images.

Architecture

The project of the skyscraper in Nikitsky gates, 1923-1925

Lisitsky is an architect for his education, and all his work some way or otherwise about the space. At one time, German critics noted that the main thing in the works of Lisitsky - the struggle with the old architectural understanding of the space, which was perceived as static. Lisitsky created a dynamic space in all his works - exhibitions, typography, artistic design. The idea of \u200b\u200ba horizontal skyscraper, much out of his time, never was carried out, like many of his other projects, but entered the history of avant-garde architecture.

Registration of exhibitions

Space of Prunov, 1923. Fragment of the exposition of the Big Berlin Art Exhibition

Receptions of Lisitsky's exhibition design are still considered to be trained. If he was not the discoverer in architecture and painting, then about the exhibition design it can be said that Lisitsky invented it - and invented new principles of artistic installation. For the first exhibition "Space of the Podunov", Lisitsky replaced the picturesque work of their enlarged models from plywood for the "space of constructivist art" came up with the unusual processing of walls, thanks to which the walls changed their color if the visitor was in motion. For Lisitsky, it was important that the viewer became a participant in the exhibition process on a par with works of art, and the exhibition itself would turn into the game, for this, it as modern curators picked up exhibits in order to strengthen the effect of their statement, they broke their spectacular compositions resembling the lungs. In the hall of constructivist art in Dresden, the viewer could open and close the works that he wanted to see - directly "communicating with the exhibited objects" according to Lisitsky. And at the other famous exhibition of Lisitsky, "Press", in Cologne, he actually created his exhibition decision new exhibits - a huge star and moving attitudes, which showed work.

About the fate of the artist in a big history of art

El Lisitsky. Red Bay White Wedge, 1920. Vitebsk

Lisitsky divided the fate of all big artists of the avant-garde. By the 1930s, with the change of state policy in the field of culture, he began to get less work, after his death, his wife was explained at all to Siberia, and the name of the artist himself was believed to oblivion. Given the close connections of Lisitsky in the European world of art, it is not surprising that its influence is rated much more than in Russia. In the West, its exhibitions are regularly organized, there are also more opportunities to get his work, many of whom have downtown in America - with picturesque Persons, for example, the Russian viewer is practically not familiar, and the Bay Wedin poster did not give the last 40 years to the exhibition - Meanwhile, it is in its importance for the history of the Russian avant-garde, Malevich's arms with the Black Square.

On how it was Lisitsky changed the world, it is not easy to judge: he worked immediately in all imaginable directions, but with his name it is difficult to associate a single author's concept. Lisitsky is also connected with the invention of Jewish modernism, and with the development of the architecture of constructivism, and in the invention of constructivist techniques in printing, undoubtedly and its merit is possible, just priority - in the design of exhibitions and photo experiments, where he really was ahead of his time. A short period associated with the invention of the belts had a strong influence on all Western visual arts - first of all, to the Bauhaus school, but also to the Hungarian avant-garde.

Tatyana Goryacheva

"Modern exhibition design would be impossible without Lisitsky: his work became the shittometha. Easy to refrain Malevich's suprematism, the neoplasticism of Mondriana, but it is difficult to refer to the exhibition design of Lisitsky - therefore, no one will refer to it: how can I be the author of the location of items in space? And the techniques of photofreed and moving attitudes came up with it. He was more like an artist integrating talent: Crashed from contemporary art leading trends and created on their basis completely utopian architectural projects, always bringing their handwriting in them. His projects within the framework of constructivist printing can always be easily and unmistakably learn. Horizontal skyscrapers have become a breakthrough, but they were not built - therefore we can say that Lisitsky achieved more success in printing. He did a lot of posters and book covers, issued books all his life. We show completely fantastic books on Yiddish, which he decorated back in 1916 and 1918, even before it became an adherent of modern art systems, although it was already trying to make modern techniques in them. But the Jewish tradition remains in his works until the end of the life: among the books of 1921 there are those covering the cover of which completely constructivist, and in the usual objects, which are located in the country stylization. "

Maria Nasimova

"Lisitsky started as a Jewish illustrator, this is a fairly well-known fact, but it is still associated primarily with the Patterns. Although he worked in completely different genres! One typographic head of our exhibition occupies a whole hall - 50 exhibits. The Jewish period for Lisitsky is very important, although he sharply moved towards his constructivist solutions - he was a big schedule, designer, illustrator. Created photocollages one of the first in history.

Lisitsky turned the photo and design. I saw on one of the exhibitions, as his project for residential units recreated - and he just struck me: Clean IKEA! How could it be possible to come up with a hundred years ago? He studied Malevich's space with its models, but completely reworked them and showed it in his own way. If you ask designers today, who for them is the basis of the basics, then everyone will answer that Lisitsky. "

Work with photographic materials. From the history of El Lisitsky. Constructor. (Self-portrait) Alexander Rodchenko. Kinoglaz. Advertising poster in the middle of the XIX century - for technical purposes when creating group photos. At the beginning of the twentieth century - artistic application. Gustav club. Sport, 1923

1. Photomontage (from Greek. Phos, PHOTE PODEW PHOTAZ - Light and installation of Franz. Montage rise, installation, assembly) 1. Suitable from photographic images or their parts united in artistic and sense of the composition. 2. The composition obtained by this method. Photomontage is performed by gluing different parts of the pictures. Mechanical photo montage from photos cut out the desired images, customize them by zooming under the required scale, glue on a sheet of paper. Projection photo montage on the photo paper consistently print images from a number of negatives. Computer photo montage The most powerful and common program Adobe Photoshop.adobe Photoshop Digital photo allows you to immediately use the footage for digital photomontage.

Immediately in two museums - the Tretyakov Gallery and the Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance - in the middle of November, large exhibitions were opened on the Russian artist El Lisitsky. Exposures can be found until February 18. Porusski magazine decided to find out who El Lisitsky, why is it called an outstanding figure of avant-garde, why should I visit both exhibitions and what they differ.

Designer (self-portrait), 1924. From the meeting of the State Tretyakov Gallery

The name of El Lisitsky, it is familiar to you or not, it seems non-standard and futuristic. That were the avant-gardeists themselves. At the beginning of the 20th century, representatives of this direction in art sought to find new means of expression, radically different from the previous ones. They experimented, expanded the boundaries and created a new artistic reality of the future. Lisitsky was no exception. He showed himself in many genres of art - was an architect, artist, engineer, graphic designer, photographer and typographer. Almost everywhere Lisitsky - a recognized innovator, and therefore, an outstanding avant-garde. Lisitsky has achieved significant success in the design of books, in graphic design, in photography, in the revival of Jewish art. However, among its iconic ideas - the stands, horizontal skyscrapers and an innovative approach to the organization of exhibition space. It is for them that Lisitsky is considered an outstanding officer of the avant-garde, because his universal talent presented unique art decisions to the world.

Poduna

El Lisitsky. View. 1920

Let's start familiarizing from the most important invention of Lisitsky - Prunov. The project is neologism, abbreviation from the ambitious "project approval of the new." Since 1920, El Lisitsky began working in the style of Suprematism, actively interacting with Malevich. Suprematism was expressed in combinations of simple multi-colored geometric shapes, which formed the suprematic compositions. According to Malevich, Suprematism is a full-fledged creation of an artist, his pure fantasy, abstract creation. Thus, he dismissed the artist from subordination to real objects of the surrounding world.

Initially, Lisitsky was fascinated by the concept of Suprematism, but soon it was more interested in not ideological filling, but the practical application of suprematist ideas. It is then that it creates the stands - a new artistic system that has connected the idea of \u200b\u200ba geometric plane with a volume. Lisitsky comes up with real three-dimensional models consisting of multicolored bulk figures. These models serve as a prototype of innovative architectural solutions - the futuristic city of the future. Lisitsky called the "Transfer station along the path from painting to architecture." The stands allow for a different look at the organization of space - both pictorial and real.

Horizontal skyscrapers

El Lisitsky "Horizontal skyscraper in Moscow. View of passionate boulevard "1925

At the beginning of the 20th century, the avant-gardists were created by the history - they came up with the cities of the future, laid new artistic and aesthetic values, sought crystal functionality and practicality. In 1924-1925 El Lisitsky presents an unusual project on the square in Nikitsky gates - horizontal skyscrapers. They became a logical continuation of the ideas of the Luins, which from painting were transformed into an architectural object. Like the projects, skyscrapers look like simple geometric shapes. But this time the outlines turned into a strictly functional invention.

In horizontal parts of the skyscrapers, central institutions were supposed to be located, and in vertical supports there would be elevators and stairs. One of the supports was planned to be associated with the metropolitan. Lisitsky put in front of him an ambitious goal - to get a maximum of a useful area with a minimal support. He planned to put eight skyscrapers in the center of Moscow - they would completely change the appearance of the city, turning it into the city of the future. Here Lisitsky showed himself a real urbanist. However, the concept of horizontal skyscrapers was too innovative for its time. She was never embodied in Russia. The architectural solutions of Lisitsky had a significant impact on world architecture. The prototypes of horizontal skyscrapers were built in other countries.

Exhibition space

Another innovative decision El Lisitsky was again inspired by the face. In 1923, he creates a project room for a large art exhibition in Berlin. This is a three-dimensional space in which geometric figures of the objects have become truly voluminous - they literally rose from the walls. At that time, the exposure was organized by a simple principle - all works and items were waved in a row on the walls. Lisitsky turns the exhibition itself itself in the installation, in an art object, which actively interacts with the viewer. In the view-room, the viewer turned out to be in the bulk space, which changes depending on which angle to look at it. Room and objects placed in it are transformed by calling for an audience to an interactive and involved in the process of creating an exposure. A similar approach to the organization of exhibition space was a new word in the exhibition design.

Today we have a unique opportunity to visit the first large-scale retrospective of the pioneer of the Russian and world avant-garde El Lisitsky in Russia. The purpose of separating retrospectives into two exhibitions is to fully reveal the multifaceted creativity of Lisitsky. Curators presented us with a chance of pouflex - visiting one of the parts of the exhibition, we can take the timeout and digest the seen. And when we will be ready - to go to the next exhibition, in order to meet even more deeply with the work of the artist.

The main difference between exhibitions is that they are devoted to different periods of Creativity El Lisitsky. In the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, the exposition tells about the initial Jewish period of artist's creativity. Here you can see the early works of Lisitsky. The Tretyakov Gallery presents the main avant-garde period of creativity. Here you will get acquainted with the famous Patterns, architectural projects, sketches of exhibition design and photography. Before visiting, we recommend download the Guide of Alena Donetsk and capture the headphones - the former editor of the Russian Vogue will make an excellent company in the study of the Universe of Lisitsky.

You can start a familiarity with a retrospective in the order of chronology from the Jewish Museum and the Tolerance Center - this part of the exposition helps to understand the origins of Lisitsky's creativity, talks about the influence of the Jewish roots on the artist's work and introduces the audience with his unique style. In turn, the exposition in the Tretyakov Gallery represents the avant-garde period of creativity and includes the iconic works of the artist. Our advice: Forget about chronology. If you decide to visit the first exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, then you will still want to know what influenced Lisitsky. If you first go to the Jewish Museum, then the Treighteners are not avoided in the end, because it is there you will learn how the artistic and architectural talent of Lisitsky developed. The point is in accents, and how to place them - to solve only you.

Anya Stebleanskaya

Estet, a little traveler, a connoisseur of literature, spacious museums and cinema. Believes that Pushkin is our all.

Russian photoAvanGard

Andrei Fomenko

In the early period of its history, the photo was not considered a full-fledged artistic form with specific expressive capabilities. The first attempts to her aesthetization were based on the denial of it on the reproductive qualities - mechanistic and reproduction. It is characteristic that the representatives of modernist art were characterized by special intransigence for whom, for which it turned into a synonym for slave imitation of nature. The beginning of this criticism of the photo put Baudelaire in the text "Modern Public and Photography", which included in the survey review of 1859. In it, he calls a photo of the manifestation of "material progress", threatening the very existence of "poetry".

However, at the beginning of the XX century, this relationship changes. The new generation of modernist artists features photographic equipment are beginning to be considered as the foundation of the new poetics, allowing to show such aspects of physical reality, which escaped from the eye brought up by traditional, "craft" technologies of painting and graphics. In the 1920s, the "second discovery" of the photo is going on with the periphery of the art scene, it moves to its center, and all that has recently seemed to be corrected by the disadvantages, turns into dignity. One after another representatives of the radical avant-garde declare their refusal of painting for the sake of more accurate, more reliable, more economical - in a word, more modern - technology. Their arguments are different, although the results are largely similar. One of the most influential argumentation systems is associated with the reassessment of photographs with the rethinking of social functions of the art itself, which from the production of rarities for the "Disinterested Contemplation" should turn into the form of organizing the collective life of society, corresponding to the modern level of development of productive forces, and at the same time in the means of its revolutionary change. This idea underlies the so-called "production movement", formed in Soviet Russia in the early 20s, thanks to the joint efforts of artists, writers, architects and theoretics of avant-garde arts - Alexander Rodchenko, Gustav Klotsis, El Lisitsky, Spring brothers, Moses Ginzburg, Nicholas Chubby, Boris Arvatova, Sergey Tretyakova, Boris Kushner, etc.

The photo has become one of the preferred ways of expression for constructivists - this fact is well known. But shortly before that, the word "photograph" itself personified everything that the advanced, radical art would not be wishes. The photo was identified with superficial, mechanical copying of reality, concentrating the worst qualities of traditional art. The avant-garde opposed it, on the one hand, the study of the language of art in its autonomy and "opacity", and the other is the ideology of free formation, not limited to the need to display the existing order of things. As part of this ideology, the concept of life-in-law was formed, which makes the problem of the convergence of the avant-garde and photographs particularly intriguing.

To "monistic, collective, real and effective" culture

There is no consequential opinion regarding the "beginning" of the history of modern (modernist) art. It all depends on what to consider "contemporary art." Someone takes as a point of reference the avant-garde currents of the beginningXX century, someone - postpressionism and symbolism of the endXIX. -Ho. The avant-gardeners of the 10-20s usually erected their genealogy to impressionism. Modern researchers who are inclined to wider generalizations prefer to start with Kourba, Mana, Bodler, with romanticismXIX. century, from the aesthetics of Kant or with enlightenment. Fully presented and longer stories of modernism. In essence, modernity begins together with history, from the moment that someone spent the border between yesterday and today, between "ancient, time-immerses" and "our time".

However, for the so-called mass viewer - no matter how uncertain this definition is more or less clear. Modernist art is an art contrary to the "normal". And this is the "opinion of profane" - has the diagnostic accuracy that is sometimes lost in more sophisticated theories. The norm is understood in different ways, but in general is a combination of "Truth" and "Beauty". On the one hand, it is determined from the point of view of compliance with the appearance of the phenomena of the surrounding world, on the other hand, from the point of view of a certain cultural canon. Accordingly, the reproaches addressed by the works of modernist art make an accent or on their " unrealistic", Either on anti-sourcetism.

Of course, the so-called life vessel is conventional and, therefore, language character, just like the aesthetic ideal: both are regulated by certain rules defined by "grammar". But everyday consciousness takes his current system of rules for the only possible. Therefore, an attempt to introduce another rule system is perceived by him as something negative - as a deviation from this rate, which carries a destructive start, threatening to undermine public and cultural foundations.

The art of the avant-garde made the rule of violation of the rules and the deviation from the "only possible" cultural norm. But at the same time, from the point of view of "dedicated" in the issues of modernist art, it is whether it demonstrates the correspondence of the norm - in contrast to the art of popular (by the way, this makes the signs of Kitcha so attractive in the eyes of the avant-garde - because Kitch is familiar undormatism). Moreover, various modernist flows were constantly sought to formulate some absolute norm, The rules system that would be universal value. The notorious reductionism of the avant-garde, that is, the desire of him to some kind of primaryly, is not explained by him to destruction as such, and the desire to identify this basic, unteracted level of art and make it its foundation. One of the arguments in favor of such reductionism is that only in this way it is possible to stop the decay process, which captured society and man.

In "Manifesto I "Dutch Group De Steyl, who has played a crucial role in the history of contemporary art, was argued:

"There is an old and new consciousness of time.

Old oriented on an individual.

New oriented to universal.

Dispute individual With universal manifests itself in both world war and in contemporary art.< ... >

New is the art that detects a new consciousness of time: the current ratio of universal and individual. "

Here the conflict between the "new" and "old" consciousness is approved, and the new one is determined through the category of universal, while the old marked the predominance of an individual, particular beginning. This contradiction is constitutive for the avant-garde - as well as the intention to liquidate it or, as they say further in the manifesto "de Steyl", destroy the "traditions, dogmas and domination of individual" - all that prevents the implementation of the "new consciousness of time" 2 . The idea of \u200b\u200bthe universal norm, which is formulated in the avant-garde programs and manifestations and which corresponds to the work of avant-garde art, has nothing to do with the actual position of things and with relevant cultural conventions. On the contrary, these conventions are considered by avant-gardeists as false and subject to elimination or, if an alternative is unclear, identifying their convention, artificiality and problematic. Victor Shklovsky very accurately noticed that "art is ironically and destructive" 3 . This phrase testifies to a deeper understanding of the essence of the case than the widespread interpretation of modernism as "(itself) on the Scriptures of the medial substrate" (for example, a pictorial surface or sculptural form) - the latter is only one of the options or aspects of this art.

Indeed, early Avangard saw his task in the disclosure of "special properties" of each type of art, "its borders and requirements" 4 coinciding with the boundaries and requirements of artistic space. but it At the same time, art is understood in different ways, and each new definition leads to the revision of the installations regulating the artistic process. The very idea of \u200b\u200bthe idea that there is art and what is his attitude towards insure. For example, in abstract painting, the medium is identified with an artistic sign carrier (picture) and, accordingly, with the qualities and parameters that are inherent in this carrier. This definition, in principle, relates to any painting, including naturalistic. But the artist-abstractionist pages will die "clarify" it and for the sake of this refuses to image. The next step is to equate the picture to the material design, the object, openly demonstrating its "MANAGEMENT". Art is now understood not as reflection, but as productionpar Excellence , Production in its perfect, inappropriate, reflective form. And again, there is a need to "correction" of the existing, actual, order of things that contradicts the fundamental identity of artistic and material production. The program of life and there is a program to correct this "wrong", that is, the art of art, overcome in the development process of the "productive forces", the attitude of art to "everyday life". It is about to establish a correspondence between the actual norms of culture and the absolute, universal norm formulated by art as a result of studying its own language.

According to the American criticism of the Greenberg Clement, the avant-garde offers the audience a reason for reflection: the modernist work of art, unlike Kitcha, provokes audience activity 5 . This means that the viewer or the reader of such a work is invited to become an accomplice of a creative, simulator process and to perceive the culture not as something and forever this, but as something becoming. The avant-garde seems to do not give to a certain system of norms and rules. And at a certain stage of its history, he proceeds to a direct intervention to the scope of public practice to transform it. The production movement corresponds to exactly such a historical moment.

In the 20s, art tries to become an effective force that operates modern machine technologies, and at the same time gain social legitimacy previously sacrificed. But since the essential sign of the avant-garde is the criticism of the existing regulativity, then, instead of adapting to it, the avant-garde is trying to embody in the social field his own understanding of the universal norm. Society, the order of which is working out avant-garde, does not coincide with society in its current state. Avant-garde design turns out to be primarily social design. It is in this context that "informational" and propaganda media are of particular importance for industrialists: Agitplacat, photo report, movies, newspaper.

The photo answered the basic requirements of production to art. Its main advantage compared to traditional artistic media was that it made it possible to bring the scope of artistic production in line with the modern level of technology development and move from the manufacture of "aesthetic mirages" for individual contemplation to the mass production of documented information used in order to propaganda and Enlightenment. Photo and filmmers put the artist to the position of a qualified technical specialist working in collaboration with the production team and in accordance with a certain production plan.

Photomontage: from formation to factories

Already within the framework of the avant-garde paradigm with its critical attitude to the pictorial, formal conditions for revaluation of photographs were created. However, for the practical development of this field, the avant-garde needed a certain mediating model. As such a model, installed.

Installation turns into a kind of "style" of thinking of artists and writers-avant-gardeists of the end of the 10th. Its essence is that the work is understood as a complex integer, between the individual parts of which the intervals impede them to combine them into continuous unity and displacing attention from the level of meaning to the level meaning. The mounted method of organizing heterogeneous material meets the contradictory logic of modernist art and combines both starts that determine the evolution of this art at the endXIX - early XX century - on the one hand, it explicates the principle of autonomy of art, on the other - will to overcome the border between art and inexplication. Installation marks a turning point in the evolution of modernism - the transition from aesthetic reflection, that is, from the study of its own language, to expansion to the sphere extremely sophisticated. At the level of morphology, this expansion is combined with the revival of depiction, which, however, is accompanied by peculiar "precautions" expressing an ambivalent attitude towards it and fully tangible in the structure of the photomontage. This is explained by the fact that the structuralist artists seek to rethink the pictures in the spirit of the concept of life, genetically ascending to understanding the work of art as self-defining object. Such an object refers to external reality not as the subject of the image, but as its material. I am expressed by the language of semiotics, it can be said that such a work is not an iconic, but a sign symbol of the subject, material world.

Apparently, the first example of photomontage in the Soviet avant-garde should be considered the work of Gustav Klotsis "Dynamic City" (1919). Analogue and, possibly, the prototype of the "dynamic city" serve abstract suprematic Pictures El Lisitsky - the so-called trunks. The similarity enhances the inscription made by club on its photo moment: "Watch from all sides" is a kind of guide to use, indicating the lack of a picture of fixed spatial coordinates. As you know, Lisitsky accompanied his protrusions with the same recommendations, in accordance with the special quality of their spatial structure, which the French critic Yves Alain Boo defines as "radical reversibility" 6 .

Radical reversibility is not exhausted by the possibility of changing the spatial axes within the picture plane (reaise of top and bottom, left and right), it also denotes the reversibility of the protruding forward and departing into depth. To achieve the last Lisitsky resorts to the axonometric principle of construction, opposing its classical perspective. Instead of a closed perspective cube, the front side of which coincides with the plane of the picture, and the depth of the depth lines mirror reflects the point of view of the viewer, an open, reversible space occurs. As Lisitsky wrote: "Suprematism placed the top of the final visual pyramid of the linear perspective into infinity.<…> Suprematic The space can unfold both forward, on this side of the plane and in the depth. " The result of this kind of organization is the effect of Poland: each meaning in this case corresponds to mutually exclusive meant (top and bottom, close and distant, convex and concave, plane and volumetric).

This quality of the belts becomes especially tangible when comparing with the works of Malevich, the ideas of which Lisitsky develops. Pictures of Lisitsky may seem step back compared to clean suprematic Abstraction - return to a more traditional image model. However, entering elements of illusory in an abstract picture spatiality, Lisitsky seeks to avoid flatness hypertrophy - the danger contained in suprematic System. Transformed into a combination of flat geometric shapes on a neutral background, an abstract picture acquired even more certainty and unequivocarly than the painting "realistic": there "Painting was a tip on the starch shirt of a gentleman and a pink corset, tightening the wake-up belly of a revolving lady" 7 Here it boiled down to the literal picture surface, only in a certain way differentiated. Lisitsky brings to Suprematism deconstructive The beginning of which is the essence of problematization The relationship between the meaning and meaning levels of representation in a kind of "self-criticism" of the artistic work.

Returning to the work of the club, we notice that the use of figurative photographic elements serves precisely to strengthen the effect of "open meaning." The artist, as it were, lures the viewer into a semantic trap, using as bait, iconic signs, approving the anthropomorphic point of view with the polar coordinates inherent in it. However, these signs are arranged without taking into account these coordinates, in the absence of a "horizon ring". The structural role of photographic elements in this work is determined primarily by the principle of radical reversibility, which turns the first photomontage into the model of the utopian order, unfolding on the other side of the space of euclide geometry. The "dynamic city" has the appropriate - namely dynamic - structure. He appears before us in the process of its design. This is evidenced by photographic fragments. The workers depicted on them are busy building a future reality, the order of which is not specified initially - it still has to be found as the project is implemented.

The photo performs a function of a disorientating pointer, eliminating the naturalistic interpretation of the image and at the same time establishing a connection with the "reality" beyond, and its purely quantitative share is minimal. Using the terminology of formalists, it can be said that it is here - obviously "subordinate element" design. However, the penetration of this kind of alien element itself into the system suprematic Painting is significant. From such fixed elements and new systems grow, little similar to those of which they have developed. In the process of art evolution, the slave element becomes dominant.

In parallel to the development of photographic equipment and the transition from the use of finished images to independent photographic "raw materials" in the practice of photomontage, certain changes occur. Initially, the installation method was nothing more than a way to emphasize the materiality of the work (for example, a colorful surface), which begged the latest hints of illusionism from it. But in the photo montage, specific materiality, the "texture" of the carrier ceases to play a significant role - due to the medial features of photographs, as if devoid of its own texture, but able to transmit the texture of other materials capable of particularly accuracy. If Tatlin in his "counter-rubrels" tried to make a work not just visible, but tangible, no matter how reducing the distance between a person and a thing, then the mechanical technologies for fixing reality this distance is restored. Installation is no longer the amount of materials, together forming, so to speak, the body of reality, and the sum of different points of view on this reality. The photo gives us a magical opportunity to manipulate things - more precisely, their images - at a distance, by the power of one glance. As a result, the meaning of "hands" and manual labor, which was still very significant in the early photocollages of the club, Lisitsky and Rodchenko, is reduced: the drawing function, as V. Benyamin said, turns away from the hand to the eye.

Poetics and Instant Picture Policy

In the mid-20s, two main directions are formed in the Soviet photoanadagard - propaganda and factographic, whose leaders are becoming, respectively, Gustav Kloths and Alexander Rodchenko. For this period, these two figures are equally representative as the Malevich and Tatlin figures for the avant-garde of the second half of the 10th.

AND Kloths and Rodchenko did their first pictures in 1924, seeking to fill the shortage of a suitable material for photomontasters. But if the club and in the future considered a photo of only the raw material subject to subsequent processing, then for Rodchenko she soon acquired an independent value. Changing painting to the photo, Rodchenko does not just master the new technology for creating images - he himself is mastered in a new role for himself, exchanging the independence of the free artist to the position of the photo reporter working to order. However, this new role remains exactly the choice of a free artist, a kind of aesthetic context, the result of the artistic evolution, which has nominated the question: "How to be an artist" in a new, socialist culture.

On the one hand, the development of photography turns out to be the next step towards the rehabilitation of the image. But, on the other hand, the relationship between "that" and "how", between the "content" (or rather, the "material") and the "form" (understood as the techniques of the organization of this material) are complemented and determined by another term - "why" . Such qualities of a photographic medium as "accuracy, speed and low cost" (BRIC) turn into advantages in the light of installation for production and utilitarian art. This means the introduction of new evaluation criteria that determine the relevance or irrelevant of a work, one or another reception in the light of the tasks of the cultural revolution.

Thus, for Rodchenko, the central argument in favor of unexpected shooting perspectives ("from top to bottom" and "upward") deviating from the traditional horizontal, characteristic of picture optics, serves as an indication of the ideological luggage that brings with each formal system. Trying to reanimate the forms of traditional art by filling out the new, "revolutionary" content (as members of the AHRR and VAPP associations did), we inevitably relay the ideology of this art, which in a new context takes on uniquely reactionary meaning. Such a strategy underlies the concept of "photocartines" proposed by representatives of the "Centristian" block of Soviet photographs, which grouped around the Journal "Soviet photo" and his editor of Leonid Mezherchercher. For the avant-gardeists of "Photockartin" there is a symptom of artistic restoration, during which the conservative part of the art scene is trying to take revenge and reduce the cultural revolution to "revolutionary topics". "The revolution in the photo," says Rodchenko, is that the fact is to be shot due to the quality ("as removed") acted so much and unexpectedly with all his photographic specifics, so as he could not only compete with painting, but also showed every new perfect way Remove the world in science, technology and in everyday life of modern humanity " 8 .

The avant-garde photography is built on visual paradoxes and displacements, on the "unrecognizance" of acquaintances and places, on violation of the norms of classical image, built according to the rules of direct perspective. Objective The foundation of all this "deforming" work form technical capabilities of photography. But at the same time, this identification of the artist with a mechanical eye of the camera acquires the nature of the expansion, purposeful and active development of the new areas of experience, which opens through photographic medium.

Formal techniques to which "left" photographers are resorted to primacy actions on contemplation, converting reality over its passive perception. They, as it were, speak the viewer: The very contemplation of a particular object is an active process that includes a preliminary choice of distance, angle, frame boundaries. None of these parameters is obvious, not set in advance as something of granted and arising from the natural order of things, because there is no "natural order" at all. The view of the consumer is consistently replaced by the manufacturer's look.

In the photographic practice of industrialists, three main formal strategies can be distinguished. In general, their meaning can be reduced to Membering the active position of the observer in relation to the subject of observation, the principal possibility of "other" vision of "life", which cannot be exhausted by some one, canonical, point of view. For this, photographers-constructivists resort to, firstly, to the reception of the "angles" when the camera occupies an arbitrary position to the horizon line. The essence of this reception, ascending to the principle of "radical reversibility" in the early photomontages and the stands of Lisitsky and Clutis, is the displacement of the anthropomorphic coordinates organizing the image space.

The language of geometric abstraction and photomontage reminds the other reception directly related to the "Racursom" and also based on the "decanonization" of the perspective space - the reception of "such figures" 9 . We are talking about multiple duplication or varying one form, one standard photo-statement element. But if in the photo moment, the animation of the element is achieved artificially, by physical intervention in the image, then in direct photos the corresponding effects are detected in the reality itself, which is the "artifice", purchasing the features of the text-cleattive - or production conveyor. Artificial dominates natural. Human will is objectified in things.

In the literature of the 20s, we also meet with the motive of "such figures". It occurs when looking at the world from the window of the aircraft: "A good point for observing a person is not like a king of nature, but as one of the animal breeds," as Tretyakov says in its famous report "Through the non-stuck glasses", describing the experience of such a flight. Sitting in an airplane, the writer looks down, and it opens a spectacle of a purely "horizontal", non-erchically organized world: "All individual differences are melted with a height. People exist as a breed of termites whose specialty to boil the soil and build geometrically correct structures - crystals from clay, straw and wood " 10 .

The quoted text is included by the Tretyakov as the preface in the book of "collective farm essays", in the context of which he receives an additional meaning: a production writer rises above the ground and contemplates its surface with traces of agricultural activities of a person with abstraction, straight-still " suprematic", Distance - but only in order to come into contact with this earth in the most direct way, taking part in the activities of the collective farm 11 . A peculiar methodological "Degumanism", to which Tretyakov resorts, is partly only the preliminary stage for the new opening of a person. "Such figures" are inferior to a "close-up" or "fragment".

This is the third reception of the photoanagard. He, so to speak, is symmetrical to the previous one: if the effect of "such figures" occurs when the "close-up", on the contrary, with the maximum approximation to the subject of shooting. In any case, there is a deviation from a certain "medium", "optimal" distance. "Close-up" is a pole of a single, opposed pole of the total - and at the same time conceptually with this commonly connected. The fragmentation of a close-up, its composite incompetence, provoking its context, is indicated.

Unlike the net extensiveness of "such figures", "close-up" is extremely intense - it is like a bunch of energy that feeds the conveyor mechanism. The face shot literally radiates energy - as the face of Sergei Tretyakov at the famous picture of Rodchenko. However, one person simultaneously turns out to be a universal conductor as a conductor or battery of this energy. It is extremely difficult, guided by this portrait, to create an idea, "how Sergey Tretyakov looked in life." There is a feeling that everything is individual, unique disappears from his face. Any random snapshot carries much more information in this regard. Even more noticeable this feature of the photograph 20-30s in comparison with the photo of the middleXIX. century. "In those times, Ernst Junger writes, - the light ray met on his way a much more dense individual character than this is possible today." 12 . In contrast, "Portrait of Sergey Tretyakova" is, in fact, not the face of the individual, but a type mask to which Junger gave the definition of the worker.

The work is that the universal meaning of various constructivist experiments: from theatrical performances of Meyerhold and Eistenstein, designed to teach a person to use their body as a perfect car (the concept of "biomechanics" and "psychotechnics"), to the transformable "residential cells" of Moses of Ginzburg, distributing the production process on the sphere of life; From the photomontage, the name of which, as Kloths, "has grown out of industrial culture," to the photo at all, according to Junger, the most adequate means of representation of the "Geshtalta" of the worker. We are talking about a special way to endow things with meaning. "You need to know," Junger writes, "that in the worker's era, if he wears his name right ... there can be nothing that would not be comprehended as work. The pace of work is a punch of a fist, the beating of thoughts and hearts, work is life day and night, science, love, art, faith, cult, war; Work is the oscillations of the atom and the force that moves the stars and soils. " 13 .

The central argument to which Rodchenko resorts in its program article "against a summarized portrait for a snapshot" comes from the same prerequisites. "Modern science and technology," says Rodchenko, is not looking for truths, but open areas to work in it, changing every day achieved " 14 . This makes senseless work on the generalization of the achieved, because the "forced pace of scientific and technological progress" is ahead of all the generalization. Photography performs here as a kind of sounding of reality, in no case applying to its "summation".

But at the same time, the apology of the snapshot in the article Rodchenko is combined with the implicit realization of its limitations: only the "sum of the moments" can be an alternative to the "summed portrait", open both in temporary and in the spatial plan. No wonder the central argument in favor of the photo is not some separate photo - and the photo folder depicting Lenin. Each of these pictures in itself is incomplete and incomplete, but in charge with other photographs, it forms a multifaceted and valuable certificate, compared with which any picturesque portrait, applying for a summary of this or that personality, looks unreliable. "It is necessary to firmly realize that with the occurrence of photodocuments there can be no question of any single immutable portrait," Rodchenko writes. - Moreover, a person is not the same amount, he is many amounts, sometimes completely opposite " 15 . So the idea of \u200b\u200bphotoseria arises, to which Rodchenko returns in the article "Ways of Modern Photography". "You need to give several different photos from different points from different points and provisions, as if visiting it, and not peep into one keyhole," says Rodchenko 16 . Thus, the installation strategy is transformed into a photo sequence.

About documentary epos

The principle of photosary is a symptom of a trend that is gaining strength in the avant-garde art of the 1920s and the meaning of which is to find new feature forms that have a polyphonic structure and expressing the global meaning of social transformations. If in the mid-20s, avant-gardeists appreciated the photograph for her mobility, for the ability to keep up with the tempo of life, with the pace of work, now it begins to be increasingly considered in terms of creating a large form. Of course, the "large form" differs from small not only by the number of pages or square meters of the square. It is primarily important that it requires considerable time and resources, without giving the equivalent "practical" reimbursement of these costs.

The genre of "long-term photocarbage" proposed by the Tretyakov is a literal antithesis of the "instant photo", which in 1928 the same Tretyakov called one of the two main conquests of LEF (along with the "Literature of Fact"). But the "long-term observation" is not simply opposed to an instant photograph with them - rather it integrates an earlier model. At the same time crystallizes another genre, the appropriate trend towards monumentalization Photos - Photo fedence genre. Previously, this trend is reflected in the design of Soviet pavilions at the World Exhibitions - in particular the pavilion at the press "Press" in Cologne in 1928, which was led by Lisitsky with the participation of Sergey Senkin - the nearest colleague and like-minded club. This innovative work is associated with the last experiments of Lisitsky, aimed at the transformation of traditional standards of depiction - including with the principle of "radical reversibility" of spatial axes. Photographic images occupied not only the walls, but also the ceiling, as well as special stands of complex design. There was a peculiar effect of disorientation - as if the audience was inside one of the early gods.

Two years later, Gustav Kloths in one of his reports claimed: "The photomontazh goes beyond the limits of printing. In the near future we will see the photomontal frescoes of colossal sizes " 17 . By the same time, the practical embodiment of the club of this program includes: " supergiant", Full growth, Lenin's photographs and Stalin, installed on Sverdlov Square in Moscow by May 1, 1932. At night, the portraits were illuminated by spotlights, in accordance with the task of using for agitation and propaganda of "powerful electricity techniques". In his article for the "Proletarian photo", the club sets out the history of the implementation of this project and, in particular, describes its initial intent 18 . Judging by this description, the project of the club was initially fully consistent with its photomontal stylistics of the late 20s - early 30s: there is also a contrast comparison of various-scale elements, and panoramic paintings of socialist buildings, and planar graphics (red banners). In one word, this work fully corresponded deconstructive The logic of photomontage and the paradoxical concept of propaganda, "not impassing, but revealing the techniques", which was previously formulated by Boris Arvatov 19 . In the process of incarnation, the project was significantly simplified. And yet, the club calls it to the "global achievement", which opens up "grand prospects for a monumental photography, which becomes new powerful weapons of class struggle and construction" 20 . The design of Sverdlov Square, as it is, completes the history open by the early poster of the club "Lenin and the electrification of the whole country": from the use of electricity in utilitarian purposes, we turn to its "deletization".

Do not we deal with full rebirth industrial Project under the action of external or internal factors? Indeed, the symptoms of such a rebirth - or, more precisely, the compromise with the requirements of official culture is quite obvious, but they appear later, in the mid-30s, when the avant-gardeists begin to adjust the stylistics of their works. But this can not be said about the works of Klocis, Rodchenko, Ignatovich, belonging to the period of the first five-year plan. They still meet the principles of semiotic and gnoseological criticism, which, according to Bua, is distinguished by the early runways of Lisitsky and which is an indicator of avant-garde art as such. Moreover, the impression arises that it is at this time the possibilities of the methods developed by the Soviet avant-garde are most fully revealed.

However, the production workers themselves perfectly understood that the left art enters into a new phase of their development. In the article "New Lion Tolstoy", published in the magazine "New Lef" in 1927, Sergey Tretyakov proposes the term exactly the transmitting essence of their aspirations. Paulumizing with ideologists of the VAPP and with the program of the revival of classical literary genres capable, in their opinion, to express the scale of revolutionary transformations, Tretyakov declares: "Our Epos is a newspaper." It may seem that this thesis is due to the controversy context. But below the Tretyakov gives the following clarification, which fills the word "epos" by positive content: "What was the Bible for a medieval Christian - a pointer for all occasions, then the teacher novel for the Russian liberal intelligentsia - topics in our days for the Soviet activist is newspaper. In it coverage of events, their synthesis and directive for all sites of social, political, economic, household front " 21 .

In other words, the concept of the epic is used by the Tretyakov in the context of approval industrial Concepts: Epos does not replace faults, but allows you to open the deep meaning of the facts and thereby make them a more effective instrument of revolutionary struggle and socialist construction. It is a natural result of the desire to overcome the gap between art and life, to turn art into continuation of reality, and not in an isolated scene of its representation. The new epic, instead of serve as a closed, finished system, becomes an incentive of constant changes and development. It grows from utilitarian and service forms and genres - from a newspaper report, from the text of the decree or circulation, from the photograph and newsreel.

Indicating the newspaper as a truly modern form of the epic, thereby confirms that its base element serves a fragment, which has been in such an integrity that does not have rigid borders and is built on the principle of comparing heterogeneous elements. In other words, the new epos is built according to the "Montage of Facts" - in the spirit of the photosery of Rodchenko and other photographers-constructivists, opposing the generalized, "summated portrait" of reality, the amount of fragmentary photographers, or photomontasters of the club, in which internal contradiability becomes a structural principle of building a whole.

Past, present and future

The principles of "documentary epic" were finally formulated in one of the last books Tretyakov - in the collection of literary portraits "People of one campfire." In the preface to this book, Tretyakov establishes the general, universal quality, "characterizing the art of the first decade after world war." This quality, in his opinion, is "searching for large arts, extracted reality and applying for a popular educational influence" 22 . The concept of documentary epic is the result of development, at the beginning of which the thesis of Nicholas Punin is about "monistic, collective, real and effective culture". The desire to make the art of a part of the collective production process and is the main prerequisite for its formation. And at the same time, it makes us look at the evolution of the avant-garde under some new angle of view and puts new questions before us. What are the roots of this new concept? What is its connection with those strategic tasks that are guided by the apologists of "production and utilitarian art"? Finally, what can have the idea of \u200b\u200bepic art with the principles of avant-garde?

To answer these questions, it should be understood what, in fact, consists of the specifics of the epic as such and what it differs from the artistic forms developed in the following epochs. These problems were deeply investigated by Mikhail Bakhtin in his texts of the 30s - mainly in Epos and Roman essay, as well as in the book "The form of time and chronotop in the novel."

Bakhtina "Epos" forms a conceptual opposition to "Roman". The essence of the contradiction between them is that the EPOS is implemented in the "absolute past". This past is separated from the present, i.e. From becoming, unfinished, open to the future of historical reality, a impermeable boundary and has an unconditional value priority in front of him. The epic world is not subject to reassessment and rethinking - it is completed both as a whole and in each of its part. Roman opens the circle of finished and finished, overcomes the epic distance. The novel develops as it were, in direct and constant contact with the elements of historical development - he expresses the spirit of this becoming historical reality. And in it a person also loses completeness, integrity and certainty. If the epic man "the whole is completely Ovneshnen" and "absolutely equal to himself", so "between his genuine essence and its external phenomenon there is not the slightest discrepancies," the man Roman ceases to coincide with him, with his social role - and this discrepancy becomes The source of innovation dynamics 23 . Of course, we are talking about genre standards, but they have a certain historical reality. Human Being is split into various spheres - external and internal, and the "inner world" arises as a result of the principal non-altitude of a person "in the existing socio-historical flesh".

The subsequent history of European culture was the history of attempts to overcome this splitness of human existence in the world and restoring the lost completeness - a kind of bypassing in the absolute past. But over time, European humanity continuously believed in a successful outcome of such searches - especially since the disorder between different areas of life not only did not weaken, but, on the contrary, aggravated. In this sense, the concept of decades is immanently the concept of culture: the entire history of the latter is the history of the decay of genres and forms, the progressive differentiation process, accompanied by the tragic sensation of the intact intact.

In the European culture of the new and especially modern time, the recognition of the insurmountability of this dissonance turned into a certificate of uncompromising, honesty and genuine humanity: in our days, the Happy End is considered a sign of conformistic and false mass culture, while high art serves as a reminder of an inevitable defeat of a person in the fight against fate . Against this background, the will to victory, voluntaryism and avant-garde optimism look more like an exception. It is involuntarily asking for a comparison with an optimistic mass culture - no wonder conservative antgarthous critics often address the same reproaches as the kitsch, exposing an avant-garde artist as an edulitar and charlatan, whose products are deprived of genuine artistic quality, intellectual depths and was created based on sensation. However, this optimism differs from optimism of mass culture by the fact that the implementation of the goals of the avant-garde is postponed to the future. The radical confidence of the avant-garde on the future leads to equally radical criticism in relation to the present.

Avangard makes conclusions from the previous history of culture, from its "Romanization", which opened the prospect of an unfinished future. No wonder he originates at the time of a sharp strengthening of decadent sentiment in European culture. In response to them, the avant-garde draws no look into the mythical or epic past, but to the future, and it is decided to sacrifice the cultural "complexity", which accumulated the experience of previous failures. The historically conditioned real avant-garde contrasts the absolute future, which is closed with prehistoric past, which is why the archaic, primitive and infantile signs are so widely used in the forefront. At the same time, in the evolution of the avant-garde, the movement from the denial of modern industrial civilization to its integration (of course, the return movements also occur periodically). Achievements of technical progress can and should be facing their own negative consequences. New technologies, including machine industry, transport, mechanical reproduction, cinema, from the mechanisms of alienation and fragmentation of life are transformed into an instrument of utopian design of the inalital world. At the new twist of its development, passing the way of liberation, society "returns" to classless, universal condition, and culture again acquires a syncretic character.

However, seeking to realize the utopia of a holistic, inappropriate being, avant-garde at the same time refuses attempts to draw this integrity within the "one, separately taken" paintings. The future is present in the present rather negatively - in the form of a lacoon and breaks pointing to the incompleteness of the world and for the prospect of the absolute future. And this ultimately returns avant-garde in the context of the art of the new time.

An expression of becoming becoming unfinished, decentned, Multilingual reality Bakhtin calls a novel. The novel destroys the epic "value-removing distance" - and a special role in this process belongs to laughter. In the field of comic, writes Bakhtin, "the artistic logic of analysis, dismemberment, kingdom" dominates " 24 . But does the same logic prevail in the sphere of avant-garde methods? Isn't the installation of a symbolic "making" of things? And does the avant-garde photo do not bring to the limit of this logic of decanonization, dismantling a sustainable picture of the world?

If we turn to the constructivist photo, we will see that with all the permeants of her pathos life affirmation Her methods through parodies. Here are their short list: comparison of the incomparable, the creation of "unexpected neighborhoods" and the use of non-canonical persons (cancellation of the symbolic spatial hierarchy of the top and bottom, left and right, integer and part, etc.), fragmentation (symbolic dismemberment of the social body). Constable, "deep" traditional of avant-garde is expressed in the denial of specific forms of tradition, simultaneously integrating in itself (at least by dialectical overcoming) preceding moments and episodes of art evolution. Formulating the task of building an absolutely holistic, harmonic society, the avant-garde at the same time postpones the implementation of this task "For later", transfers it to the future, which simultaneously turns into a source of constant criticism of this. The negative reaction of the agents of the authorities on this deeply ambivalent poetics was absolutely adequate in its own way - it was the reaction of "canonizers" who wanted to see in art only the implementation of law and life-affirming functions.

Deformations

During the period of massive criticism of "formalism", the critic L.Averbakh spoke about the "pioneer" Rodchenko: "... He took a pioneer, putting the device an angle, and instead of a pioneer it turned out some monster with one huge hand, a curve and in general with a violation of every symmetry of the body" 25 . We listen to this remark: Is it not appropriate this association with pathology, with bodily deformation? Such associations often arise in the photographs of Rodchenko - can be remembered, for example, the deformed face of the "Hornist" or "Jump in height" - one of the photos of the sports series of the 30s: here the body of the divers turns into some strange flying machine, simultaneously similar In the doll of insect in the state of metamorphosis.

In the 1930s, the theme of bodily transformations becomes one of the central in art (especially for artists of a surrealistic circle). According to Boris Groys, interest in this topic is a natural continuation of the avant-garde project: the body believed the border with experiments aimed at converting reality. Make the body transformable, plastic, pliable - it would mean to break the resistance of nature itself 26 . This remark is true, but requires clarification. The source of resistance, cosiness, from the point of view of avant-gardeists, should be sought not in the nature of things as such. On the contrary, the essence of this nature is in endless creativity, which is similar to the capable element of fire, "dimly flammable and measuringly fading", at Heraklit Efesse. Things are an alienated form of existence of fire: they produced, they make him retreat, fade. The task of the avant-garde is toggle the flame again, resume the process of creation, the necessary condition of which is the destruction or in any case a change in the already created. Constructivists with rationalism issuing in them the heirs of the Education Project, tried to realize this task with the methods of sober and planned work on the creation of a new person. But it is worth a change angle view and a feeling of transparent logic and membership, inspired by their works, turns around the effect of anxious weirdness, sacrificial his self-loose In the spirit of surrealistic aesthetics.

The emergence of the collective body of the proletarian society becomes one of the main topics of the Soviet avant-garde photography, and the installation technique acts as its image and similarity. The design of this superpoint encompasses the moment of fragmentation, reduction, violence on the integrity of the photograph and ultimately over the bodies captured on this photograph. Constructivist manipulations with photographic image are related to procedures underlying all initiation rituals: gaining a new, more advanced, social or super-society, the bodies are achieved only after killing, sacrificing the initial, individual body. The memory of this killing is recorded on the body in the form of scars, scars and tattoos indicating the negation of the primary physicality. Constituting "installation of facts" negativity is equivalent to these scars.

It has long been noticed that the art of an avant-garde, who resorted to systematic sensitiveness and the likelihood of a person with a car, was much more "totalitarian" in spirit than the art of real totalitarianism. Real totalitarianism cannot be the same consistent and frank, it is inclined to mask the work of its mechanisms. In exchange for a dishonorable part and deformed physicity in the art of "high Stalinism" (including the late works of Rodchenko and Kloths), an image of an organically integral, "symmetric" body comes out. The desire to integrate the experience of decay is replaced by its displacement of the field of representation and the illusory reconstruction of the "humanistic" ideal.

It is logical to assume that Stalin's culture does not allow the symbolization of negativity and destructiveness In view of the excessive reality of this experience. It is the source of that "disturbing oddity" 27 which binds to the Stalinist era and rearly projected onto its signs - works of socialist realism. Meanwhile, Stalinist art is not responsible for this effect, while remaining a symptom shielding real experience. "Reflexive" (avant-garde) it can only be as a result of its historical contextualization- But this reflection is not "internal", but "external". On the contrary, in the works of avant-garde destruction and deformation the essence of the structural principles of their formal organization. In the situation of Stalinism, these principles acquired a conversion effect.

In some works of the Soviet avant-garde, from among the latest, destructive effect arises as if contrary to their direct value and the intention of the author and involuntarily acquires a critical sound. At one of the posters of Viktor Denis and Nikolai Dolgorukov, who worked in the manner of clubs until the end of the 30s, because of the horizon there appears a huge, towering over the panorama of the Red Square. Since in general the photomontage space is simply pretty naturalistically, in compliance with the laws of perspective, this figure looks like a foreign anomaly. It seems a little more, and she will give people and technique in the foreground.

Avangard and Kitch.

In essence, "Documentary Epos" and was the only genuine "socialist realism" - this dogmatic definition acquires not a dogma pattern, if it is to spread it to the posters of Gustav club and Sergey Senkin, on the photo reports of Alexander Rodchenko, Boris Ignatovich and Elizar Lagman, who combined " Sober work "with" Grand Perspectives ", not trying to cover the contradiction between them. Compared to these works, the art of "social realism" in the usual, the historical significance of this word seems historically uncompetitive, and his victory "in life" - a random curiosity. In fact, this "curiosity" is natural.

Many of the researchers of socialist realism talked about the inability to describe this phenomenon in the categories of aesthetics of the new and modern time. Instead, they pointed to the deep archaism of the forms of Stalinist culture, and also carried out an analogy between Stalin's art and modern mass culture. Both analogies are essentially based on one feature of socially owned art - namely, on his "formality", "canonism", a tendency to "fossil reality", against which the Tretyaks objected. However, the second of them, in our opinion, is more accurate - if only because the nutritional soil for social realism, as for the mass culture, serve as aesthetic forms created by the European culture of the new time. In addition, and Stalin's realism and Western mass culture are not absolutely isolated and closed in themselves: they are in contact with the culture of high, avant-garde, "extracted" and integrate its techniques.

Thus, we return to the classic ( greenbergian) Determination of social realism as kitsch. The main difference of Kitcha from the avant-garde Greenberg considered that the first offers us ready-to-use product, while the second is only a reason for reflection. Indeed, in socialism, the idea of \u200b\u200bcompletion and integrity plays a central role. But the difference between Kitcha from the avant-garde can be described and somewhat different, namely, an indication of the function of the Museum Institute or, in a broader sense, a system of cultural memory embodied in specific samples.

In the context of modernist culture, the museum is essentially a collection of tabulating samples: he imposes a ban on the repetition of the old, showing what has already been done and what it is no longer possible, what can only be redone. This prohibition not only does not deny the positive assessment of the relevant work - but, on the contrary, confirms it. In the official Soviet culture, the specific negative aspect of the modern museum is weakened: ideally the museum, especially the Museum of Contemporary Art, is a collection of positive role samples. The selection is not made on the principle of originality, that is, deviations from the historic canon, but, on the contrary, according to the principle of conformity to him.

Socialist realism, positioning itself as a result of all global culture, is trying to carry out the synthesis of all its achievements. "Classics from classics are not born," Russian formalists in the late 20s, trying to show that the art evolution is carried out by disappearing from the canon. The history of art from their point of view is the story of Yeresy in the absence of an unchanged orthodoxy. Stalinist culture, on the contrary, leads its origin exclusively from classics. However, sequential neoclassicism is also not a meant, because it also evades synthesis in its own way. This requirement soon understood writers and artists from the associations of RAP and AHHR, who accepted to work out the order at the "Soviet Tolstoy" and combine epos with a novel, and a psychological portrait with an icon. It is not about combining the quotation, which retain communication with the initial context and therefore give the new text of the complex, internally controversial, and about an attempt to achieve some "golden middle". After all, the quote is a product of dismemberment and, therefore, the death of the sample, its corpse. Yes, and any sharply peculiar, too noticeable reception threatens the integrity and continuity of the tradition, testifying to sneaking inside it, about partialness and incompleteness. The ideal of Stalin's culture is the work of a whole "life-affirming" and the declaring completeness of being. If the avant-garde struggles with tradition, the Stalinist art neutralizes it. For this, it forms a strictly ordered canon of historical memory, in which "positive" and "negative", "positive" and "negative" are clearly divided.

However, this canon represents a certain amount and therefore, despite the attempts to homogenize it, remains too diverse in its composition. In addition, he has the impact of external factors: so, changes in the official political course can lead to its revision. Cases of such a revision are especially indicative: they emphasize primarily asserting the importance of cultural memories attached in this culture. Typical for Stalinist culture The practice of removal from the archives of certain documents of the past due to a change in political situation shows that this culture thinks the archive exclusively in the positive register. Negative memories, if possible, simply "are forgotten", that is, excluded, unhand from the archive (as portraits of the "enemies of the people" from the Soviet textbooks were smeared), since this culture does not carry out a clear boundary between the past and the present. In some sense, its ideal is no longer an absolute epic or mythical past, both in traditional cultures, and not an absolute future, as in the culture of avant-garde, but the absolute present. In this absolute present, negativity is projected into the historical, pre-revolutionary past or in modern, "relative" present of capitalist society.

The characteristic example: in the 30s, when the avant-garde photomontage language is rejected or, at least, is aligned with traditional picture conventions, the sphere remains where this method continues to exist in its classic. It is formed plots from the life of the bourgeois, western world - the world of exploitation, unemployment, class struggle, etc. The negativity, which, as we have already seen, is the determining principle of building a photomontage, it seems impossible in the representation of a positive "Soviet reality", but it is quite relevant to the reality of capitalist.

It is pointless to argue about whether social identity is "continuation" and the development of the constructivist project "other means", or he was based on its denial. The fact is that in the case of the art "Means" is not something indifferent or secondary. And constructivism, and Ahrrovsky, and later socialist realism mean the same content. A more fundamentally formal difference: and here the notorious "as" representation is entering. Production movement, despite the fact that it proclaimed the abandonment of autonomy and renounced the principles of modernist art, it remained essentially a purely modern phenomenon. And modernism is focused on studying the language of art and reminds of the gap between the order of things and the order of signs (even in his desire to eliminate this clearance). Here the principle of extremes, not the "golden middle", the principle of decanonization, approving "freedom to identify the material" 28 . These principles turned out to be unacceptable for power. It accurately identified the "critical form", the constituting space of autonomy of art with the help of complex, non-definitive definition and external regulation of the mechanisms, and hurried to eliminate them.

El Lisitsky Novator photomontage. El Lisitsky

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