October journal No.7 Winter (1978) - Soviet Revolutionary Culture

Art |

Theory I Criticism I Politics

Soviet Revolutionary Culture: A Special Issue Annette Michelson Alfred H. Barr, Jr. A. V. Lunacharsky

A Specter and Its Specter Russian Diary 1927-28

Paul Schmidt

Discovering Meyerhold: Traces of a Search Vladimir Tatlin: Form/Faktura The Factory of Facts

Margit Rowell Dziga Vertov

Gogol-Meyerhold's The InspectorGeneral

and Other Writings

$4.00/Winter 1978

Published by The MIT Press for The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies

OCTOBE

editors Rosalind Krauss Annette Michelson managing editor Douglas Crimp

OCTOBER is published quarterly by the MIT Press for the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. Subscriptions: $14.00 per year; Institutions: $20.00 per year. Foreign subscriptions, including Canada: add $3.00 for mailing. Address subscriptions to OCTOBER, MIT Press Journals, 28 Carleton Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142. Manuscripts, accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes, should be sent to OCTOBER, 8 West 40 Street, New York, N.Y. 10018. No responsibility is assumed for loss or injury of manuscripts. OCTOBER was designed by Charles Read, is set in Baskerville, and printed by Wickersham Printing Company, Inc. ? 1978 by MIT and IAUS. OCTOBER does not reflect the views of the IAUS. OCTOBER is the property of its editors, who are wholly responsible for its contents.

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Annette Michelson Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Jere Abbott John E. Bowlt Elizabeth Jones A. V. Lunacharsky Paul Schmidt Margit Rowell Dziga Vertov

A Specter and Its Specter Russian Diary 1927-28 Foreword Afterword A Note on Barr's Contribution to the Scholarship of Soviet Art Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General Discovering Meyerhold: Traces of a Search Vladimir Tatlin: Form/Faktura The Factory of Facts and Other Writings

3 7 7 51

53 57 71

83 109

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ALFRED H. BARR, JR., became the first Director of the Museum of Modern Art in the year following his trip to the Soviet Union recorded in his "Russian Diary." In 1936 he organized the two historic exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, the former introducing many works of the Russian avant-garde to an American audience. In addition to the catalogues of these exhibitions, his major publications include monographs on Picasso and Matisse. JOHN E. BOWLT, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Texas, Austin, edited Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902-1934 for the Documents of 20thCentury Art series. ELIZABETH JONES, Assistant Director of the Smith College Art Museum, was formerly Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, where for many years she worked with Alfred Barr. ANATOLY VASSILIEVICH LUNACHARSKY (1875-1934) was Lenin's close collaborator and the revolutionary regime's first Commissar of Education. In that capacity he was responsible for the active encouragement of aesthetic innovation and progressive teaching which characterized the period 1917-28. He wrote extensively on cultural issues, particularly the theater. MARGIT ROWELL is Curator of the Guggenheim Museum, where she has organized major shows of Mondrian, Mir6, Kupka, and Dubuffet. She is currently preparing an exhibition which will examine issues of planar sculpture related to those discussed in her essay on Tatlin published here. PAUL SCHMIDT, Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Rimbaud: Complete Works in Translation, as well as essays on Soviet cinema. His Meyerhold at Work, from which the essay published here is drawn, will be issued by the University of Texas Press in 1979. DZIGA VERTOV, one of the most innovative and celebrated of the revolutionary generation of Soviet filmmakers, was born Denis Abramovich Kaufman in Bialystok in 1896 and died in Moscow in 1958. The texts presented here are selected from a volume of his writings, edited and introduced by ANNETTE MICHELSON, to be published next fall by the University of California Press. Acknowledgements We are grateful to MARGARET SCOLARI BARR, who has been unsparing of her time, effort, and editorial skill in preparing for publication Alfred Barr's "Russian Diary," a document we are especially pleased to present. Our debt to JAY LEYDA in the preparation of this special issue on Soviet Revolutionary Culture cannot be repaid. We wish, however, to acknowledge once again the generosity of a friend and the expertise of a senior scholar in the field.

A Specter and Its Specter Once again Europe and the West are haunted, by communism and its specter: the Culture of Revolution. This seventh issue of October offers, after our decade of radical aspiration and defeat, some documents of another, earlier decade, of that extended "moment in our century when revolutionary practice, theoretical inquiry, and artistic innovation were joined in a manner exemplary and unique."1 It was half a century ago, in the last year of the immediately postrevolutionthat Alfred H. Barr, Jr., then a young graduate student, journeyed with decade, ary a friend to the Land of the Bolsheviks, as though "to the moon." In these documents of 1927-28, Pasternak and Lunacharsky join in Barr's celebration of Meyerhold's Inspector-General, the most thoroughly revivifying theatrical work of our century, while Vertov articulates the premises of his cinematic practice, culminating in the final work of the silent period, that summa of the medium's formal and discursive properties, The Man with a Movie Camera. Meyerhold and Vertov have composed in diptych the supreme temporal instance of an analytic art. Eisenstein, whom Barr encounters at that animated, open house which was the home of Sergei Tretyakov, is now at work on the film which, in its celebration of the decade, proposes the systematic radicalization of montage in its intellectual mode. Between sessions at the editing table, he meditates upon the project of a cinematic Capital, and, reviewing recent history, considers that "methods of planned and constructive approach to artistic creation, lost to artists as representatives of the petite bourgeoisie, have been restored and raised to the level of scientific analysis and synthesis. The process then instituting the penetration of the creative process by dialectical and materialist principles, as yet unrealized by artists, constitutes the raw stuff of a future proletarian art." He then concludes with an apprehensive, indeed a prescient characterization of the developing program of Stalinist ideology: "The tragedy of today's 'leftists' consists in the fact that the still incomplete analytic process finds itself in a situation in which synthesis is demanded...."2 Capital was never filmed, and for that very reason. The project, a ghost gone west, nevertheless returned to haunt Eisenstein when, between takes of Que Viva Mexico!, he filled books and notebooks, translating the projected critique of dialectical reason into the filmic rendering of the central modernist text of his generation: Ulysses. And both enterprises, dispatched upon his return to Moscow into the limbo of utopian designs, returned once more in 1968 to haunt our filmmakers. The notion of a demand for "synthesis" proved, as we know, to be the most extravagantly optimistic of euphemisms. Eisenstein, like Meyerhold and Pasternak and Vertov and Tretyakov, was a member of a host summoned, like a "Joint Opposition," to answer charges of which the mild, aesthetic variant was "formalism." Of each, silence, cunning, exile, degradation, or death was demanded-the 1. 2.

"About October," October, no. 1 (Spring 1976), 3. Sergei Eisenstein, "Notes for a Film of Capital," October, no. 2 (Summer 1976), 25-6.

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several prices paid by those whose "analytic" impulses and commitments went counter to the "synthetic" spirit of the times. Thirty-five years later, in the founding text of what has become the internationally organized movement of Soviet dissent, this charge was curiously renewed, in a manner and context whose contradictions epitomize the way in which the Stalinist repression produced a drastic and enduring confusion in its heroes and victims. Here is the text in question: Caesar was lolling in his chair at a table and smoking his pipe. He had his back to Shukhov and couldn't see him. K-123 was sitting across from him. He was a scrawny old man who'd done twenty years. He was eating mush. "You're wrong, pal," Caesar was saying, and he was trying not to be too hard on him. "One must say in all objectivity that Eisenstein is a genius. Now isn't Ivan the Terrible a work of genius? The oprichniki dancing in masks! The scene in the cathedral!" "All show-off!" K-123 snapped. He was holding his spoon in front of his mouth. "Too much art is no art at all. Like candy instead of bread! And the politics of it is utterly vile-vindication of a one-man tyranny. An insult to the memory of three generations of Russian intellectuals!" (He ate his mush, but there was no taste in his mouth. It was wasted on him.) "But what other treatment of the subject would have been let through ... ?" "Ha! Let through, you say? Then don't call him a genius. Call him a toady, say he carried out orders like a dog. A genius doesn't adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants!" "Hm, hm!" Shukhov cleared his throat. He was afraid to butt in on this learned conversation. But he couldn't just go on standing there. Caesar looked around and stretched out his hand for the mush, as if it had just come to him out of thin air. He didn't even look at Shukhov and went back to his talk. "But listen! It's not what but how that matters in art." K-123 jumped up and banged his fist on the table. "No! Your how can go to hell if it doesn't raise the right feelings in me!"3 We recognize the tone, the tenor of moral exigency, and, having come, in the fifteen years since this text's first appearance, to know the author's politically regressive views, we recognize, as well, the presuppositions which inflect Solzhenitsyn's aesthetic imperatives in the direction of the Stalinist repression and 3. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, trans. Max Hayward and Leopold Labedz, New York, Bantam Books, 1963, pp. 93-4.

A Specter and Its Specter

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its Zhdanovist aesthetic. The falsification of the conceptual framework, the corruption of values engendered by Stalinism have in fact produced a dissenting tradition of moral, if not critical, rejection of Eisenstein, which begins to run like a livid streak through the literature of dissent. Here, enhaloed by its author's moral force, is a recasting of the verdict: In his article "On the Nature of the Word" he [Mandelstam] wrote: "Everything has become heavier and more massive, and therefore man must be the hardest thing in the world, standing in relation to it as diamond to glass. The hieratic, that is, sacred nature of poetry is due to the fact that man is harder than anything else on earth." In 1922, when this was written, everybody around us was talking about the new regime being hard, but nobody paused to consider that we are each one of us responsible for what happens in the world. Everybody was happy to divest himself of responsibility even for his own actions. M.'s words would have struck the wrong note, even if anyone had heard them-but I am sure nobody paid any attention, except possibly Akmatova, who was always mourning the dead, whether martyrs for the faith or soldiers. The "handsome, twenty-two-year-old" Mayakovski and the beautiful demigods of Khlebnikov's poetic fantasies are much closer to the Symbolists' "man who dares" than to the "hard man" called for by M. In my young days I must have made fun of the idea and particularly of his line: "Only in battle do we find our allotted part." This was because the word "battle" evoked the sort of image later exemplified in Eisenstein's films: doddering old knights brandishing cardboard swords. M. never had the faintest idea how to handle a rifle, hated firearmswith all his being, and had never worn a military uniform. How was I to know that real battles with real bloodshed (as opposed to Eisenstein's sham ones) would be fought in such an unwarlike field as poetry, of all things?4 Every day was a red letter day in our bountiful new-fangled Empire and brought new marvels to talk about: the latest play by Svetlov, new poetry by Selvinski, the basis of the superstructure, an Eisenstein film complete with Prussian Knights in armor, or grand schemes to make Siberian rivers flow backwards. Who had any time for the widow of a nobody like Mandelstam, or for some woman by the name of Tsvetayeva? They had both turned into "back numbers"--one in Paris and the other beyond the "hundred-and-five-kilometer limit."5 Neither Solzhenitsyn nor Nadezhda Mandelstam sees Eisenstein as a fellow 4. 5.

Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned, New York, Atheneum, 1974, pp. 45-6. Ibid., p. 464.

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victim, and we must understand their failure to see this and to perceive the manner in which Eisenstein used the heavy machinery of his medium to articulate an elaborate and provocative critique of the regime. In this matter Stalin was more perceptive than they were: Ivan the Terrible, Part Two, was banned from release. To complete this brief anthology, consider the following statement, extracted from a text by Robert Warshow, left unfinished at the time of his early death in 1965: To be honest, I must say that I had come with some hope of finding that the pretensions of the great Soviet cinema were false. Since I had never, in fact, quite accepted these pretensions, it may not count for much to say that these films seemed to me, in aesthetic terms, as successful as ever.... It was not at all an aesthetic failure that I encountered in those movies, but something worse: a triumph of art over humanity. It made me, for a while, quite sick of the art of the cinema, and sick also of the people who sat with me in the audience, mes semblables, whom I suspected of being either cinema enthusiasts or Communists-and I wasn't always sure which was worse. (In fact, the audiences were unusually silent at most of these movies, and for all I know may have been suffering the same emotions as I was.)6 Here, in this third and final text, a small paradigm of cold-war ideology, of joylessness disguised as seriousness, of moral complacency disguised as fraternal feeling, we discern, once more, the radical lack of interest in and sympathy for the revolutionary aspiration and its culture. Like Mandelstam and Solzhenitsyn, Warshow dismisses the innovations, the developing forms and strategies of the Soviet avant-garde as vulgar irrelevancies when challenged by the weight of history. And what art will meet that test, and what song but the innocent nightingale's withstand the challenge? At this particular moment, when the moral certainties of dissent generate the intellectual regression and political ambiguities of reaction,7 it is imperative that we not forget the promise and achievement of October in the Arts. ANNETTE

MICHELSON

6. Robert Warshow, "Reviewing Russian Movies," in The Immediate Experience, New York, Atheneum, 1970, pp. 271-2. 7. See "The Agony of the French Left," October, no. 6 (Fall 1978), 18-23. Since the publication of this text, and as if in express fulfillment of its appraisal of probable developments, the Paris based organization known as le Comite d'intellectuels et d'ecrivains pour la liberte, whose telling acronym is CIEL, has been formed. Its first public sessions, convened this past summer with government assistance, were the occasion for the joining of liberal, centrist, and rightist intellectuals, together with the editors of Tel Quel, in a new union sacree. In substance, tone, rhetoric, and ambiance, they reproduce, with a fidelity that is unconditional, the discourse of the Committee for Cultural Freedom of the 1950s. No single presence or ideological component is missing from this replay.

Russian Diary

1927-28

ALFRED H. BARR, JR.

Foreword* In the academic year 1926-27 the protagonists of this diary, Alfred Barr and Jere Abbott, were promising young art historians. In Cambridge they shared living quarters; they were both doing graduate work at Harvard where Prof. Paul Sachs had just started his now famous Museum Course. Alfred Barr, besides studying, commuted to Wellesley, where he taught a course in modern art "unbelievably ahead of its time" (Abbott's words). They had both travelled extensively in Europe and had seen the conventional sights. This time, however, the trip they gradually plotted was focussed exclusively on recent art and architecture; among their first objectives was the Bauhaus in Dessau. The thought of Russia never crossed their minds. How things went is best told in Jere Abbott's words. Now verging on eighty he has the faculty of total recall. In two letters he introduces and sets the tone for the whole diary. With his consent I quote from them with slight transpositions and elisions. M. S. B. As an introduction to what follows let me make the general statement that in the winter of 1927-28 the Russians were far too busy trying to reorganize essentials and for that reason, mainly, there was no supervision over the few visitors from the outside world. We went anywhere we pleased; life there was less regulated and easier than it was ever to be again. The change began shortly after we left. INTOURIST had been started but it so stumbled along that no one bothered with it. I am sure that we were never followed and we had no official guides. We saw Russia freely and exposed. The people were hopeful for a simple reason. They felt that Russia was * Prof. Jay Leyda of New York University, for three years assistant to Eisenstein, gave invaluable help in the publication of this diary, thanks to his knowledge of the history of Russian film; he provided the key to most of the Russian acronyms. I am also grateful to Prof. John Bowlt of the University of Texas at Austin for his interpretation of difficult words and passages.-M. S. B.

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theirs. They couldn't realize or suspect that much of the "old Russia" was still in the genes and would return. Regulation by the few, class distinction, and cruelty would appear in their stubborn way. Quite a bit of French and English was still spoken without fear. It was truly a transitional period. As we planned our trip there was no mention or intent later to go to Russia when we were in Cambridge during the winter of 1926-27. Information about Russia, aside from meager accounts in the daily press, was nonexistent. Alfred preceded me to England. Early in the fall of 1927 I joined him in London. We got to know Wyndham Lewis, the artist, critic, and writer. Through him we met an extraordinary London "character," Nina Hammett, who knew all the art crowd and was enthusiastically Communist in spirit. There was discussion about Russia. We decided to go there. It was that simple. We felt we were about to go to the moon and our first surprise was the easethe matter of fact way-with which we got visas in Berlin. The wait was only about a week! The night before Christmas we left Berlin's Ost Bahnhof. We separated ourselves from a distinctly drab crowd and settled into our sleeping compartment which we had reserved. The next day we were crossing Poland. Except for the log farm houses the landscape was Maine in deep winter. We got to the Russian border in the evening and changed trains. In Russia as in Spain, the rail gauge is different. As I recall, we were surprised, rather, to find that our reservation of a compartment was honored, and we had it on to Moscow. We arrived at two o'clock the next day. No Russian met us. Nina's friend May O'Callahan greeted us and took us to the Hotel Bristol. Nothing surprising. All the usual old-time routine. Passports turned in etc. They were given back to us in a few days. Everyone was pleasant and appeared to be completely baffled as to why we were there. Meyerhold told us to drop in any time to watch rehearsals and of course Sergei Eisenstein became a close friend almost at once. Engaging. Very extrovert and witty. I was very fond of him and used to see him later when he came to this country. He died February 9, 1948 of a heart attack. Our introduction to both of these brilliant men was through May O'Callahan. There was no time limit to our visas. We'd thought to stay two or three weeks. However we quickly came to feel completely at home and we stayed on and on. We left Leningrad in March. The dollar was pure gold in those days so money did not limit our length of stay. In 1927, even foreigners were not in a position to judge about repression. Churches were open. There were still some private shops and some excellent book shops. The Jewish Theater, with the delightful Chagall murals in its foyer, put on the brightest musicals. We were drowned in theater, cinema, ballet. As I look back on it we met few Russians. Alfred and I went everywhere alone or with our thoroughly delightful young Man-Friday helper and guide of sorts, Piotr, whose family name I don't recall; it sounded like Lick-a-cheff. The last syllable pronounced "choff."

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AlfredBarr(right) and JereAbbott with their guide Piotr in TverskayaPark. (See diary entry for February 12.)

Much barter was taking place, but things were sold in some private shops which still were in business. Moscow's streets were crowded day and night and there were thousands of people there from the provinces. They were in tattered native costumes. The men's clothing shops-private shops-still did a big business and prices were high. We outfitted Piotr in one of them; the material from the government shops was so sleazy and awful. My icon I bought in an outdoor "flea" market which was private. Control was spotty. There was a lot of trading of family furnishings. The mass of forms-paper regulations-and of domestic permits had not yet developed. Piotr went to Leningrad with us to visit relatives. I can't recall our departure from Russia except that Alfred and I were depressed. Piotr was small for his 19 years and he had had such a good time with us and-he looked so forlorn as he waved from the railway platform that Alfred and I dissolved shamelessly into tears. JERE ABBOTT* November 1977 * Jere Abbott also kept a journal of this trip; he has given his manuscript to the Smith College Museum. It differs considerably from Barr's because, thanks to energy and good health, he covered more ground. He systematically listed the most important works in the Shchukin and Morosov collections, as they stood separately and intact at that time.-M. S. B.

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The Diary Dec. 24, 1927 6:52-We leave Berlin fromthe SchlesischerBahnhof-second class-since there are no thirdclass sleepers.Bad air but comfortablebeds and a pleasant feelingof finalityin our direction.Germans,Poles, Orientals in our car. No English, but one Americanpassportbesides ours. I1:00-Our passportscollectedforGerman inspection. 11:30-Polish inspection.--Sleep. Dec. 25, 1927 10 a.m. (?)-pass throughWarsaw--accordingto Jere-I beingasleep in myupper berth.Poland coveredwith patchesof clay-yellowsnow-thatchedmushroom-like houses in one street;villageswithradiatingfieldsabout them-few towns.We read the Soviet guide-and the alphabet causes us dismay. 7 p.m.-Polish inspectionat Stolby. 9:00-Our firstRussian officialin ankle-lengthmilitarygreatcoatappears and takesour passports. 9:30-Niegorelye-the firststop in Russia. Into a shed-likecustoms house for baggage inspection. Our books examined--especiallyJere'sPeruvian magazines on Inca archeologywhich cause the poor officialspuzzlement.No duty. 10:00-I go in searchof the Reisebtiroofficialwho has our Russian ticketsready forus. We mail postcards. 10:30-We climb aboard our third-classsleeperand are usheredby a bewhiskered guard into a four-bunk-or rather shelf--compartment.Patting the shelves meaningfullyproduces pallets forone ruble.' In the compartmentto the left are English-speakingRussians returning from Berlin for a visit to Moscow; to the right are threeChinese. Down the corridorcomes a huge long-coatedofficer of the Red Army."Ich weiss nur ein Wortin English: 'Goodbye,'" he smiles boyishly. on our shelves.I begin to stuff a laundrybag fora pillow. 11:20-We sit,reflecting, The guard slides back thedoor and in come our two companions forthenight-a prettyRussian Jewessand her bashfuldaughter-and we bow. We go out in the corridor to smile in privacy-while they stow their belongings. She appears at the door--"Vielleicht Sie sprechenDeutsch?" (11:30-the trainstarts.) She calls theguard in Russian and he appears with bags full of spotlessbed linen and blankets(2 rubles). We ask her to ask him forthesame forus. She does. Then she asks us to remainoutside while daughterpreparesforbed. While we are "bleibing" in the corridorwe talk with the Russian next door about Moscow. Soon thelady,our companion,opens thedoor and asks theguard fortea. She 1.

The exchange was two rubles to the dollar.

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asks if we'll have some. Daughter looks down from the top shelf. Then the minutesand finallywe come in. They are "curtainsare drawn" foranotherfifteen both "asleep," theirfaces to the wall. We get into our pajamas and pass a very passable-if somewhatairless night. December26 10:30a.m.-I wake to find"daughter's"black eyesstaring."Morgen" I grunt.She blinks. I look down. "Mother" sleeps. Beneathme Jere'sshelfis empty.I turnover and sleep till eleven.Then I dressand we walk a dozen carsto breakfast.One of the thirdclass "wagons" has a loudspeakerbelching music. We have coffeewhich is mostlycocoa, and bread and cheese. We talk in bad German with our friendsand amuse them by tryingto pronounce Russian. On theway back to our car we stopped to listento theradio. A militaryband played a Couperin dance with bassoons, trombones,and percussion. Outside the snow is deep, the peasants wear fursand theirhorses high collars. Black and white magpies sit on the telephonewires. Occasionally a fivedomed church. 2:15-Quite on time, we arrivein Moscow. To our immense reliefRozinskyis waiting forus. He speaks verygood English. There are only four "state" taxis outside the stationand theseare all taken.The meterlesstaxis are treacherousso we climb into a tram. Moscow assertsits characterimmediately-utterlylacking in any consistent style-a huge tastelesstriumphalarch in frontof the station.Behind the arch a monasteryin verydelicate Russian rococo of the eighteenthcentury.The snow coversmuch unpicturesquedisorder. Our hotel (the Bristol,Tverskaya39) is not prepossessing,but our room is verylarge with two tinybeds and only threerubles apiece. R. helps us to make ourselves chez nous. He is most interestedin music and knows the Russian field verythoroughlythoughhe is not especiallyinterestedin the "left."He also knows his theaterand promisesto be of the greatesthelp. We walk about the town past the new and bad telegraphbuilding to the theatersquare. Jeresends a cable home. To our wonder,Dexter[Maine] is in the cable list. The buildings, throughdisrepair,have a most delicate tone-pinks, greens,and pale yellows; much baroque, rococo, and "drittesRococo." We stop in at theSavoie while R. phones up to anotherprotege,a Russianborn South African.We arrangea kino party.2Have tea and cakes and go to the theater,where we meet the South African,and an English Quaker, Miss White. The filmis excellent-a propaganda, revolutionary"October" theme,but superblyphotographedand directed.Its bias gave it dignityand punch. (The End of St. Petersburg.Dir. V.I. Pudovkin-Mezhrabpom-Russ.)3 2. 3.

Throughout the diary "kino" is used forfilmsor movies. Kino is a filmperiodical. InternationalWorkersRelief. It maintained the second largestfilmstudio in Moscow.

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Back to the Bristol with the full intentionof going to bed. While we're undressingI hear English spokenoutsideour door. I go out to look themoverand decide to speak. One of them,an elderlyman, Dana by name, is verycordial. We ask themin to get acquainted. A second named Wolf is on The New Masses. He came over as a delegateto the Octobercelebrationand is stayingon to studyfilms. A thirdis a Hindu, the son of RabindranathTagore, a communist,"wanted" by the British.Goes bythename of Spencer.Dana turnsout to be HarryDana. Henry WadsworthLongfellowDana of Cambridge,a delightfuland veryfriendly person. He is here workingon the theaterand poetry. Afteran hour's talk theyleave but Dana returnsto say thatMay O'Callahan, Lydia Horton's friend,wanted to see us right away. So we dressedand went upstairs to Dana's room formidnighttea and biscuits. May is verythoroughly Irish,ostentatiouslyfrank,but seemsto like us. She knowsmanypeople. She and Dana will help us verymuch. To bed by 1:30. We feel as if this were the most importantplace in the world forus to be. Such abundance, so much to see: people, theaters,films,churches,pictures,music and only a monthto do it in, forwe mustattemptLeningradand perhapsKiev. It is impossible to describe the feelingof exhilaration;perhaps it is the air (after spirit Berlin),perhaps thecordialityofour new friends,perhapstheextraordinary of forward-looking,the gay hopefulnessof the Russians, their awareness that Russia has at least a centuryof greatnessbeforeher, that she will wax, while France and England wane. Dec. 27 "To bed" at 1:15,"but not to sleep," mycompanions were-or perhaps was an-enthusiastic bed bug(s). We foughttillfourwhen all ofus sleptthroughsheer fatigue-they from feeding and I frombeing fed on. Awake by 10:30. As we dressed,Robert Wolf knocked on our door and presentedMary Reed, a comely Americandamsel who asked us whetherwe'd care to see the Mezhrabpom-Russ kino studio in action. May O'C had asked us to dine at fourand I felttoo tired anyway,but Jerefeltinclined.So I decidedto takeour passportsoverto thebureau to.get our local permitand thengo back to bed. The formerprovedtoo much for me. The building had eightentrancesand fourfloors,all signsin Russian in spite of the factthatforeignerswere forcedto frequentit. Afterhalf an hour's inquiry (by thrustinga card writtenby Roz. under people's noses) I was usheredinto a room where, over the heads of some fortyMongols and Turkomans, I saw a solitary,yes,patheticbureaucratfillingout formsby dictation.I computedthatit would take two and a half workingdays beforehe reachedme so I gave up and staggeredback to bed feelingveryweary.I slept all day while Jerewrote.Dined with O'C and in the evening went to Prof. Weekstead'swith Dana. Prof. W. teachesEnglish at the Academy.I hope to see him next week.

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13

In theeveningRoz. called and we talkedmusic foran hour or so. He brought me some Zwieback and Metchnikovsour milk, the latterpowerfullyunpleasant. Dec. 28 Much restedbut still a littleweary.Breakfastlate withDana and MaryReed. A fineday so we went fora walk to the Germanembassy,a shop, and thento the room (one) wheredwelta man, wife,child (4 yrs.),and sisterofwife.The two girls play and dance and sing at the Dom Gertsena-the author's club of Moscow.4 They were both thereand welcomedus with much theatricalmincing.The child Susanny danced and sang, veryprettilywhile her motherand "aunt" played the guitar-stirringRussian folktunes.They seem to live withthemostextraordinary found them too gay-too gaiety and verve.Piotr,5Dana's Russian interpreter, much like geishas. In the afternoonI slept while Jerewrote. About eight o'clock May O'C came to take us to Tretyakov's.6 He is one of theleadersof the Neue Sachlichkeitin Russian literature,thoughsome yearsback he was an influentialfuturist.Beforethe revolutionhe was professorof Russian literaturein Peking University. He lives in one of the four"modern" buildings in Moscow-an apartment house built in the Corbusier-Gropiusstyle.But only the superficialsare modern, forthe plumbing, heating,etc. are technicallyverycrudeand cheap, a comedyof the strongmodern inclination without any technical traditionto satisfyit. Tretyakova received us cordially speaking adequate English; with her husband I spoke German. She was solidly built and curvilinear,veryenergetic, and entirelydevoid of femininecharm,which is doubtlessa bourgeoisperversion. Tretyakovwas verytall, his head well shaped and completelyshaved. He was dressed in heavy khaki whipcord blouse and breecheswith greygolf stockings. The costumeseemedostentatiouslypracticalthoughMay O'C assuresus thathe is Their daughterwas remarkablyuncomely,squat and entirelywithoutaffectation. with her mother heavy puffyeyes; explained thathooligans (sic) had triedto rob her of her skis and that she had been badly shocked. Among thecompanyon our arrivalwereEisenstein,thegreatkino producer, and two Georgian kino men. The formerwas just on thepoint ofleavingbut May arrangedwithhim so thatwe hope to see partsofhis twonew filmsin a fortnight: Dom Gertsena(Herzen House)-a writers'club named afterAlexanderHerzen. 4. 5. Withinthe Barrdiarythisyoung interpreter is sometimesmentionedas Piotr,at othertimesas Peter.It seemedbestto preservehis Russian identitythroughoutthediary.His signatureat theback of thephotographreproducedon page 9 is Petia Likhatchew.He was wellborn;his fatherhad been a sea captain; with his motherhe spoke French;he also knew English. 6. Sergei Tretyakov(1892-1939) was one of the more radical membersof the postrevolutionary futuristmovement.He played a leading role as a criticand literarytheoreticianand cofoundedLef (1923-25) and Novyi lef(1927-28). No connectionwith the TretyakovGallery.

14

OCTOBER

Moisei Ginzburg. Apartment Block, Moscow. 1926-27. This is the building where the Tretyakovs lived. (See also diary entryfor January 26.) I ,

October and The General Line.' Both were intended for the October celebration

but were delayed. The Georgians seemed interestingbut spoke only Russian. Tretyakovshowed firstsome photographs he had made of the region around Tiflis,a walled townin a finemountainsetting.Madame showedus architectural magazines. thatdid not conform Tretyakovseemedto have lost all interestin everything He had no interest his ideal of art. to objective,descriptive,self-styled journalistic in painting since it had becomeabstract!He no longerwritespoetrybut confines himselfto "reporting." He showed me his latestworkin ms.,a "bio-interview"he called it,givingas completelyas possible the lifeof a boy in China. He spenthours daily formany monthstalkingwith a Chinese boy in Moscow tryingto learn all he could about his lifein one of theremoteprovincesofSouth China.8To what theboycould tell him he added his own thoroughknowledgeof China, thus achievingwhat he believes to be the most realisticand intimateaccount of life in China in any foreignlanguage. His aim howeveris not in theleastartisticas was Turgenev'sor Octoberwas firstreleasedabroad as Ten Days thatShook the World; The General Line was 7. retitledThe Old and the New. 8. S. Tretyakov,Den Shi-Hua, Bio-interview, Moscow,Molodaia Gbardiia, 1930.Coverand layout by Rodchenko. Translated into English as A Chinese Testament,New York, Simon and Schuster, 1934.

Russian Diary

15

Gogol's but is purelydocumentaryreportingof themostthoroughkind,intended to produce greaterunderstandingbetween Russia and China. When I asked about Malevich and Pevsner and Altman9 he was not interested-theywereabstractartists,he was concrete,a unit in a Marxian society where ... [sentenceunfinished].He was more interestedin Rodchenko who had left suprematismfor photography.He showed us a ms. of poems forchildren writtenbyhimselfand illustratedbyRodchenkoand his wifewithphotographsof paper puppets, veryfinein compositionand wittyas illustrations.'0This volume had been vetoedby the governmentofficialbecause the pictureswere not literal, realisticillustrationsof the subject matterof the verses.(T. was not surewhether this censorshipwas Victorianor postexpressionistic.) Beforewe wentout to tea and salad in thedining room,Tretyakovashowed us her apartment. The building was intended to house the workersin the governmentinsurance office.These privileged memberspaid about ten rubles (verylittle) for theirapartments.A few were leftover and these were rentedto outsiders (New Economic Policy profiteers,i.e., independent merchants or manufacturers-"bourgeois")and others.They have to pay 200R a month.The bad, apartmentswere poorly built: circulationbad, doors too wide, door fixtures chute bath crude, inconvenient, taps rusty,garbage piping plumbing pathetic. Aftersalad we said goodnight since I needed sleep and went back home; a fine walk, finecompany,a fineevening,veryinstructivethoughno moreenlightening than our hour this morningat Pava. Apparentlythereis no place wheretalentof an artisticor literarysortis so carefullynurturedas in Moscow; poets, even,are well paid, especiallyif theyare usefulin propaganda. Poetryis paid forby the line, thusexplaining much of the irregularlyprintedfreeversewhich is most of it, metrically,quite regular. We'd ratherbe here than any place on earth. Dec. 29th, 1927 Last night the Indians next door kept me awake by their loud debateperhaps theywererejoicingoverthenew anti-Britishboycottor perhapstheywere welcoming Diego Rivera, who arrivedrecentlyfromMexico to do some frescoes fortheSoviet.They told me ofhis comingand seemedto know him well. I hope to see him as he has a complete seriesof photographsof his Mexico City frescoes. Aftera late breakfastDana and we startfortheShchukincollectionbut arrive mistake at the Historical Museum at the Iberian gate. We look at several by mediocreicons, finetextiles,and some earlyprehistoricCaucasian sculpture;also 9. Natan Altman (1889-1970),painter,sculptor,designer.For informationon him see M. Etkind, Natan Altman,Moscow, 1971. 10. The referenceis to a book of cartoons called Samozveri (Self-Animals)which Tretyakov projected in 1926, but which was not published. Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) and his wife Varvara Stepanova (1894-1958)workedon the photographicillustrationsforthis book. Some of these appeared in Novyi lef,no. 1, Moscow, 1927,betweenpp. 18 and 19.

16

OCTOBER

an interestingshow illustratingMoscow lifein theseventeenthcentury.Then we walk through the Red Square past Lenin's tomb (a well-designed wooden structurein the Assyrianstyle)to St. Basil's Cathedral--magnificently rich in a in and tones." barbaric style-reds,greens, oranges deep Coming back genuinely we steppedinto theshrineof theIberian Madonna. Prayershanded to thepriestby worshipperson slips of paper wereintonedbeforea finelate ByzantineMadonna just barelyvisible behind a clutterof gaudy bric-a-brac.Outside the shrineon the wall to theleftis theinscriptionin large red letters:"Religion is an opiate forthe people," in which thereis as much truthas falsehood froma social-scientific position. Coming back I boughtfora fewkopecsa child's book of ballads about Robin Hood, verywell illustratedwith lively,well-composeddrawings by Pronovapparentlyinfluencedby the iconism of Grigoriev,Sudeikin, etc.'2 Then we had dinnerat a vegetarianrestaurant:soup (verycomplex and rich) 30K, vegetables25K, kompot 35K, tea 10K. In the evening we went to the RevolutionaryTheater, one of Meyerhold's to see a play by [Barr's omission] called The End of TwistedSnout-a offspring, mixed farce,satire, and melodrama on the theme of the disintegrationof the small-town,bourgeois societyafterthe revolution.It lasted from7:30 to 11:30fiveacts and sevensceneswithoutany flaggingof interest,the action was so rapid, the setsso interesting, and theacting so extraordinarily high in quality. Of a cast none was poor and a dozen wereverygood. There mustbe twiceas many of forty, fineactorsin Moscow as in any othercityin theworld. [A sketchofone of thesets inserted.]The audience was also entirelyproletarian.The play was therefore very obvious in plot, unsubtlein psychology,and broadlyacted,but highlyentertaining. was an officer Dana's interpreter aboard the Aurora during the mutiny.'3 Afterthe play we went to the Dom Gertsenaforbeer and cheese. The girl whom we visitedyesterday morningplayed "Hallelujah" on thegrandpiano in a with but withoutany feeling interestingrhythmiceffects grand concertomanner, forjazz. There were many literaryfolkabout but no major lions. Bed by 2:15. Dec. 30 Aftera late breakfastI was able at last to persuade the conciergeto get me some stampsforour long delayed lettershome. Barrsaw the original versionof the Lenin mausoleum, i.e., the wooden structuredesignedby 11. Alexei Shohusev in 1924. This was replaced by the stone version(still standing) in 1930. 12. The identityof Pronov has not been established.Both Boris Grigoriev(1886-1939) and Sergei Sudeikin (1882-1946) were moderateartistswho had achieved some renown beforethe revolution, Grigorievforhis excellentdrawingsand Sudeikin forhis stagedesigns.These children'sbooks as well as all otherbooks and posterslatermentionedare in theAHB Archivein the Museum of ModernArt. 13. Barris presumablyconfusingtwo events:the sailors' mutinyportrayedin Eisenstein'sPotemkin, an eventof the 1905 revolution;and the participationof the crewof the Aurora in the opening assault on theWinterPalace duringtheOctoberRevolutionof 1917,portrayedin Eisenstein'sOctober. See also diaryentryforJanuary11.

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17

Then to the firstMuseum of Modern Foreign Painting, formerlythe it is the finestcollection of modern French Shchukin Collection--perhaps painting afterBarnes's in Philadelphia and Reber's at Lugano-8 Cezannes, 48 Picassos, 40 Matisses,a dozen Derains, etc.'4 The earlyPicassos are particularly valuable historicallysince the developmentof cubism is here betterillustrated than anywhereelse, though thereare too fewBraques and Henri Rousseaus. We wonder if the Morosov is equally fine. We met Bob Wolf in the gallery and had dinner with him at another Tolstoyan restaurant. In the evening Rozinsky called for us to take us to a Scriabin concert. Accordingto R., Scr's music can only be appreciatedafterextensivestudyof the man's life and philosophy. S. was a mystic,a theosophist,a Rosicrucian, and whatnot and felt driven to save or transformor destroymankind by a great "mystery"in theformofa musical composition.He died beforehe had begun this magnum opus, thoughhe leftnotesfora preludeto it. Rozinskytakesall thisvery believesS. to be thegreatestof all theRussian composers.In seriouslyand firmly and Borodinare not to thishe may well be rightthoughMoussorgsky,Stravinsky, be ignoredin a competition. Scriabin's music did not convince us. Up to opus 40 he seemed unable to escape the romanticismof Chopin though much of his music is richerand more complex than any of Chopin. Afterno. 40, in the5thand 9th Sonatas and in the d'extase,which Koussevitzkyplayed in Boston last year,he seems to go far Poerme beyondChopin in a passionate staccatostyle,verypowerfulbut incompleteand still to my thinking romantic, though R. held that after opus 25 he was increasinglyphilosophical and not in the least romantic.R. confusesintention with conclusion. Dec. 31 A badly used day. We set out with Dana and Piotr to do some shopping for blouses and books and theatertickets,but the day beforeNew Year's proved the wrong time. I found a few good books on painting and posters at the State Publishing House, but theyare too few.There seemsto be no good book on Soviet painting in Russian. The American book by Lozowick and the German by KonstantinUmanskywill have to serveme forthe timebeing.'5 Even thoughwe had littlesuccesswithour purchasesit is always interesting to walk in Moscow. It is almostimpossibleto meetwithan uninteresting costume, 14. In 1918both theShchukinand the Morosovcollectionswerenationalizedand became the First and Second Museumsof New WesternPainting. In 1923bothwereamalgamatedinto a single Museum of New WesternPainting. In the early 1930s many of the Museum's works were transferred to the Hermitagein Leningrad,and in 1948all theholdingsweredistributedbetweentheHermitageand the Pushkin Museum of Fine Artsin Moscow. 15. Louis Lozowick, Modern Russian Art,New York, Museum of ModernArt/Soci&te Anonyme, 1925.KonstantinUmansky,Neue Kunst in Russland, 1914-1919,Potsdam,Kiepenheuer,and Munich, Goltz, 1920.

18

OCTOBER

and most of the facial typesare extraordinarily vividand differentiated. As to the architecture,Moscow seems to have had a particularlysevereattack of "drittes Rococo." Viennese ideas of 1905 seemed to have been importedindiscriminately. The interiorof the large food store opposite our hotel is the frightfullest art nouveau I've everseen and thereis also much verybad "Beaux-Arts"and baroque and rococo importationsof the last threecenturies. The manychurchesand monasterieshoweverare verywonderfulin toneand picturesquein composition.Of the threeor fourmodernbuildings,thetelegraph officeseems the most pretentiousand the worst-a badly studied potpourri in detail though interestingin composition. The apartmentwhere the Tretyakovs live is merely Bauhaus academic. The Mosselprom building is good as an adaptation of factorystyleto an officebuilding. There is some good steamboat detailing on the Izvestia [building]. In the evening we went to the Dom Gertsenawith Mary Reed and Dana. Mayakovskywas therebut on the whole the partywas boringlybourgeois-bad jazz, no room fordancing, ostentatiousCharlestoning,good food. Beforewe left, Pava, who was in great form,struckup a Hopak and some of the older people threwa mean folkdance, a greatreliefafter"Tea forTwo." There was one boiled shirton a veryAmerican-lookingyouth who turnedout to be a Dane. With O'C and Dana to the Novodevichi Monastery or Conventunfortunatelythe church was closed with its importantmonumentsand icons. But the monasteryclose by was verybeautiful,theexteriorof theprincipalchurch throughtheold archwayquite magical. Most of thegravemonumentswereworse than Westernones; Chekhov's was good, we didn't see Scriabin's. Then we took a brisk walk out toward the Lenin hills and back by bus throughthe town to the [Barr's omission], a small and ancient churchnear the Chinese wall. A priestlet us in but it was too dark to see some rathersecond-rate icons. Afterdinner we went with O'C to see Gogol's Revizor (The InspectorGeneral) at Meyerhold's theater,a long, exhausting, and highly interesting evening-7:30 to ten of twelve.16Beforethe show we were takenbackstageto see the astonishing mechanics: the double intersectingquarter-turntables which carriedalternatetiltedplatform-stagesout to the main stage. We saw also the lightingbridgeat the rearof the theaterwhereall the switchesare concentrated, instead of the customarydivision betweenthe prosceniumand wings and back. The museum was very interestingalso, showing beautiful models of all of Meyerhold's productions. We sent our cards back to him and received an appointmentfornext Wednesdaymorning:interviewand rehearsal. Revizor is a comedyof small town bureaucracyin the 1860s (?) The mayor and his ... etc. Meyerholdcombinedthe most theatricalelementsin two versions-an early and late-of Gogol's play. The charactersare intenselyindividualized-that of the 16.

See Lunacharsky'sreviewand defenseof this productionin this issue of October.

19

Russian Diary

impostoris a fantasticcaricatureof thefashionableyoungman who, when drunk, believes in his own fabulous importance. (Meyerhold's wife-who takes the principal female role-is overemphasized.) A Giottesquestage,tiltedand trapezoidal, The setsare extremelyinteresting. with carefullycomposed and ratherblockyfurniture.Some of the scenes,such as thelate scene when theletteris read,wereextremely crowded,fortypeople massed so that theycould scarcelymove-very like Rowlandson in feeling. The finaleffect is one ofastonishing,overpoweringvirtuosity and originality in direction,but at too manymoments,extravaganceand distortion.The alternations of minutelycharacterizedrealism with shocking expressionismare very uncomfortable.The stageitselfis too small forthevisual comfortof theaudience if not for the physical convenienceof the actors.-Lastly, like many thingsin it was themost Russia, theplay is too long and lacks concentration.--Nevertheless enthralling"theater" I have ever seen. Jan. 3 To VOKS'7 but foundour passportswerenot yetready.They wereable to get a painterin touch with El Lissitzky,the architectand book designer(formerly We took a across the river to the Revolution trolley "Prounism"). Square near where he lived in a curious house built of split logs leftin the rough. His quite charmingGerman wife receivedus. She showed paintingsby her children(who are being educated in Germany)and architecturalprojetsby her husband. They were handsome in rendering,using quadrille paper, transparentgummedpaper, textures.His schemeswere forambitious public buildvarnish,etc. fordifferent of ings great engineeringdifficulty-themost franklypaper architectureI have seen. He showed also books and photographs,many of them quite ingenious, suggestingMoholy-Nagy.I asked whetherhe painted. He replied thathe painted only when he had nothingelse to do, and as thatwas never,never.Gropius's card to El Lissitzkywas well received.He is evidentlyveryfriendlywith the Bauhaus. We got back a littlelate forour date with O'C to go to see the head of the State Publishing Corporation who is also editor of Kino, an importantfilm journal (8,000 circulation).He spoke a littleGerman and was verygenial-gave Jeresome filmmagazines and me a valuable periodical on thepaintingsof 1919, Tatlin, Malevich, etc. We had excellenttea and cakes and a littlethree-year-old GershwinfromLady Be Good. He said the subscriptionsto periodicalsin general had doubled in a year,but thattheywerestill publishingat a loss,which thestate ofcoursemakesup. Manynew technicalencyclopediasare being written.The new general encycl. is finishedthroughthe letterG. The thousands of new readers, peasants,and workerswho neverread before,are a greatproblem.This new public demands Jack London (who is extremelypopular) and James Oliver Curwood and Burroughs (?) the author of Tarzan of the Apes, etc. 17.

VOKS-Society forCultural Relations with Foreigners.

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Russian Diary

21

An hour after we left him we went with O'C and Tretyakova to see Rodchenko and his talentedwife. Neitherspoke anythingbut Russian but both are brilliant, versatile artists. R. showed us an appalling varietyof thingssuprematistpaintings(precededby theearliestgeometricalthingsI've seen, 1915, done with compass)-woodcuts, linoleum cuts, posters,book designs, photographs,kino set,etc.,etc. He has done no paintingsince 1922,devotinghimselfto thephotographicartsofwhich he is a master.R's wifeis managingeditorofKino. When I showed her Mrs. Simon's film[Hands by Stella Simon] she was much interestedand asked forfourstillsto reproducewith an article.It will be funtobe paid in rubles (if any). I arrangedto getphotographsof Rodchenko's workforan article.8"

We leftafter11:30-an excellentevening-but I must findsome paintersif possible. Jan. 4 To Meyerhold'stheaterwith O'C and Dana foran interviewfollowedby a rehearsal.M., who spoke German, was verycordial. Through O'C, who speaks Russian excellently,I asked him: 1. Whetherhe'd been directlyinfluencedby Giottoin his stageforRevizortiltedtrapezoid,figuremassing,and props. He answeredverymuch in the affirmative. 2. Whetherhe found the obligation to propagandize a stimulusor a handand icap. He replied thathis theaterwas an expressionof the time-spirit dealt with revolutionarymaterial naturallyand inevitably.Remembering his officialposition in 1919,his answerwas not entirelysatisfactory. 3. Whetherhis actors weren't discomfitedby the small stage in Revizoranswer "No" (acceptedwith doubt). 4. Whetherhe approvedof theminglingoffilmand theateras in thePiscator Biihne in Berlin. He answeredthathe employedsuch a mixturein The Window on the Village. While we were talking,theorchestrawas practicingsome jazz. The ghoulish row of Revizorwax figureswere still on the stage. Then we went to the museum whereM. wentover thesets,commentingon them. I was able to get a complete set of the M. literaturebut still lack some photographsof the Revizor.We wereasked to fillout cardsand to writesomething in a book which was filledwith importantnames beneathblurbsin all languages. names wereLee Simonson, ScottNearing, Chinese, Spanish, French, etc.--recent and Tagore's son, etc. Then to a rehearsalupstairs,a revivalof an old play of 1923: The Magnifi18.

The articlein Kino is in the AHB Archive.

Alexander Rodchenko.VarvaraStepanova(theartist's wife).1935.(CollectiontheMuseumof ModernArt, New York,theParkinsonFund.)

22

OCTOBER

cent Cuckold (fromthe French) using constructivist setting-platforms,chutes, The acrobatic. action was etc.19 Then to luncheon at the Dom Gertsenawith Dana. Tolstoya joined us. She to guide us throughtheTretyakovMuseum wherethere was veryfriendly--offered are many picturesof her grandfather. In the eveningwe wentto Les [The Forest]-a rusticfantasiaby Ostrovsky. A maypole-likeswingA spiral inclined plane was used at the leftveryeffectively. about was used in the center.A delightfuldialogue betweenlovers while they swung around--accordion-Andreyev. Piotr, Dana's young interpreter,is very interesting.The other day he astonishedJerebywhistlingpartof theD Minor Toccata. Jereasked him what the youngergenerationread in Russia. He said thatonce Conrad, Conan Doyle, and JackLondon wereverypopular, but thatnow novels wereless read and technical books were takingtheirplace, verysignificant. Beforethe theaterDana called us up to his room to meetDiego Rivera,the famous Mexican painter.He seemeda large,hearty,ratherRabelaisian character; is going to takeus to theLenin Academywherehe is teachingfrescopaintingand composition. Jan. 5 To VOKS where we at last got our local visas which are good til Jan. 25 when theymust be renewed(7 rubles). Permissionto leave will cost us 22R. AfterVOKS, to Meyerholdto see a rehearsalof his new play. It was in its initial stages, but M. himself was in top form. As Rivera (who was along) remarkedhe was a fineractor than all his troupe combined. He puts immense energyinto his directing. At 3:30 Dana and we met Rozinskyfor dinner. He had broughta young composer and his wife.Aftereating we wentwith themto theirrooms wherehe played some Scriabin,some of his own compositionswhich suggestedCyrilScott to me, Debussy to Jere.They were about twentyyears behind the times,very romantic.He and R. wish to take us to see Alexandrovand Myaskovsky, the two mostimportantRussian composersstill in Russia. ([Ippolitov-]Ivanov is old and Gliere of not much importance;Prokofievand Stravinskyin Paris.)20 Afterthemusic a friendfromthe Musical Studio of the Moscow ArtTheater arrivedand gave us an agonizinglyfunnypuppet show in which monkeys,dogs, etc. took parts in sentimentalsongs which [he] sang behind the screen.He had been on the Americantour playing in Lysistrataand Carmencita. Then we tore to the Meyerholdagain to see Tretyakov'sRichi Kitai [Roar in China. China]: a propaganda play again-English and Americaninterference 19. The firstSoviet productionof Fernand Crommelynck'sfarceThe MagnificentCuckold was by setsand costumeswere designed by Liubov Popova. Meyerholdin 1922. The constructivist 20. Anatoly Alexandrov (b. 1888); Nikolai Myaskovsky(1881-1950); Mikhail Ippolitiv-Ivanov (1859-1935); Reinhold Gliere (1875-1956).

Meyerhold'sproductionof Ostrovsky'sThe Forest.

Tretyakov'sRoar China as staged at Meyerhold's theater.

OCTOBER

24

All theEnglish and theone Americanwerecaricaturedwhile thecoolies stoodout as noble victimsof foreigntruculence.The whole play was actedbeforeand upon an excellentrepresentationof a rivergunboat-the Cockchafer.2'It was superbly directedand intenselydramatic,though theimbalance caused by thepropaganda was aestheticallyunpleasant. Shaw, who would have writtena surpassinglygood play on this theme, would not have been guilty of such one-sidedness,but revolutionarydrama is young. Jan. 6 At thispoint it is well to note beforeit be too late thatforfivenightswe have foiled the bedbugs-powder and baume analgi'sique having miserablyfailed,we arrangedourselvesin pajamas, four pairs of socks, two for the feet,two forthe hands, and a kerchiefaround the neck. They refuseadamantlyand obliginglyto come out in the cold so thatour ears and facesare safe. We wroteour journals all morning since [the] exhibition to which Diego Rivera was to take us was closed suddenly.Two reasons were suggestedby the Mexican-firsttherewereportraitsof some of theopposition,second,because in a group representingLenin's funeralsome figureswere nude. In theafternoonwe wentwith Rozinskyto see an exhibitionofpaintingsby "peasants and workers"at the FirstUniversity.Some wereverygood. We bought forfiverubles each a couple of paintings by a sixteen-year-old boy fromcentral Russia. We may buy some others. From theexhibitionwe went to theJewishTheaterto see thecomic operetta 200,000, a welcome relief afterthe strenuous evenings at Meyerhold's.It was beautifullydone with much Chagall flavor,fadedyellows,greens,and lavendersintensityof the Habima22but strongdark oranges. It lacked of course the terrific had much of the same character. repertory Why is the theaterso popular here? There are over twenty-five theatersin Moscow, a cityof two million. New York strugglesto support oneChicago has none. Perhaps the theaterhas taken the place of the churchsince the revolution mocks at religion. Perhaps it is because the theateris so good, but it is good because of a demand, so thata virtuouscircle is formed. Jan. 7 The morningratherwasted in an abortiveeffortto make plans fora visit tomorrowto the churchesand monasteriesat Sergievoabout 70 kilometersfrom Moscow. Brent Allinson, a young and beautiful Harvard "poet," wanted our 21. 22.

The Cockchaferwas a Britishgunboat in the Yangtzekiang. The Habima was one of the two main Jewishtheatersin Moscow.

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company. As he was intenton making it a social occasion and we on icons we decided not to join forces. I wrote a little on my article for Kino. Movies require a new critical apparatus. In the eveningto the Kamernywith Jereto see Desire Under theElms very unintelligentlygiven. Tairov employedhis customarycommedia dell'artetheatricalityand completelymissedthepoint. The actingwas unsubtle.It is a play for the Moscow Art Theater, forrestrainedintrospectiveacting. Tairov's Victorian New England peasantsthrewthemselvesabout like eighteenth-century buccaneers roaringand swaggering. The settingwas good intrinsicallybut looked more poured concretethan cheap timberconstruction.The costumessuggestedTristan and Iseult. In the afternoonwe went with Rozinsky to see Alexandrov,who is the foremostRussian composer afterMyaskovsky(except the Parisians). His songs weresensitiveand charming.His 6th Sonata lackedany consistentstyle,wavering between Scriabin and Prokofiev.He and his wife,who is Professorof Dalcroze Eurythmicsat the First University,were very eager to hear about music in America. Our visitconfirmedour opinion that Russian music is at presentcuriously romanticand about 10 or 15 yearsbehindtherestoftheworld.The acknowledged leader,Myaskovsky,is apparentlya skillfuleclectic,drawingfromMoussorgsky, Tchaikovsky,and Scriabin. My ideas about Meyerholdbegin to take shape. He seems to me... laterOn the way back fromAlexandrovwe passed the Trades Union Building, easily the finestmodem architecturein Moscow, veryGropius in stylewith all glass sections,steamboatbalconies, etc. Rozinskyand Dana had a smarttiffover "realism" and "naturalism,"the Russian using thewordin itsphilosophical sense,theAmericanin its French(and English) sense. Sunday, Jan. 8 To the Morosov collection; at least as fine as the Shchukin; eighteen C&zannes,eleven Gauguins, a finerlot thoughfewerthan the FirstMuseum. The greatVan Gogh Billiard Room (Cafe at Night), a wall of superb Matisses,many Marquets,Friesz,Rouault, Derain. The finestBonnardsI've seen,also some large and regrettableDaphnis and Chloe decors by Maurice Denis-too sweet and milky--theusual Monets,but six good Sisleys.Curiouslywe have seen no Seurats in Moscow. We asked to see the director,Ternowetz by name.2" He has just published (1928) a new book on Giorgio de Chirico. Doubtless he is responsible Boris Ternowetz(1884-1941) was a criticand sculptor.From 1919 onwards Ternowetzwas in 23. chargeof the Museum(s) of New WesternPainting.

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for the Joan Mir6 and the LUgersin the Shchukin, since he is directorof both galleries. We hope to see him again. Back to the hotel to findour firstmail, Christmascards,had arrived.We decide to go to Sergievo Wednesdaywith Dana and Diego Rivera. In the eveningwith the grandsonof Longfellow and the granddaughterof Tolstoy to see the nephew of Chekhov in Hamlet at the Second Moscow Art Theater. To judge fromhis filmThe Waiterin the Palace Hotel, Chekhov was wearing a false chin in Hamlet and seemed to be encumbered.Also he has tuberculosisof the throat,but in spite of thesehandicaps he gave a magnificent albeit a bit over-agonized.Many thingsseemedwrongwiththeplay performance, as a whole. The chorus was amusing in mouselike greyand black but far too conspicuous. The Queen and Polonius were poor (all the male courtiersand P. wore "bald" wigs). The ghost scene was excellent in settingbut therewas no ghost-Hamlet carryingon a monologue in the second person. "You are my father'sghost!" etc. Hamlet did not appear in the prayerscene, a veryserious omission, perhaps he was gargling. Chekhov carriedthe tormentto an extreme without indicating the tragicquality of Hamlet's introversiveactivity.Many of the settingswere ornamental with pseudomedieval stained glass in the 1905 Burne-Jonestradition,though the ghost scene was more RobertEdmund Jones. Betweentheacts we talkedwithBrentAllinson who was much excitedby the censorshipof his poem on Sacco and Vanzetti.He had used thephrase "God save us!" and mentionedthe "souls" of the martyrsand had personified"Pity" witha capital P. These heterodoxieswere expunged. The play within a play was superblydone by membersof the ballet. Monday Jan. 9 Museum's closed. Went with Dana to a Russian peasant shop. We bought some veryfinedolls fora fewkopeks apiece. Interestingtechnicalexpressionsin carved and turned dolls. Later with Dana and Allinson to see a filmat the Mezhrabpom-Russ. Dina, a film, Caucasian story,a few fairly good shots, melodramaticbanality superimposedon finelocal color.24WorstcontinuityI've ever seen. Dinner at the Tolstoyan (vegetarian)restaurant.Long bickerwith Dana on thesourcesof romanticismin English poetryand thenin Frenchpainting. I look forwardto seeing him next winter. The directorat the M. promisedto let us see Gorki's Mothernextweek. On Saturdaywe are to go to Eisenstein'sand the Sovkino. Workedon myarticlefor Kino. Tuesday, Jan. 10 Many morningsbeforewe get up, soldierspass singing. I now removethe 24.

1926. Dina Dza-Dzu, Miezhrabpom-Russ,

G. Patrakeev. Destructive ResultsofWarand Famine.

1927.(Collection AlfredH. Barr,Jr.) This is one ofthe paintingsBarr purchased at the peasants and workers exhibitionon January6.

socks frommyhands and handkerchief frommyneck,but keep themon myfeet. No bugs have bittenforovera weekand theHindu conspiratorsnextdoor are very quiet. William Gropper's wife showed us an invoice of two pounds of chocolate candy and six pairs of silk stockings.The dutywas 206R. She sent them back. We went into the FirstUniversityto see ifwe could carryaway our pictures which we'd reservedfromthepeasant and workersexhibition.As we wentaround theroom picking themoffthewalls at [the]colossal sumsof5 or 6 rubles,a crowd formedin wonder at our eccentricity. They gave advice to the artists,most of whom seemedto be there.We spent35R. between[us] and got verygood things. One of the artists,Boris Sachs, who speaks a littleGerman,is coming to see us. His thingsare verysensitive,more sophisticated,thoughhe seemsonly 16 or 18 years old. I bought my firstlot of children'sbooks. At fouro'clock we dined with O'C in theLuxe Hotel-the food providedby her privatecook. The food was excellent,thoughvegetarian.Veryfinecaviar on rye bread, excellentsweetishGeorgian wine which tastedlike Asti. Later she asked us up to herroom to meettwomen of about 35 or so, one a studentof the kino and Frenchand German literature.The othera studentof English literature.Later we went to see Spartacusby the Ukrainian Film Co. It turnedout to be ten yearsold and verybad. Quo Vadis of 1914 was verymuch better.Even the storyof Spartacus was absurdlygarbled. Tomorrow to Sergievo so I spent the rest of the evening cramming Kondakov, whose book on icons is not as lucid as one might wish nor is the archaeologyof icons at all a simple affair:Suzdal, Pskov, Moscow, Novgorod, 25The Rublev Trinitylooks interesting. tellingthemapartis beyondme at present.

25.

See AlfredH. Barr,Jr.,"Russian Icons," The Arts,XVII (February1931).

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Jan. 11 Wednesday Dana with us (Rivera couldn't). Up at 7:30, but findno taxis in the square and the buses too full. Finally hail a taxi and make the train at the Yaroslavl Station with half a minute to spare. (9:00) The 3rd class carriageswere packed with peasants and all the windows down so we stood on the rear deck. The landscape verybeautiful-new snow heavyon the trees.Reached Sergievoabout 10:45 (70 kilometers)and took a taxi to the Troitzko-Sergievskaya Monastery about half a mile fromthe station.We passed a marketteemingwithpeasants in browncoats and came to high walls, thenthrougha gateinto theenclosureof the most fantasticunreality.Some of the buildings were beautiful,some veryConey was gaudy beyonddescription.The UspenskyCathedrala Island. The refectory simple and rather poorly proportioned box on the outside with very bad decadent frescoesin the interior,among them a Last Judgseventeenth-century ment with some westernpuritans among the damned. The campanile, over 325 feethigh, was composedofa seriesofeighteenth-century pavilions, telescopedone above the other.The effectwas rich but ineffectualin scale. The severetombof Boris Godunov seemedburied in the snow. Aftersome difficulty we foundan assistantcurator(?) who spoke enthusiastic French through a long grey beard. He took us firstthrough the museum of liturgicalvestments,treasuresof silver,etc. and theninto theTroitzka Cathedral. The exterioris verybeautifulVladimir fifteenth century,marvelouslytoned,the interiorverysomber with the deep reds and greens of long-uncleaned,smokediscolored icons. To the rightamong the icons of the toweringreredoswas the Rublev Trinity-very beautiful in color-wine-colored purple, pale blues and greensand ivories-and finerin drawing and largerthan I had expected.There were otherexcellenticons especiallyof thelifeof Christ,some of which had been cleaned. Then we wentinto a room whereseveralicons lay about in various statesof cleaning. Now thatthemonasteryis turnedinto a museumtheseimportantworks of art are reappearingbeneaththeirwretchedeighteenth-and nineteenth-century repaintingsand varnish. Aftertherefectory and icon gallery,whichwas a littledisappointing,and the interiorof the Uspensky,which was 5 below zero,we leftforthestation,arriving twentyminutesbeforethetrainleft.We had tea,while waitingforthetrainto pull in. And while we grewimpatientat its latenessit pulled out fromtheotherend of the station about a hundred yards away. Dana was franticsince he had an engagementto see the premiereof O'Neill's Gold. Aftertwo hours of waiting during which Dana and I played chess with watches,lumps of sugar, and 20kopek pieces, and the sorryremnantsof a set produced by the restaurantchef,a sympatheticspirit,we just barelymade the next trainjust afterfinishingthelast move.

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Jere went with O'C to see [Ivanov's] The Armoured Train at the First Moscow Art [Theater]. I wroteon my articleand went to bed. Thursday,Jan. 12 Tired afteryesterday'sstrenuousness.Go shopping with Tretyakova,O'C, and Jere,who buys some embroideredblouses etc. I contentmyselfwitha peasant spoon, Caucasian cottons,and carvedwooden desk bric-a-brac. Buy some more children'sbooks. Tretyakova takes us to a shop for photographs of architecturebut the confusionis so completethatwe leave in disgust. Hear that the Poles confiscateall printedmatterin Russian. Will have to mail our stuffto Paris. Piotr is very interestingas well as charming. Jere learned from him somethingof his past. His fatherwas a merchantship captain whose ship was torpedoed in the Baltic. He shot himselfratherthan returnwithout his ship. Piotr's sisterwas killed in Leningrad streetfightingduring the OctoberRevolution. I think of Gaisia, who lost her parents and brothers,escaping through Vladivostok with her sister. In the evening Jere and Sheriapin go to a film. Sheriapin was aboard the Aurora (the Potemkin)during the mutiny.He was an officer. Friday,Jan. 13 I wonderif thisjournal will everbe worththe time and trouble. Today we were finallyconquered by Russian icons: the superb collection formerlybelonging to Ostroukov.26We spent two hours going over themagain and again. He also had an excellentlate Rembrandt. Wednesdaynighton thebus comingback fromtheYaroslavl,Dana and Jere, sittingbehind me, were discussingwhere the lattershould get offforthe MXAT [Moscow Art Theater]. A woman seated beside, turnedabout and, speaking in French,gave theminformation.A littlelatershe began to read.The titleat thetop of the page was in English: Easy Reading. Beneath was a paragraph heading: Highland--something,"Aha," I thought,"an excerptfromScott,"and thenafter much squinting I read Highland Park, the Ford Factory.Aftershe gotup to leave a man took her place. He heard me talkingin English and said, "Did you go to RobertsCollege?" "No," I answered,"did you?" "Yes, I was educatedthere.I'm a Greek.I thoughtyou were a Greek,too." 26. Ilya Ostroukov(1858-1929),painterand collector.From 1905-13,Ostroukovwas a trusteeof the TretyakovGallery. His remarkablecollection of icons laterformedthe basis of theicon collectionat the TretyakovGallery.

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Such is Moscow. Wrotethis bothersomejournal all eveningwhile Jereand Piotrwentto the movies. SaturdayJan. 14 To the State Tretyakov Gallery. A barren waste of nineteenth-century storypictures,portraits,and allegories. But in the cellar some finethingsby Goncharova,Lentulov, Larionov, Mashkov,and othermembersof the Bubnovy Valet (Jackof Diamonds).27 Back fordinnerand thenwith O'C to theRusskino to see Eisenstein.He was extremelyaffable,humorous in talk, almost a clown in appearance. He studied artistduring at Riga, was an official (we learnedlaterfromTretyakov)architecture the war. Worked with Meyerholdfor a year,then two years in the Proletariat [Theater] and finally1924 in the kino. Potemkin was his second film. 27.

thatexhibited together BubnovyValet(JackofDiamonds)was thenameofa groupofartists

from 1910 to 1918. The group included at varyingtimes Falk, Goncharova, Larionov, Lentulov, Malevich,Mashkov,and others.

Sergei Eisenstein.The General Line. 1929.

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We saw fourreelsof October,his revolutionaryfilm,which was supposed to be finishedthreemonthsago and maybe readybyFebruary.His masteryof cutting and camera placementwere clearlyshown, especiallyin the Julyriot scene. We didn't see the stormingof the WinterPalace, which is thehigh point of the film. Certainfaultsappeared: he seemedto yieldto the temptationof the fineshot,viz., the drawbridgescene, the stranglingscene. At times,too, the tempowas too fast. The filmseems however a magnificentaccomplishment. After October we saw his reconstructionfilm, The General Line, intendedto show the differences betweenold and new methodsof farmingand etc. The cattle-raising,dairying, parts were still uncut and gave us an excellent idea of Eisenstein'sraw material:processionwith icons, prayingin fields,reaping with sickles, wind, rain, airplane propeller. We asked whethermuch of the excellenceof E.'s filmsdid not develop in thecuttingratherthan in the shooting. He laughed and answeredthatthe criticsalways wroteof his filmingas "always carefullypremeditated"and then he himself would write, "always carefully premeditated,"having a sense of humor. He hopes to come to AmericaafterThe General Line is finished,perhaps in June. From the Russkino we tore by [taxi] to the Vakhtangov Theater to see Razlom (The Break-Up). It was certainlyone of the interestingplays we've seen, betterconstructed,less caricatured.The Whitesare human beings as well as the Reds and this makes possible situations in which one can believe, whereas in Richi-Kitai the "opposition" was made up of fools, puppets, and idiots. We sat with Tretyakovand -kova and O'C. I asked Tretyakovabout the caricaturein his Richi-Kitai. He replied thatit was not in his play but entirelyin the directingof Meyerhold."How soon," I asked, "will it be possible to write objectivelyof the revolution?""Objectivityis bad," he answeredand wentinto a long explanation in bad Germanwhich I couldn'tfollow.Yet in his bio-interview on the life of a Chinese boy he illustratesobjectivityperfectly.Both he and Meyerholdfeel themselvesa unit in the new society.While theyfunctionin this way I suppose any artisticobjectivityis impossible. Prejudice is inevitable. I cannot get over the factthatO'C, who is intelligent,critical,and a great should not have noticedthe impossiblecharacterizations and actions theatergoer, of the English and Americans in Richi-Kitai by comparison with the superb realizationof the Chinese. Uncle Tom's Cabin was doubtless the greatesttheatricalpropaganda ever staged but as a work of art it is of a verylow order.Compare The Persians of Aeschyluswrittena fewyearsafterthe defeatof Xerxes. Of course there are several October and civil-war plays which show the tragedyand comedyof strifein an impartial manner.One of these,Days of the Turbins,was much censoredbecause it createdsympathyfortheWhites.28At the 28.

Translated in English as The Days of the Turbin Family.

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1stMXAT, The ArmoredTrain shows the despair of thedefeatedWhiteswithout caricature. To returnto Razlom. This is hailed as a conspicuous example of the influenceof kino on theater.A "triplewindow" set is used formuch of theplay, sometimesone room,sometimestwo or threebeinglighted,suggestingtheagility withwhich thesceneschange in a film.Furthermoretwo small 450 setswereused, very stronglysuggestingan overhead angle shot. In one of them a four-sided around a tableon whichwas a map. The diaphragmopened on a group of officers whole setwas tipped forwardat a 450 angle makingthemap visibleto everyonein the audience as well as lending an air of intimatekeyholeobservation.All the were skillfullybraced in ordernot to props were nailed or glued and the officers slide. The effectwas verystriking-but smacks to me of the tour de force.The salvationof the theaterlies not in thisdirectionwhereit can onlyhobble afterthe more nimble kino. infinitely The battleshipsets of Razlom were veryingenious-but less imposing and hieraticthan Meyerhold'sCockchaferin Richi-Kitai. Jan. 15 Back to Vakhtangov'sforthePrincess Turandot,a Chinese Arabian Nightslike fantasy.Excellentsetsin an applied cubisticmannerwithChinese color. The play was carriedthroughin the best commedia dell'arte tradition.We leftafter when you suffices the thirdact withoutregret.Two and a half hours' buffoonery can't understandRussky.There were many delightedchildrenthere. We got to the Trades Union Hall (formerlya sumptuousclub) just in time fora concertof Prokofiev'smusic played by studentsat the Conservatory. A miraculous thinghappened. We had asked at thebox office forticketsand, aftera moment'sfutilesign language, wereabout to give up in despair.Suddenly a boy who was standingnear came up and asked if we spoke English. He then drewout two ticketssayingthathis friendscould not come and thushe would be glad to sell theirticketsat a ruble apiece. As theywere verycheap we took them and, as he was veryagreeable,we annexed him too. He was just beginninghis studies as a mining engineer specializing in mineralogy,but veryfond of the theaterand music. We foundhim not only a deus ex machina but a verypleasant companion. We hope to see him again. In theeveningPiotr and Jerewentto the kino while I stayedin the room to write. Jereasked Piotr yesterdaywhy he was so small. He answeredverysimply, "During 1919 and '20 when I was supposed to be growing,I was starving.The doctors said I couldn't possibly recoverbut I was taken into the countryand gradually regained my strength." Our friendof the concertwhose name was Theodore said, when Jereasked what English books he read, thathe liked JackLondon mostbut also read much because it was writtenin a New York argot of O'Henry, whom he found difficult

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(sic). I asked what modernRussian music he liked themost. "Prokofiev,"he said, "and then Stravinsky,but Prok. much more." I was not much impressedby Prok's music. The thingsforsmall orchestra in any of his things. wereentertainingand wittybut thereis littlesustainedeffort combinations.Some of He is verycleverin his use of percussion-brass-woodwind his songs were charming and remindedone of Ravel, though less stylish.The piano sonata was veryromantic.Underneaththe modernharmonyone glimpsed Tchaikovsky and Schumann. Monday Jan 16 Spent the day writing-with a couple of fruitlesshours searchingtheshops forartbooks. I know theremustbe some but I can't findthem.Dana arrangeswith Lunacharskyfor a visit on Saturday. We'll trythen to crash the Kremlin. In the evening to the concertof the famous Leaderless Orchestra.We were not greatlyimpressed,though Rozinskypraised the quality of the stringsenthusiastically.The tempowas uneven and tendedto slow up especiallywhen theline was thrownfromone choir to another. I'm sure theywould have played better with Klempereror Koussevitzkypreservingthe tempo and puttingpunch in the fortissimi.Also theprogramwas verypoor. Borodin'sweak unfinishedsymphony, a vulgar waltz by Glazunov far inferiorto Johann Strauss,and some songs of Glazunov sung by a young bass whose career is very interesting.He was a mechanicand thena chauffeurin Odessa. His union senthim on a scholarshipto the Leningrad [Conservatory].From therethe Narkomprossenthim to Rome to studywith Battistini. They played Scheherazadeduringthesecondsectionof theconcert.I had not heard it played by an orchestrasince junior year,1921,when it put me in great ecstasy in Alexander Hall [Princeton]. Tonight, knowing the music so thoroughly,it failed to move me, except to the greatestadmiration.It is so much betterthan any otherRussian orchestralcomposition of the nineteenthcentury, not a dead themein thewhole composition,and onlyoccasionallyis it repetitious. Its clarityand good workmanshipmake one think of Mozart, its ingenuityof Strauss.The arrangementof theorchestrawas interesting. [He drawsa plan of the of the arrangement orchestra.] Tuesday Jan. 17 To the bank, where theystill use the abacus forcounting,apparentlyvery and far cheaper than an adding machine, though thereis no automatic efficient recordpossible. Then to the Museum forArt-Culture,formerly the StroganovSchool. Many of the pictureshad been moved but we found the best collection of the finest Russian painters,betterby farthan theTretyakovexceptin the twentieth-century and suprematistsweretherein serried Bubnovy Valet.The cubists,cubo-futurists, Dix or Grosz or Chirico. ranks,also the postexpressionists, reflecting

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The curator (?), an elderlylady, was verykind to us and gave me a good bibliographyand severalmonographs. (Got a good letterfromVirgil Barker.29He seems to like my stuffwhich pleases me verymuch.) Spent the eveninggoing overmyfilmarticleand writing letters.Jerewent to see a play with Dana. I was too weary. Between 5:00 and 6:00 we had a visit fromtwo veryentertainingyoung architects,one a girl. We garbled French and German and had a grand time looking over photographs.The man [Andrei Burov] has done the buildings for Eisenstein'snew filmthe The General Line.30He was delightedto findone of his esquisses illustratedin thecatalogue of theMachine Age Exposition in New York. Wed. 18th To the Museum of Fine Arts. Fine Egyptian things in the Golenishev collection,especiallyFayumportraits.We had littletimeforanythingbut a survey because our time was taken up with Efros, the curator of painting (and an importantcritic),a young orientalist,and the curatorof the Egyptian things.3' More photographs from Louis Simon. Also some snapshots from Lux Feininger.32 In the morning we looked over photographs of Rivera's paintings and drawings;verystrongand simplified,Egyptianinfluenceand Giotto and Piero. Thurs. 19th Off to the School for Art-Culturewith Diego and Dana and Piotr. Diego introducedus to Prof.Sterenberg(David Sterenberg)withwhom he had workedas a cubist in Paris beforethe war.33Sterenbergis now one of the most influential teachersof paintingin Moscow and certainlyone of the mostinterestingpainters we've seen. There is scarcely any cubistic hangover in his work at present, primitivisticportraitsand figures,finepostexpressioniststill lifes,curious intimate studiesof flowersand grass,a decorativescreensuggestingthe Korin in the Metropolitan.34 While we weregoing throughthe school we metFalk who had been a leader in the Bubnovy Valet and later perhaps the finestof the Russian cubists.35He is now professorofpaintingin theschool. We wentto his studio to see his laterwork since onlyhis cubistthingswhich he had long ago passed bywereofinterestto the directorand were included in the exhibition in the gallery. 29. Virgil Barker,contributingeditorof The Arts. AndreiBurov designed the model farmin The General Line. 30. 31. Abram Efros (1888-1954) was the author of Dva veka russkogo iskusstva,Moscow, 1969,an examinationof 18th-and 19th-century art. These youthfulsnapshotsof the photographerLux Feiningerare in theAHB Archive. 32. 33. David Sterenberg(1881-1948),painter,critic,and administrator.From 1918-21he was head of the Visual ArtsSection (IZO) of the People's CommissariatforEnlightenment. 34. There is no painting by Korin now in the MetropolitanMuseum. 35. RobertFalk (1886-1958),painterand teacher.From 1928 to 1937 Falk residedin Paris.

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Falk has passed throughmany phases in the past decade: fromcrystalline cubism (without disintegration)--flatgeometricfigures,Rembrandtesque,C&zanne in walnut-stainperiod, Chardin, then to a solid realistic Speicher-like phase, to a fewimpressionistexperiments,and now a strongcarefullycomposed realism suggestingMarchand in landscape, Segonzac in still life and figures. To returnto the school to which we paid threevisitson separatedays. It is called the Moscow Higher WorkshopsforArtsand Craftsand includes a large number of departments:painting, sculpture,architecture,printing (color and various processes), typography,graphic arts, furnituredesigning, advertising posters,and techniques of materials (Materialen-Kultur).36 In painting the mastersare Sterenberg,Falk, and four or fivemore. In architecture:Vesnin,37Lissitzky,and 3 or 4 more. In metal and cabinet work: and Sterenberg. Rodchenko and Tatlin. In graphics: Favorsky38 etc. ....... In each art the fundamentalsof material,technique,and composition are supposedly thoroughlytaught. This seemed successfulin furnitureand metalmade a thoroughknowlwork,where Tatlin's and Rodchenko's constructivism In of architecture there were materials necessary. many compositional edge problemscarriedout in clay and cardboardand metal but we saw fewsigns that the actual problemsof constructionwere being faced.We remembertheverybad technicsof the Tretyakovapartmenthouse. In Rodchenko's atelierwe saw many interestingand ingenious designsand models for furniture:officedesks, filingcases, etc. Tatlin, who spoke as bad Germanas I did, was verymodestand kindly.His workwas only two monthsold but he had to show [us] verybeautiful metal constructionsby pupils. The sculptureseemedveryuninteresting on thewhole,clay modelingfroma model. The thingsin wood were much finer.Beginnersin stone were chipping away at marble moldings. The whole institutionseemedpainfullylacking in organizationand equipmentbut thefinespiritof enthusiasmwill conquer thesetechnicaldifficulties with time and money.It was annoying,though,not to findany printedmatterabout the school, not even a list of professorsor courses.The building was disorderly. They weremuch interestedin the Bauhaus and have evidentlylearnedmuch fromit. I asked Sterenbergwhat were the chiefdifferences betweenthe two. He replied that the Bauhaus aimed to develop the individual whereas the Moscow workshopsworkedforthedevelopmentof themasses.This seemedsuperficialand doctrinairesince the real work at the Bauhaus seems as social, the spirit as communistic as in the Moscow school. Kandinsky,Feininger, and Klee have actually verylittleinfluenceamong the Bauhaus students.The importantdifferBarr is referringto the Moscow art school known as Vkhutein(abbreviationforHigher State 36. Art-TechnicalInstitute). 37. Presumably,Barr is referringto Alexander Vesnin (1883-1959), painter and architect,and proponentof constructivism.His two brothers,Leonid and Victor,were also progressivearchitects. Vladimir Favorsky(1886-1964),graphic artistand teacher.Known forhis book illustrations. 38.

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ence so faras I could discernlay in the factthattheaim of theMoscow school was more practical, its technique far less efficient;the aim of the Bauhaus more theoretical,its technique much superior. But with men such as Lissitzkyand Tatlin and Falk thereis much in the future.The great lack is a Gropius, an organizinggenius. A good janitor to directstorageand clean up rubbishwould be a boon. Thursday Jan. 19, afternoon We tore back fromthe School for Arts and Craftsto go with O'C. to see Rodchenko again. I had prepareda listofquestions to ask him. He answeredthem in a ratherdisgruntledmanner,insistingthatthepast boredhim utterlyand that he couldn't rememberat all when he had painted this way or that. Fortunately, Stepanova (Meyerhold'sassistant),his brilliantwife,was a greathelp.39She also picked out photographsof his paintings and promisesto send othersof his kino sets, photomontage,photographs,constructions,etc. O'C was verypatient but fromSterenberg'sslipperyaffabilannoyedat R's pouting attitude.Verydifferent Falk's friendliness. and simple ity Jeretoreoffto the JewishTheater to see Benjamin the Third. I followedin time to see the last two acts. Verytheatricaltheater,excellentlyflavoredmusic rightout of Chagall's pictures.The Jewsin Russia seem to have an extraordinarily vivid and distinctiveculture. Rodchenko showed much satisfactionat having deliveredthedeath blow to painting in 1922. Since then NOZH and OST have thriven.40 Stepanova then took more of the Simon photos formy Kino article. FridayJan. 20 To see Lunacharskybut foundhim called to a generalcouncil. So we wentto an exhibitionof RevolutionaryArtists.Most of the painting in various realistic styles-mostly Neue Sachlichkeit, some showing influenceof photomontage. Some veryfinelacquered boxes with scenes fromthe revolutiondone in theicon stylewith gold hatchingand schemata. The graphicswere interesting, but the sculptureratherstupid variationson Bourdelle and Metznerand Maillol and Konenkovwith U.S.S.R. themes. In theeveningto thefirst MXAT to see Days oftheTurbins,theirrevolutionary play, which seems to us rathercounter: the storyof a White familyof the Ukraine during the stormyWrangel-Petliuradays, superbly acted in purely actualisticmanner. 39. She designedsets and costumesforMeyerhold. NOZH stands forNew Societyof Painters.Founded in Moscow in 1922,it was a conservative 40. group that favoredfigurativepainting. It existed formallyuntil 1924 when it joined with another realist group called Bytie (Life). OST means Society for Easel Artists,an exhibitiongroup which advocatedexpressionismand was active between 1925 and 1928.

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Saturday21 To the Ostroukovmuseum to borrowthe MuratovLes icones russes.41We met Ost. himself,an invalid of about 60, but veryinterestedin our Kondakov volume which we had broughtas a hostage. He promisedto give us a letterto a friendof his in Novgorod. We wonder,too, if Vladimir should be seen. and theschool. And We hurryback to go withDana and Diego to Sterenberg teaches who "Prof." with from the school to dine Weekstead, English in the Second (?) Soviet University. In the evening Piotr and Jerewent to the kino. I went throughMuratov findingthe illustrationsveryexciting.The textseems a littlesuperficialbut will correctmuch of Kondakov. 22 While eating breakfast,Potemkincatchesmyeyeamong thekino ads in the Pravda. Dana and I rush offfora 12 o'clock special showing (today being the anniversaryof the 1905 revolution).Jerehad seen it in N.Y. and didn't come. It was magnificently up to expectations.The tensioncontinuous,theshotsthrilling, the incidentsbeautifullydirected,and the cuttingdisplaying to the full Eisenstein's mastery.One fault only appeared, a lack of dramaticcompositionwhich seemed sacrificedto the emphasis of greatepisodes,thespoiled meat,themutiny, thesleeping sailors swingingin thehammocks,the dead seaman on thequay, the Cossacks marchingmercilesslydown thesteps,thePotemkinpreparingforaction; but the scenes aboard ship and thegreatstep scene werenot dramaticallyrelated. Neverthelessit is a glorious achievement. A fewhours laterwe saw an equally great,thoughnot so epoch-makingfilm Gorki's Mat (Mother).Here therewas Pudovkin rkgisseur, Mezhrabpom-Russ, by a much morecarefulsubordinationof single sequencesto thewhole composition. The essential unimportanceof most Americanfilms,theirvulgarityand trivial sentimentwas brought home by Mat. In the kino at least the revolutionhas produced greatarteven when moreor less infectedwith propaganda. Here at last is a popular art;why,one wonders,does the Sovietbotherwithpainters?The film in Russia is more artistically,as well as politically,importantthan the easel picture. In the evening (a full day) to the Kamernyto see Antigone.42Fine cubistic sets,faircostumes,excellenthandling of light,but thegreatthemeof Sophocles' play was distortedto fitrevolutionaryneeds. Antigone became a leader of the proletariatdyingforher cause. Kreon became the aristocratictyrant. 41. It is importantto mentionherethe book Drevne-russkaiaikonipis v sobraniiI.S. Ostroukhova, Moscow, 1914, by Pavel Muratov (1871-1947). Muratov used some of this material for a later monograph,Les icones russes,Paris, Editions de la Pl6iade, 1927,to which Barr is referring. AlexanderTairov firstproduced Antigone at his Kamerny(Chamber) Theater on October 1, 42. 1927.

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Monday Jan. 23 Read Muratovin the morningand evening.To theNarkomproswith Dana to see Lunacharskybut he had changed thedate to Wednesday,characteristically Russian. I wonder if our thirdvisit will findhim available. The walls of the Kremlin are less pregnable than we had thought.Afterthe vain journey to the Narkompros,we returnedto the Artsand CraftsSchool. Tuesday Jan. 24 Finished Muratov and feel eager to see and talk icons; a great new fieldis opening up, ifonly material(books and photographs)wereavailable here.I spent theafternoonin a vain huntforbooks. Found a setof Grabarfor40 rubles,but the plates are bad.43 In the evening to see an educational filmon the mechanism of the brain. Pavlov's experimentson dogs and monkeys,childrenand idiots and frogswere beautifullyshown. There wereremarkableshotsofchildrenat play,of thehead of a woman in child-[birth],of a monkey,whose visual brain had been removed, tryingto eat an orange; but a materialisticphilosophy based on theconditioned reflexseems absurdlylimited.The so-calledhigherfacultiesof man can't even be photographedand much less easily explained. What then is the correctMarxian attitudetoward God or, to humanize, towardSt. Thomas-and what is thecorrectThomistic attitudetowardSt. Marx? Elucidate also thedebate betweentheSts. Marx and Engels and St. Markand the Angels? Since Leonardo firstexplained the conditionedreflex,should we conclude that the conditionedreflexexplains Leonardo? WednesdayJan. 25 Take the Muratov book back to Ostroukov. He shows us a fine set of periodicalscalled RusskayaIkona-which JereordersfromtheKniga [Bookshop] on KuznetzkyMost. Then to the Narkomprosfora thirdattemptto see Lunacharsky,this time successful.He gave us 3/4 of an hour-genial conversation,friendlyadvice but littlenew information.Most importanthe wroteus a letterto the Narkomindel44 about gettingus into the Kremlin.This goal seems in sight at last though the recentpolitical disturbancesmake it verydifficult. In the eveningwith Piotr to see a pleasant,mediocrefilm,The Daughter of the Stationmaster(Mezhrabpom-Russ)--storyby Pushkin. The verybeautiful Vera Malinovskayaplayed the part-she was in The Waiterat thePalace Hotel also. 43. 44.

Igor Grabar,Istoriia russkogoiskusstva,Moscow, Knebel, 1910-15. Narkomindelwas the Peoples' CommissariatforForeignAffairs.

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39

Thursday Jan. 26 Startout with Dana to hunt books on Russian art at the library.No luck. Only the Lenin Library and State Institutefor the Study of Fine Arts (Lunacharsky) remain. Go to the Fine Arts Museum to finishour review of the paintings there. Some excellent Magnascos, a curious Griinewaldesque piece (nearerto Baldung it seemed to me), a veryAndre Lhote Cuyp and an extraordinaryFrancesco Morandini (late sixteenthcentury)which seemed close to Fuseli. Then to the Shchukin fora second visit. The Gauguins and Cezannes are certainlyinferiorto Morosov's,but his half-dozenRousseaus compensate.Make listsof photographs.Aftera too-greasymeal at thehotelwe go withTretyakovato visit a brilliantyoung architect,Moisei Ginzburgby name.45He has writtenan interestingbook on the theoryof architecture(illustrationsare good). He is perhaps the most [illegible] of Russian architects;though his work lacks the boldness of Lissitzky or Tatlin, it is certainlymore concerned with actual problems. He did the apartmenthouse where the Tretyakovslive. He showed us the photos of his work, gave us back numbers of Sovetskaia arkhitectura,46 periodical published by the "left" architects.In his room he had an excellent maquettefora workers'apartmenthouse and club. He explained whyit was that severalof the big new buildingsare so bad-or at least unfortunate-Izvestiaand Telegraph, etc. These were done by older architectswho had drag but who had only a superficialfeelingforthe problemsof moderndesign,hence theludicrous steamboatfunnelson Izvestiaand the inertweightof the Lenin Institute. We gave Ginzburg Peter Smith's and Russell Hitchcock's addresses. He wants articleson Americanarchitectureand likes Jere'sphotos. Ginzburg'swife, who gave us tea,remarkedthatRussian architectsand Americanengineersshould combine,afterI had told how reactionaryour architectsare. In the eveningI was both sick and ill--indigestion. Friday27 Spent day in bed. Jerewent with Dana to foreignofficeto see about Kremlin,taking Lunacharsky'sletter.It will be difficult. Practicallyno foreignersare admitted. Saturday28 Last nightI destroyedthiscreature[bug taped to page ofjournal], thesecond casualtyamong thecompanions ofmyslumber.I have been bittenonlyonce since 45. Moisei Ginzburg (1892-1946) was a supporterof constructivismand a regularcontributorto progressivearchitecturaljournals. His most importantpublications were his books Ritm v arkhitektura,Moscow, 1923and Stil i epokha, Moscow, 1924. Barr means Sovremennaiaarkhitektura(ContemporaryArchitecture), 46. the magazine edited by Ginzburgand A.A. Vesnin from1926-30. It was supersededin 1931 by Sovetskaia arkhitektura.

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I adopted my elaborate defences.This is of another species than the bug of December27th.This seems to belong to the tickfamily. This is mybirthday[Barrwas 26]-to judge fromthedate-and a long letter fromK.G. [KatherineGauss] which was most welcome. In the morningI wroteand rested.In the afternoonto the Morosov.Again the Bonnards,van Goghs, C&zannes,Gauguins lefttheirmark,a trulymarvelous collection. We saw for the firsttime the German room: Marc, Campendonck, Klees. Grosz, Pechstein,a fineMunch, and two first-rate Ternowetzwas verykind and showed us the fewbooks he had on Russian painting. He took mylist of photographs,which he said are only 75 k.,ifI can get them. Most of themwere to illustratethe importanceof negro sculpturein the formationof cubism in Picasso's workof 1907-09.We made arrangements to visit Tyschler,thepainterwho interestedus so much at theExhibition of RevolutionaryArtists.Ternowetzlikes him too, probablybecause he is the closestof all the Russians to Chirico.47 I wroteand went to bed earlybeing somewhatweakened by fasting. Jan 29. To thegreatmarketwithPiotr. Much rummagingamong junk, brass,icons, etc. Jereboughta verygood provincialicon triptych for10rubles,a greatbargain. We also got some small brassicons and I a littlepanel oftheProphetElijah being fed. In the evening,afteran hour's search, to see the painter Tyschler,whom Ternowetzhad recommended.Found his work refreshingly imaginative,frankly of a fantasticworld, ratherthan of the carefulthis-worldliness of most Russian painters.Some of his thingssuggestedChirico by analogy. Jan. 30-Feb. 9: WrittenafterI'd been ill, brief. Jan 30-Last day, can't remember. Jan 31 Tues. Went to hear Roland Hayes in evening.Voice weak but superblytrained-a veryfinemaster.Audienceveryenthusiastic.Methim afterwards-fine personality. Most of the day in the libraryin the TretyakovGallery. Wed Feb 1st. Tretyakovacalled forus and we went to see the head of Blue Blouses, that remarkableorganizationwhich spreads the news of Russia's problemsand needs 47. AlexanderTyshler(b. 1898)was influencedboth by expressionismand by surrealism.He was a leading memberof OST.

A Blue Blouse productionof the 1920s.

....... ................

. .....

.......

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through factoryclubs and peasant villages.48We received photographs and literatureand an invitationto see a show tomorrownightthough thatwill mean giving up a good concertof Prokofievand Stravinskymusic. The Blue Blouses grewgraduallyout ofa news serviceduringa periodwhen paper was expensiveand illiteracyfarmoregeneralthannow. The newswas acted instead of read. Gradually a more elaborate programand technique developed until now thereare B.B. troupes all over Russia engaging in an excellentand effectiveformof propaganda, formingat the same time the most natural and spontaneous of Russian theaters. In theeveningto Meyerhold'sto see his Windowon the Village,a delightful revueof village lifeas it is and was: much dancing and singing,merry-go-round, swings,cinema, etc. We thoroughlyenjoyedit, especiallythescene in which two reluctantgirls are graduallymoved to dance by a most seductiveaccordion. Thurs. Feb. 2 Got in touch with VictorMidler49of theTretyakovwho may help me with myprimitiveproblem;but I haven't much hope of gettingany materialthatI can keep. To Eisenstein's to see about stills forarticleson Octoberand The General Line. Found him very weary. "Will you go on a vacation after October is finished?"--"No,I'll probably die." We found out throughDiego why October has been so delayed. With Piotr to theclub of theTransportationWorkersto see theBlue Blouses perform.We arrivedan hour too earlyand sat througha long lectureon Russia's natural resourcesand economy. The interiorof the club was interesting.Various propaganda charts and posters--Darwinian and antireligious,anti-Trotsky.A club "wall" newspaper, etc. The Blue Blouses wereon fromabout 9:00 to 10:45.The first partof theshow was mostly sugarcoated propaganda in the form of song and dance. Very ingenious costumeshiftsand simple athleticballet. Afteran entr'actetheygave a parody on Carmen,veryslapstick.Charlie Chaplin's was much funnier. The whole performancehowever was hugely and noisily enjoyed by the audience forwhom it was carefullystudied.They wantedopera in theclub and the B.B. providedit. The 'lan and spontaneityand simplicityof the performanceas well as its remarkablefunctionalismmake the B.B. a veryimportantunit of the Russian theater. Jazzband with combs etc. 48. The idea of a theatricalizednewspaper called The Blue Blouse firstarose in Moscow in 1923. The titlederivedfromthe image of the traditionalblue coverall worn by workers. 49. Victor (b. 1888) was a painteras well as a museum worker.He was much influencedby the Jackof Diamonds Midloer group.

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Friday in thecountryso I wentto the JerewentwithPiotrto visithis brother-in-law on the Kropotkinato workin Instituteforthe Science of Art(Kunstwissenschaft) I found a faircollectionof currentperiodicalsincluding among the the library.50 Americanonly the TheatreArts,The AmericanMercury,and The Artswhichhad my "Dutch Letter"in it. I worked seven hours straightand got much material for my thesisespeciallyfromthe periodicals Apollon and The Golden Fleece. AfterdinnerI walked to theBolshoi forticketsto Prince Igor but foundthe box officeclosed. To bed early,verytired. Sat. 4. To theTretyakovto see VictorMidler. He was verypleasant,seems to know about the important Russians of my particular problem: Larionov, Chagall, Goncharova, etc. Is going to tryto get photographsof paintings I listed. I have littlehope. Came home feelingtired--headache--wentto bed. Feb. 5 In bed-not verysick-gastrointestinal.Jeretheperfectnurse.Have a doctor to get advice about medicinesand diet. Feb. 6 ill.

Better.Dinner at Litvinov's with Dana and Roland Hayes called off.Hayes Feb. 7 Betterbut weak. Dana also ill-also Mary Reed. Feb. 8

Much betterbut legs still shaky. Rozinskyin. He read me an articleby the German regisseurErwin Piscator on the class theaterfull of absurd sophistriesand historicalmisstatements. The only vital theateris the class theater.Whenevera theaterceases to handle a class problem it is decadent,like a class which is not self-conscious.The Greektheater and themedievaltheaterwereclass-conscious.The only theaterwhich can existin Berlin is the PiscatorTheater forit is the only class theater,the only proletariat excelanti-bourgeoistheater.Eisenstein's filmsare class-consciousand therefore Barr is referringto the Russian (or State) Academyof ArtisticSciences (RAKhN or GAKhN) 50. which had been foundedin 1921 by Vassily Kandinskyet al.

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lent,but Potemkin is at faultbecause Eisensteinfailed to emphasize therelation betweenthemutinyand theprofoundmovementof the 1905revolution,etc.etc.I nearlyhad a relapse blowing offsteam and poor R., who is usually so positive, seemed quite subdued, though he insisted that he agreed with all that Piscator wrote.P. evidentlyknew thepublic he was writingfor.To distortfactto such an extentin a German paper would have been unwise. I do agree with Piscator, though,about thevitalizingpower of a social or political issue in the theateras a relieffrometernalwoman. No one makes love in Potemkin. Tomorrow if I'm able to staggerwe do the Kremlin. Jeregoes to Tretyakov'sfor dinner. Has argumentwith Tretyakovabout functionalismand choice in architecture. T. believesthatany selectionin a purely functionalbuilding is impossible,a typicalerrorof a man whose logic is superb but who knows nothing about building programs. He seems also to have a hangoverfromhis futuristicdays, speaks of razing Moscow completelyto build anew. Feb. 9-17: writtenin Leningrad betweenFeb. 22 and Feb. 24 Fri. Feb. 9 The Kremlinat last,thoughDana is too sickto go and I stagger.A man from the Narkomindeltakes us to the gate wherewe are metby a Red officer. The two of themstayby us duringthewhole round. We proceedto theold Armorywhere a veryintelligentwoman fromthe Historical Museum acts as our guide. We go throughrooms of marveloussilverand gold plate, embroideries,armor,etc. til I have to sit and rest.Finally we emergeand walk across to the courtyardof the main palace where in the centeris the 14th-century church of Our Lord in the Woods. To our great disappointmentwe can't go in and thus miss the fine Transfiguration -perhaps by Rublev. We see part of Ivan's palace above and behind thebad 19th-century stories.Then to theCathedraloftheArchangelwhich is not especiallyinteresting.The AnnunciationSobor (Cathedral)has much finer icons. The "feast"row in the tchin51is partiallyby Rublev or close to him. They seemed veryfinethroughour poor opera glasses. Then to the UspenskySobor (Dormition)-large but filledwithscaffolding.Unfortunately theyare cleaning all the accumulated repainting to lay bare the wrecksof 16th-century work of the school of Dionysos. The effect will be ghastlywhen complete.The uncleanedpart if poor in style. is decorativelysatisfactory, Then out past the great bell and the innumerablecannons, having missed two-thirdsof what we hoped to see, and disappointed in what we did see,and to cap theclimax we weretold thatthe chargeforour visitwould be 25R., whichwe refusedto pay until furtherargumentwith Narkomindel,which had not warned us of this tax. I restduringmuch of the day and go to bed early. Tchin means the correctdisposition of images, especiallyin connectionwith the Deisis in the 51. iconostasis.

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Sat. Feb. 10 We wrap our many books. In evening I go to [a] filmwhich Jereand Piotr had seen while I was sick-Prisoners of the Soil, Mezhrabpom-Russ--excellent filmwith a superb brothelscene, as usual the themeof the downtroddenpeasant and thedecadentaristocrat.Coming back to hotel earlyI play two games of chess with a waiterand takeone; verygood fun,a laughing group of waitersand cooks stood about while "Alekhine" of Moscow played "Capablanca of New York." Sunday Feb. 11 Take an A tram early for the Porcelain Museum, formerlyone of the Morosov Palaces. Aftera not too interestinghour we walk back toward the Kremlin,tryto get into Our Lady of Georgia to see the Ushakovs but findit shut, Dom Boyar,thento theRed Square and into St. Basil'sgo to theveryinteresting thatmarvelouschurch-which is almostas incrediblewithinas without.It is now a museum with many finesecondaryicons. Then to the Historical Museum but findthat the rooms with thebesticons are closed. Back to our favoriterestaurant, veryhungry.Buy a Russian book on Picasso, interestingearlythingsillustrated. Monday Feb. 12 Up earlyto go to Grabar'sand phone only to findthathe had been called out of town till Wednesdaymorning-and he had told us to come withoutphoning. So we sally forthwith Piotr to buy our ticketsforLeningradbutare seduced the by many marvelousphotographers'backdropsset up in the TverskayaPark. We have our photographs taken,and then a backdropwithoutus, much to the puzzlementof the photographer. Back forluncheon and thento theTretyakovGallerywhereCuratorMidler had promisedto have myphotographsreadyand to show us the icons. At first we were told that he was not there. But while we were being told, he appeared suddenly,having missed his cue, and, aftersome embarrassment, explained that no photographscould be takenexcept at greatexpense and that the icons could not be seen because otherpictureshad been storedin frontof them. We leftin disgust,resentingnot so much his inabilityto oblige as his too facilepromises.A typicalRussian day of delays and disappointmentsand wasted time. In the eveningto the ProletcultTheater to see A long the Road. Interesting direction,verysparse settingand figurecomposition,excellentvigorous acting. Skating in the park. Feb. 13 Finally get ticketsto Leningrad-hard class-only $6.00 (12 R). To the Historical Museum to see theold icon collectionunderMme. Kavka's guidance (Anisimov, the curator,being abroad).52Several magnificentthings, Alexander Anisimov (1877-1939) was a specialist in old Russian icons and a memberof the 52. Central State RestorationStudios.

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especiallythedisquietinglybeautifulhead of an archangeldatingfromthetwelfth centuryand probablyGreek,done in Russia (though Grabar thinksit Russian), the Dormitionon the back of the Donskaya Madonna, perhaps by Theophanos, the Riaboushinski Archangel,the Novodevichi St. Nicholas, and many thingsof less importance.The collection was closed to the public the day afterit was opened forfearthatit mightserveas a religious influence. Feb. 14 Vain search forphotographerto buy icon photos, thento Morosov's to find French aftertwo weeks delay. Hunted a my photos readyand verysatisfactory, recommended librarian the of the by bookshop TretyakovGallery but found it nonexistent.Afterdinner(4:30) to Eisenstein'sapartment.He receivedus withhis manner.Afterwe had customarycomical remarksand pseudo-foot-in-the-grave a of vast stills from and October The General Line (of gone through pile which he generouslygave us severaldozen), we looked at his books on Daumier and on thehistoryof the theater,a veryfinelibrarywith some scarcevolumes. He reads all importantEuropean languages and talks fourof them.And Daumier is his greathobby. Rush back to hotel to receivea call fromKonstantinUmansky,the brilliant young head of TASS (the foreignnews commission),and author at the age of 19 of the book Neue Kunst in Russland. He too speaks English, German, and French.During thelast fewyearshe has not followedpaintingcarefully,findingit of littleinterestin comparisonwith architecture, about which he is verysanguine of the theater and kino. I asked for his ideas about a proletarianart. and, course, He repeated the commonplace that the various modern movementswere far beyond the grasp of the proletariatand then suggestedthat a proletarianstyle was emerging from the wall newspaper with its combined text,poster, and photomontage-an interestingand acute suggestion. Certainlythe various revolutionarystyles--futurism, suprematism,cubism, left-classicism-are far beyond the interestsof the ordinary,who preferthe of the Tretyakov. nineteenth-century story-pictures AfterUmansky's briefvisit we hurriedofffora farewellcall at the Tretyakovs. Olga was especiallydressedfortheoccasion and gave us tea veryvivaciously. Justas we were leaving, Tretyakovcame in so we took offour coats and stayed longer.He gave us each severalofhis books autographingthemwithexhortations to found the AmericanLef.53 15 Pack books, in morning,only to findthem too heavy for the Soviet book post. Unpack and repack. To Grabar's to get our photos of magnificenttwelfth53.

Lef, periodical of the Leftartists'and writers'revolutionarymovement(1923-25).

Diego Rivera. Sawing Rails. 1927. (Former collectionAlfredH. Barr,Jr.)

centuryicons and then to TASS (press cliche department)to tryto make a last Find two satisfactory, attemptto findphotos of modernpicturesand architecture. restbad, tworublesapiece. Back in timefordinnerand thento HermitageTheater to findKino sold out. We go backstagein theaterto see maquettes,manyexcellent; no photos. Jereand Piotr stayfor 10:30projection.I back to pack. 16 Suddenlydecide I wantone ofDiego Rivera'sdrawings.Find him dressingbut all drawingsover at Sterenberg's,whitherwe go, he having an engagement there.I take back roll of drawingsand choose a finecharcoal of men workingon railroad tracks(30 rubles). Take new packages of books to P.O. withPiotr-10 packets,fiveof themstill too heavy.Repack in P.O. Then rush to VOX to findJerehad gone back to hotel with Dana's mail. Finally findJereand we take a tram,a long 14-kopeckride to southeastcornerof town,to visitChirikov'sicons.54He is a friendofGrabar'sand has a veryfineseriesof late icons, almost as good as Ostroukov's,all storedin closets.He broughtthemout one byone. He is thechiefcleanerof icons working underGrabar-a veryfinecraftsmanas well as connoisseurand collector.He took us over to see thechurchof theUspenskyVirginof... [Barr'somission]near his house wheretherewas anotherveryexceptionalcollection.Back to hotel forfinal packing. Rozinskystops in to say good-bye;Dana, MaryReed sick with her bad heart.Leave forstationwith Piotrwho is going withus to Leningrad to visithis brothers.Veryfortunateforus. Piotr and Jeresit up all nightbut I doze, on an upper shelf--hardclass. Airverybad-but onlysevenfleabitesand nothingstolen. 54.

GregoryChirikov(dates unknown) was an icon restoreras well as collectorof icons.

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Feb. 17 (writtenFeb. 28) Arrive in Leningrad at 10:30-to Hotel Angleterrenear St. Isaac's Cathedral-recommendedby Eisensteinbut roomscold, expensive,and servicebad. We decide to spend the night since Piotr had gone for the day to his sister.We wander streetslooking for restaurantsbut have little luck, gloomiest day in Russia-until we trythe Hotel Europe and findnot only German but English spoken-very good rooms and beds and adequate service.To bed early. As to the city,it seems entirelyun-Russian in appearance, exceptone large and execrableimitationof St. Basil's in Moscow. But it is themostcompleteand most beautiful eighteenth-century city I have seen-superb composition of and theearliest,such as theWinterPalace (now and facades, squares places palace the Palace of Art),in late baroque, but thelaterin beautifullystudiedneoclassic. The main artery,the Prospect25 October,55 is spacious but veryugly nineteentharchitecture. century Feb. 18 Move to Hotel Europe from Angleterre,much betterand a little more expensive (7.50 R.). No museums open. Piotr appears and we take a long walk past the Russian Museum down by the Neva, past many huge palaces, many of themin disrepair,along theback of theHermitageand theWinterPalace, thenup past the fineFalconet bronze of Peter the Great to the St. Isaac Sobor which we enterto findit as cold, heavy,costly,and tastelessas its exteriorwould lead one to suppose. Then to luncheon in the old Astoria Hotel, now the First Proletariat Restaurant,and a verypoor one, dirtyas are all the restaurants,and wretched service,the food greasyand heavy.Then back across canals to the Sobor of Our Lady of Kazan-a veryfineneoclassical churchon theplan of St. Peter'sin Rome. In the interior,severeand fine,were severalbeggarsand raggedwomen hugging the stoves.Back to our room fora comfortabletea. In the eveningwith Piotr to a small theaterto see severalexcellentone-act and inabilityto plays, one of them satirizingthe Russian worship of efficiency practiceit. 19 To Hermitage-trulya marvelousgallery,though the Italian picturesare a little disappointing-the Rembrandts,however,a dozen late portraitsand the Danae are verywonderful.The gallerywas more crowded than any I have ever seen, many docent groups of workers,peasants,and soldiers. -In addition to the Rembrandts-Vrel, Duyster,Boorse,de Hooch, Bartolomeo Vivarini,two small Botticellis?,a dugentopanel, two large Magnascos, de Witte,Poussin's greatPolyphemus landscape, a Chardin kitchenscene, Guido's 55.

The Nevski Prospectof Gogol famehad been renamedProspect25 October.

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49

Childhood of the Virgin,a VeroneseConversionof St. Paul, a late Lotto portrait, Procaccini Madonna, etc. The Titians did not interestme especially-the late Sebastian seemeda bit dull. In the eveningto a ratherpoor Russian filmsatirizingAmericanprejudices about Bolshevists,a good subject but handled verybadly.56 Monday February20th To Russian Museum to go over the icons with Smirnov, the Byzantine scholar,and Lessuchevsky,a young Ukrainian,assistantcuratorand specialistin brasses.57The collection is not so fineas the Moscow Historical Museum, nor up to the Ostroukov-a fineByzantineSt. Nicholas, the greatBoris and Gleb from Novgorod and many lesserthings. Dinner at the "Bar" Restaurant-food quite good and cheap if you have an Obyed-but costlyif a la carte.5s Tuesday Back to Hermitage,rear entrance.Mlle. Matzulyevitch, who promisesto see about photos and to put us in touch with Schmidt,the curatorof paintings. In filmsdating from1903 (Death of evening to a veryinterestingKino retrospective: Lincoln), early Max Linder and Chaplin, and ending with the step scene from Potemkin. Wednesday,22 Russian Museum again to go over modern painting with Ivan Punin,59 perhaps the finestof Russian criticsof modernart.The collectiontakesone from the Bubnovy Valetthroughcubism and suprematismto contemporarywork.The collection is small-about fiftypaintings but well chosen, exactly the sort of collection which we lack in any American gallery except Duncan Phillips's. Punin gave us each a copy of his excellentmonograph on Tatlin. In eveningto a good but interminableRussian filmofcomedyand adventure built around a Conan Doyle Moriarty-likevillain with an anti-Sovietcomplex who is frustrated by a trioof gallant young newspapermenwith radical inclinations. The filmwas intended for boys, Piotr explained, and the action moved breathlessly.We leftexhaustedat the end of the second hour, two-thirdsdone. Feb. 23 Afterbreakfastwe walk across theice on theNeva to theZoological Museum The ExtraordinaryAdventuresof Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks by Lev Kuleshov, 56. Goskino, 1924. VladimirLessuchevsky(1898-1941)was interestedin 18th-century 57. Russian portraiture as well as in brasses. 58. Obyed-prix-fixedinner. 59. Barrmeans Nikolai Punin (1888-1953).

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to see the greatstuffedmammothwhich I used to dream about in thedays when paleontology was to be my career.Then to the Hermitageforan appointment with Schmidt at 12:00. He had not yet arrived-we waited an hour. They phoned-he had a cold-and had apparentlynot been notifiedby the suave and cordial Matzulyevitch.Perhaps we can see him next Tuesday-perhapsperhaps-time wasted-Russia-Russia. Piotr discoversa good restaurant-a reallygood one-with real waitersand clean tableclothsand not expensive,1.25 R fordinner. In the eveningto Prince Igor at theopera. The interioris not large but very charmingforan opera-but Prince Igor was flat,uninterestingmusic,exceptfor the ballet and a fewchoruses.Borodin's symphoniesand his opera are about on the same level. The horsesand taxis are decked with ribands-a holiday is near. Fri. 24 Through the Russian Museum-the peasant arts fromall over the empire fromKiev to Kamchatka. Many verybeautifulthingsand excellentlyarranged. About eleveno'clock Piotr comesand we leave forthetrainto Novgorod.We go 2nd (soft) class forthe firsttime in Russia in orderto save our strengthfor intensiveactivityduring the next threedays. Piotr is embarrassedbut secretly,I think,pleased by our bourgeois "softness."It is his firstsoftberthand he has traveleda great deal. Dream evening of-or morningof-Jan 29 (1928) This whitepainted cottage-the last on theleft-it was not herebefore(nor I in it) The thistle-grey beard of the old man bristlesabove the pile of beddingsheetsblanketspillowcases-which he is carrying Two sheets Two blankets Two pillowcases neatly folded Firsttheundersheetopens itsshutterslike a triptych thisside thenthatuntil it lies with quadrilled creases And the upper sheet hovers above it like a discouraged parachute-then settlesexhaling gently,lightlysettles Then (turningnew snow to old) the blanketspreciselysuffocatethe sheets While the two pillows like obese tombstonesregard the crime without alarum Old man, I said, whydo you takesuch pains? I know thebody'sburiedin the mattress.

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Russian Diary

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PosterforThe Extraordinary Adventures ofMr. Westin the Land of the Bolsheviksby Lev

Kuleshov. 1924. (See diary entryfor February 19.)

Afterword AlfredBarr,Jr.,and JereAbbottarrivedin Moscow at a climacticmomentin the historyof Soviet culture,forthe years1927-28saw manyrapid and dramatic changes in artistictheoryand practicein the Soviet Union. Soviet artof thelate 1920s was affectednot only by the intense and uneven conflictbetween state impositionand individual freedom,but also by themountingrivalrybetweenthe new and old generationsof artists.The pioneermembersof theavant-gardesuch and as RobertFalk, KazimirMalevich,AlexanderRodchenko,David Sterenberg, such as AnatolyLunacharskyand Nikolai VladimirTatlin and theirsympathizers Punin still occupied influentialpositions within the various pedagogical and of Narkompros(People's structure researchinstitutesor withintheadministrative Commissariatfor Enlightenment).But their authoritywas being undermined swiftlyand importunatelyby the activitiesof recentgraduatesfromtherestruc-

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Russian Diary

Poster for The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr.

West in the Land of the Bolsheviks by Lev

Kuleshov. 1924. (See diary entry for February 19.)

Afterword Alfred Barr, Jr., and Jere Abbott arrived in Moscow at a climactic moment in the history of Soviet culture, for the years 1927-28 saw many rapid and dramatic changes in artistic theory and practice in the Soviet Union. Soviet art of the late 1920s was affected not only by the intense and uneven conflict between state imposition and individual freedom, but also by the mounting rivalry between the new and old generations of artists. The pioneer members of the avant-garde such as Robert Falk, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, David Sterenberg, and Vladimir Tatlin and their sympathizers such as Anatoly Lunacharsky and Nikolai Punin still occupied influential positions within the various pedagogical and research institutes or within the administrative structure of Narkompros (People's Commissariat for Enlightenment). But their authority was being undermined swiftly and importunately by the activities of recent graduates from the restruc-

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tured art schools, especially from Vkhutein (Higher State Art-Technical Institute) in Moscow. In many cases, younger artists like Boris Ioganson and Evgeni Katsman were of humble social origin and of very limited cultural experience. Consequently, they advocated a simplistic and narrative art form in place of abstract or nonfigurative experimentation. Their demands were upheld by powerful groups such as AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia) and OMKh (Society of Moscow Artists) which enjoyed state preference and patronage and which censured the programs supported by Malevich, Tatlin, and their colleagues. The 1928 AKhRR manifesto echoed the party's own implicit and explicit demands of art: "As artists of the Proletarian Revolution, we have the duty of transforming the authentic revolutionary reality into realistic forms comprehensible to the broad masses of the workers and of participating actively in Socialist construction by our socio-artistic work." Barr's visit coincided, in fact, with the sessions of the XV Party Congress during December 1927, at which particular attention was given to the problems of cultural strategy: "At the basis of the plan for cultural construction must lie the tasks of popular education, tasks that can ensure the cultural growth of the broad masses of workers."2 The art exhibition dedicated to the XV Party Congress, open during January 1928 at the Museum of the Revolution, confirmed the party's call for accessibility and intelligibility of artistic form. Inevitably, the combined pressures of the party, of AKhRR, and of the popular demand for narrative art accelerated the move towards a new realism in the late 1920s-a move that culminated in the official establishment of socialist realism as the exclusive, Soviet artistic style in 1934. As Barr indicates, this trend was especially evident in painting, sculpture, and music in 1927-28. It was not by chance that early, experimental works of Natalia Goncharova, Aristarkh Lentulov, Ilya Mashkov, et al. were already in the storerooms of the Tretyakov Gallery. Yet, in spite of the increasing intrusion of party policy into artistic life, the late 1920s were still a creative and innovative period, especially in the spheres of photography, cinema, and the mass theater. What seems to have attracted and impressed Barr and Abbott most were the remarkable achievements of Eisenstein and Meyerhold; Louis Lozowick, who also visited Moscow in 1928, had a similar reaction, as he described in his unpublished memoirs. Moreover, the late 1920s witnessed a "second wave" of Soviet constructivism and design: in 1927 Vladimir Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, Sergei Tretyakov, et al. founded the journal Novyi lef (New Left Front of the Arts); in that year Eisenstein produced October; and in 1929 Dziga Vertov produced The Man with 1. From "Deklaratsiia Assotsiatsii khudozhnikov revoliutsii (AKhR)" (1928). Translation in John E. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902-1934, New York, Viking, 1976, p. 271. In 1928 AKhRR changed its name to AKhR (Association of Artists of the Revolution). 2. From the Directives of the XV Party Congress (1927). Quoted in L. Ivanova et al., compilers, Kulturnaia zhizn v SSSR 1917-1927, Moscow, 1975, p. 731.

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a Movie Camera. Most importantly, the group called October, active 1928-32, championed the essential principles of constructivism and attracted many important artists including Alexander Deineka, Eisenstein, Gustav Klucis, El Lissitzky, Diego Rivera, Rodchenko, and Varvara Stepanova. Amidst mounting opposition and censure, accused of "abolishing art," 3 October upheld a firm ideological and moral stance: "We reject the philistine realism of epigones, the realism of a stagnant, individualistic way of life, passively contemplative, static, naturalistic realism with its fruitless copying of reality.... We reject any claim by any one association of artists to ideological monopoly or exclusive representation of the artistic interests of the working and peasant masses."4 What Barr and Abbott saw in Moscow and Leningrad in 1927-28 was the final iridescence of the Russian avant-garde. Like many of the artists and critics whom he met, Barr entertained hopes for the survival of this free creative spirit, but, unlike them, he had not known the earlier and more exciting years. In comparison with the period just before and after 1917, the late 1920s were a time of conservative consolidation and entrenchment. Nikolai Punin, "perhaps the finest of Russian critics of modern art" (Barr), was acutely aware of this: "As regards art in Russia now, everything is at a standstill, there are scarcely any new forces, and, for the old ones there is only contempt. No-one's in the mood for art."5 These lines, from a letter Punin wrote to Goncharova while in Tokyo in 1927, might serve as a sobering epilogue to Barr's more positive, optimistic account. JOHN

E. BOWLT

A Note on Barr's Contribution to the Scholarship of Soviet Art As Jere Abbott recalls in his introduction, neither he nor his friend Alfred Barr had planned to venture into Russia; they went on the spur of the moment. Nevertheless, from Barr's diary it is clear that they were not strangers to the arts that flowered there after the revolution of 1917. Barr's persistent interest in Russian music dates back to his school days, when he shared with a classmate a special admiration for the opera they referred to as Eugene One Gin. Architecture as 3. From Resolution of the Secretariat of RAPKh (Russian Association of Proletarian Artists) (1932). Quoted in I. Matsa et al., compilers, Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let, Moscow-Leningrad. 1933, p. 650. 4. From "Oktiabr. Obedinenie khudozhestvennogo truda. Deklaratsiia" (1928). Translation in Bowlt, Russian Art, pp. 277-8. 5. Letter from N. Punin to N. Goncharova dated 7 July, 1927 and mailed from Tokyo, Japan. Private collection, Paris. In the summer of 1927, Punin was in Japan with an exhibition of Russian art. He returned to Leningrad in August of that year.

Russian Diary

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a Movie Camera. Most importantly, the group called October, active 1928-32, championed the essential principles of constructivism and attracted many important artists including Alexander Deineka, Eisenstein, Gustav Klucis, El Lissitzky, Diego Rivera, Rodchenko, and Varvara Stepanova. Amidst mounting opposition and censure, accused of "abolishing art," 3 October upheld a firm ideological and moral stance: "We reject the philistine realism of epigones, the realism of a stagnant, individualistic way of life, passively contemplative, static, naturalistic realism with its fruitless copying of reality.... We reject any claim by any one association of artists to ideological monopoly or exclusive representation of the artistic interests of the working and peasant masses."4 What Barr and Abbott saw in Moscow and Leningrad in 1927-28 was the final iridescence of the Russian avant-garde. Like many of the artists and critics whom he met, Barr entertained hopes for the survival of this free creative spirit, but, unlike them, he had not known the earlier and more exciting years. In comparison with the period just before and after 1917, the late 1920s were a time of conservative consolidation and entrenchment. Nikolai Punin, "perhaps the finest of Russian critics of modern art" (Barr), was acutely aware of this: "As regards art in Russia now, everything is at a standstill, there are scarcely any new forces, and, for the old ones there is only contempt. No-one's in the mood for art."5 These lines, from a letter Punin wrote to Goncharova while in Tokyo in 1927, might serve as a sobering epilogue to Barr's more positive, optimistic account. JOHN

E. BOWLT

A Note on Barr's Contribution to the Scholarship of Soviet Art As Jere Abbott recalls in his introduction, neither he nor his friend Alfred Barr had planned to venture into Russia; they went on the spur of the moment. Nevertheless, from Barr's diary it is clear that they were not strangers to the arts that flowered there after the revolution of 1917. Barr's persistent interest in Russian music dates back to his school days, when he shared with a classmate a special admiration for the opera they referred to as Eugene One Gin. Architecture as 3. From Resolution of the Secretariat of RAPKh (Russian Association of Proletarian Artists) (1932). Quoted in I. Matsa et al., compilers, Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let, Moscow-Leningrad. 1933, p. 650. 4. From "Oktiabr. Obedinenie khudozhestvennogo truda. Deklaratsiia" (1928). Translation in Bowlt, Russian Art, pp. 277-8. 5. Letter from N. Punin to N. Goncharova dated 7 July, 1927 and mailed from Tokyo, Japan. Private collection, Paris. In the summer of 1927, Punin was in Japan with an exhibition of Russian art. He returned to Leningrad in August of that year.

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practiced by the pioneers of modernism in the West provided a standard against which to judge the recent buildings in Moscow. It is worth remembering that in the year 1926-27, Barr had offered at Wellesley a course in modern art, the first to be given in any college. There were no precedents for such a course and, while some few books existed on modern Western art, Russian art of the twenties was documented only in Louis Lozowick's slender volume, Modern Russian Art. For the rest, news of art in Russia appeared at times in Vanity Fair, The Dial, Transition, The Little Review, and The Arts. Barr could have seen actual works by the avant-garde only in New York. Some few examples had appeared in mixed shows organized by the Societe Anonyme under the leadership of Katherine Dreier, the perceptive and forward-looking disciple of Marcel Duchamp. The first exclusively Russian exhibition was staged by the Societe at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923, with works by Burliuk, Goncharova, Larionov, Kandinsky, and Archipenko. A more traditional show, organized by Igor Grabar, was presented in 1924 at the Grand Central Palace. Of the more progressive artists only Bakst and Benois were included, thereby arousing the indignation of the critic Christian Brinton, who was a champion of contemporary Russian art. He protested the omission of "examples of cubo-futurist, suprematist, Tatlinist and kindred exuberant searchers after new and startling phases of selfexpression." That these Russians actually belonged in the stream of the international avant-garde was affirmed, again by the Societe Anonyme, in an International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where Kandinsky, Archipenko, Burliuk, Lissitzky, Gabo, and Pevsner were represented. Early in December 1927, Barr and Abbott spent some time at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where the constructivist principles of Tatlin, Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Gabo, and Pevsner were being elaborated and developed. Their visit is recorded in a letter of Lyonel Feininger, who was gratified by Barr's interest in his work. He took them to call on Klee, but not Kandinsky, who was ill. Gropius gave them an introduction to Tatlin. Once in Russia, Barr collected books, pamphlets, programs, photographs with singular patience and persistence, and as a result produced articles on Russian film, LEF, Eisenstein, Russian architecture, and icons. ' Barr became Director of the Museum of Modern Art in 1928, and in 1936 he incorporated the achievements of the postrevolutionary Russians in the groundbreaking exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art. Not only painting and sculpture, but posters, constructions, stage sets, film stills, and costumes were represented. Of the major figures, Rodchenko's art was introduced to the public for the first time; indeed, it might be said that the names of all these Russians first became familiar 1. "The Documentary versus the Abstract Film," Sovetskoe Kino (Moscow), March 1928; "The 'LEF' and Soviet Art," Transition, no. 14 (Fall 1928), 267-70; "The Researches of Eisenstein," Drawing and Design, IV (June 1928), 155-6; "Sergei Michailovich Eisenstein," The Arts, XIV (December 1928), 316-21; "Notes on Russian Architecture," The Arts, XV (February 1929), 103-6, 144; "Russian Icons," The Arts, XVII (February 1931).

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to the public in that year. The chapters on Russian art in the catalogue remained the only complete and reliable reference work on the subject until the publication of Camilla Gray's The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922 in 1962.2 Barr always kept an eye on the news of art developments in Russia, so he was dismayed but not surprised when, in 1932, Stalin proclaimed socialist realism to be the only acceptable art, all other forms being reprehensible. The first inklings of the censorship to come can be found in the diary. In the late forties and early fifties, Barr defended artists against the charge of political subversion, for it was a McCarthy tenet that modern art was a Soviet communist conspiracy. In exasperation he wrote "Is Modern Art Communistic?" for the New York Times Magazine, a searing article in which he equated with apposite illustrations the art endorsed by Hitler with the products of Stalin's socialist realism, reminding the reader that modern works were feared and suppressed as subversive in both dictatorships. In 1955, when official cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union did not exist, the Museum of Modern Art and three other museums attempted to open negotiations for an exchange of exhibitions. Of course, the Americans hoped sooner or later to secure loans from the great Shchukin and Morosov collections. Transactions were long drawn out, and a first exchange was settled upon: nineteenthcentury Russian pictures for nineteenth-century American pictures. This led in 1956 to Barr's second visit to the USSR, where his familiarity with nineteenthcentury Russian painting in general and his specific knowledge of many individual works amazed and flattered his hosts. Barr drew up a rigorously selected list of pictures he thought worthwhile, but the Russians tried to amend the list, forcing in works of less aesthetic interest but obvious social significance. In the end the whole scheme foundered, ostensibly because the U.S. could not officially guarantee that heirs of owners of works, perhaps confiscated, would not be permitted to bring suit for recovery. As a result of contacts made during these protracted negotiations, Barr was invited to lecture in June 1959, as a guest of VOKS. With the help of simultaneous translators of varying abilities, he spoke in Moscow and in the theater of the Winter Palace (now part of the Hermitage) in Leningrad, where his lectures, attended only by the numerous staff of the Hermitage, had to be repeated the next morning in a hall crowded with persons standing on chairs and spilling over into corridors. Besides 35 mm. slides that rarely fit the projectors, Barr took with him a film on Jackson Pollock and the abstract film by Francis Thompson, NY NY. He repeated his lecture on the Museum of Modern Art later in Tiflis and in cosmopolitan Erevan, where many citizens had returned from abroad in the 1947 repatriation effort and were more internationally sophisticated. Thanks to a spirited translator, he brought down the house and was offered a midnight 2. The near-scriptural status of Barr's text was witnessed by the author in Tiflis in 1960, when the art critic of a Malmo newspaper proudly displayed his laboriously transcribed copy of the Russian chapters.

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banquet. However, just before leaving the Soviet Union, he was summoned to Moscow for a meeting with cultural officials and severely admonished for the tone of his lectures, in an effort to counteract the eager interest they had aroused. In 1956, and again in 1959, Barr had made some unofficial contacts through which he was able to acquire for the Museum of Modern Art works by such artists as Sitnikov, Plavinsky, Nemukhin, and Serov. The most enduring testament to Barr's love of Russia and its art, however, is the collection of MOMA. Although Amsterdam has many more works by Malevich, the seven he acquired include the full range of the artist's suprematist development, climaxing with the unique White on White. Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Gabo, Pevsner, Puni, Popova, Lissitzky, Goncharova, and Larionov are all represented with works of the first quality. Add to these, posters by Lissitzky, typography by Rodchenko, films by Eisenstein, as well as prints and drawings.3 No other museum outside the Soviet Union can boast so broad a representation of the period and no other collection has been formed with an equal combination of scholarship and aesthetic judgment. ELIZABETH

JONES

3. Even after his retirement, Barr's interest in the museum's collections, Russian and otherwise, continued. When he saw in a gallery a remarkable constructed figure in painted wood, dated 1914, by the unknown emigre artist Baranoff-Rossine, he urged his successor to see it, and it subsequently entered the collection.

Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General*

A. V. LUNACHARSKY translated by ALEXANDER SUMERKIN I.

A Few Words about the Past

It seems to be my fate more often than not to differ with most of our theater critics in my opinions on Meyerhold. I remember the innumerable expressions of delight and praise which were lavished upon The Magnificent Cuckold,l while I found the production vulgar and the stage design artistically unjustified. I still believe that even if The Magnificent Cuckold was important for Meyerhold's own development and necessary, as such, for him, he has since clearly surpassed it. Although the third Meyerhold Theater poster claims that it is still a "living and militant production," it is now interesting, I think, only to historians. With The Forest2 I began to feel a turn for the better in Meyerhold's theater. A sensitive artist, he came to understand that his innovations and tricks, his talented but mischievous destruction of the old theater at any cost, may be all right, but it is not at all the sustenance our public needs. The Forest marked a new approach to the old task: to single out social types and typical situations. Rich in finds and gimmicks, the production was still hardly convincing, for it lacked a unifying inner pivot. Meyerhold stood on the threshold separating defiance of the old theater and the true creation of a new one. Bubus3 was another step in that direction. The critics did not understand it and scolded Meyerhold. It had, of course, quite a few of the witty devices in which Meyerhold so excels: bamboo, the barker, etc., and even if Meyerhold did not succeed in his derision of Liszt and Chopin, the musical foundation introduced into the production gave it an unexpectedly clear rhythm. * This account of Meyerhold's production of Gogol's The Inspector-General (Revizor), as presented on December 1, 1926, was originally published in Novyj Mir, no. 2, 1927. 1. The Magnificent Cuckold, by the Belgian playwright Fernand Commelynck, was first performed in Meyerhold's production at the Actors' Theater in April 1922. Its costumes and decors, to which it owes a part of its celebrity, were designed by the painter Liubov Popova. The Forest, a comedy in five acts by Nicolas Ostrovsky, was rearranged by Meyerhold in thirty2. three episodes and presented during the season of 1924. 3. Bubus, a comedy by Faiko, was mounted by Meyerhold in January 1925. Unlike the Gogol production, it was not received enthusiastically, although it was distinguished by a number of significant theatrical innovations.

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The Meyerhold production of Bubus, 1925.

I have long dreamed (and discussed, as well; see my long speech "On Musical Drama") of subordinating drama, with its philistine looseness, as it were, to the clear rhythms that have traditionally been dominant in opera and particularly in ballet. If these two arts require dramatization, if, that is, their conventions need more realistic richness, the drama seemed to be in need of a certain, moderate rhythmicization. The rhythm of music and movement, musically determined, would find an immediate repercussion in the rhythmicization of space, bringing a greater graphic clarity to the whole stage area at any moment of the performance. As I then thought, a certain role in this rhythmicization could be played by constructivism. Bubus made Meyerhold's progress towards this goal extremely clear. The rhythmic composition in time and space in no way diminished the authenticity of the production, that is, its quality of social caricature. No wonder that, at the farranging discussion held after the performance, I could not help noting Meyerhold's significant advance towards the theater we need. Meyerhold, in turn, responded by saying that he had been consciously moving towards sociomechanics, as we both called it then.

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Concurrently with Bubus, Roar China4 appeared in a flash, as a nearly perfect agitprop, based on the same principles, and still a little overloaded-in this instance with the Chinese local color. The most remarkable thing in the production of Erdman's Mandate,5 next to its wonderful text (I mean the text, not the play, which is a mediocre comedy), was the talented fusion of an honest realism (itself a synthesis of general phenomena and the mundanely specific) with a free fantasy. Like a great graphic artist who reduces specific living phenomena to their essence, at the same time never breaking with a full-blooded reality, and then, at times, combining real objects or figures in a really fantastic way, Meyerhold broke with both the conventions of the theater and those of reality and made a giant step towards a completely free theater. He juggled with his magnificent Guliachkins and their environment, he indulged in magic fantasies, and never was his indulgence unwarranted. The most unexpected tricks, such as the incredible sets in the finale, splendidly underscored the essence of the phenomena portrayed. A realist artist cannot be a slave to reality. This rule is important, as is another: the artist must maintain permanent contact with reality, always remaining within a language of phenomena familiar to the public. Of course, the great theater of the past always followed this path, but to follow a path is also to advance. Woe to Wit, The Inspector-General, and The Marriage presume not only the truth but also the grotesque, the caricature, and without the atmosphere of this grotesquery they can only fade. Why, then, can an artist not subject older works, as well as new ones, to an experimental transformation, using the multilayered optics of variously refracted grotesques? The Inspector-General is a new step along this path. It is the most convincing of Meyerhold's productions. In The Inspector-General he deals, of course, with a text significantly superior to that of The Mandate. This text, with its wonderful unfolding of the action, has provided him with types which, as integral parts of their picturesque times, can at the same time develop into generalized human masks, at least within the context of a presocialist society. II.

Gogol Offended Was Meyerhold entitled to change Gogol or to interpret his work in a free style? Of course he was. It is time to put an end to idle talk of hidebound respect for the classics! Who is not aware that the most classic of the classics-Aeschylus and Aristophanes-are performed today throughout the world in a way that bears not the slightest similarity to the original performances as they were seen and, undoubtedly, staged 4. Roar China, a theatrical event in nine parts by Sergei Tretyakov, was directed by Fedorov and Boutarine and produced at Meyerhold's theater in January 1926. 5. The Mandate, a three-act comedy by Nicolas Erdman, opened in 1926.

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by their very authors? Who is not aware that Shakespeare's plays are subjected to all kinds of changes, abridgments, distortions, and that productions of Hamlet, for example, differ from each other and from the original production at the Globe Theater as though absolutely different plays? Why is nobody upset when Leconte de Lisle rewrites The Erinniae and Hoffmannstahl adapts Electra? Why could Phaedra be rewritten, each time in a new way, by Seneca, Racine, and d'Annunzio, each of them checking it only very slightly against Euripides? Why does no one doubt that Pushkin would have been perfectly happy had he seen Moussorgsky's Boris Godunov, although Moussorgsky added and deleted a few episodes, and his characters sing instead of talk, which was, of course, in no way intended by Pushkin? Of course, we must preserve these plays in their exact texts, and our academic theaters must stage them in a manner as faithful to the original as possible. I quite agree with this point of view, and I would like to ask of the Maly Theater, for instance: are you certain that in your productions of the masterworks of Russian classical theater everything has been done to insure excellence and fidelity to their original forms as more or less approved by their authors? It is, however, ridiculous to assign to Meyerhold's theater the highly respectable curatorial task of a museum. If the Maly Theater, to which such duties are quite legitimately assigned, has some new-style productions along with old ones, it would be simply barbaric to forbid even the most daring of its fantasies to the theater that is meant to be a laboratory for experimentation and research. Pushkin once said, "I do not find it funny when a despicable dauber spoils Raphael's Madonna." But if somebody had announced that, in leaving Raphael's picture to the Dresden Gallery, he wanted to paint a version, a variation, maybe even a caricature of the Madonna, Pushkin would certainly not have banned it. For if so, one might then ask him, "Alexander Sergeevich, how, after the Gospels, did you dare in Gavriliada to depict the Annunciation in your own way?" I can understand when conservative elements in our society are outraged by innovations, but when I hear communists say, "It's a scandal, it's not the true Gogol," I can only throw up my hands and admit that the human mind can accommodate political ideas of the most revolutionary sort and aesthetic philistinism at one and the same time. If you want the true Gogol, go to the theater that is meant to show it; and if want to see Meyerhold's production, go and see Gogol reflected in the most you complicated mirror surface of our consciousness. The second question is whether Meyerhold had the right to use the variants that Gogol himself rejected? Some people say, "Gogol knew why he had rejected one or another version, so why should we revive them?" But Gogol even burnt his second volume [of the Dead Souls-trans.], and we know that he burnt it under the influence of a hostile environment. Who can provide evidence that Gogol did not reject one or another

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version for fear of shocking the prim functionaries of the Saint Petersburg public? Who can vouch for the fact that he was not afraid of censorship? We shall soon be seeing Boris Godunov as conceived by Moussorgsky. We know that this great composer accepted its adaptation by the facile, mundane Rimski-Korsakov, but it is still questionable whether this adaptation had not deprived the original Boris of three-fourths of its titanic power. Of course the versions presented by Meyerhold are not new discoveries, and I can easily imagine that some spectators might prefer the definitive Gogol version of The Inspector-General to Meyerhold's, but still, all the new lines that I heard at the performance were fresh and amusing, they all bear Gogol's imprint, and I really enjoyed them. III.

The Visual Aspect of the Production

The most remarkable visual feature of the production is its extraordinary artistic completeness. Often, watching even the best productions at the best theaters, I have felt that the scenic space was incomplete. Often you confront a large stage with two characters engaged in a dialogue at one corner. If you concentrate your attention on that corner, the remaining space no longer exists for you, practically speaking, but it keeps irritating your subconscious by its mere presence in the nonfocused part of your vision. If your eye starts wandering around the full stage (which is always a kind of work of art), you can no longer concentrate on the action. Not to mention the fact that at almost any theater (constructivist theater has fought against this) the actors crawl about on the floor of a vast stage so that five-sixths of its space remains void. Very seldom is the staging so perfect that absolutely every character with no lines to speak at the given moment, every position of an actor's head, hands, or feet becomes a part of the overall composition. We can only call a picture, or rather a color engraving, good if all the lines and colors are brought together into a unified whole. An artist would not make one single dot without a correlation with the general composition of the picture, just as a composer would never introduce a single note without the most elaborate artistic-mechanical calculations. This is the greatest achievement of Meyerhold in his Inspector-General, and on an unprecedented scale. The large stage remains unfilled in most instances (in some scenes it is used, but it does not pretend to be interesting); it is a large semicircle of polished wood with doors. The action is presented to the audience as if in a basket. A certain playing area, where objects and people act, is moved forward according to the director's will. This space is lit up accordingly (with great skill) and resembles a moving bunch of flowers or a most orderly kaleidoscope. The people and the objects follow one another continuously in the incessant dynamics, like color engravings.

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I contend that absolutely any moment of this large production photographed on a color still would be a finished work of art; I stress: finished to the very last detail. Another original feature of the production's style was not so much the absence of scenery (which is not so important, any more than the elaborate constructions in their original architectural-mechanical forms), as an extremely successful attempt to make authentic objects play their roles. Not only are sets banished, but also accessories. It is real furniture that we see, real fruits, real groceries, as well as real people in real clothes, a combination of people and objects taken directly from life. Meyerhold believes that there is no need for artistic transformation. In this sense he is a complete materialist. But, nevertheless, these authentic objects assume an intense pictorial significance, thanks to the composition and the lighting. Here I cannot help making a certain reproach to Meyerhold. Inspired by his idea, in an effort to make the production festive and joyful, Meyerhold exaggerated the luxury of the furniture and the costumes, particularly those of Anna Andreevna. Of course, the beautiful things made of mahogany and Karelian birchwood, which Meyerhold was fortunately able to find, are wonderful; of course, the dresses of Anna Andreevna resemble charming Kustodiev pictures of merchants' fanciful abundance; but still, for a small clerk's wife in a provincial town, they are not justified artistically. It would be even more interesting to see the same efforts without such aesthetic sugarcoating. Even though it is refined sugar of the highest quality, and it pleases the audience's palate, that is not the point. A director should not be carried away by purely sensuous visual pleasure. Because of the luxurious dresses and other exaggerated effects of her appearance, Anna Andreevna is pushed by the director too much to the fore, and, to some extent, this destroys the play's balance. But this critical remark is not so serious, and I repeat: the idea of assigning roles to authentic objects, instead of using stage props, is an excellent one and very well handled by Meyerhold.

Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General, 1926.

Gogol-Meyerhold's The Inspector-General

IV.

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All Upside Down

The critics and the public were shocked by the abrupt ways in which Meyerhold broke all the traditions of staging The Inspector-General. Some people even had the feeling that everything was done simply "upside down"; for instance, Osip must be old, so Meyerhold made him young. According to this logic, Khlestakov should have been made old, but Meyerhold did not do that. The idea is not to turn everything upside down; it is to try to break away from the old traditions, and to create a completely new and fresh version. It is, of course, the right of every true artist. Why can our music critics demand, and with good reason, from our pianists, chamber or orchestra musicians a new interpretation of the classics, including Beethoven himself, one that would be more adequate to our time; and why cannot such demands be made of an innovator in the theater? Many of Meyerhold's innovations really work; Osip, for instance. It is true that, generally speaking, Osip's character is richer in traditional productions of The Inspector-General, and that Meyerhold, having deleted a large part of his role, made it less important. But still, the character of a rogue who has tasted the Saint Petersburg way of life is very colorful. Avoiding monologues, as usual, Meyerhold introduces a charming little scene of an intimate duo between Osip and a serving wench. In this way he justifies Osip's lines about his experience in jumping off a coach into an archway, lines that used to sound a little strange when pronounced by an elderly man. Meyerhold added a little spice to the mayor's wife's willing flirtation with their guest's young and outgoing servant, making him, the only representative of folksy good humor and reason, chuckle a few times in most appropriate places. In short, he created an extremely curious and interesting version for which we can thank him-even knowing that many theaters may not accept a version that dismisses the decent, good old Osip, sanctified by tradition and, to be sure, superb. Many people are outraged by the changes in the roles of Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. I found them magnificent. I did not notice any of the special gloom or criminal overtones that some critics found in the characters of these two provincials. The comic element of Meyerhold comes from the fact that he replaced the usual hastiness and commotion of their action-not very natural against the background of the slow and boring life of a somnolent provincial town-with extreme slowness in gesture and speech. They are people who like to tell everything in great detail. I really do not know which is more appropriate to this slow story with its numerous digressions, its taste for details, its habit of beginning everything from Adam-a hasty, nervous speech or the love for detailed descriptions and exposition, the desire to torture their listeners, which Meyerhold gave to his marionettes. I disagree radically with those who find Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky "not realistic." Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky are presented as being close to clown figures. Almost nowhere in Gogol's work is there so much

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caricature as in these two characters, and it is in Meyerhold's production that I saw real people in their parts for the first time. I cannot enumerate all the fortuitous "reversals"introduced by Meyerhold in the process of creating a new and fresh version. But, naturally, there are some defects, too. The mayor, for instance, is a failure. Starkovsky's acting is not bad, and in the final scene he creates a strong enough impact. But the whole type is conceived somehow unconvincingly. Always mistrustful of words, always trying to cover up for them by action, Meyerhold's staging of the mayor's report in the first scene is accompanied by all kinds of manipulations and treatments by the doctor, and they distract one's attention from the main course of the action. Then, his picture of the mayor as a hysterical neurotic is not followed up in later episodes, and it does not fit this thick-skinned individual. In general, it is hard to say what kind of mayor this one is, where he comes from, and what his past has been. In my view, the mayor, in this sense, is not complete, yet it would be most interesting to try to bring out in him, as well, a full-blooded character that would, at the same time, be different from the traditional cliche of a small-scale tyrant. In short, Meyerhold should have made a greater effort, for thus far he has not found it. V.

The Logic of the Production

Some people found mysticism in the production. A burnt child really does dread the fire! They even discovered doubles in it! Having read a few reviews, I went to see the performance with a mixture of curiosity and perplexity. How -could Meyerhold, an inveterate enemy of mysticism of any kind (not long ago he rejected even psychology!) make a Hoffmannian-Dostoevskyan-St.-PetersburgWhite-Nights show with doubles? Of course, there was nothing of the kind in the production. I hope I shall be excused for this remark, but to me all this fear of mysticism and compulsive search for doubles shows that not only a major part of our public, but also a majority of our critics simply cannot see when watching a performance. I did not talk with Meyerhold about the internal logic of the production or about the reasons that led him to introduce new characters with no lines to say, etc., but I am absolutely convinced that what I am going to say coincides with his intentions, because all this is quite clear, quite material, and not at all clouded by a mysterious haze. Meyerhold's presupposition is that monologues are inadmissible. One can accept or reject it, but to Meyerhold a character's long speech to himself seems awkward and obsolete. Since Gogol once mentions a certain officer, a great gambler and drunkard whom Khlestakov met in his travels, Meyerhold decided to use this figure. He makes this gambler and drunkard follow Khlestakov like a shadow. He is a genuine masterpiece of Meyerhold's. His bluish-pale face, his broken eyebrow, his provincial pretense of being "irresistable," his incessant

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drinking, his brave dances when he is high, his cynical mocking smile replaced by a dead facial expression when, having drunk too much, he passes out-all this is so great, so much in the style of the period, that from a partner who makes Khlestakov's acting more lively and allows the director to make his mise-en-scenes richer, Meyerhold made a step to a personal creation, theatrical and nondramaturgical at the same time. The officer has no lines to say, he does not influence the course of action, and therefore he remains outside the literary drama. He is an animated piece of furniture, an accessory, and yet an unforgettable personality. Meyerhold makes exceptionally skillful use of this officer in an astonishing trick, fully justified psychologically. Khlestakov noticed that he was being taken for somebody else. He already has a vague, half-conscious idea of exploiting the misunderstanding of the provincial clods by pretending to be a big shot. So he borrows an overcoat and a shako from his companion, leaving him his own old fur hat and worn raincoat, and from this moment on he really looks like an important type. His very psychology starts to change at this moment. Before our eyes a frightened fop, a most unfunctionary functionary, is transformed into the phantasmagorical figure of an impostor. This is the only justification for the action that follows. A small clerk, who cannot even afford a decent wardrobe, would have been almost inconceivable as Khlestakov in his following scenes. Do the local functionaries believe he is an inspector-general in disguise? Meanwhile, the overcoat with a fur collar and the shako cannot but astound the provincial characters. The production, divided into fifteen scenes (Meyerhold likes this device, borrowed from the cinema), unfolds in the following order: the first two scenes, with little variations, do not bring serious surprises; the third scene, "A Unicorn," already introduces what some critics mistook for mysticism. When Anna Andreevna is alone in her room, some officers suddenly appear around her-two, four, eight. They sing a comic serenade for her, and at the end one more officer jumps from a box and fires his gun. What is the meaning of all this abracadabra?True, the officersare wonderful types, very much in the style of the epoch. True, the serenade is filled with perfect brio, and the public greets the scene with loud applause. But still, where is all this happening? Is it reality or a hallucination, a Hoffmanniana? It is none of these. It is just a device that a good book illustrator can use to make a vignette. For instance, if a writer finishes a chapter with the words, "her head was always full of officersin bright uniforms flooding her with compliments and ready to shoot themselves for the sake of her beautiful eyes," the artist can make this phrase into a vignette, even making it fantastic to the point where the above-mentioned officers would all be accommodated inside Anna Andreevna's head. Meyerhold does exactly the same. He claims the right that legitimately belongs to the cinema: dreams and other peculiar visions can be shown as a fantastic reality. I do not know if anyone has used it in the theater before. I know

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The "Unicorn" episode from The Inspector-General.

that in the cinema it is now the most ordinary of devices, and Meyerhold applied it to his production with extraordinary grace and conviction. The fourth and fifth scenes present no special difficulties. In the sixth scene, "Procession," the remarkable mise-en-scene should be noted. The movements of Khlestakov and those of the people massed on the stage, and Garin's superb acting form an exceptionally expressive picture. I could not help noting as well the great moment when Garin-Khlestakov sings of his purpose in life, which is "to cull the posies of pleasure," and at the same time noisily spits in a most disgusting and sickening way. This is the first introduction on the stage of the philosophy of life condemned by Gogol in The Inspector-General, and by a simple action it is raised to the peak of generalization. This sickening spit followed by a belching sound, accompanying the light-minded, merry, and half-drunken conviction in "culling the posies of pleasure," makes you feel to the bones the meaning of philistine hedonism. The seventh scene, "With a Plump Bottle," is staged in the finest possible way. Khlestakov is drunk, so drunk that reality looks fabulous to him. Not only does he keep telling lies, but he enjoys his lies to the full, and even his smallest wishes seem to come true in no time. When he wants to, he hears magic music play, he sees the delicacies he has dreamt about appear in front of him, etc. So, this scene is not to be understood as true reality but as reality filtered through the haze of a half-drunken mind. Is it mysticism? But how could it suddenly turn into mysticism? If a novelist has the right to tell us how a drunken man sees the world, why indeed can the theater not show it? It is true that hitherto we have always demanded that the

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The Inspector-General

theater show only what the public can really see. An exception could be made only for mysterious ghosts or pseudoscientific hallucinations. Meyerhold has gone much farther: not scientific hallucinations, but reality distorted by alcoholic excitement. The eighth scene, "Bribes," is even more upsetting and revolting for the untrained public and critics who are unable to understand the perfectly logical, but new devices for the theater. One should simply remember that in the preceding scene, "The Elephant Fallen off Its Feet," Khlestakov is seen in a dead drunken sleep. During the day he already managed to cheat the provincials out of their money. In his dreams he sees all these inhuman mugs rushing in a strange confusion. He dreams of lines of flirting women, of trembling hands with offerings stretched out to him, of piles of envelopes with money falling down on him like rain. Thoroughly justified as well is the idea of scenic action shown through the main character, of showing reality through Khlestakov's eyes. Meyerhold used this device twice: first, by making us see the characters eating dessert at the mayor's table through the eyes of the drunken Khlestakov, and then, by seeing Khlestakov's day in a curious stylization of a drunken dream. Is this not a bold expansion of stage technique? Doesn't it spare us a scene with real bureaucrats and their offerings presented successively to Khlestakov-an excellent, but slightly too familiar scene by now, and, to be absolutely frank, a slightly monotonous one? Let us present the other version as well, of course. I cannot, however, help welcoming the new one, brimming with healthy fantasy and devoid of morbid contraptions. Because dreams are part of reality and some people's dreams are more revealing than their waking actions.

The "Procession" episode from The Inspector-

General.

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The "Kiss Me" scene is done on the same astonishingly high level. I have already mentioned that it was a true comedy of love. Love or, at least, pettybourgeois love is subjected to such ruthless criticism, is corroded by such a concentrated acid, that an attentive spectator is involuntarily disturbed. This scene has everything: sweet music, dances, infatuation, and jealousy, the inconstancy of man's love, flirting women-all the elements of the eternally recreated fabric of the game of love. And behold! How horrendous it all looks! The torpid drunken cadet strumming on the piano, the sentimental songs, the intoxication, the almost bestial frivolity. Meyerhold was even bold enough to take his charming Anna Andreevna to the bathroom and then make her pale in fear under persistent questioning by Khlestakov's "Where have you been?" It would have been obscene had it not been so precise. All this is necessary because Meyerhold wants to show that only a thin veil separates this false and vulgar "feast" of philistine eroticism from a toilet. Watching the scene, I asked myself, not without fear-can it be that Meyerhold is attacking all love, eroticism in general? No, this is not a boring Christian sermon on the viciousness of all love, because it is physical, or an attack on the false decorative character of any superstructure above the physiological level. Meyerhold does not take this misleading route. He is carried away by a real anger, smashing away in his mockery at the poetry of the salons where males and females cover their brutal carnality with silk dresses, contre-danses, and sweet sounds. Then comes a short break. I did not like the scene "The Lord of the Finances." It is not convincing. Probably, Meyerhold should have gone farther and given a real picture of tragicomic grief. But he did not do so. The episode with the noncommissioned officer'swidow is very vulgar. I think it should be changed. The rest, in my view, is not original enough. This scene, essentially very well designed and never as yet shown on stage with the strength worthy of Gogol, does not capture the public's attention. "The Blessing" is much better, and "The Dream of Saint Petersburg" is superb. This is one of the best scenes. With the generosity of a Jordaens, Meyerhold heaped the stage with all kinds of food. After the meal the mayor and his spouse, both plump, complacent, and melting, surrounded by everything conceivable to appease the demands of a human belly, let their stomachs dream about the future. Suddenly I understood with exceptional clarity what I had never before understood when reading The Inspector-General or watching it on stage: that behind his satire of small provincial bureaucracy, with, of course, certain allusions to its "sister-in-law," the bureaucratic absolute monarchy, Gogol hit more deeply at the fundamental philosophy of carnivorous gluttony of this fatassed Russia. What was the foundation of the distasteful version of the bourgeois world that was the "True Russia"? An outright gluttony, not even ornamented with

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grace. These were the words of Uspensky and Shchedrin, on the permanent tune in the sad Russian symphony: to gorge, to paw women, to humiliate one's fellow men in a sadistic intoxication, to trample them, to fawn in self-oblivion upon those higher in rank-and all this in order to win the right to gorge more extravagantly and to trample more cruelly. This was the solid framework of the bureaucratic philosophy from top to bottom, and, with few exceptions, of the entire society. Meyerhold, in his turn, makes of this episode a picture approaching a Dutch still life in its rounded contours, its abundance, the streams of melted butter watering the isle of the blessed, on which the mayor and his spouse, among fruits, hams, and game, take flight on the wings of the most elevated carnivorous fantasy. Music contributes to this elevation of the triumphant, bestial joy of living. But at the same time the framework of the deadly bestiality is strikingly obvious, as if the stage were seen in X-ray. The final scene is also excellent. Leaving aside the magnificent preparation of the fall of the mayor and his spouse from the heights of their fantasies to the

The finale of The Inspector-General.

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depths of the abyss, the variety of human types, the perfect organization of the commotion and hustle in the overcrowded drawing room-all that precedes the final chords, when, in a stroke of a genius-director's magic wand, Meyerhold suddenly reveals the horrifyingly mechanistic, inhuman, deadly character of the world depicted by Gogol as he had witnessed it. The moment when the group of ugly marionettes come to a standstill, stricken by the news of an imminent thunderous inspection, the motion that had animated them before is transformed into a mechanistic, convulsive dance that sweeps this garland of human trash away through the auditorium. Having decomposed the portrayed world into rest and motion, Meyerhold tells them in the imperious voice of a clairvoyant artist: you are dead, and your motion is that of the dead. One leaves the theater overwhelmed with pride for the fresh achievements of Russian theater, and filled, as well, with a kind of horror at Gogol's uncanny satire of the humanity he knew. Debates on The Inspector-General will continue to rage. Well then, let us debate!

Discovering Meyerhold: Traces of a Search

PAUL

SCHMIDT

It is the evening of December 17, 1898, the opening night of Chekhov's play The Sea Gull at the Moscow Art Theater. On stage, in the roles of the two opposed playwrights, Treplev and Trigorin, are Vsevolod Meyerhold and Konstantin Stanislavsky. "What we need is a new kind of theater," says the aspiring Treplev/Meyerhold. "We need new forms ..." And to Nina, when she complains that his play "has no living people in it," he replies "Why should there be? I don't want to show life as it is, or the way it should be, but the way it is in dreams." Nina rejects Treplev/Meyerhold and becomes the lover of Trigorin/Stanislavsky, who tells her: "I'd like to be in your shoes just for an hour, to see through your eyes and find out what you're thinking and what kind of person you are." Like Nina, the revolution rejected Treplev/Meyerhold and chose Trigorin/ Stanislavsky. It abandoned the openly revolutionary vision of "the way life is in dreams" and chose the prurient desire, the private petty desire, "to be in your shoes just for an hour, to see through your eyes and find out what you're thinking...." The reasons for that choice are less interesting than the fact that a choice had indeed to be made; Chekhov had understood that as clearly as he understood most things. And the casting of his play for that evening seems an act of prophecy, for the choice must still be made today: in distinctions between the work of Stanislavsky and the work of Meyerhold the definition of a modern theater is to be found. Some of those distinctions are historical: the triumph of the Moscow Art Theater and Stanislavsky's Method was not in what it began, but in what it ended. It was the end of the nineteenth century, not the beginning of the twentieth. It was a triumph of culmination, not of innovation. Yet it was a triumph; the Art Theater endures to this day, and its influence has been powerful, especially in America. It is familiar. Meyerhold and his theater were obliterated. Upon what basis, then, can we make a reasoned choice? How can we distinguish, so late, Meyerhold's "new forms"? It is difficult; we must speculate over what has vanished irretrievably. But others have speculated before us, one in particular, all day long, after seeing Meyerhold's production of Griboedov's play Woe to Wit in Moscow on the evening of March 25, 1928.

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Boris Pasternak to Meyerhold Moscow, March 26, 1928 Dear Vsevolod Emilievich, I regret stopping by to see you at the entr'acte last night. Nothing I said to made you any sense-but if it had, it would have been false anyway. And now I today have been practically obsessed all day long, unable to get anything started. And it's because I have been longing for last night. Now that's a different matter. That's clear proof; that I understand. The Inspector-General was an extraordinary production and I don't intend analyzing it in detail. Not that everything in it was of equal stature, but that's the way any creative organism exists: nucleus here, protoplasm there. It may be possible that in Woe to Wit the very same virtues are arranged less systematically, it may be that they are distributed less lavishly there, but those same virtues and subtleties in this production, in contrast to The InspectorGeneral, have become much more profound. If the productions are viewed sequentially this profundity is absolutely obvious and there's no point in wasting words to prove it. It would have been much pleasanter for me to live with my silent awareness of this than to be telling you about it now, and if it weren't for the nonsense that I know you have had to listen to and read about your production, you would never know of my delight. I don't know much about theater and I am not much attracted to it. Suffice it to say that I have lived all my life in Moscow and I have never been to the Maly nor to the Kamerny Theater. I read once in Swinburne's book on Shakespeare that Shakespeare had intended his best works to be read and not to be staged, and this view, even applied to such a name, did not surprise me. It is clear that Shakespeare more than anybody else was addressing the human imagination, not just companies of actors. But let us suppose (we want so much to believe it, and perhaps it really was so) that Blackfriars was a true theater. That means of course that it was a realistic theater. In which case it was patterned and modelled after nature. What then could be the model for such a theater?Human types, behaviors, habits, temperaments? No, all that is still not enough, all those living particularities demand to be imitated, and certainly they are, but they can serve as models only for the actor, that living and fundamental element of theater, not for theater as a whole. True, even a talented actor is so rare that sometimes a culture must be satisfied with him alone, but nonetheless, given even those rare cases, a culture is entitled to want more and to yearn for a totality, i.e., for theater. It seems to me that the only possible model for the composition of a theater can be the imagination, the imagination as a whole, as a system, as an inimitable unity, a pounding musculature, total in its singularity. To put it more

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simply, by virtue of the imagination all arts tend toward an ideal theater, and sometimes, very rarely, they manage to find it. I remember several of Stanislavsky's productions; when I was thirteen and visiting Petersburg for a few days, I would go every evening to watch Komissarzhevskaya; I've seen Michael Chekhov-and I am very much indebted to them to the same degree and in the same sense as I am to you, but one thing is incomparable: when I saw your work I experienced theater for the first and only time in my life. I realized what it meant, and began to believe that as an art it was indeed conceivable. When the spirit of genuine talent touches me it turns me into nothing more than a naive child, I become utterly devoted to the work of art and quail before its author as if I had no experience of life and it was all new to me, and I reach for my handkerchief much too often. After this immediate wave of emotion subsides and I begin to understand what has taken place, then interestingly, what invariably affects me are the common genetic forms that express themselves through the work of art, the laws that determine it, the most general secrets of human nature to which the work of art owes its attraction. It's strange to me, but clear to me, that I can only give my attention to something not worthy of it. Because everything worthy of my attention makes me inattentive-doubly so: first, because it stuns me, and second because it gives rise to reflections that distract me from observing it in detail. But I am happy with this trait of mine, and would not want to live otherwise. What then is the lesson you so casually offer; what is it you make us remember? The main thing I have already said: that rare and barely conceivable enterprise to which Shakespeare, according to Swinburne, addressed himself, has been realized by you. On Sadovaya Street. I have been to your theater three times now and-don't be angry, and please don't laugh-three times is a lot for me. There were two things in your Cuckold that amazed me: your attitude to virtuosity and your attitude to the material. I saw the way you were accumulating virtuosity, hoarding it, or to put it more precisely, what forms of it you were cultivating. You have allotted to it just the role it deserves to play in a great and fascinating art. It occupies in your work the place of a fire extinguisher or a train brake-both devices developed to perfection, both always close at hand, and both inconspicuous when not in use. You have realized better than anyone that art as a whole is a tragedy-a tragedy which can afford no tragedies and which must be allowed to run its entire course smoothly, guarded against catastrophe. And then having avoided the error of certain talents that soon burn themselves out, you have not lapsed into the common error typical of misunderstood mastery. You have not become the slave of a degenerate virtuosity, you have not furnished your home exclusively with fire extinguishers, as evidently happened with Briusov and is happening now (strange as it may seem, given Mayakovsky's temperament) with the LEF people. Your

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train is genuinely gathering speed and moving off, not standing with brakes frozen by petrified formal habits. Also, as I said, I was astonished by your attitude to the material. Once, around the time of Shakespeare's 300th anniversary, I spent a great many hours thinking about his use of metaphors, his poetic richness. I came to the conclusion that it was only Mirandola alive who did not resemble Mirandola dead in Shakespeare; everything else, everything alive was connected in a flood of circular, whirling similitude. I discovered behind his imagery, all those things constantly resembling one another, that sense of universal interrelatedness which grips a great poet at moments of impetuous creativity, that most dynamic of all dynamics. Georg said of Dante: "He took a handful of ashes from the stove, blew on it, and thus created Inferno"-and his words express exactly what I mean just now. When I saw Ilyinsky and Zaichikov smash to pieces that theatrical intonation we are so used to, and then take the fragments-which ought to have made us laugh, they were so formless-and press them and carve them into fleeting forms of expression, forms which began to astonish the spectator and which became the special language of the work of art-it was then I was reminded of the rare and fulgurant summit of art where one can speak of the absolute indifference of the material. I have found that in Aeschylus, in Dante, in Shakespeare-I know it's stupid to make a list-no great poet is conceivable without it-but I never imagined a metaphor could be realized in the theater. And then to find, suddenly, after this initial moment of insatiable energy with which every great creative enterprise ought to begin, but which in most cases either ends in total catastrophe or degenerates into a futile pointlessness, suddenly and delightfully to find that you are also an inexhaustible master of plastic composition, a dramaturge no less than a director, an astonishing historian, and most importantly, a vital and strong-willed historian, that is, an historian who cannot fail to love his homeland and its past because he performs an act of love for its future in his daily work. And this is the only kind of futurism I can accept: futurism with a genealogy. I can't tell you how much I have been granted by your Inspector-General and Woe. It was easy to recall what was essential in Cuckold. There I was able to say I was amazed by two things: the production expressed its principles and I am astonished by principles, which are always easy to name and to list. The vital virtues of your most recent organisms, however, are incalculable-precisely because they are indeed organisms. If I had gone backstage after The Inspector-General I would not have been so confused at meeting Zinaida Nikolaevna. The reason is not only that she is so brilliant as Sophie in Woe to Wit (the role is generally less grateful in performance, and in Griboedov's text as well), but the incredibly absurd reaction she has gotten from the rabble. I was horribly embarrassed by that, and I felt that no matter what I said she wouldn't take my words at their face value, that whatever praises I might have uttered, she would invariably connect them with the

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fact of her mortification. And all that is only a specter of the worst sort of emptiness, I pay no attention to it, I admire both of you and I write this to both of you, and I envy both of you the happiness of working with the human being you love. Entirely yours, B. Pasternak

To the Meyerholds: A Poem by Pasternak All the corridor-gutters have emptied. The chatter subsides, dies away. At the window, late for the performance, The storm knits a stocking of snow. You hole up backstage in the darkness While out here in front I turn pale. Like a fool, I stop by at the entr'acte, Get confused and don't know what to say. I catch sight of treetops and rooftops, And a whirlwind of flies in the dark. I will learn from this raggle-tag winter How to play cat and mouse just like you. I will say that below, those grimaces Have taken my breath away. That my present got wet and unravelled, But I'll bring you another someday. That on earth you can't help people's feelings, That I carry applause from the hall, That these tokens I bear are intended For you both-but for her most of all. I adore your awkward way of walking, That lock of hair, eagerly gray. Even if it's a part you are playing To the hilt-go ahead. One must play. Just as one rather gifted director Played a part in a very young world-

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A spirit adrift on the waters With a rib that he thought he could mold. He entered from behind an arrangement Of stars, and a planet or two, By a trembling hand leading an actress Onstage for her fatal debut. And inspired by that unique performance As if by the odor of kohl, You efface yourself, leaving your makeup. That makeup that we call your soul.

Speculations "... people's feelings," Pasternak's feelings: why is it so much a matter of feelings? Because it is a matter of response: theater is one of the forms through which a culture figures forth meaning. It is a system by which a culture presents its meanings, hence its values, to itself. It is significant, therefore, and propaedeutic: it entails response. Are not all texts so defined? Perhaps. And perhaps I must look for a distinction between the theater of Stanislavsky and the theater of Meyerhold outside of any possible playtext; a distinction that pertains to the staging of plays without being fixed to any one play, or even necessarily deriving from it. Something apart from language. What is theater apart from language, without a playtext? The presence of an individual defined as an individual, who is present to a group defined as a group, which is present to him. Within this frame, what is called "acting" inevitably occurs, and signification is inescapable. What is the code of that signification? What are its transactions? Movement. Movement presented and perceived as significant, therefore gesture, and the reaction that all gesture ineluctably calls forth. Gesture and its reaction may constitute a code when organized in rhythmic patterns.

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Music and dance are also matters of rhythm. Are they significant in this sense? of rhythmic soundThe patterns of rhythmic movement-dance-or music-can't by themselves constitute an independent system of signification; they signify only in reference to some other system of signification. Further, neither music nor dance ever proposes-not music at its most transcendental, nor dance in its most vulgar and mimicking moments-a model for future behavior. Dance and music are matters of memory; they refer us always to a past. Only theater, in patterns of gesture and reaction, can encompass a future, and the notion of probability. In this sense theater is always revolutionary. In what sense? It is propaedeutic, as all revolutionary art must be; it points toward a future, without having to present that future; rather, it shows us the virtualities contained within the present, and asks for response. In theatrical gesture and its reaction is the idea of violent change made clear. Theater proposes implicitly, and shows us explicitly, the destruction of a gesture and its source: the individual who made it, and the class it identifies-the class to which the gesture-maker belongs by virtue of having made the gesture. Theater shows us the results of that destruction: consequences, and evolutions: it shows us Oedipus, blinded and setting out into exile, and Hamlet, dying and yielding place to Fortinbras. What of Stanislavsky and Meyerhold? How did they use gesture? Stanislavsky used gesture to represent movement, movement neither presented nor perceived, therefore movement that signified only accidently, by imitation of what he called "real life." Gesture observed unawares. Such gesture is implicitly pornographic. How did Meyerhold use gesture? Meyerhold used gesture to present movement: movement that signified, movement structured to present a possibility, a virtuality, an idea. This is a social act. Two gestures are involved, and the primary one is the gesture of presentation: the act of indicating and defining the gesture as gesture. It is this doubleness that defines theatrical gesture: the primary gesture surrounds the secondary one with a stillness in which it is figured forth with lambent clarity. How is that stillness created? By structuring gesture; presenting it in space, but in a moment removed from

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time; presenting it, that is, in a tableau: a moment clearly part of a flux but perceived as being outside of it, no matter how briefly. Time must therefore be articulated within space in a way that permits the possibility of slowing time, to the point of making it stand still.

What Meyerhold Said* Before being staged music was able to create an image in the mind only in time; through staging, music conquered space. The mental image becomes real through the mime and movement of the actor, subordinated to the musical design; what had unravelled itself only in time was now made manifest in space as well. I have read all of Wagner, in German. We know him as a composer and author of the texts of his own operas, but he also wrote ten volumes of extremely interesting essays. I have studied them all thoroughly. If you go to those volumes and look at the pages I have covered with my own notes, you will understand at once what interested me. Wagner introduced two new factors, unknown before his time: the leitmotif, and the "endless" melodic line. He marked off in the orchestra those emotional states which had to be taken into account in the spectator, and expressed them not only in words-words spoken in dialogues written by Wagner himself-but also ... at that moment when a character says something, he has the orchestra play certain melodies, he arranges certain harmonies, by which he causes certain ideas to arise in the spectator's brain; that is, the spectator experiences certain associations. In Wagner you often stop listening to the singer, because he isn't singing; at moments of a concentrated emotional staccato, at certain points of structural importance to the text, he is only speaking in harmony at a fast tempo. But you do hear the orchestra-it makes itself heard-and you follow what is going on in the orchestra. The orchestra is thus used as a new element in theatrical activity. Acting is melody, directing is harmony ... I discovered that not long ago, and I astonished myself, the definition was so exact. Don't you think so?... Musical terminology helps us a great deal. I love it because it possesses an almost mathematical exactness.... I understood what the art of the stage director was when I learned to harmonize in my staging the melodic line of the performance, which is what the acting is. That's very important. *

The following quotations are from Stat'i, Pis'ma, Reci, Besedy, 2 vols., Moscow, Iskusstvo, 1968; Aleksandr Gladkov, "Iz vospominanij o Mejerkhol'de," Moskva eatralnaja, Moscow, 1960, pp. 347-76; and Aleksandr Gladkov, "Mejerkhol'd govorit," Novyj Mir, 8, 1961, 213-35.

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... And when Stefka says: "Why? Well, because. .." and then falls silent, the music speaks for her. Music reveals the inner essence; it spares us, comrades, from what? From the need for authentic emotions. Why must I have an authentic emotion when such a marvelous means of expression exists? Have you ever considered why there is always music during the acrobatic numbers at the circus? You may say, oh, to create a mood, for the sake of festivity, but that would be a superficial answer. Circus people need music as a rhythmic support, as an aid in keeping time. Their work is based on an extremely exact time-count, the least deviation from which could lead to break-up and catastrophe. With familiar music as a background, counting time is usually faultless. Without music it is more difficult, but still possible. But if the orchestra were suddenly to play music different from the one the acrobat was accustomed to, it could lead to disaster. In a certain measure this is also true in the theater. Supported by the rhythmic background of music, acting gains precision. Once in Constantinople I visited a Moslem school during a lesson, and I was struck by the fact that the student, learning the Koran by heart, held the teacher's hand, and both of them rocked rhythmically back and forth. And then I understood that a strong rhythm helps the student concentrate, and provides for easier recall. Rhythm is a great help! The director must be able to feel the time without looking at his watch. A performance of a play is an alternation of dynamic and static moments, as well as dynamic moments of different kinds. That is why the gift of rhythm seems to me one of the most important a director can have. Without a keen sense of stage time it is impossible to direct a good production. Dragging out or speeding up an act can completely change the character of a performance. Play Maeterlinck fast, and you get music-hall routines. Play musichall routines slow-and you begin to think it's Leonid Andreev. It is precisely in the possibility for the actor to improvise that drama is distinct from opera. In opera the conductor does not permit the extension of any temporal sections, and only the tempi can be extended .... I will never renounce the right to stimulate an actor to improvise. The only important thing in improvisation is that secondary concerns do not overwhelm the main thing, which is the matter of timing, and of the interdependence of temporal sections on stage. Pauses are very attractive to a good actor, one who has mastered his craft, but in an actor who has no feeling of time they can be insupportable. That's why an intelligent sense of self-restraint is so necessary. In the directorial scores for my

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productions I have attempted to discover various devices for self-restraint. In Bubus the Teacher the musical accompaniment helped the actors to restrict themselves in time. In The Inspector-General the little moving platforms were intended to restrict the actors in space. Directing is not a matter of static groupings, it is a process-the influence of time upon space. Beyond the spatial idea it includes the temporal idea, which is rhythmic and musical. When you look at a bridge, you see what might be a leap frozen in metalmovement, that is, not something static. The tension in the bridge is the main thing, not the decoration of the guard-rail. It's the same with directing.

Some Conclusions The actor is central to the theatrical enterprise. And yet the actor is always limited by the role and by the self-absorption necessary for him to perform it; he can never be anything but Oedipus or Hamlet. If we go merely to see him as Oedipus or as Hamlet, we can never see the play Oedipus or the play Hamlet. The director alone can perform for us the play Oedipus, the play Hamlet. And in order for him to do that he must first break through the willfulness of most actors, their overwhelming consciousness of self, their unawareness of their surround. He must teach them to hear not just their internal rhythm, but the rhythm of the whole. All of Meyerhold's training devices, his science of biomechanics, were attempts to teach actors an externally controllable technique-but one that had, nevertheless, a spontaneous and organic source in the actor's gestalt. Meyerhold knew well that if we perceive in the actor's performance a split between mind and body, if we perceive the process of control of one over the other, we are distracted from the organic process of the performance as a whole. In this knowledge he is one with Stanislavsky. And yet he knows that he cannot do his own work as director, cannot construct an elaborate whole of which the actor, though primus inter pares, is only one component among many, until he can rely with absolute assurance on the actor's sense of the whole. The Stanislavskian actor is always idiosyncratic, autochthonous; hence any performance with such actors works best when the director simply provides a frame within which they are left to do what they do. The focus of attention in such productions is on the alchemical reaction between actor and actor. From this point of view we see that Stanislavsky was not a director, but a trainer of actors. His directorial impulse was dissipated in the attempt to coordinate the individuality of actors, hence he was able to perceive the text only rudimentarily, only as a pretext for the display of authentic emotion.

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Stanislavsky's drive was toward improvisation: acting "as if," as if it were spontaneous. His acting is illusionistic, subjective, conventional in the sense of stereotypical (since how else would we recognize it?). It is a concept of acting that rests ultimately on individual genius: the greatest actors (and Stanislavsky was a great actor) give us supreme gestures which then pass into the repertory of other actors, and thereafter into the theater as a whole. Improvisational acting implicitly denies the idea of any training except of a supplementary kind. Meyerhold was a great actor; and yet he gave up acting in order to find a system of acting accessible to all, one that could be taught to all. He dreamed ultimately of passing from a spectacle acted by professionals to the free play of workers during their free time. He dreamed of a theater of acting-as-action: movement presented as equal to work, as valuable activity for its own sake. Movement, in other words, as social and reciprocal, not as autochthonous and reflexive; movement directed out, not turned in. His system of biomechanics was an elaboration of physical exercises that emphasized the actor's outward visualization of himself, not his internal state. It emphasized his dependence on the actors he played with. It used the terms risunok (sketch, pose, profile) and samozerkalenie (self-mirroring) to force the actor's visual awareness of himself, to change him from an instinctive improviser to one who sees himself as a director would see him-sees himself, that is, as part of a whole. Meyerhold's conception of acting totally denies the idea of "character," with its nineteenth-century history as an image of bourgeois individualism: of private morality and personal motivation. And above all, it attacks the Freudian notion of sexual individuality as a motivation for action. Freud's theater, that strange Viennese monodrama, the individual isolated and talking, talking, talking in an endless attempt to reveal his intimate personal past, an unending stream of words delivered to an invisible and unreacting other, somewhere out there beyond the edge of the couch: this was the image of the actor that Stanislavsky and his followers, willy-nilly, had installed at the heart of his theater. It was this image that Meyerhold was to deny above all else in his. In Meyerhold's theater darkness is destroyed by light, the hidden chair of the analyst-observer is discovered, made present; a passive, purely aural process is replaced by an active, physical transaction between two equal entities who occupy the same space. The idea of audience, those who hear, is replaced by the idea of spectators, those who see. The primacy of the voice as a speaker of words is denied for the sake of the text, written in more than words. In the distinction between Stanislavsky and Meyerhold it is, ultimately, the notion of text that is paramount. Text not merely as playtext, but as the record of the confrontation of playtext and director. Meyerhold is the first modern director because he is the first to insist on the primacy of that role, indeed the first to

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conceive it as a role, something to be played out, performed. He sees it as a creative force as well, equal to the role of the playwright in shaping the theatrical experience, an experience considered different from the playtext, and not achieved merely by actors. Without the director as demiurge, henceforth, nothing theatrical obtains. The role of the director is here conceived as an extension of the Romantic notion of the Interpreter, shifted away from the actor and the idea of character, from the mimetic impulse merely, to more complicated impulses. In this modern conception there is more to the text than could be conveyed by actors or designers. The text had to be revealed; it did not correspond to reality, no longer held a mirror up to nature. In Mayakovsky's phrase, the theater was "no longer a mirror, but a magnifying glass." Meyerhold's was a modernist view of the complexity of the text, its need for elucidation. Meyerhold first of all directors operates on the text in the modern sense; he writes the text anew; in Barthes's phrase, he "crosses its writing with a new inscription." And here he reveals to us the only way in which a playtext can be read: in the juxtaposition of text with historical time. Its performance (reading) at any given moment is the measure of the time between its original writing and this "new inscription." The author fixes the text in his own time, the director in his staging inscribes it in his, and in the inscription reveals history to us. It is in this sense that Meyerhold is a Marxist director: he knew that certain texts belonged to a past, and had to be reconstructed in a present, always with a sense of their contained extension (i.e., into a future). His confrontation with the playtext was the midpoint of that progression of the text; hence his responsibility to the text comprised his understanding of the time when it was first written, of the time in which he as director was to rewrite it, and of a vision of the future which would determine the direction of his rewriting. This is to be "absolutely modern" in Rimbaud's sense-to perceive the inevitability of this process qua process whenever language is to be encoded as text. Meyerhold offers us theater as spectacle: a conception worked out in opposition to the untenable notion of realism in theater, of "real life" upon the stage. To the idea of an art existing in se and per se, where the viewer is idealized and the author is absent, Meyerhold opposes an art whose very existence is the transaction between viewer and author. In his theater the viewer is made visible, and made to confront the author as director/inscriber, as presenter/commentator, as "author of the spectacle," as Meyerhold used to sign his productions. Meyerhold offers us a theater of the world, one that forces us to look at the world and our existence in it.

Vladimir Tatlin: Form/Faktura*

MARGIT

ROWELL

Tatlin's life is known to us in barest outline. Although a large body of his works and writings presumably still exists in the Soviet Union, these are for the most part unseen and unknown by Westerners.' The bases for study of this artist, considered the founder of constructivism, are therefore sparse: a small number of paintings, drawings, miscellaneous objects and fragments of objects; a few photographs, texts, and eyewitness reports, which are accessible outside Russia. Since no quantity of work ever found its way to the West, far less firsthand documentation is available for Tatlin than for Malevich, say, or Lissitzky. Yet Tatlin is as celebrated as they, as honored as they are for his contributions to the art of the twentieth century. We can only conjecture that the high points of his creative activity are known to us and, although few, they are, like the greater bodies of work by his better known contemporaries, exemplary and a valid point of departure. From these remaining fragments we can draw a profile of Tatlin's achievement and see that it is at one and the same time profoundly Russian and extremely modern. That is to say, Tatlin drew on the peculiarly Russian conceptions of faktura and transrational language to envision an art that would consist of a semantic encoding of pure materials. The biographical framework of Tatlin's life is fairly familiar. Born in Moscow in 1885,2 he was fifteen years younger than Malevich, eight years older *

This essay was originally presented as a lecture, in French, at the Grand Palais in Paris on February 14, 1978. The author is grateful to ASDA for the opportunity to deliver the lecture, to Charlotte Douglas for her translation of the Moscow V. E. Tatlin exhibition catalogue referred to throughout, to Philip Verre for infinite aid and assistance, and to Fred Starr for advice and encouragement. 1. In the catalogue of the recent Tatlin exhibition in Moscow, it is noted that aside from the "work which is located in our State Museums-the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the Bakhrushin Museum and the Leningrad Theatrical Museum, among othtrs-a large number of his works, primarily paintings and graphics, were, after his death, given to the Central State Archive of Literature and Art ...." (V. E. Tatlin, Katalog vystavki proizvedenii, Moscow, 1977, p. 27.) It is thought that a number of reliefs and counter-reliefs are to be found in the museum collections as well. Also, a collection of Tatlin's writings has apparently been published in the Soviet Union. And not in Kharkov, as is sometimes written. Tatlin's family moved to Kharkov when he was 2. two years old, and he spent approximately the next fifteen years there, which accounts for this confusion.

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than Mayakovsky, four years younger than Picasso. By the age of seventeen, he had run away from home and joined the Merchant Marine. He would continue to go to sea intermittently until 1914-15. At seventeen, he went to Moscow, where he began painting icons and ultimately entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. There he studied under the academic painters K. A. Korovin and V. A. Serov. By 1908, he was friendly with Larionov, the Burliuk brothers, the Vesnin brothers, as well as with the painter Lebedev and the sculptor Lebedeva, who would remain lifelong friends. In 1909-10, he began exhibiting fairly regularly in the principal avant-garde exhibitions in Odessa, Moscow, and Petrograd and was friendly with most of the significant artists of the period.3 Tatlin executed his first stage designs in 1911, for Czar Maximillian and His Unruly Son Adolf, presented in Moscow.4 In the spring-summer of 1913, he travelled to Berlin, and subsequently to Paris, where he visited Picasso's studio. Upon his return, he began his experimental relief constructions. In 1917, together with Rodchenko, he worked under George Yakulov on the interior decoration of Moscow's Cafe Pittoresque. After the October Revolution and in the context of Lenin's propaganda program, he received a commission for a monument, for which, in 1919-20, he conceived the celebrated Monument to the IIIrd International. Aside from the Letatlin, or glider, on which Tatlin worked between 1930 and '32, the model for the monument was his last major personal work. Beginning in 1918, Tatlin devoted his energies to pedagogy, reorganizing the curriculum of the State Free Art Studios, and teaching "Volume, Material, and Construction," "Culture of Materials," and wood- and metalworking and ceramics during successive phases of his teaching career.5 He continued to work on stage decors until his death. Although Tatlin lived until 1953, the artist we admire as the father of constructivism died many years earlier, despite outward appearances of an active creative life. Indeed, Tatlin, as we choose to remember him, had a creative life span of at most twenty years, from approximately 1912 to 1932. Although Tatlin is recognized as the initiator of constructivism, he did not invent this concept. His oeuvre, particularly the counter-reliefs and the model for the Monument, which is in some ways their logical extension in time and space, is the culmination of an intellectual and aesthetic movement which was beginning to crystallize in Russia as early as 1911. At about that time, artists and writers began to speak out against the aesthetic enterprise dominated by the idea of 3. According to Troels Andersen (in Vladimir Tatlin, Stockholm, Moderna Museet, 1968, pp. 12-13), Tatlin exhibited with the League of Youth in 1911, The Donkey's Tail in 1912, joined the Jack of Diamonds in 1912, exhibited in the League of Youth and World of Art exhibitions in 1913, the Tramway V and 0.10 exhibitions in 1915, and in his own exhibition The Shop in 1916. 4. A set design for this play is reproduced in Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922, New York, Harry N. Abrams, p. 170. 5. "Volume, Material, and Construction," 1919-24; "Culture of Materials," 1921-25; wood- and metalworking and ceramics, 1927-30; in V. E. Tatlin, pp. 6-9.

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"beauty." French painting, represented by prime examples in Russian collections, embodied the conventions they wished to refute: references to nature, illusionistic spatial organization, and, more significantly in this context, what seemed to them a personal, individualistic form of expression in which the arbitrary and the accidental played major roles, and which, therefore, could not be measured or considered useful to the collectivity. In place of these conventions, the poets and painters of this generation in Russia sought to regenerate language itself in order to express the original purity of human experience. Art was to be a self-contained reality, not a reproduction of existing phenomena. Language, be it poetic or pictorial, was to have its own substance which would engender new forms. In 1912-13, in an attempt to purify the spoken or written word, to strip it of historical connotations, Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov invented the zaum, or transrational tongue. Malevich's suprematism can be considered an attempt to create a pure visual idiom, uncontaminated by traditional formal conventions. And Tatlin's constructivism exemplifies another dimension of this complex movement. But before attempting an analysis of Tatlin's particular contribution, it is important to establish a definition of constructivism; for that term, which ironically has its own history, evokes a number of diverse connotations, many of which are far removed from its original meaning. Tatlin's own 1932 definition is the clearest and most precise. "'Constructivism' in quotation marks," said Tatlin, by which he acknowledged that the term was already distorted, "has not taken into account the organic connection of its effort, its work, to the materials. In essence, it is only as a result of the dynamics of these interrelationships that a vitally necessary form is born.... Meanwhile, the appearance of new cultural-living institutions in which the working masses will live, think, and bring their talents to light will demand from artists not only an external decorativeness, but will demand first of all objects in accordance with the dialectics of the new way of life." 6 In other words, the constructivist object must exist as a necessary form in relation to two poles of being: the physical materials which are its substance and for which no other form could be appropriate, on the one hand, and, on the other, the social context within which it serves a need or function. Simple as it may seem, this idea is complex indeed when one considers the notion of "necessary form" in relation to the time and place in history-and in art history-in which Tatlin lived and worked. Tatlin's "necessary form" was a compound logic; it was to express truth to materials, mankind's authentic creative will, the universal laws of human experience, and a social necessity. The idea of truth to materials is fairly obvious. A given physical substance, because of its intrinsic nature, will generate certain kinds of forms and not others. Man's creative powers are exercized in organizing 6.

V. E. Tatlin, p. 26.

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the medium without violating its unique characteristics. This respect for a material's identity is an expression of man's relation to the fundamental elements of nature. Finally, the form, through its inner relationships, tensions, contrasts, textures, rhythms is a reflection of natural laws and processes. This is a metaphysical reading of the original definition of the constructivist object. But its physical existence is equally significant. The constructivist object exists in the viewer's real space, not in the confined and artificial space of the traditional work of art. Its medium is commonplace (wood, glass, metal), a reminder that it is not a representation of something else. Its forms belong to that repertory inherent to each material; its colors are those of each natural substance; the contrasts, rhythms, and tensions which emerge are those generated by particular juxtapositions within the object, and not from extrapictorial situations to which the object might allude. "Social necessity" carried a broad range of implications. It encompassed works of art which, through their own radically innovative aesthetic principles, would break down the barriers between painting, sculpture, and architecture, even between art and life, and would exist as examples of a general creative and useful activity which would educate a mass audience to the meaning of the new social reality. It also was to include productions corresponding to the technology of the new age (thereby reflecting the possibilities and necessities of that age). And finally, it included innovative utilitarian objects serving a precise function in the new society. The social necessity of the constructivist object was idealist but not specifically political. In view of latter-day interpretations, it is important to emphasize that, prior to 1917, and even after the October Revolution, Malevich, Tatlin, and their colleagues were fundamentally apolitical. Their conception of art was comparable to that of laboratory research or experimentation. They sought to break with tradition and hoped for a new society, but for them this society was defined only in terms of a prerevolutionary utopianism. After 1917, there was perhaps a slight shift of focus; certainly much more was said about an art for the collectivity, and that collectivity was more specifically defined. But the major artistic breakthroughs had already been accomplished.

Tatlin began his career as a painter. His works of the period around 1911-12, of which The Fish Vendor is a typical example,7 show the impact of Cezanne and cubism, which Tatlin would have known through the Moscow collections of Morosov and Shchukin. Their influence is of less importance to his style, however, than that of icon painting and folk art. Folk art's influence on Larionov, Goncharova, and Malevich has been well documented. It appears in their use of 7. Collection Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Exhibited in Russian and Soviet Painting, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977; color plate in catalogue, p. 44.

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KasimirMalevich.Taking In the Rye. 1912.(Stedelijk Museum,Amsterdam.)

VladimirTatlin. The Model. 1913.(Tretyakov Gallery,Moscow.) vivid hues, heavy outlines like those of popular woodcuts or lubki, shallow space, and loose, narrative-like structure. The impact of icon painting, though less thoroughly analyzed, is of no less importance.8 Although icons seemed to belong to an anonymous folk-art tradition, they were in fact far more structured, regularized, and sophisticated as a semantic system. Indeed, the icon presented a text of concrete signs connoting an impalpable reality. The visual refinement of the icon and its manner of organizing the viewer's perception and emotions provided these artists with a rich source upon which to draw. More specifically, the charged colors and rhythms, the inverse perspective, the use of rich materials to enhance an otherwise purely spiritual content provided them with pictorial devices that constituted an alternative to the exhausted formulae of Western art. Like many of his contemporaries, Tatlin had painted icons and copied religious frescoes in his youth. His paintings of 1911-13 betray the importance of this experience to his developing style. The dynamic curves, the luminous and spatially undefined ground, the strongly schematized morphologies, the abrupt change of scale between central and secondary motifs (some of which are inserted in the rhythms of the landscape) are reminiscent of the icon's stylistic conventions. The Model (collection Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) was presumably Tatlin's last painting before leaving for Berlin and Paris in the spring of 1913. A comparison of this painting with a canvas by Malevich of 1912 (since by 1913 Malevich was a cubist painter) is revealing. The dominant feature of Malevich's 8.

See M. Betz, "The Icon and Russian Modernism," in Artforum, summer 1977, 38-45.

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paintings, such as Taking in the Rye or The Woodcutter, is color, color which generates both the space and form, thus recalling the celebrated statement by Cezanne: "Lorsque la couleur est d sa richesse, la forme est a sa plenitude." The schematized silhouettes, the saturated hues, and the effect of vaulted planes evoke comparisons with folk art, Goncharova, and Fernand Leger. The impact of Tatlin's painting is wholly different. Despite its density of hue, it is chromatically restrained, for color was not Tatlin's prime concern. He was much more preoccupied by the rhythmic continuity of an articulated form, suggestive of an organic function. This accent on a dynamic articulation through line-drawn curves is found in icon painting as well. Malevich's figures are assemblages of separate and discrete planes, whereas Tatlin's, no matter how schematized, retain a fluid continuity. This distinction is equally eloquent in drawings. Malevich's drawn silhouettes are the rapid summary of a visual impression, whereas Tatlin indicates how the different parts of the body are linked together in order to serve a function. The distinction will be significant. In the spring of 1913, Tatlin travelled briefly to Berlin as a bandore player, after which he continued to Paris, where he visited Picasso in his studio at 242 boulevard Raspail.9 According to Edward Fry, who interviewed Lipchitz in the 1960s, the latter served as an interpreter. It is generally assumed that Tatlin received such a shock from the constructions he saw in Picasso's studio, that, upon his return to Russia, he began to make the counter-reliefs which have since become legendary, though, to our knowledge, few of them have survived. Yet, as seductive and credible as this sequence of events may appear, one wonders if it is not a gross oversimplification. For if one examines the background, context, intentions, and results of these two artists, one discovers that they are radically antithetical. Picasso's constructions are less familiar to us than the rest of his oeuvre, since in the artist's possession all his life. But a few examples were remained they photographed by Kahnweiler and reproduced by Apollinaire in Les Soirees de Paris as early as the autumn of 1913. What is singular about them is that Picasso was, until then, essentially a painter and these works, despite a real extension into space, reflect a painter's vision. Whereas the analytical cubist painter sought to eliminate illusions of depth, to split open the volume of a given object and align There is some question as to when Tatlin visited Picasso in Paris. Troels Andersen, Vladimir 9. Tatlin, p. 12, and the chronology in V. E. Tatlin, p. 3, indicate that it was in spring-summer 1913. Camilla Gray and Pierre Daix (in La Vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1977, p. 136 and p. 141, fn. 5) believe it was after the summer, in which case Picasso would already have moved to the rue Schoelcher. Since the former opinions are based on Soviet written documents, the latter on oral reports from contemporaries such as Larionov, the former position appears more justified. Furthermore, photographs exist showing elaborate installations of the constructions in Picasso's boulevard Raspail studio (the guitar surrounded by drawings; a large relief of a woman playing a guitar strung up with string; see "Oeuvres et images inedites de la jeunesse de Picasso" in Cahiers d'Art, II, 1950, 281-2); this seems a more impressive context for Tatlin's visit. There are no indications that the constructions were reinstalled in such a manner after Picasso's move to the rue Schoelcher studio.

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its different faces parallel to the surface of the canvas, Picasso attempted, in these constructions, to detach the picture planes from the surface of the canvas and reassemble them in front of the wall. Although the organization by planar components is essentially the same, that is to say, pictorial, their posture and presence are different, established in a new relationship to the wall, the ambient space, and the viewer. They are no longer virtually or truly constricted by the conventional spatial limitations of the two-dimensional surface. Although pictorially conceived, the first objects have no ground or background; the motifs are silhouetted against the wall. This is a logical progression from the shattered and blurred analytical cubist ground; moreover, it is thought that Picasso's interest in African sculpture was crucial to this development.'? The African masks which so appealed to Picasso, Braque, Derain, and Vlaminck were hung directly on their walls. Despite the transfer of these masks to a context where they were stripped of their specific ritual functions, they maintained a magical, not to say iconic, power which did not escape the European artists' understanding. The spiritual content and functional autonomy of these objects was manifest in their formal stylization, defined as an architectonic, frontal, hieratic organization. The initiated tribal member does not confuse the sacred reality of the mask with human reality, nor is the one meant to refer directly to the other. He therefore does not seek to recognize a familiar face. On the contrary, he deciphers a repertory of signs which constitute a coded text. Thus, in the Ivory Coast masks which European artists favored, there is no modeled imitation of the continuous volumes of the human face. The mask exists as a flat or concave plane, bounded by a crudely cut contour. The nose may be a noninflected triangular or rectangular plane, the eyes projected cylinders, the mouth a projecting ridge. Placement, height of relief, and shape are important to the legibility of these ciphers of predetermined meaning. Picasso's metal Guitar of 1912 evokes the same compelling presence as the African mask through a strict nonimitative formal logic." The dark sheet metal recalls the patinated dark wood; a projected cylinder signifies the hollowed mouth of the guitar, whereas a length of concave pipe reads as the neck and an open hollow box shape as its body. The instrument's characteristic curves exist here and there, not in relation to a functional structure but as rhythmic reminders. The viewer is not called upon to recognize a guitar but to read its emblem, an emblem which has an expanded significance precisely because it is not a literal image. Reduced to a frontal organization of architectonic planes, it exists as a somewhat enigmatic, autonomous statement. In thinking of the relationship between the iconic presence of the Guitar and 10. Of course, guitars are hung on the wall. So that these first cut-out constructions are entirely logical. It may even have been an effect of artistic accident that Picasso hung his first guitar, once made, on the wall. 11. For a full analysis of this work, see William Rubin, Picasso in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, MOMA, 1972, p. 74.

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the African mask as a formal precedent, one is reminded of the connection between Tatlin's painting and the Russian icon. In parallel cases both artists are attracted to an art which has no connection to their aesthetic formation, which is thought to be primal, and is constituted as a coded text. To analyze the Guitar solely in terms of its references to African art would, of course, be inadequate. The cutting away of planes, the transparency or invisibility of certain components of the original instrument, the layering and superimposition of others derive from Picasso's own painting. This emblem or system of signs is of Picasso's own making, inspired by his transposed vision of the subject. And Picasso chose his materials to facilitate this vision. The first requisite was that the material adapt itself to the intricacies of a layered syntax. Flexibility and malleability were his fundamental priorities, for, like Matisse at a later period, Picasso was drawing with scissors. And, in order to embody his ideas as quickly as they arose, he worked with extremely pliable materials: paper, cardboard, string, sheet metal, wood. He was indifferent to the intrinsic properties of each medium. All were treated in a similar manner. They were cut, folded, bent, punctured, and pinned into different shapes. Around 1914, painted surfaces became more common in Picasso's constructions, which employed them towards various ends: an allusion to diverse substances and textures (such as fabric, bread, sausage); the dynamic orientation of planes; chromatic passages and contrasts, transitions, tensions, harmonies, and dissonances within a single work. Yet despite their growing complexity, these works remain the embodiment of a pictorial idea, the result of a painter's vision rather than a sculptor's. The medium is subordinated to the image, stripped of its specificity and autonomy. Finally, and as a confirmation that Picasso's goal was not sculpture in any conventional sense, he did not seek perfection in the execution of these constructions. The notion of a well-crafted or well-finished object was definitely not a priority. On the contrary, the artist was preoccupied by a spatial rendering of his vision. A later text by Gonzalez which discusses Picasso's own feelings (probably about his synthetic cubist paintings) is significant in this respect: "With these paintings, Picasso told me, it is only necessary to cut them out-the colors are only the indications of different perspectives, of planes inclined from one side or the other-then assemble them according to the indications given by the color, in order to find oneself in the presence of a 'sculpture.'" 12 In view of their crudeness (Andre Salmon speaks of Picasso's lack of technical skill in making these constructions),'3 these constructions perhaps were a means, not an end, like Braque's paper and cardboard models of the summer of 1912, "investigations for 12. J. Gonzalez, "Picasso sculpteur," in Cahiers d'Art, nos. 6-7 (1936), 189. English translation by Ron Johnson, in The Early Sculpture of Picasso, 1901-14, New York, Garland Press, 1976, p. 100. Picasso is probably referring here to paintings which do not precede but were done simultaneously with the constructions. 13. Andre Salmon, Souvenirs sansfin; Deuxieme epoque 1908-1920), Paris, Gallimard, 1955, p. 240.

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form and volume," aids for painting, so to speak, and not finished sculptural works.14

Like his contemporaries, Tatlin, at the time of his visit to Picasso, was preoccupied by problems of the form and meaning of the work of art, but in relation to a radically different context. A text by Nicolai Tarabukin makes this abundantly clear: The form of a work of art derives from two fundamental premises: the material or medium (colors, sounds, words) and the construction, through which the material is organized in a coherent whole, acquiring its artistic logic and its profound meaning. Consequently, the notion of form should be understood as the real structure of the work, its structural or compositional unity ... The form of objects from the outside world often serves as a stimulus to artistic creation, but form in this sense... must be excluded from the number of real pictorial components of the work of art.... 5 So that, whereas the French school accepted the object in the outside world as a given, the Russians did not; their focus was, rather, on medium and technique as the true constituents of the work of art. Medium, as used in this text, implies a specific substance or texture, specified by the Russian term faktura. Tarabukin develops this concept in a later passage: In painting, and in art in general, the problem of materials must be considered separately, in that the painter must acquire a developed sense of materials, he must feel the inherent characteristics of each material which of themselves condition the construction of the object. The material dictates the forms, and not the opposite. Wood, metal, glass, etc., impose different constructions. Consequently, the constructivist organization of an object depends on the materials used: the study of diverse materials constitutes an important and autonomous consideration.16 Thus, for these artists, the layer of paint itself could be considered as a texture or fabric which generates form. For example, Cezanne's singular brushstroke was a faktura which articulated the organization of his surface. Malevich showed his admiration for Cezanne's technique in paintings such as the Argentine Polka of 1911. A more eloquent manipulation of surface texture is seen in Larionov's work 14. See Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, London, Phaidon, 1971, p. 234. This conjecture does not invalidate the "immense impact [of Picasso's constructions] on twentieth-century sculpture" (W. Rubin, Picasso, p. 208, fn. 2). That impact was possible through the simple fact that they survived and were made known through exhibitions and reproductions. 15. Nikolai Tarabukin, Le Dernier tableau, Paris, Editions Champ Libre, 1972, p. 104. The original text was apparently written in 1916 and published in 1923. 16. Ibid., pp. 123-24. Note the use of "constructivist" here, which preceded (and of course influenced) the invention of the specific term.

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of 1912-13. The consistency of the paint and the orientation of the brushwork create the "reality" of Larionov's "rayism." In short, each material-be it paint, wood, glass, metal, etc.-by its very nature, generates specific forms; and Tarabukin's texts indicate that the "culture of materials" which is attributed to Tatlin belongs to the broader framework of the whole of Russian art.

The first known relief from Tatlin's hand (and his only documented figurative relief) appears to have been inspired by a construction he may have seen in Picasso's studio. The visual analogies between these two objects are obvious (insofar as we may judge from photographs and descriptions, since both are presumably destroyed). Picasso's assemblage is thought to have been made of paper imitating wood (on the left), cardboard and wire (in the central portion), and sheet metal stencil with grillwork (on the right). Tatlin's relief is also conceived in three parts: the element on the left appears to be a tin plate laced with a wire mesh over the opening; the central element is a piece of curved sheet metal; on the right is a piece of wallpaper (such as he may have seen in other assemblages in Picasso's studio). Yet despite these and other superficial similarities, the artist's intentions are demonstrably different.

Pablo Picasso. Still Life. 1913.(Destroyed.)

Vladimir Tatlin. The Bottle. 1913. (Destroyed.)

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In Tatlin's relief, the element on the left was a sign meant to signify transparency itself, evoked by the shape of a bottle, enhanced by wire filigree, and reinforced by the curve of the smaller reflective surface placed beneath the wire web.17Presumably Tatlin sought to capture the essential ambiguity of a volume in glass: both concave and convex, filling space and filled by space, and consisting of a nearly invisiblestructure. The central motif is a rolled sheet of polished metal. The form itself is emphasized by the reflective attributes of metal. Whereas the element on the left is open, empty, and receptive to light, the central motif is closed, convex, and rejects the light that falls upon it. The third substance, a piece of wallpaper with a trompe-l'oeil pattern, exhibits both intaglio and cameo effects, depth and relief, shadow and reflection. The wallpaper is torn at the upper edge, and the lower left corner is folded over, pointing to the friable substance of paper. This first relief shows a tentative expression of the true nature of each material. In the structures that follow, the expression of substance is more direct.18 In fact, through the constancy of forms for a given material, one can speak of a distinct repertory of signs. It would seem, moreover, that Tatlin already wanted a systematized lexicon of forms by which to order content and avoid the pitfalls of subjective, individualistic, arbitrary expression. He believed in "a combination of the simplest rectilinear and the simplest curvilinear forms." For it is precisely this that brings about "a uniformity of technico-constructive solutions and confines the artist to research on the most usual materials, those which are commonly accepted." 19 Wood is the material most often found in the later reliefs. As prepared for everyday use, the usual form of wood is that of a plank or rectangular plane. Adhering to Tatlin's logic, wood's inherent form is the geometric plane: flat on both sides, cut in a triangular, square, or rectangular silhouette.Technically, wood is shaped with a saw, producing clean edges; it can be perforated with a drill. The simple wooden plane may be positioned parallel, perpendicular, or at a slant to the wall. It has its own natural color which must be respected. The formal possibilities of metal are quite different. Manufactured in thin sheets, its purest form in the urban environment is the cylinder or cone, produced by cutting, bending, or folding. Archipenko pointed this out in reference to his 1912-14 constructions: "The cone and the cylinder are the only shapes one can make with a sheet of metal without submitting it to the forge."20 If metal is 17. According to Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment, pp. 178-179, who studied this work from photographs, this component was a piece of "curved polished metal." According to Ivan Puni, in Sovremennaia zhivopis (Contemporary Painting), Berlin, Frenkel Verlag, 1923, p. 30, it was a shard of glass. We would prefer the second reading. 18. These reliefs unfortunately are known only from photographs. See Gray, The Russian Experiment, pp. 176-9, for reproductions. 19. Tatlin, quoted in A. Abramavo, "Tatlin," Rassegna Sovietica, July-September 1966, 138. 20. Archipenko, in Yvon Taillandier, "Conversation avec Archipenko," Vingtieme Siecle, XXXVII, supplement to no. 22, Noel, n.p.

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polished, the surface reflects light, thereby accentuating its shape. And by its thinness, flexibility, malleability, it lends itself to a broader range of variants. But its basic form is that of a container or sheath. Finally, glass is suitable for two kinds of formal manipulation: it exists as a rectangular pane, or it can be shaped into a cylinder or cone. Transparent, it stands at the edge of invisibility. It provides a transition between inner and outer space, the space of the work of art and the viewer's space. In one of the few documented reliefs in which Tatlin used glass in its curved form, he cut the conic shape in half, thereby emphasizing the equivocal nature of his medium: the transparent shell dissolves into invisibility; contained space opens into ambient space. The combination of diverse materials into a single heterogeneous object illustrates one other aspect of faktura. In a 1914 text by Vladimir Markov, written in defense of the new sculpture, the author identifies the icon as a precedent: Let us look back to our icons. They were embellished with metal halos in the form of crowns, metal casings on the shoulders, fringes, incrustations. Even paintings were enhanced with precious stones, metals, etc..... Through the noise of colors, the sound of materials, the assemblage of faktura, the people are called to beauty, to religion, to God.... [The icon is] a nonreal image. The real world is introduced into its essence through the assemblage and the incrustation of real tangible objects. One could say that this produces a combat between two worlds.21 Thus, Tatlin referred to a tradition in which the assemblage of disparate materials and the respect for each was of real significance. If Tatlin received a shock upon entering Picasso's studio, how can that shock be measured? Certainly he recognized that the Spaniard used nonartistic materials with an uncommon freshness and freedom. But just as surely, he must have disapproved of the manner in which Picasso deflected his mediums from their original sense, neither respecting their specific attributes nor seeking to draw upon the new realities which they might generate. Picasso admitted the importance of "displacement" to his work: "The sheet of newspaper was never used in order to make a newspaper. It was used to become a bottle or something like that. It was never used literally but always as an element displaced from its habitual meaning into another meaning.... "22 This difference of approach to materials is crucial for an understanding of Tatlin's reliefs as well as all his subsequent activity. Deeply bound up in a native 21. V. Markov (pseudonym for the sculptor Valdemar Matvejs), Printsipy tvorchestva v plasticheskikh iskussvakh. Faktura (Principles of Creation in the Visual Arts. Faktura.), St. Petersburg, Union of Youth, 1914. The author is grateful to Jean-Claude Marcade for bringing this passage to her attention and for its translation from the Russian. 22. Picasso, quoted in Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, McGraw Hill, 1964, p. 77.

VladimirTatlin. Painting Relief. 1914.(Probably destroyed.)

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Russian tradition, this attitude extends to much more than visual art; it is to be found, for example, in the literature of the avant-garde. It is, in this context, important that one of Tatlin's friends was the poet Khlebnikov. Although Tatlin did not meet Khlebnikov until 1916, he had illustrated some of his verse in 1912-13. Seeking to invent a universal language based on the texture and possible meanings of isolated linguistic units, Khiebnikov used the phonetic sound, the syllable, divested of historical or contextual connotation, as his raw material. New sounds in unprecedented juxtapositions were to engender new forms and inspire new meanings. Accordingly, two of Khlebnikov's working principles were the isolation of the basic unit of the signifier, or phoneme, and the destruction of conventional syntax in favor of a phonetic sequence which creates a phonetic texture. Khlebnikov's verses confound psychological, symbolic, or descriptive reading; their impact derives from the intricate functioning of vocal sounds. Tatlin's manner of composing the counter-reliefs relates to these procedures. The artist assembled pieces of glass, wood, plaster, metal, each for its particular texture and formal possibilities, and divested of former connotations. Each element exists for what it is: the word as such, the material as such, a pure presence, an immediate sensory stimulus that triggers unpredictable impressions. For each artist, the ultimate aim was a return to primary experience, the eliciting of instinctual sensation which would induce a new emotional experience and hence a new reality. In May 1923, Tatlin directed, designed, and appeared in the posthumous production of Khlebnikov's Zangezi. It is obvious that the poet's verbal experiments corresponded more than superficially to Tatlin's own preoccupations. In reference to this production Tatlin wrote: The Zangezi production is be staged on the principle that "the word is a building unit, the material a unit of organized volumes." Khlebnikov himself ... regards the word as plastic material. The properties of this material make it possible to operate with it to build up "the linguistic state."... Parallel to his word-constructions, I decided to make a material construction.... Khlebnikov took sounds as elements.... The hard C sound, for instance, gives birth to cup, cranium, container. All these words have to do with the concept of a sheath. One body enclosed in another. The sound P has to do with a diminishing of energy which stands in relationship to the area in which it is used: as in paddle, position, palm, porringer.. .23 This text encourages the conjecture that Tatlin's conception of the form of metal as a cone or a sheath corresponds to the hard C sound for Khlebnikov; and that the form of wood-as a plinth, a plank, or a plane-may correspond to the sound P. It 23.

Tatlin, quoted in Andersen, Vladimir Tatlin, p. 69.

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is worth mentioning in this context that Khlebnikov dreamed of an alphabet in which the consonants would be of metal and the vowels of glass! 24

As we have seen, Tatlin's counter-reliefs are the fruit of complex historical circumstances and imperatives. There is, in addition, one biographical factor which may have contributed to the formulation of their specific images and inventions: namely, his activity as a sailor. Although it is almost impossible to confirm, several indications suggest that Tatlin was a marine carpenter. According to most contemporary reports, Tatlin had considerable manual skill. He probably made all his reliefs himself, which indicates experience in working with materials such as metal and wood; also "glass, plaster, cardboard, gesso, tar... putty, paints." 25

Moreover, photographs from the period indicate that Tatlin, with three assistants, built the model for the Monument to the Illrd International himself. Except for a few metal fittings visible in photographs, this model was built entirely of wood. T. M. Shapiro, the only surviving assistant on the project, relates that, due to the penury of metal, they carved 2000 wooden pegs by hand in order to assemble the model.26 A marine carpenter, after looking at these photographs, remarked that only a professional carpenter could have conceived and mounted the model; more specifically, a carpenter specialized in making staircases and knowledgeable enough to make a plan.27 In 1922, Tatlin was appointed the head of the woodworking studio at the Moscow Vkhutein.28 Since artists were appointed to functions in a rather haphazard way, this is not necessarily meaningful. But the beechwood prototype of a chair, executed under his direction in 1926, is once again, according to professional standards, the work of someone with intimate knowledge of his medium and its tensile possibilities. Tatlin's famous glider Letatlin, a work of incomparable technical complexwas executed in the tower of the Novodevichy Monastery in Moscow with ity, students from the Vkhutein. There is no mention of a professional carpenter among them, although we know that Tatlin sought advice from a surgeon and a pilot instructor in designing this work.29 No matter what assistance he received, we may assume that the conception was his own, a design derived from an intimate knowledge of a diversity of materials and their structural possibilities.30 24. See Andrei B. Nakov, 2 Stenberg, Paris, Galerie Chauvelin, 1975, p. 44, and p. 56, fn. 33. 25. Tatlin listed these materials in a leaflet on his reliefs and counter-reliefs published December 17, 1915. 26. Interview with the author in Moscow, May 25, 1977. 27. This, despite Shapiro's statement that there were no "detailed working drawings" (in Andersen, Vladimir Tatlin, p. 23). 28. Higher Art Technical Institute. 29. Andersen, Vladimir Tatlin, p. 76. 30. Ibid., p. 75 ff.

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Vladimir Tatlin. Counter-relief. 1916. (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.) Drawing for Counter-relief. 1916. (Courtesy Jean Chauvelin, Paris.)

Finally, Tatlin made stringed musical instruments throughout his lifetime, one of which (a bandore) appears in a late photograph of the artist, and several of which are conserved at the Glinka Museum of Music in Moscow. The fabrication of musical instruments goes beyond carpentry; it is highly skilled cabinetwork. The few works accessible to Western viewers speak for themselves. One relief of 1916, stored in the reserves of Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. The ground is palisander wood, a type of rosewood which is extremely difficult to work, yet here it is cut and shaped to perfection. The conic relief is made of zinc, as are the linings of the four corner perforations. Since one of the basic attributes of zinc is its unique oxidation process, it is commonly used on sailing vessels. A wing strut from Letatlin, made of cork and a flexible wood (probably ash or willow) and measuring 2.4 meters, is another eloquent example of Tatlin's technical sophistication.31 The organic fluidity of this structure (in the form of a figure 8) seems to defy, but in truth is natural to, its very substance. In building it, Tatlin followed a shipbuilding principle of keeping the wood, and therefore the fibers, whole. The wood is not sawed but cloven and compressed to the desired thickness.32 Although built according to functional prerequisites, this object is a 31. Exhibited in Sammlung Costakis, Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, 1977. Reproduced in catalogue, p. 95. See Andersen, Vladimir Tatlin, p. 76. 32.

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Vladimir Tatlin. Letatlin Wing Strut. 1930-32. (Collection George Costakis.) Corner Relief. 1915. (Probably destroyed.)

revelation of the artist's sensitive relation to his materials. Indeed it is the constructivist object incarnate. Drawings of the same period confirm the artist's technical frame of reference. Tatlin drew with a ruler; he had little consideration for style. If the lines extended into space, beyond the contours of a given configuration, this was unimportant; formal construction and spatial organization were his primary concerns. And once he had established his repertory of signs, textural indications were unnecessary. A bowed or arched plane signified metal. A flat rectilinear shape (or even one with slightly curving edges) indicated wood. These drawings, sketches for constructions, are predominantly functional and look anonymous. The foregoing observations suggest that Tatlin's "culture of materials," despite the historical tradition of faktura, may have been generated by a more immediate and empirical source. For a knowledge, understanding, and sensitivity in regard to materials is the fundamental training of the marine carpenter. His expertise in the specifications of every material and in each state is crucial to survival at sea. Tatlin liked to define the culture of materials as born of "the culture of the man of the sea."33 It seems clear that this remark is a key to the fundamental premise of his art. 33. Tatlin, quoted in Vieri Quilici, L'Architettura del Costruttivismo, Bari, Editori Laterza, 1969, p. 308.

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Tatlin's naval experience and its influence on his oeuvre is not limited to mere technical training. One may also conjecture that his images arose from his seagoing experiences, a hypothesis to which we shall return in reference to the Monument to the Illrd International. But this is also true in relation to the counter-reliefs. Tatlin's forms and their spatial articulation derived from an organic vision. A comparison of his drawings and constructions to those of Rodchenko, which stem from an analogous constructivist aesthetic, show Rodchenko's to be rigorously geometric, or based on purely visual (as opposed to functional) formal considerations. Tatlin's drawings and constructions, on the other hand, were designed in accordance with functional articulations, whether or not the object was conceived for functional use. For example, the relief of 1914 is mounted like a triangular sail pinned to a mast and connoting a certain flexibility of movement or relativity of position. The corner reliefs of 1915 consist of thin metal plates in saillike shapes, bent or curved in a lightly billowing effect, rigged as overlapping planes on guy-wires which, while stretching tautly to the wall, once again imply movement or flexibility. These "reliefs" are not pinned to the wall; rather they are anchored at some distance. They exist in indeterminate space, like sails on the sea. It is worth noting, in relating to Tatlin's reliefs, that there are no absolute right angles aboard a seagoing vessel, no strictly geometric planes, no tightly fitted joints which would run the risk of splitting or breaking open under stress. Everything is designed to absorb the unpredictable play of the sea.

Tatlin's model for the Monument to the Illrd International, executed in 1919-20, was the celebration of a specific ideology. For Tatlin, this was not so much a radical departure as a focusing of his aims, both aesthetic and social. Although Russian artists had been essentially apolitical prior to 1917, they nonetheless sought a substantive modification of the conception of the work of art, traditionally bourgeois in its origins and functions. The new art would be an active transformational force in the mass revolution. The inaccessibility to the proletariat of Tatlin's art, like that of Malevich, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, made for its utopian character. Tatlin was quick to perceive this and, in 1922, he repudiated his reliefs and counter-reliefs, declaring them useless objects.34 In a text published in 1923,35the painter Ivan Puni arrived at the same conclusion, using, however, a different logic. Although his own relief constructions of 1915-17 were probably influenced by both Malevich and Tatlin, Puni had, by 1923, revised his aesthetic criteria, and his text of that year is highly critical of 34. Recorded (by the Secretary N. Tarabukin) in the minutes of the INCHUK Scientific Council meeting, March 23, 1922. Reprinted (in Italian) in Quilici, ibid., p. 494. 35. Ivan Puni, Contemporary Painting, pp. 29-32.

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both artists. For Puni, the relief is the logical extension of cubism. But whereas Picasso maintained the "subject" which generated its own particular space, Tatlin, in seeking to substitute a reality without images, suppressed the spatial exigencies and formal possibilities of the subject motif. As a result, Tatlin ran the risk of purely decorative craftsmanship, devoid of mystery, ambiguity, or real meaning. Moreover, continued Puni, Picasso's reliefs are part of an intuitive dialectical development which allows for the unpredictable, whereas Tatlin's counter-reliefs partake of a linear progression in which there can be no intuitive leaps. A sculpture of planes leads to a form of architecture. Abstraction leads to the absolute, to an impalpable, unattainable ideology. To Puni's eyes, this was characteristically Russian. And this aspiration towards the absolute leads inevitably to the absurd. Since the Monument to the Illrd International is the culmination of this progression, it is therefore, in Puni's view, an ideological absurdity. Puni's preferences and prejudices are not central to our concerns at this moment. Unquestionably the Monument to the Illrd International grew out of certain notions which existed in embryonic stage in the reliefs and counter-reliefs. Two notions in particular are peculiar to the time and place in which Tatlin worked: the importance of materials that generate specific forms, and the understanding that this new kind of construction embodies a new language which is ideologically significant. These two notions, of course, derive from the concepts of faktura and tektonika. But with the October Revolution, they take on new meaning. Faktura will henceforth denote the introduction of modern materials representing the new age; tektonika will encompass both industrial technology and the ideal of communism. Tatlin was commissioned under Lenin's program for monumental propaganda, a program designed to disseminate heroic images for a largely illiterate audience. However, according to his biographer, N. Punin, Tatlin disagreed with the program's basic tenets. How could the conventional figurative monument, built to the glory of the individual hero, correspond to the new conception of history, the new society? How could the individualistic portrait represent the dynamic, diversified face of the new masses? To Tatlin's mind it could not. He would depict no human figures. He would erect a monument to an abstract ideal. Several factors influenced the form his vision would take. According to a recent Soviet argument,36his resistance to the sculptural monument was grounded in Russian tradition, in which such monuments were virtually nonexistent. In Russia, the ultimate monumental enterprise was the building-monument, the church, as both place of worship (and thereby reserved for a specified collective activity) and a sacred image, embodying a precise ideology in every detail: the cruciform plan, the elevation, and the decorative program. Thus, through its See A. Strigalev, "Proekt pamiatnika III Internatsionala," (Project for the Monument to the 36. IIrd International in V. E. Tatlin, p. 16 ff.

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collective function and its universal symbolism, it was immediately legible to a wide audience. And the beauty and mystery of these edifices made them (and makes them still) monuments not only to the sacred spirit but to the human spirit, to the vision and hands which built them. (From his travels as a seaman, Tatlin was probably familiar with the great cathedrals of Europe as well.) Like his Bauhaus contemporaries, Tatlin surely perceived the medieval cathedral as the product of a collective vision and collective realization. And in its embodiment of the most sophisticated vision and advanced technology of its time, it must have corresponded to his own aspiration to reform society through the union of art and technics. The Monument to the Illrd International was to be Tatlin's cathedral to socialism. Secondly, Tatlin's work in the theater probably contributed to the development of his concept. The theater is the vehicle par excellence for disseminating popular culture. Furthermore, the Soviet theater designs, both pre- and postrevolutionary, were extremely abstract, audacious, and inventive in their forms, materials, lighting effects, and technical (kinetic) machinery. The October Revolution brought theater into the streets. Artists were engaged to shape the vision, understanding, and emotions of the masses. Tatlin's task implied the creation of a visual experience of such spectacular proportions that it would satisfy and transform-both visually and ideologically-the expectations of the audience to which it was addressed. Once Tatlin had conceived the shape of his monument, he returned to his study of materials, materials that would engender an emblem for the new society. According to Shapiro, only glass and steel appeared appropriate to the task. Petrograd was under reconstruction. The sky was filled with moving cranes, lightweight, openwork, kinetic, functional structures operating from a precarious point of balance. "We behaved like monks with a dogma," stated Shapiro. "We would have nothing to do with old materials. New content must have new form. We must abandon the static forms of the age of the pyramids. With the word 'dynamic' everything begins to turn; it engenders the idea of slanting form, energetic turning, two spirals which follow each other."37 As the son of a railroad engineer who had travelled to the United States and written a book about American railroad engineering, Tatlin was surely familiar with a broad range of structural experiments in iron or steel. He surely knew of the Eiffel Tower, probably having seen it in Paris during his 1913 visit. Closer to his own experience, were the skeleton masts seen on battleships prior to 1914, when he was often at sea.38The armature of such masts had the form of a latticework cone, constructed on the principle of the "rotational hyperboloid." The interior of these slatted "chimneys" was rigged so that equipment could be hoisted or lowered onto the deck or into the hold. Signal lights and radio transmitters were rigged to the top. In visual and functional terms, these masts present a credible point of Author's interview, cf. note 26. Also see V. E. Tatlin, p. 24. 37. 38. This is one thesis of K. P. Zygas, in "Tatlin's Tower Reconsidered," in Architectural Association Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 2 (London, 1976), 15-27.

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departure for Tatlin's construction. K. Simenov makes a general reference to Tatlin's seaman's experience when he writes: ... his putting to sea ... was connected not only with a romantic attraction to the sea, but also with an interest in such a well-engineered structure as a steamship, or in such a marvel of beauty combined with effectiveness as the rigging of a sailing vessel.... The form itself of an openwork metal tower inside of which are inserted the volumes of several halls and rooms, is connected in the mind with the sensation of the sea and the wide sky against which is cast something of ship-like height, powerful and simple, populated with people, and raised aloft by human hands.39 Thus, the general silhouette of the monument, including its heeling to one side, may well have had a nautical inspiration, an inspiration found also in some of the artist's theater designs. In 1916, while working with Meyerhold on the film Spirit Magic, Tatlin proposed to replace the director's idea for a "mystical tree" with "a great ship's mast with all the proper naval attributes-the rigging and the observation turrets. You can clamber all over the mast, that is, all over the tree...." Apparently Meyerhold was "horrified."40 This inspiration may also have carried over to some of the engineering aspects of the monument. Photographs and Shapiro's accounts41 indicate that the four-meter model was erected on a stand, about one and one-quarter meters high, which housed (and hid) the supports and the mechanisms for turning the four glass chambers. This relationship between super- and substructure recalls the sailboat's light, open, evanescent silhouette and the heavy machinery, keel, and ballast below deck. At least three models for the monument were built.42 Its essential form was that of a gigantic iron spiral wrapped around a cone and inclined at a 45-degree angle. Vertically aligned within it were four glass enclosures, each a different shape, serving a different governmental activity, and revolving at a different speed.43The lowest, a broad-based cylinder,44was designed for annual meetings of V. E. Tatlin, pp. 23-24. 39. 40. Tatlin, quoted in V. E. Tatlin, p. 46. 41. See Andersen, Vladimir Tatlin, p. 23. 42. It is thought that there were probably three models. The original model was built in the mosaics workshop of the Academy of Arts in Petrograd in 1920. The second is a "re-erection" (which seems to imply the building of a new model) in Moscow, in December 1920, for the 8th Soviet Congress. The third model was exhibited at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels. The earliest descriptions of the monument indicate that there were four inner chambers. 43. However subsequent descriptions vary, some of them mentioning only three (deleting the upper hemisphere). It is possible that the number of glass volumes varied from one model to another. 44. Most early descriptions (including that of N. Punin) describe the lowest glass enclosure as a cube, and a number of interpretations have been based on this assumption. However, this is difficult to justify in that the earliest photographs of the model and of its drawings clearly show the lowest volume to be a broad-based cylinder. Furthermore, T. Shapiro's recent reconstruction of the model (seen in Moscow in May 1977), despite certain structural discrepancies, contained four volumes, the lowest of which was a cylinder.

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the legislative body and was to revolve once a year. The second, a pyramid, would house monthly executive meetings and revolve once a month. The two uppermost chambers, a narrow cylinder and a hemisphere, would serve respectively as an information bureau and to emit propaganda to the street. The cylinder was to revolve once a day, the hemisphere, hourly. Radio antennae and film projectors were to be rigged to the top. There is, at first glance, no precedent for such a revolutionary formal and functional concept. Although upon careful consideration precedents abound, none is totally convincing. Among those proposed are the Eiffel Tower, Boccioni's 1912 Development of a Bottle in Space, Breughel's Tower of Babel, Rodin's project for a Tour du Travail of 1894-97, Hermann Obrist's 1902 project for a socialist monument, the chimneys of Gaudi's Casa Mila in Barcelona, the Great Mosque at Samarra, Borromini's Sant'Ivo della Sapienza, oil wells at Baku.45 Another hypothesis, more closely derived from Tatlin's own experience and sensibility, suggests itself. The constructivist ideal was the only aesthetic which would embody the abstract and dynamic dimensions of communist ideology. To 45. See John Elderfield, "The line of free men: Tatlin's 'towers' and the age of invention," in Studio International, November, 1969, pp. 163-65; also K. P. Zygas, "Tatlin's Tower."

Still from Eisenstein's The General Line showing oil wells at Baku.

Skeleton masts of a pre-World War II warship.

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translate this ideal into a public architecture, Tatlin took the underlying principles of the counter-reliefs one step further. Tatlin's observation of advanced constructions merely served to substantiate his claims as set forth in the counter-reliefs: that each material elicits one or two specific forms. Metal postulates the cone-shape, encompassing or enclosing a space; this is the shape of the armature. Glass, as a cylinder or a pane, inscribes or defines without closing off, thus allowing interaction between inner and outer spaces (in this case between the representatives of the people and the people themselves). And finally, the building's formulation was to be not only a synthesis of art and technology, heralding a new society, but a symbol of the unification of all men under communism. As such an ideal configuration, its physical presence should be dematerialized, a disembodied representation or cipher of pure forms in space. There are as many interpretations of the tower's symbolic form as there are of its possible sources. According to one,46 the diagonal axis is parallel to the polar axis, a reminder that the IIIrd International was to encompass the globe. The same 46. Adolf Max Vogt, Russische und franzbsische Revolutions-Architektur 1917/1789, K6ln, Verlag M. DuMont Schanberg, 1974, pp. 209-13.

Vladimir Tatlin. Model for the Monument to the IIIrd

International.1919-20.

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author notes that the speed of rotation of each inner chamber corresponds to wellknown cosmic movements: of the earth, sun, and moon. And the form of each glass enclosure is inspired by the fundamental geometrical bodies found in Johannes Kepler's World Model (Machina mundi artificialis) of 1596.47Aside from the fact that geometry and astronomy were very much in fashion at that time, Tatlin's nautical background would have acquainted him with these disciplines. Moreover, the precarious balance of the cantilevered structure expresses the uncertainty and dynamism of the new society. And of course such a structure could be conceived only in an industrial era. Contemporaneous and equally dramatic projects by Lissitzky, Ladowski, the Vesnin brothers support this premise.48 The interpretations of the period are simpler. Nikolai Punin, Tatlin's first biographer, probably expressed the view closest to the artist's own. The vertical axis manifests classical stability, the functional, the gravitational, the postulates of human logic. The double spiral reflects the dynamic spirit of the new age, creative imagination, mankind's desire to rise above earthly materialism and pursue a new ideal. The spiral curve intersects the vertical axis and harnesses it to its ascent. These two historical forces stand, consequently, in a relation of symbiosis, not of conflict, and the tower's structure synthesizes utilitarian and aesthetic form, organized content and art.49 Lissitzky liked to compare steel to the proletarian will, and the transparency of glass to its conscience. And, as Punin noted, the tensions created by this juxtaposition of mediums, so substantially and technically different, create fundamental and contrasting rhythms, the rhythms of creative intuition, the rhythms of life itself.50 Tatlin believed that "invention is the reflection of the desires and impulses of the collectivity and not of a single individual." The artist is "a unit rich with the initiatives ... the energy ... the vitality of the collectivity." 5 This then was what his monument was to express. Or, as Punin put it, "We assert that only the strength of the myriad proletarian consciousness could project into the world the idea of this monument-form. The realization of this idea requires that muscular strength, for we possess an ideal, living, and classical expression, in pure and creative form, of the international union of the workers of the world."52 The monument, Tatlin's first attempt at a social work of art, was doomed to failure. A form so abstract, so subtle in its expression of political thought was simply unacceptable. As Trotsky stated in 1923: 47. Ibid., pp. 202-4. 48. Ibid., pp. 144-145. 49. Nikolai Punin, Pamiatrik III Internatsionala. Proekt V. E. Tatlina. (Monument to the IIIrd International. A Project by V. E. Tatlin), Petersburg, July 1920. 50. Ibid. 51. Tatlin, quoted by Abramova, "Tatlin," p. 137. 52. Punin, Monument to the IIIrd International.

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I remember seeing once when a child, a wooden temple built in a beer bottle. This fired my imagination, but I did not ask myself at that time what it was for. Tatlin proceeds by a reverse method; he wants to construct a beer bottle for the World Council of People's Commissars which would sit in a spiral concrete temple. But for the moment, I cannot refrain from the question: What is it for?53 Tatlin's project could not convince those who were in a position to see it realized. Apart from the usual conceptual discrepancies between an artist and governmental authorities, it is understandable that in a country ravaged by famine, civil war, and revolution, such a plan could not be considered a priority. All the more so in this particular instance, where the materials and techniques were sorely lacking. In a text of 1922, Ilya Ehrenburg described the paradox of the situation: It was all very moving. Soviet office workers were moving off with their rations of horse meat. A boy was selling cake crumbs, and in the middle of the square ... I stood with two artists, giving our fantasy free rein on the subject of metal.... We were absorbed in our fantasy after making the acquaintance of Tatlin's project for a monument to the IIIrd International, and we had every reason to be absorbed. For a self-taught white-eyebrowed prophet (resembling an artisan) had placed on the ruins of imperial St. Petersburg a clear sign: the beginning of the new architecture.... In the midst of an epidemic of plaster idiots, quartered in our squares by the cunning of superior powers ... came suddenly something simple and clear ... these men have no right of domicile in modern towns. Secondly: the new SCULPTURE = ARCHITECTURE. Thirdly .. .: the personal is dying out, a monument should represent the age, the movement, and not any man. Fourthly, our slogan is utilitarianism-if we are to build, then let us build not in the blue but for a useful purpose. Then we have the question of forms. The dynamism of the present age has found expression in the amazing spiral. Finally: the material-the bold glass that, together with iron, has already become an everyday architectural commodity.... Sorrowfully we looked at the dilapidated buildings, blackened from stoves reeking like swarms of bees, at the tram painstakingly catching up the sleds of the office workers, at the "cake crumbs." . . . Where are we to find the iron and other metal ... so that the model can be a monument?54 53. 54.

Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1923), Ann Arbor, 1971, pp. 247-8. Ilya Ehrenburg, quoted (in English) in Andersen, Vladimir Tatlin, p. 58.

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Tatlin's monument, which, according to Mayakovsky, was the first work truly to express the October Revolution, set forth the basic tenets of constructivism. It marks the passage from the "laboratory period" to the productivist era, formulated as such in November 1921. Beginning in 1922-23, artistic creation and industrial production would be synonymous. The artist was truly to serve the revolution; art was to be integrated into the life of the masses. In the reformed, government-controlled studios, Tatlin taught the creation of utilitarian objects which were not only functional but formally expressed the needs and ideals of the new society. In productivist art properly speaking, new functions require new materials and the materials determine the parameters of formal invention. Tatlin aspired to create new forms for the life he saw ahead. Although his voice was barely heard, he opened the way to a new conception of the work of art and of the everyday object. The theory and practice of the "culture of materials" have irreversibly modified our outlook in regard to the objects of our environment. Tatlin was among the first to understand that an object may be beautiful, functional, and illustrate the social and aesthetic values of a given time and place as well. Or, closer to his own terminology, the constructivist form is organized content, a term which embraced aesthetic, utilitarian, and social imperatives.55 Tatlin's life and work were comparable to those of his friend Khlebnikov, of whom a critic once said that his poetry was awkward, nonpoetic, useless. Khlebnikov, pleading for the poet's freedom with respect to the canons of intelligibility, cites the invocation which resists the demand: "Be easy to understand, like a sign. The speech of higher reason, even incomprehensible speech, falls by some kind of seed into the black earth of the spirit, and later, in puzzling ways, it puts forth upshoots."56

55. Obviously Tatlin's ideas are extremely close to the thought and instruction at the Bauhaus during the same period. However, this appears to be less a matter of influence than of parallel development. 56. Velimir Khlebnikov, "About Verses," in Snake Train: Poetry and Prose, ed. Gary Kern, Ann Arbor. Ardis, 1976, p. 228.

The Factory of Facts and Other Writings

DZIGA VERTOV translated by KEVIN O'BRIAN

On the Film Kino-Glazl The world's first attempt to create a film-object without the participation of actors, artists, directors; without using a studio, sets, costumes. All members of the cast continue doing what they usually do in life. The present film represents an assault on our reality by movie cameras, and prepares the theme of creative labor against a background of class contradictions and of everyday life. In revealing the origins of objects and of bread, the movie camera makes it possible for every worker to acquire the conviction, through evidence, that he, the worker, creates all these things himself, and that consequently they belong to him. In undressing a flirtatious bourgeoise and a bloated bourgeois, and in returning food and objects to the workers and peasants who've made them, we are giving millions of laborers the opportunity to see the truth and to question the need to dress and feed a caste of parasites. If this experiment succeeds, the picture, while independent (in both its content and formal exploration), will serve as a prologue to the international film, Workers of the World, Unite! The spade work for the creation of this film is presently being done under the Council of Three-the supreme organ of the kinoks. The Council of Three,2 basing itself politically on the communist 1. Kino-Glaz (Cinema-Eye) is the title Vertov gives to a series of short newsreel films begun in 1922, as well as his name for the feature-length film of 1924 which culminates the early works' development and initiates his mature period. Moreover Vertov employs this term to designate the movement and cinematic style of which he is the founder and leader. In order to avoid possible confusion we have retained the Russian "Kino-Glaz" to designate only the 1924 feature; "Kino-Eye" refers here to the 1922-24 newsreels; and "cinema-eye" is used generically to refer to the style. The Council of Three was a policy-making group formed within that of the Kinoks, Vertov's 2. staff of collaborators. The Council articulated and stressed Vertov's project through public statements and manifestoes. The group is generally assumed to have been composed of Vertov, Mikhail Kaufman, his cameraman, and Elizaveta Svilova, Vertov's editor. Georges Sadoul, in his Histoire generale du cinema (L'Art Muet, vol. 5, Editions Denoel, Paris, 1975), lists, in addition, the painter Beliaev, with Vertov presumably presiding ex officio.

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Dziga Vertov. A Sixth ot the World. 1926.

;i

rBi

program, is striving to instill cinema with the fundamental ideas of Leninism and to invest their extremely profound content not in the grimaces of actors, more or less successful as they may be, but in the labor and thoughts of the working class itself. The experiment is made difficult by our technical backwardness. Unequipped technically, but relying upon the hard experimentation of nineteen Kino-Pravdas,3 we nevertheless hope, beginning with this first work, to open the eyes of the masses to the connection (not one of kisses or detectives) between the social and visual phenomena interpreted by the movie camera. Proceeding from the material4 to the film-object (and not from the film-object to the material), the kinoks consider it wrong, in beginning work, to present a socalled scenario. In the years to come, the scenario, as a product of literary composition, will completely disappear. Allowing, however, for possible reservations on the part of Goskino5 or Narkompros6 as to our ability to construct a film-object correct in ideology and 3. Kino-Pravda was a film journal conceived and directed by Vertov, named after the newspaper founded by Lenin. Each edition treated two or three subjects. Initiated in June 1922, it reached a total of 23 issues before its disappearance in 1925. It is beginning with this series that Vertov's theoretical position begins to become known. A term frequently used by Vertov and others to mean film footage. Its constructivist connotation 4. is especially significant with respect to Vertov's theory and practice. 5. Created in December 1922, the Goskino was the production agency of the state cinema policy. The Gosprokat, the state rental agency which was given the monopoly of distribution throughout the U.S.S.R., was a branch of Goskino. In February 1923, Goskino's industrial and commercial activities were put under the control of the State Economic Council and its cultural activities were retained by the People's Commissariat of Education. 6. Narkompros, the People's Commissariat of Education, was created by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party in October 1917. It was charged with the enormous task of reorganizing education according to socialist methods and aims and also served as mediator between the regime and the nation's intellectuals. Anatoly Lunacharsky was the first and most distinguished Commissar of Education.

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technique without a previously approved scenario, I enclose, with this memorandum, a sketch of the movie cameras' offensive and an approximate list of characters and places. 1923 The Factory of Facts (By way of proposal) After five years of stubborn prospecting, the cinema-eye method has now won a total victory in the field of nonacted film (cf., Kino-Eye's First Reconnaissance [Mission], Leninist Kino-Pravda, Forward, Soviet!, and A Sixth of the World, now in release). Right now-as the experience of the past year shows-the simple adoption a of single external mannerism of cinema-eye by the so-called artistic film (the acted film, the film with actors), is enough to create a big stir (Strike, Potemkin) in that area as well. We see the varying ways in which the cinema-eye method is already forcing the "acted," the "actor-based" film out of cinema. The increasing adoption of cinema-eye's external manner by the "acted" film (Strike and Potemkin) is only an isolated incident, a chance reflection of the ever-growing cinema-eye movement. I will not go into it at this moment. How soon, in what way, at the price of what disillusionments the proletarian viewer will gradually come to realize the impossibility of saving the decrepit and degenerate "actor-based" film, even with the regular injection of certain cinema-eye elements-that question belongs to the future. The topic for the present, for today is, however, the issue, raised by Comrade Fevralsky in his timely article in Pravda (June 15) of a single center for the work and workers of cinema-eye, the issue of a firm basis for cinema-eye work.

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Comrade Fevralsky is absolutely right when he speaks of the necessity for immediate centralization of all types of nontheatrical, nonacted film. The newsreel storehouses, the production of Soviet film magazines, of KinoPravda, major animation studios, the production of cinema-eye films, the reediting and correction of foreign "cultural films," and finally, the production of hits without actors such as A Sixth of the World-all this ought to be concentrated in a single place and not (as currently) scattered through all the sections, all the buildings of Goskino-Sovkino.7 All of nonacted film in a single place, together with a film lab, together with a vault for nonacted films. Our view is as follows: Parallel to the united film factory of grimaces (the union of all types of cinema-theatrical work, from Sabinsky to Eisenstein) should be formed a FILM-FACTORY OF FACTS (the union of all types of cinema-eye work, from current flash-newsreels to scientific films, from thematic Kino-Pravdas to stirring revolutionary film marathon runs. Once again: Not FEKS8 and not Eisenstein's "factory of attractions," 9 neither the factory of kisses and doves (their type of director has not yet died out), nor the factory of death (The Minaret of Death, Death Bay, Tripoli Tragedy, etc.). Simply: the FACTORY OF FACTS. Filming facts. Sorting facts. Disseminating facts. Agitating with facts. Propaganda with facts. Fists made of facts. Lightning bolts of facts! Founded in December 1924, on the basis of the existing Goskino (see above), Sovkino, under the 7. chairmanship of Konstantin Chvedtchikov, was given the exclusive right to purchase film and foreign equipment and to export Soviet film. This agency played a major role in the expansion of the Soviet film industry from 1925 on, that is to say, in the period of its maturity, which coincides with that of Vertov. 8. FEKS (Fabrika eksentritcheskogo aktera, The Factory of the Eccentric Actor) was the name of a group of young theater and film artists formed in Leningrad in 1922. According to Grigori Kozintsev, one of its leading exponents, it was "a laboratory in which, through an original alliance of 'left' art (mainly Meyerhold and Mayakovsky) and the filmic practice of Chaplin, Griffith, Mack Sennett, Stroheim, was formed a system of cinema acting style Kabuki, black theater, circus and a rejection of naturalism composed its basis," and, one might add, that of a number of other innovative theatrical styles of that period in the U.S.S.R. and elsewhere. Among the films produced by the members of the group was a version of Gogol's The Cloak (1926). Vertov is obviously referring to the theory of "the montage of attractions," formulated in 9. Eisenstein's first published text (in Lef, 1923). Eisenstein speaks of the basic cinematic unit as the "shock" that "make(s) the final ideological conclusion perceptible. This is fully analogous with the 'pictorial storehouse' employed by George Grosz, or the elements of photographic illustration (photomontage) employed by Rodchenko." In Sergei Eisenstein, "Montage of attractions," Appendix II, The Film Sense, trans. and ed. by Jay Leyda, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

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Mountains of facts. Hurricanes of facts. And separate little factlets. Against cinema-sorcery. Against cinema-mystification. For the genuine cinematization of the worker-peasant U.S.S.R. 1926

Cinema-Eye A Drawing in the Journal Lapot' A Poster. Showing little flowers. Telegraph poles. Petals. Little birds. A sickle. An operatic, curly-headed peasant with a sheaf of rye is theatrically shaking the hand of a sugary worker, hammer on shoulder and a roll of calico under his arm. The sun is rising. Beneath that is written: "The Union of Town and Country." It's a poster meant for the countryside. Two peasants are standing in front of it: "Come and see what union is like, Uncle Ivan. There. But what's it like for us?! They've brought two plows, and newspapers ... and that's it ..." "Be quiet and use your head! Think that's a real union? Those are actors putting it on in a theater." This drawing in the journal Lapot' reminds me of the peasants' attitude toward the depictions on the painted agit-trains of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1919-21). Horse-"A ctors" The peasants called "actors" not only the Cossacks that had been daubed on the walls of the train cars, but also the horses depicted there, simply because in the drawing they were incorrectly shod. The more remote the place, the less the peasants grasped the general, urgently propagandistic sense of the drawings. They'd carefully look over each drawing, each figure individually. They'd answer my questions as to whether they like the drawings or not: "We don't know, we're ignorant and uneducated people." That didn't prevent the peasants from talking among themselves, however, and laughing at the "actor"-horses. A Film Showing in the Country 1920. I'm in charge of a cinema-train. We're showing films at a remote station.

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There's a film drama on the screen. The whites and the reds. The whites are drinking, dancing, and kissing half-naked women; during the interludes they shoot red prisoners. The reds underground. The reds at the front. The reds fighting. The reds win and put all the drunken whites and their women in prison. The content's good, but why should anyone want to show film-dramas based on the same old cliche for five years now? The viewers, illiterate and uneducated peasants, don't read the subtitles. They can't grasp the content of the thing. They examine individual details, such as the drawings on the decorated train. Coolness and distrust. These viewers, still unspoiled, do not understand the artifices of theatricality. A "lady" remains for them a lady, no matter what "peasant clothing" you show her in. These viewers are seeing the movie screen for the first or second time; they still do not understand the taste of film-moonshine; and when, after the sugary actors of a film-drama, real peasants appear on the screen, they all perk up and stare at the screen. A real tractor, of which they know only from hearsay, has gone over a few acres and plowed them in a few minutes, before the viewers' very eyes. Conversations, shouts, questions. There's not a word about the actors. On the screen are their own kind, real people. There isn't a single false, theatrical movement to unmask the screen, to deprive it of the peasants' confidence. This sharp division between the perceptions of film drama and of newsreel has been noted anywhere cinema was being shown for the first, second, or third time-anywhere the poison hadn't yet penetrated, where the need for the toxic sweetness of artistic dramas, of kisses, sighs, and murder hadn't yet set in. Petrushka'? or Life It was at the time when only the outlines of the cinema-eye movement were visible, when we had to decide whether to march in step with artistic cinema and with the whole brotherhood of directors who produce film-vodka-a legal and profitable business-or declare war on art films and begin to build cinema anew. "Petrushka or life?" we asked the viewers. "Petrushka," answered those who were hopelessly infected. "We already know life; we don't need life. Hide life, boring life, from us." "Life," answered the viewers who were uninfected or not yet hopelessly infected. "We don't know life. We haven't seen life. We know our country village and the ten versts around it. Show us life." 1926 10.

Petrushka is the Punch of the Russian puppet theater.

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Provisional Instructions to Cinema-Eye Groups I.

Introduction

Our eye sees very poorly and very little-and so men conceived of the microscope in order to see invisible phenomena; and they discovered the telescope in order to see and explore distant, unknown worlds. The movie camera was invented in order to penetrate deeper into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena, so that we not forget what happens and what the future must take into account. But the movie camera experienced a misfortune. It was invented at a time when there was no single country in which Capital was not in power. The bourgeoisie's hellish idea consisted of using the new toy to entertain the masses, or rather to divert the workers' attention from their basic aim: the struggle against their masters. Under the electric narcotic of the movie theaters, the proletariat, more or less starving, jobless, unclenched its iron fist and unknowingly submitted to the corrupting influence of the masters' cinema. The theater is expensive and seats are few. And so the masters force the movie camera to disseminate theatrical productions which show us how the bourgeoisie love, how they suffer, how they "care for" their workers, and how these higher beings, the aristocracy, differ from lower ones (workers, peasants, etc.). In prerevolutionary Russia the masters' cinema played the same role. After the October Revolution the cinema was faced with the difficult task of adapting itself to the new life. Actors who had played tsarist civil servants began to play workers; those who had played ladies of the court are now grimacing in Soviet style. Few of us yet realize, however, that all this grimacing remains, in many respects, within the framework of bourgeois technique and theatrical form. We know many enemies of the contemporary theater who are at the same time passionate admirers of cinema in its present form. Few people see clearly as yet that nontheatrical cinema (with the exception of newsreel and some scientific films) does not exist. Every theatrical presentation, every motion picture is constructed in exactly the same way: a playwright or scriptwriter, then a director or film director, then actors, rehearsals, sets, and the presentation to the public. The essential thing in theater is acting, and so every motion picture constructed upon a scenario and acting is a theatrical presentation, and that is why there are no differences between the productions by directors of different nuances. All of this, both in whole and in part, applies to theater regardless of its trend and direction, regardless of its relationship to theater as such. All of this lies outside the genuine purpose of the movie camera-the exploration of the phenomena of life. Kino-Pravda has clearly shown that it is possible to work outside theater and in step with the revolution. Cinema-eye is continuing the work, begun by KinoPravda, of creating Red Soviet cinematography.

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II.

The Work of Cinema-Eye

On the basis of reports by film-observers a plan for the orientation and offensive of the movie camera in life's ever-changing environment is being worked out by the Council of Cinema-Eye. The work of the movie camera is reminiscent of the work of the agents of the G.P.U. who do not know what lies ahead, but have a definite assignment: to separate out and bring to light a particular issue, a particular affair. a) The kinok-observer watches closely the environment and the people around him, and tries to connect separate, isolated phenomena according to generalized or distinctive characteristics. The kinok-observer is assigned a theme by the leader. b) The group leader or cinema-[reconnaissance] scout distributes themes to the observers, and in the beginning helps each observer to summarize his observations. When the leader has collected all the summaries, he in turn classifies them, and rearranges the individual data until a sufficiently clear construction of the theme is achieved. Themes for initial observation can be split roughly into three categories: 1) Observation of a place (for example, a village reading-room, a cooperative).

Mikhail Kaufman, Vertov's brother and cameraman.

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2) Observation of a person or object in motion (examples: your father, a Young Pioneer,1" a postman, a streetcar, etc.). 3) Observation of a theme independent of a particular person or place (examples: water, bread, footwear, fathers and children, city and country, tears, laughter, etc.). The group leader must teach them to use a camera (later, a movie camera) in order to photograph the more striking moments of observation for a bulletinboard or mural newspaper. A bulletin-board newspaper is issued monthly or every two weeks and uses photographs to illustrate the life of a factory, plant, or village; it participates in campaigns; reveals surrounding life as fully as possible; agitates, propagandizes, and organizes. The group leader submits his work to approval by the Goskino cell of the Red kinoks and is under the immediate supervision of the Cinema-Eye Council. c) The Cinema-Eye Council heads the entire organization. It is made up of one representative from each group of kinok-observers, one representative of the unorganized kinoks, and, provisionally, three representatives of the kinok production workers. In its practical, everyday work the Cinema-Eye Council relies upon a technical staff-the Goskino cell of Red kinoks. The Goskino kinoks' cell should be regarded as one of the factories in which the raw material supplied by kinok-observers is made into film-objects. The Goskino kinoks' cell should also be regarded as an educational, model workshop through which Young Pioneer and Komsomol film groups will be drawn into production work. Specifically, all groups of kinok-observers will be drawn into the production of future cinema-eye series. They will be the author-creators of all subsequent film-objects. This departure from authorship by one person or a group of persons to mass authorship will, in our view, accelerate the destruction of bourgeois, artistic cinema. III.

Very Simple Slogans

1) Film-drama is the opium of the people. 2) Down with the immortal kings and queens of the screen! Long live the ordinary mortal, filmed in life at his daily tasks. 3) Down with the bourgeois fairytale script! Long live life as it is. 11. The Young Pioneers were established by the 5th Komsomol Congress in 1922 for children between the ages of 10 and 14. The organization stressed collective action rather than individual incentive and competition. Its members play a leading role in Vertov's Kino-Glaz of 1924, in which the children are active in price control, the anti-alcoholic campaign, and in other aspects of public education.

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4) Film-drama and religion are deadly weapons in the hands of the capitalists. By showing our revolutionary way of life, we will wrest that weapon from the enemy's hands. 5) The contemporary artistic drama is a survival of the old world. It is an attempt to pour our revolutionary reality into bourgeois molds. 6) Down with the staging of everyday life! Film us on the spot, as we are. 7) The scenario is a fairytale invented for us by some writer. We live our own lives and we do not submit to anyone's fictions. 8) Each of us does his task in life and does not prevent anyone else from working. The film workers' task is to film us in such a way as not to interfere with our work. 9) Long live the cinema-eye of the proletarian revolution! IV.

The Kinoks and Editing

By editing, artistic cinema usually means the splicing together of individual filmed scenes according to a scenario, worked out to a greater or lesser extent by the director. The kinoks attribute a completely different significance to editing and regard it as the organization of the visible world. The kinoks distinguish between: 1) Editing during the time of observation-the orienting of the unaided eye at any place, any time. 2) Editing after the time of observation-the mental organization of what has been seen, according to characteristic features. of the aided eye of the movie camera in 3) Editing duringfilming-orienting the place inspected in step 1. Adjusting for the somewhat changed conditions for filming. 4) Editing after filming-the rough organization of the footage according to characteristic features. Looking for the montage fragments that are lacking. 5) Gauging by sight (hunting for montage fragments)-instantaneous orienting in any visual environment so as to capture the essential link shots. Exceptional attentiveness. A military rule: gauging by sight, speed, attack. 6) The final editing-revealing small, concealed themes together with the big ones. The reorganization of all the footage into the best sequence. Bringing out the core of the film-object. Coordinating similar elements, and finally, the numerical calculation of the montage groupings. When filming under conditions which do not permit preliminary observation-as in shadowing with a movie camera or filming unobserved-the first two steps drop away and the third or fifth step comes to the fore. When filming short moments, or given rush filming, the combining of several steps is possible. In all other instances, when filming one or several themes, all the steps are

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carried out and the editing is uninterrupted, beginning with the initial observation and ending with the finished film-object. V. The Kinoks and the Scenario It is entirely apropos to mention the scenario here. Once added to the above mentioned editing system, a literary scenario immediately cancels its meaning and significance. Because our objects are constructed by editing, by the organization of footage of everyday life, unlike artistic dramas which are constructed by the writer's pen. Does this mean that we work haphazardly, without thought or plan? Nothing of the kind. If, however, we compare our preliminary plan to the plan of a commission that sets out, let us say, to investigate the living quarters of the unemployed, then we must compare the scenario to a short story of that investigation written before the investigation has taken place. How do artistic cinema and the kinoks each proceed in the present case? The kinoks organize a film-object on the basis of the factual film-data of the investigation. After polishing up a scenario, film directors will shoot some entertaining film-illustrations to go with it: a couple of kisses, a few tears, a murder, moonlit clouds rushing above, and a dove. At the end they write "Long live .. . !" and it all ends with the "International." Such, with minor changes, are all film-art-agitdramas. When a picture ends with the "International," the censors usually pass it, but the viewers always feel a bit uneasy hearing the proletarian hymn in such a bourgeois context. A scenario is the invention of an individual or a group of people; it is a short story which these people desire to transfer to the screen. We do not consider this desire criminal, but presenting this sort of work as cinema's main objective, ousting real film-objects with these little film short stories, and suppressing all the movie camera's remarkable possibilities in worship of the god of art-drama-this we cannot understand, and do not, of course, accept. We have not come to cinema in order to feed fairytales to the NEPmen and NEPwomen 2 lounging in the loges of our first-class movie theaters. We are not tearing down artistic cinema in order to soothe and amuse the consciousness of the working masses with new rattles. We have come to serve a particular class, the workers and peasants not yet caught in the sweet web of art-dramas. 12. NEP stands for New Economic Policy and refers to independent merchants and manufacturers who were seen as "bourgeois" and often accused of profiteering.

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We have come to show the world as it is, and to explain to the worker the bourgeois structure of the world. We want to bring clarity into the worker's awareness of the phenomena concerning him and surrounding him. To give everyone working behind a plow or a. machine the opportunity to see his brothers at work with him simultaneously in different parts of the world, and to see all his enemies, the exploiters. We are taking our first steps in cinema, and that is why we are called kinoks. Existing cinema, as a commercial affair, like cinema as a sphere of art, has nothing in common with our work. Even in technique we only partially touch so-called artistic cinema, since the goals we have set for ourselves require a different technical approach. We have absolutely no need of huge studios or massive sets, just as we have no need for "mighty" film directors, "great" actors, and "amazing," photogenic women. On the other hand, we must have: 1) quick means of transport, 2) more sensitive film, 3) small, lightweight, hand-held cameras, 4) lighting equipment that is equally lightweight, 5) a staff of lightning-fast film reporters, 6) an army of kinok-observers. In our organization we distinguish between: 1) kinok-observers, 2) kinok-cameramen, 3) kinok-constructors [designers], 4) kinok-editors (women and men), 5) kinok-lab assistants. We teach our methods of cinema work only to Komsomols and Young Pioneers and pass on our skill and our technical experience to the rising generation of young workers in whom we place our trust. We venture to assure both respectable and not-so-respectable film directors that the cinema revolution is only beginning. We will hold out without yielding a single position until the iron shift of young people eventually arrives, and then, all together, we will advance, over the head of bourgeois art-cinema, to the cinema October of the whole Soviet Union, of the whole world. VI. Cinema-Eye on Its First Reconnaissance Part One of the film-object Life Caught Unawares The editing of Kino-Glaz, Part One, was done according to the editing scheme set forth in an earlier section of the present article.

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In Part One we note the following themes: 1) The "new" and the "old." 2) Children and grown-ups. 3) The cooperative system and the marketplace. 4) City and country. 5) The theme of bread. 6) The theme of meat, and business; "Erma7) A large theme: home-brew-cards-beer-shady theme to which I find it kovka"-cocaine-tuberculosis-madness-death-a difficult to give a single name, but one which I contrast here with the themes of health and vigor. It is, if you like, a part of our terrible heritage from the bourgeois system and which our revolution has not yet had the time or the possibility to sweep away. Along with the montage of themes (their coordination) and of each theme individually, we edited individual moments (the attack on the camp, the call for help, etc.). I can point to the dancing of the drunken peasant women in the first section of Kino-Glaz as an example of a montage moment not limited by time or space. They were filmed at different times, in different villages, and edited together into a single whole. The beer house and the market, actually all the rest ... were also done through montage. The raising of the flag on the day of the opening of the camp can serve as a model of a montage instant limited in time and space. Here, for a length of seventeen .meters, fifty-three moments that have been spliced together go by. Despite the very rapid change of subjects on the screen (one-fourth of a second is the maximum length of time an individual subject is on the screen), the screening of this fragment can be well perceived and does not tire one's vision (as verified with the worker viewer). On shortcomings of Kino-Glaz, Part One The film's excessive length should be mentioned as its chief shortcoming. We must not forget that art films were also one- or two-reel in the beginning, and that only gradually was their footage increased. The field of cinema-eye is a new one, and the portion being served to the viewer should be increased cautiously to avoid tiring him and shoving him into the arms of the art-drama. Hoping to break into the big movie theaters, we yielded to the demand to provide a six-reel film and ... made a mistake; this has to be admitted. We must correct this mistake in the future, and make small objects of various types which can be shown individually or in a group program, as desired.

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Stills from the flag-raising sequence of Vertov's Kino-Glaz, 1924.

The overly broad sweep of Part One, the excessive number of themes interconnected at the expense of the deepening of each single one, can also be considered shortcomings. This kind of approach to the first part is not coincidental; it was dictated partly by our intention to provide a broad exploration and, on the basis of that exploration, to penetrate deeper into life in the subsequent parts. Such an approach was also partly necessary since more time, artificial lighting, and a lot of animation filming were needed in order to develop completely some of the themes of Kino-Glaz.

The expenditure of time meant a greater expenditure of money. The artificial lighting "limped on both legs," while the animation stand was so busy that we had to content ourselves with a ten-meter cartoon and ten illuminated titles. I mention only these shortcomings-not that there are no others but because we need to give first consideration to precisely the above mentioned defects and mistakes, and to draw appropriate conclusions for future work. What we lost and what we gained in releasing Part One We temporarily lost several organizational and technical positions. We had fewer joint meetings, and several members of the group almost left work and disappeared, the central leadership was weakened and the organizational core of it all somehow went out of focus. At present all these organizational losses have been almost fully repaired. Of the technical positions which we temporarily ceded, the chief one is animation filning (filming each frame individually). We have done animation filming for a long time, following the first issues of Kino-Pravda, and consider it an important weapon in the struggle against artistic cinema.

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For practice we shot various things (some were necessary, some were not) by method: illuminated titles, maps, bulletins, cartoons, advertisements, and so this forth. We always announced at meetings and in the press that what we were doing in this area was only training, mere preparation for a serious departure into another essential area. When, under the most trying conditions, the kinoks spent sleepless nights filming various cartoons, humoresques, etc., they had to be reassured that it would not be long now, that we were just about to begin the real animation work which was in the kinoks' plan. Persistently we prepared the union of newsreel and scientific film in which the animation method was to play a decisive role. "Drawings in motion, blueprints in motion, the theory of relativity on the screen-such was already the direction of the kinoks' first manifesto, written at the end of 1919, and before the picture, The Einstein Theory of Relativity, was released abroad.13 Because we were distracted by work on the first part of Kino-Glaz, it turned out that our first scientific picture, Abortion, in which the kinok Belyakov had a significant part, was joined not with the factual footage in our plan, but with a bad romantic drama of a low order. As was to be expected, the union of science with drama did not occur. Dramatic footage looks very cheap and colorless beside scientific film. The scientific verity of such a picture is called into question by this sort of "artistic" proximity. It is clear that if not for work on Kino-Glaz we would not have lost this position and would have used this splendid opportunity for creating something competent, healthy, and interesting. 13.

The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1923), a film with animation by Max Fleischer.

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We are not, of course, going to give up this position we've won. We will continue this work, either by agreement with the department of scientific film, formed on our technical foundation, or by beginning to build afresh. Kino-Pravda and the film-calendars have suffered somewhat, but we have already made good 80%of the loss. The commercial cinema world greeted the first part of Kino-Glaz with hostility, to the great joy of directors, actors, and the entire priestly caste. The big movie theaters would not even open their doors to such an "abomination." The popularity of the slogan "cinema-eye" nevertheless grew and continues to grow. A series of articles devoted to Part One cut its way through the entire party, Soviet, theatrical, and cinema press. Cinema-eye, photo-eye groups sprang up, etc. Every day someone would leave a movie theater after seeing an art-drama, feeling disgust for the first time, and remember cinema-eye. As the slogan cinema-eye spread, the popularity of the name itself grew. Worker correspondents for various press organs began to sign themselves "cinema-eye" when they described everyday phenomena; a "cinema-eye" movie theater opened in Yaroslavl'; the "cinema-eye" of a peacock's tail flashed by on Moscow posters; notes on cinema-eye and caricatures of it became daily occurrences.... But if it is possible to forgive a worker correspondent for Komar for signing "cinema-eye" to the little scenes he's spied upon, one can't forgive a "cinema-eye" theater for opening not with Part One of Kino-Glaz, but with The Indian Tomb 1 or something of that sort. The filming of Part One of Kino-Glaz, which interrupted our organizational work and deprived us of several technical positions, enriched our knowledge and experience. In this work of ours we were testing ourselves, above all. Our most pressing tasks presented themselves more clearly and practically. We really came to know those difficulties awaiting us, and although we haven't overcome them completely, we are already familiar with them and understand how to overcome them. We learned a great deal in this struggle, and this lesson will not go to waste. We have ceased to be merely experimenters; we are already assuming responsibility to the proletarian viewer; and, facing the shopkeepers and specialists boycotting us, we now close our ranks for a fierce battle. 1926 On the Film

The Eleventh

[Year] The Eleventh Year, just like Part One of Kino-Glaz, Forward, Comrades, Soviet!, and A Sixth of the World, is one model, one type of nonacted film. 14.

Das Indische Grabmal (1923), scenario by Fritz Lang, directed by Joe May.

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As the author of the film-object shown today, I would like to draw your attention to the film's following aspects: First of all, The Eleventh Year is written in the purest film-language, the "language of the eye." The Eleventh Year is conceived for visual perception, "visual thinking." Secondly, The Eleventh Year is written by the movie camera in documentary language, in the language of facts recorded on film. Thirdly, The Eleventh Year is written in the socialist language, the language of the communist decoding of the visible world. Before you begin to discuss the film, I would also like to respond to several of the very interesting questions put to me during the last few days in connection with its screening at the Hermitage Cinema. The first question: "Don't some of the shots in The Eleventh Year rely on symbolism?" No. We do not emphasize symbolism. If it turns out that several shots or montage phrases, brought to perfection, develop to the significance of symbols, we do not panic or feel we must exclude them from the film. We believe that a symbolist film and a series of shots rationally constructed, developed to the significance of symbols, are two completely different concepts. The second question: "Why do you make use of complex shots, cinemaphoto-montage?" We resort to complex shots either in order to show simultaneous action, or to separate a detail from the overall film-image, or with the aim of contrasting two or more facts. The explanation of this as a trick method does not correspond to reality. The third question: "Doesn't it seem to you that the first few reels are better edited than the subsequent ones?" Lately this question has been asked especially often. Such an impression is deceptive. The first reel is apparently on a level more easily perceived by the viewer. The fourth and fifth are constructed in a more complex way. There is much more montage inventiveness in them than in the first two; they look more to the future of cinematography than the second and third reels. I must say that the fourth and fifth reels have the same relationship to the first ones that college does to high school. It is natural that the more complex montage causes the viewer to experience greater tension and requires special attention in order to be perceived. The fourth question: "Was The Eleventh Year made without a scenario?" like all cinema-eye films, The Eleventh Year was made without a scenario. Yes, You know, in exploiting this rejection of the scenario our numerous opponents have attempted to present things as though we are against planned work altogether. Whereas, contrary to prevailing notions, the kinoks devote far more labor and attention to a preliminary plan than do workers in dramatic cinema. Before setting to work, a given theme is studied with great care in all of its aspects; literature on the issue is studied; in order to gain the clearest possible understanding of the matter every source is used. Before shooting, thematic, itinerary, and calendar plans are drawn up. How do these plans differ from a scenario? They

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Dziga Vertov.The Eleventh[Year].1928.

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differ in that all of this is the plan of action for the movie camera once the given theme appears in life, but not a plan for staging the same theme. How does the filming plan of an actual battle differ from a plan for staging a series of separate battle scenes? The difference between cinema-eye's plan and the scenario in artistic cinematography amounts roughly to this. The final question concerns intertitles and has been put by many comrades in this form: "How do you explain the abundance of titles in A Sixth of the World and the lack of them in The Eleventh Year?" In A Sixth of the World we were experimenting by putting titles in parentheses through the creation of a specific series of "word-themes." The word-theme has been abolished in The Eleventh Year and the significance of the titles reduced nearly to zero. The picture is constructed through the interweaving of film-phrases, without using titles. Titles have almost no significance in The Eleventh Year. Which is better, then? The first experiment or the second? I feel that both experiments-the creation of wordthemes and their abolition-are equally important and extremely significant, for cinema-eye and for all of Soviet cinema. 1928

The Man with a Movie Camera Work on The Man with a Movie Camera required greater effort than previous cinema-eye work. This can be explained by the greater number of locations under observation as well as by complex organizational and technical operations while filming. The montage experiments demanded exceptional effort. These experiments went on constantly. The Man with a Movie Camera is straightforward, inventive, and sharply contradicts that distributor's slogan: "The more cliches, the better." That slogan

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Dziga Vertov.The Man with a Movie Camera.1929.

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prevents us, the workers on this film, from thinking of rest despite great fatigue. We must make the distributors put aside their slogan with respect to the film. The Man with a Movie Camera needs maximal, inventive presentation. In Kharkov I was asked: "How is it that you're in favor of stirring titles, and suddenly we have The Man with a Movie Camera-a film without words or titles?" My response was, "No, I'm not in favor of stirring titles, not in favor of titles at all-that's the invention of certain critics!" Indeed, the cinema-eye group, following its renunciation of the film studio, of actors, sets, and the script, fought for a decisive cleaning up of film-language, for its complete separation from the language of theater and literature. Thus, in A Sixth of the World the titles are, as it were, bracketed out of the picture and isolated into a contrapuntally constructed word-radio-theme. "Very little room is devoted to titles in The Eleventh Year (their modest role is further expressed by the graphic execution of the titles), so that a title can be cut out without in any way disturbing the film's force." (Filmfront, 1928, no. 2.) And further: "In its specific weight and practical significance the intertitle in a genuine film-object (and The Eleventh Year is such) is just like the quotation about gold from Timon of Athens in Marx's analysis of money in Capital. Incidentally, for the most part these titles are precisely quotations, which might stand for the text during the layout of a book." (Filmfront, 1928, no. 2.) Thus the complete absence of titles in The Man with a Movie Camera does not come as something unexpected, but has been prepared by all the previous cinema-eye experiments. The Man with a Movie Camera represents not only a practical result; it is, as well, a theoretical manifestation on the screen. That is apparently why public debates on it in Kharkov and Kiev assumed the aspect of a fierce battle between

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representatives of various trends in so-called art. Moreover, the dispute took place on several levels at once. Some said The Man with a Movie Camera was an experiment in visual music, a visual concert. Others saw the film in terms of a higher mathematics of montage. Still others declared that it was not "life as it is," but life the way they do not see it, etc. Whereas the film is only the sum of the facts recorded on film, or, if you like, not merely the sum, but the product, a "higher mathematics" of facts. Each item or each factor is a separate little document. The documents have been joined with one another so that, on the one hand, the film would consist only of those.linkages between signifying pieces that coincide with the visual linkages and so that, on the other hand, these linkages would not require intertitles; the final sum of all these linkages represents, therefore, an organic whole. This complex experiment, whose success is admitted by the majority of those comrades who have expressed any opinion, frees us, in the first place, from the tutelage of literature and the theater and brings us face to face with 100% cinematography. Secondly, it sharply opposes "life as it is," seen by the aided eye of the movie camera (cinema-eye), to "life as it is," seen by the imperfect human eye. 1928

Dziga Vertov

Art I Theory I Criticism | Politics

OCTO

October an openforumbfr criticaland theoreticaldiscussionsof the contemporaryartsin theirsocial andpoliticalcontexts. Editors Rosalind Krauss Annette Michelson $4.00 per copy $14.00 per year (individuals) $20.00 per year (institutions) Write Journals Department MIT Press 28 Carleton Street Cambridge, Mass. 02142

EdtgarDegas. PosedBallerina. From theOctober5 PhotographySpecial Issue.

OCTOBER 8 g&9 Laurie Anderson

Working Notes

Benjamin Boretz

Debussy, Schoenberg, Carter

Pierre Boulez and Michel Fano

A Conversation

Douglas Crimp

Pictures

Jacques Derrida

The Parergon

Michel Fano

Berg's Lulu

Dominique Jameux

IRCAM

Rosalind Krauss

Sculpture and the Expanded Field

Ivanka Stoianova

The Production Process in Music