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Cultural Revolution and Art

The October Revolution, as I have repeatedly noted, was bound to have a double effect on the fate of our art. First, it naturally had to influence art, be reflected in it, like any significant social phenomenon. Art, often very peculiar, one might say at random, reflects the events and moods of the epochs in which it develops; but in its own way it is always extremely sensitive to reality. Therefore, it is natural to expect, in its own way, the spontaneous influence of enormous social changes and extraordinary events on art. In addition, the revolution also produced great revolutions in terms of the demand for art, destroying one customer, putting forward another, and thereby changing the stylistic nature of the demand of the era. But the impact of the October Revolution cannot in any way be limited to this. It is not only a spontaneous social phenomenon, it also led the proletariat to dictatorship and created the Soviet Republic as an advanced and profoundly cultured state. The revolutionary proletariat, having seized state power, that is, the strongest opportunity to influence reality, brings the maximum of planned construction in all aspects of this reality.

As a cultural state, the Soviet government seeks not only to improve its political essence, not only to organize the economy on socialist lines, but also to the cultural reorganization of life and the profound enlightenment of the consciousness of the population.

The impact of the state on the life and consciousness of the ruling class itself - the proletariat and all other groups of the population - is in essence a cultural revolution. To this one must only add independent processes that proceed independently of the influence of the state, since the cultural revolution proceeds both along the line of the state's influence on the masses and along the line of the growth of the Soviet public.

In any case, the state, in its work on communist education and the reorganization of everyday life, could not and cannot ignore art, for art in both respects is a weapon of great importance.

In the field of reorganization of everyday life, the Soviet government has put forward an extensive plan, which can be carried out only as we win on the economic front and as our resources grow, and, consequently, in a very long time. However, we began to partially implement this plan even before this year, the year of a particularly striking proclamation of the paramount importance of the cultural revolution.

This plan consists in creating a new Moscow, in a new redevelopment of it and a number of other cities, in raising the countryside to a new type of housing conditions.

First of all, we must state that the gigantic construction tasks that lie ahead for the Union of Republics in this area will place colossal demands on monumental art, primarily on architects; they will, of course, extend to other artists, because the buildings, first of all, the public buildings that we will create, will require pictorial and sculptural decoration, which would reveal the inner meaning and inner essence of each building. I have no doubt that monumental frescoes, statues and bas-reliefs will enter, as an essential component, into newly created buildings in the very near future.

The artist Grabar has already made a proposal that it be decided to allocate at least 5% of the amount allocated for each building in order to attract its artists and sculptors to the corresponding decoration. It goes without saying that this matter requires not only internal, ideological unity in the theme of this decoration, but also such a stylistic unity that would turn works of painting and sculpture from “decoration” in the proper sense into some kind of organic part of the building. It is also true that the creation of all kinds of monuments - about which Vladimir Ilyich spoke and in part, in temporary forms, was carried out - in the squares, in squares, on the streets, as well as the cultivation of new parks and gardens and the improvement of old ones should find great use in our urban planning.

But, of course, the reform of everyday life is not limited to this. A large role in this matter belongs to the club, which is something intermediate between the state wide social life and individual life. The club is a unity of persons (territorial, professional or similar interests), which, first of all, has as its goal to enable members of the organization to collectively organize their leisure time on a more pleasant, reasonable and rich basis than each of them can do in his apartment .

When creating clubs, there is no need to necessarily strive for palace-like splendor, for tens of thousands of members and, accordingly, for the possibility, even almost the necessity, of its monumental artistic service. I do not mean to deny by this the significance of a great excellent club of the type, for example, the Central House of the Red Army in Moscow, but I mean that this type will never be the only or predominant type. On the contrary, often clubs with only a few hundred members present even certain advantages. But here we will deal with a cozy room about relatively small rooms, where appropriate calm, comfortable, joyful and invigorating furnishings come to the fore, right down to all utensils, dishes, lamps, etc., decorating the walls with posters, wall newspapers, but as well as paintings and portraits, with real artistic interest. Here easel artists, statuettes will find wide application for themselves.

Finally, individual life must also be reformed with the participation of art. Will we build predominantly communal houses, huge hotels, which will have separate apartments for families and large common halls of the club type, or will we build villages of cottages, with a central house serving them, or will we finally to more or less adapt to the new way of life those buildings that we already have (except, of course, the gloomy factory barracks, which must be destroyed as soon as possible), we still have to reckon with their improvement. There is a whole sea of activities for artists. The furnishing of rooms, from wall painting to lighting, furniture, utensils, must, on the one hand, proceed from some well-understood aesthetic principles, which consist in constantly maintaining the joy of life, the consciousness of well-being, and on the other hand, from personal tastes of the owner of the room or the family living in the apartment.

I will cite one interesting fact in this respect. The famous German architect Taut built a whole village near Berlin, of the type that he has been constantly putting forward lately. These are beautiful houses, in each of which 3-4 families live. Each family occupies a separate floor and is completely isolated. The coloring of stairs, corridors is extremely cheerful and, one might say, unexpected. This is a curious combination of blue and orange, pink and green, etc. Inside the rooms, too, light and cheerful coloring prevails, and, of course, made in such a way that its light tone does not at all contribute to pollution, because absolutely all walls and furniture can be washed with water and even soap. The furniture is made to match the walls; no other furniture is supposed to be brought in, except for the room already provided for by the arrangement: alcoves are opened, where there are wooden beds, tables recline from the walls or pretend to be against them, chairs are also partly benches, leaning back from the walls, partly mobile stools, which are then removed into the corresponding niches. The room, thus, turns into a bedroom, then into a dining room, then into a reception room, then the whole, so to speak, hides and leaves only clean bright walls, a floor, and a ceiling. All this is very improved, and undoubtedly such a room by the architect Taut is pleasing to the eye. There is a minimum of dust, a minimum of the bad smell of old housing, a maximum of sun, a maximum of air, etc.

But I was not at all surprised when Taut told me what the German workers were doing with his rooms. As soon as they move into these rooms, they immediately cover the bright, clean walls with cheap wallpaper. They transport from the dwelling where they used to live, dusty, smelly upholstered furniture and a thousand of all kinds of pictures, photographs, curtains, tablecloths, which their grandmothers or mothers also made with their own hands. True, this everyday creativity continues even now in the form of various paper pompoms, curly lampshades, knick-knacks glued from cardboard, etc. Bey’s apartment turns into some kind of museum of bad taste in Taut’s opinion, and in general in the opinion of healthy aesthetics.

However, the worker is absolutely right in his own way, for living in Taut's improved apartment is mortal boredom. Here one could place, at best, perhaps that Gastev automatic worker, around whom so much controversy is now going on. A living person wants to see in things a continuation of his personality, and often prefers some terrible, sagging armchair to new, beautiful and healthy furniture, because as a little boy he sat in it, cross-legged, and read a children's book.

I think that our workers are much less petty-bourgeois in their tastes than the Germans, whose domestic furnishings really represent a purely petty-bourgeois absurdity. I brought up this fact, not to rejoice at the commitment of the German worker to possessions, but to show that whoever wants to succeed here must be able to reckon with the individual tastes and inclinations of those whom he intends to serve.

Let us also mention here the urgent need for the artist to intervene in clothing. There is no doubt that overalls, sportswear and special holiday wear will be the three types that will drive out the neutral and rather unsuitable clothing created during the 19th century.

The most important element of clothing, of course, is the fabric itself. At all times, the fabric claimed one or another degree of artistry. It is dyed or painted. We know that there have been, and especially now there are, great art houses where people of first-class taste invent new and new designs for printed or patterned woven fabrics. In this case (just as precisely, however, as with mass-produced ceramics), it is necessary to introduce the artist into production itself, a kind of engineer-artist is needed who would enable the cheap mass production of household items to turn into artistic production. After all, household items should not only satisfy the basic needs of a person, they must also be the decoration of his room, his life. Let me give you one example of this. Two grades of galvanized buckets are produced at the Lysvinskaya factory.

One production method - without aluminum; it gives a grainy, similar to the pattern of frost on glass, the surface of the bucket. This bucket, however, is more brittle, more likely to have holes in it, and is somewhat more expensive than that made by the aluminum method. But when using aluminum, the surface is smooth and somewhat dull. Although this bucket is much more durable and somewhat cheaper, the peasants buy buckets made in the old way and declare in the most definite way that they prefer them because they are more beautiful. The same Lysva factory produces enamelware. These dishes can be smooth or decorated with some flowers, landscapes. A decorated mug costs a little more than an undecorated one, but it suits the peasantry better.

Back to fabrics. Everyone knows to what extent the village market for the sale of scarves and cotton prints, as well as the sale of these goods to the East, is important to us. On the one hand, it is necessary to guess the tastes of the consumer, and on the other hand, based on these tastes, create something new, attractive, bright. It must be remembered that human creativity in the field of fabrics in conservative societies is suspended. In this sense, both the East and the countryside, having reached a certain perfection, or, simply, a certain level, begin to resist any innovation. Then there is no more room for an artist, a creative artist. The case turns into a craft, sometimes

very virtuoso and subtle. This conservative national art in the creation of fabrics (as well as ceramic, metal utensils, etc.) is being replaced by a European factory, brazenly and rollickingly introducing outrageous bad taste and hack-work into people's life.

We cannot stand either on the point of view of the conservative tastes of the countryside and the East, or on the point of view of corrupt hack-work. Our business, relying on reality, i.e. on existing tastes, to develop them. And in this sense, the engineer-artist will play his purely revolutionary role in relation to these and conservative layers.

But it's not just about them. It is also about the city dweller. Where will the coloring and texture of fabrics go? The bourgeoisie has created an extremely dull color for men, following in this respect partly its business instinct, partly the remnants of its former puritanism. Only a woman is given the opportunity to use fabrics that are much brighter and more intricate in texture.

Where will we go? Goethe had already managed to take a social standpoint in this respect. He admired the variegated colors of the city bazaar, where peasants flocked from all sides, but he said that a more or less refined city dweller was dizzy from such variegation. A city dweller, nervously tired, accustomed to holding back in communication with others, a closed person, and in his costume sets certain general norms, from which he is afraid to deviate individually and which fluctuate within dark and cold colors. In the nobility and court life, in which solemnity, beauty and celebration play a dominant role, because this is required by the social functions of monarchs and their entourage, fabrics of very bright colors and shiny textures reign (silk, velvet, etc.), with the use of while gold and precious stones.

Of course, not only the cut of clothes, but also its coloring, are dictated by certain living conditions. But here it is difficult to say whether socialism will go along the line of further reduction in brightness, further restraint in coloring, which has its pleasant sides, or, on the contrary, will color them very magnificently and colorfully, under the influence of great joy in life and a great desire for sociability. .

Personally, I believe that there will be a strict distinction between three types of clothing: overalls, sportswear and party wear. Under overalls, one must understand one in which both the fabric and the cut absolutely correspond to the professional work that is done by a person; under sportswear - clothes adapted for this sport and, above all, for relaxation in general and for the body to feel at ease. On holidays, as I think, socialist and even approaching socialist society will greatly appreciate the bright colors of the crowd, which, according to Robespierre, during the festivities is the spectator itself and the bright spectacle itself.

In all this work, the individual creativity of the artist is extremely important. Here, as already mentioned above, there is also an engineering and artistic approach in the creation of mass fabric, in the development of types of overalls, sportswear, and individual artistic creativity of the order of high craft, reaching genuine art. Here the artist will interact closely with tailors, dressmakers, milliners, etc.

I will also mention here that even in a bourgeois society, for example, in modern Germany, the latest and most improved factories (say, the Babelsberg power plant, recently built) are not only built architecturally, talentedly and beautifully, but they also receive internal coloring and decoration that would make your stay enjoyable.

The cultural revolution, both in that part of it that occurs spontaneously in society, and in that which is the result of the planned activity of the state, involves not only the reorganization of everyday life, but, next to this, the organization of consciousness.

To organize consciousness, as we now know, does not mean only to give certain information, certain knowledge. Information turns into living social forces only if they are beliefs, if they become forces that determine the will or, more specifically, the real behavior of a person.

The character of a person is the sum of his inherent reactions to various phenomena of life. This includes both labor reactions and broadly social reactions. Both are equally important to us. To create in people a deeply social character, i.e. to define their behavior as friendly is the greatest task of socialism. The greatest vice of all petty-bourgeois ways of life, from the backward village to high capitalism, was precisely the selfish habits dictated by private property.

We must strive to create a social character in a person, strive to educate in him ideas, feelings, actions in which the dominant role would be played by huge general, historical phenomena, and not small, personal, everyday ones. Socialism does not at all desire the leveling of people, it does not at all desire their transformation into a herd. He emphasized many times through the mouths of his heralds and teachers that it is precisely socialist collectivism, namely communism, that will give especially bright freedom to the individual, will create the possibility of the original development of each individual. And only under the condition of this original development of each personality, is possible that most subtle and free division of labor, on which both the diversity and the power of mankind will rest.

This is where the role of ideological art comes into play. We will not touch here on the meaning of literature, theater, cinema, music. Let's focus on the visual arts.

From the point of view from which we approach them, it is important for us to emphasize the term pictorial. What does fine art mean? This means the art of evoking on a plane, with the help of lines, spots, colors, a living image that has some value. We will define this value more closely later.

In the field of sculpture, this means shaping this or that material in such a way that it takes the form of a certain image that has the same value.

Ancient aesthetics (even Aristotle) ​​therefore believed that the purpose of art was to imitate nature. Goethe sneered at this, declaring that if he were given the choice between a live pug and a painted pug, exactly repeating him, he would always choose a live one.

The mistake of ancient aesthetics was that it did not understand the stylistic creativity that the artist brings to his work, despite the fact that the language of this work should be realistic, i.e. must remain illustrative.

The fine arts sometimes lost their way underfoot and veered into this or that gross error. Then realism began to turn into illusionism, and the artist set himself the goal of repeating nature with the greatest possible accuracy, without pursuing any other tasks; then, on the contrary, he was fond of examples of non-figurative arts, for example, music. The artist tried to create some kind of symphony of colors with a subject matter or non-objective theme, and broke into that area, which, of course, has the right to exist, but comes closer to ornamentation or kaleidoscopic; then, finally, the artist became so individualist that he tried to create his own world, unlike the nature around us, distorting the elements of this nature beyond recognition or simply creating his own forms. In all these cases, art either ceases to be pictorial or ceases to be art in the proper sense of the word. If art causes us only bewilderment before a silk or a flower is cleverly rendered, then, of course, it becomes a great craft trick and nothing more. Genuine art is a social force that, according to Tolstoy's apt definition, which is quite acceptable to us, infects the environment with the thoughts and feelings invested by the artist in his work, although the artist himself is far from always the painter is precisely aware of what thoughts and what feelings he puts into his picture.

Art is not logic, a work of art is not a scientific treatise, not a journalistic article. His ways of influence are different. But these are all the same methods of influence that convey feelings of delight, horror, ridicule, in all their gradations, indignation, reassurance, etc., etc. If a work of art, when I stand in front of it, does not excite me, that is, –e. does not cause a great emotional movement in me, it cannot be called a work of art or it must be recognized as a meager work of art. The greater this emotional excitement, the better art fulfills its purpose. The petty-bourgeois aesthetic definition, that art is valuable precisely because of its aimlessness, sounds unconvincing and class-unacceptable to the proletariat.

But, on the other hand, the art of expressionists, for example, often very strongly charged with feeling, but expressing it almost without images or distorted images, ceases to be fine art. The bad thing about this is not that this art approaches a kind of spatial music, but that it ceases to be widely understood.

Perhaps wider accessibility is dictated to art in our country by all the social conditions of our time and is the basis of real artistic success.

During the Middle Ages (and in many other eras) religious art dominated. Religion was one of the foundations of the feudal organization of society, one of its main social ties. This determined both the theme and the form of artistic production. At present we have something much brighter, much more powerful than religion. Struggling with the heterogeneous, chaotic bourgeois world that has replaced feudalism, we are now moving again towards the organic epoch, the epoch of mass conviction, the epoch of mass concerted action. But instead of the absurdities of religion, which sanctified and conserved all darkness and injustice, we have an extremely bright, democratic worldview, joyfully accepting nature and man, with its task to subdue this nature with reason. A sensitive artist who felt the ideological and emotional scope of communism, cannot but feel the richness of thematic, formal and emotional motifs that erupt from the molten depths of the proletarian world outlook. That is why we believe that with the right approach to the use of art on the part of the proletarian state and with a real penetration into the minds of artists of our worldview, we will have in our country a huge flowering of both the art of producing things and ideological fine art.

Who will be the consumer of fine art? First of all, a significant consumer of it will be, as we have already indicated; clubs; whether in the form of careful reproductions, or even in the form of an original, works of fine art will also be distributed in private dwellings. A good reproduction of artistic products is the most democratic form of their use and at the same time can greatly reward the work of the artist.

The purchase of sculptural or easel works directly, so frequent among the bourgeoisie, according to some, should completely stop with us. I don't think so. Germany has already developed methods for distributing artistic works among the general population. One of the ways is a wide lottery. Artists produce paintings and statues for such a lottery. Their total value is, say, 100,000 rubles. One hundred thousand tickets are issued, respectively, which give the right to visit the exhibition for free and the right to win one or another work. If, each work costs 500 r. on average, the following result is obtained: for one ruble, each of the 500 participants receives an excellent work of art. But these lotteries are repeated every year, they give considerable help to producing artists and at the same time distribute genuine works of art among the masses.

But the ideological works of easel painting and movable sculpture (we have already spoken of monumental art) must still find a place for themselves in special galleries and museums, the number of which is likely to expand considerably.

The most important of all, of course, are periodic and mobile exhibitions.

Works that will not be sold at periodic and mobile exhibitions or will not be raffled off, and due to their small merits will not end up in any club, in any art gallery, even a provincial one, clearly do not deserve any attention. All the best is selected. The artist must remain motivated to create as best he can, as best as possible to the tastes of the contemporary public. If indulgence in the tastes of the public in bourgeois countries seems something terrible and humiliating, then adapting one's creativity to the requirements of the working masses, embraced by the ideas of socialism, can only lead the artist forward.

One of the important conditions for the achievements outlined here is the self-organization of artists. However, the question of their associations and the now conceived Federation of Artists lies outside the scope of this article.

This article deals mainly with the issues of applied art, i.e. artistic production. But that doesn't mean that I consider the art industry more closely tied to the Cultural Revolution than ideological art. In this article, the emphasis is on applied art because I have spoken about ideological art and its significance for us both in reports and in the press many times and with sufficient completeness.