by Jan Plamper
At some point during the 1930s, the production of Stalin sculptures must have been put on a more industrial footing.83 Visual art factories were set up. The early phases of these factories were poorly documented; the only sources available today are newspaper articles, which may bear little relation to real-life practices. On 11 May 1935 Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, under the headline “Construction of a Visual Art Factory” featured the following report:
On a 12-hectare lot . . . in the village of Vsekhsviatskoe extensive construction of a visual art factory has started. The factory is going to consist of separate buildings that are intended for various production shops (the making of brushes, colors, art puppets, the preparation of sculptural stone, a bronze foundry, and so on). A special building will be reserved for individual studios of 60 artists and sculptors. A special pavilion for plein-air work is being built on the territory of the factory as well. The walls and cupola of the pavilion are of glass. A special factory building will be allotted for the manufacturing of monumental sculptures for the Palace of Soviets.84
At least one visual art factory must have reached completion, for on 17 October 1937 Sovetskoe Iskusstvo carried an advertisement: “VseKoKhudozhnik. Sculpture production factory. Moscow, 96, Baltic Village, house 42-a, telephone D 3–27–26 is accepting orders for architectural-stucco works and for sculpture: political, athletic, military, domestic, and children’s. We have in stock figures, busts and bas-reliefs for the adornment of new buildings, clubs, reading rooms, sports arenas, and so forth. We will send you photographs and price lists upon demand.”85 Moreover, some production statements have survived: in 1940, another sculpture factory in Moscow oblast produced 449 Stalin statues, 136 Stalin busts, 168 Lenin busts, 54 Kirov busts, 50 Beria busts, 36 Marx busts, 32 Engels busts, and 15 Kuibyshev statues.86
Later on paintings were added and we know for sure that by 1949 a new technical reproduction establishment, the Painting-Sculpture Factory of the Moscow Association of Artists, existed.87 This visual art factory (re)produced art as follows. Its art soviet ordered a sketch, which was then turned in by the artist. The soviet could either reject this sketch outright or mark it for reworking, sometimes with concrete suggestions on how to change it. The soviet could issue several of these decrees one after the other, or accept the sketch. An order could then be placed, either with or without an advance payment. After the artist turned in the finished order, the work could again be either directly rejected, recommended for reworking, or accepted. Once accepted, the work of art often had to undergo an appraisal to determine the price it ought to receive. Some artists were paid forty thousand rubles (such as the first prize winner of a 1949 Stalin portrait competition), others only three hundred rubles. For the most expensive paintings, the advance payment could exceed the price paid for the finished painting.88
On one occasion (19 April 1948) art soviet members received payment at the rate of forty-five rubles for each meeting; the art soviet chairman received seventy-five rubles.89 A jury could also go on inspection tours and see, on site,what works of art needed to be changed. In July 1949, for example, the two members of the jury traveled to Savelev train station and “in the presence of the station master and the artist Antipov” inspected Antipov’s seven easel paintings (oil on canvas): “1. Full-length portrait of J. V. Stalin inside his office, 2. A copy of artist A. M. Gerasimov’s painting J. V. Stalin and A. M. Gorky, 3. A copy of artist F. A. Modorov’s painting J. V. Stalin and M. I. Kalinin, 4. Guarding the Sea Borders. View of the sea with a naval ship, 5. Portrait of J. V. Stalin, 6. Portrait of V. I. Lenin, 7. Portrait of V. M. Molotov.” The jury members found “that all paintings mentioned have been considerably improved in comparison with the last inspection along the lines of the suggestions earlier given to the artist and can, however, be accepted overall only after artist Antipov . . . makes the following corrections on site: 1. In the painting/. V. Stalin in His Office (full-length portrait) the perspectival arrangement of the desk needs to be corrected and the light falling on the figure’s chest needs to be strengthened, in equal proportion to the light’s strength on the face and legs.” In “the portrait of J. V. Stalin the shoulders ought to be very slightly widened,” but “the remaining paintings did not require changes.”90
The more routine examination of pictures took place at the art factory itself. A typical 1949 meeting of the “Great Art Soviet for Painting” (Bolshoi khudo-zhestvennyi so vet po zhivopisi) was attended by the chairman, the well-known artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalia; a (female) secretary; four standing members of the art soviet (all artists); two “art historians–consultants”; a member of the artists’ union; and the director of the art factory. Five art soviet members were missing—“ill,” “outside Moscow,” “for unknown reasons.”91 The summary of this meeting’s decisions is shown on the following page.
As can be seen from the second item in the summary, some artists owed paintings from earlier commissions—apparently having received an advance payment on the basis of their sketches but never having delivered the final product—and paid the art factory back by means of a new, unpaid-for work.
THE ART SOVIET DISCUSSES A LEADER PORTRAIT
Summaries of decisions were one thing, detailed stenographic records of art soviet meetings were another. The latter were products of intense contestation, much like the stenographic records of Politburo or other Party meetings. The stenogram was circulated to the jury members (not the artists) present at the art soviet meeting according to a—changing and disputed—hierarchy, so that the member next in line would get the stenogram with the comments of the preceding member worked in, making it impossible to discern what differences from the original had emerged. The art soviet jury members last in the line were least able to shape the written record of the meeting. One can only imagine the amount of informal lobbying of artists and jury members to achieve the kind of depiction of the meeting that suited them.92
A full-scale meeting of the Painting-sculpture Factory’s “ Great Art Soviet for Painting” is an excellent window on this key institutional practice in Stalin cult art production.93 In some ways the atmosphere of the art soviet resembled that of a workshop; one artist, for example, demonstrated a sketch, At the Sculptor’s Studio, and asked the soviet to provide him with a sculptor for specific advice on the reality of a sculptor’s art practice.94 Generally the artist whose work was being discussed was expected to be present.95 Often the other artists at the soviet had already seen the work under review in the studio and presumably made comments there. Thus Fyodor Shurpin remarked about one painting: “I have seen this painting many times and must say that, to my surprise, it looks much better than in the studio. It is rare that you take a painting to a different location and it seems better.”96
A typical art soviet discussion was of a work by the painter N. N. Yerushev, V. I. Lenin’s Funeral on Red Square, submitted after another commissioned painting, The Stalin Harvest had been declined. The visual art factory had forgiven half of Yerushev’s debt for the failed first painting and Yerushev was attempting to pay off the other half by presenting the painting of Lenin’s funeral.97 The obligatory chairperson and several artists gathered for the first discussion of this painting on 27 April 1949. They opened a first round of devastating criticisms by condemning the depiction of GUM in the background. They next turned to the portrayal of persons in the painting. In answer to one artist’s complaint that the “figure of Dzerzhinsky is awfully tall, and it has a small head,” Yerushev defended himself: “But Dzerzhinsky was very tall. I got photographs from the Lenin Museum, and our laureates—Sokolov-Skalia, Bubnov, Moravov, Nalbandian—met with me three days ago. . . . Of course this is a difficult painting. I have been sitting over it for nine years.” Thus Yerushev tried to fend off criticism by invoking the photographic templates representing the “real” Lenin and by alluding to his connections in the upper echelons of the Soviet art world. But the critics were not convinced. They went on:
POKARZHEVSKY: Don’t you have eyes? T
hen there is Stalin’s face. You should have shown the face and the body in the center, but you have the balustrade and snow-covered fir tree branches at front center. That is your center. And no people to be seen. . . . Lenin can hardly be made out. After all, this is a picture, you should remember that Lenin is surrounded by people, friends, you should have made them stand out. Tone down the snow, you should have made a gray day and more light on the faces.—The picture is unsuccessful. Its main flaw is that there are no people and no faces. . . .
PLASTOV: Comrade Yerushev, what happened on that woeful day? The leader died, next to him stands another leader, Stalin, stand comrades, comrades-in-arms, soldiers, stands the entire Russian people. . . . And how are you solving this question? You are solving it, it seems to me, without an understanding of the moment and the faces that you are depicting. How are you composing? In the foreground, you devote one-third of the composition to the most motionless [element] in the composition—the balustrade, the branches, the smoke, etc. The main, key elements—Stalin, Kalinin, Dzerzhinsky, and other comrades-in-arms of Lenin— cannot be seen. . . . It is confusing. Then you begin searching—who is standing there? That is probably Stalin—yes, it is him. . . . And altogether you get neither the people, nor the atmosphere in which this is taking place, nor the people behind these leaders, nor the leaders in front of the people. . . . Furthermore, regarding the psychology of those present: Stalin’s face should express the sorrow of a great man about a genius who has passed away, and how have you expressed this? You have not. All we see is a man with a lowered head, and so forth. On to Dzerzhinsky. It is impossible to see his face, how he looked. Even his felt boots are better drawn than his head. The people who are coming up, the simple people, how have you painted them? Very superficially, very dryly, without any details of what they felt, with what kinds of eyes they looked at the terrible grief that had struck the country. Whichever spot you look at, you find low-quality drawing, a lack of precision, or an inability to express the emotion that you undoubtedly felt in the most authentic and sincere way. I think it would help if you worked on this theme more thoroughly. . . . Do keep in mind that you have chosen an exceptional moment in the history of the country, in the history of mankind, and all of a sudden you approach this moment somewhat mechanically. I do not think this is right.
This is an impressive concrete example of a well-known painter, Arkady Plastov, explaining—“in comradely fashion,” as another member of the art soviet put it—to a younger painter how to put into practice the principles of socialist realism. Yerushev’s subject was a moment of truly mythic proportions in the history of the first socialist society: the transfer of power from the founding leader Lenin to his successor Stalin.98 This transfer meant nothing less than the progression of a Hegel-like world spirit from one body to another. Encapsulated in the new leader, Stalin, this spirit would march on toward the Marxian goal of socialism, the kingdom of freedom. To depict this crucial moment, realism as the style of choice was never in doubt. Yet this realism should move beyond mimesis. The task of this kind of realism—socialist realism—was to express on canvas a time better characterized as kairos than chronos. A depiction of an event like Lenin’s funeral had to show more than just Lenin’s funeral. It had to show not just history as it was, but history as it ought to be and indeed would be. It had to give an inkling of a place mankind had not yet been to but was inexorably moving towards—utopia. Plastov’s comments for his fellow painter come as close to an elaboration of the principles of socialist realism in the case of a concrete painting as one will find. This was socialist realism in situ.99
Yerushev was desperate. “Comrades,” he said, “I have been painting this picture for a long time and am getting confused, because I am one student and have a lot of teachers. During those nine years [the painting] spent one and a half months at the Lenin Museum, everyone looked at it, at the balustrade, at the columns. I wanted to remove them and the artists recommended that I do so, but [the Lenin Museum] said that it would be historically false, ‘you have to show it the way it was.’” Yerushev had failed to grasp the synthetic nature of socialist realism. He had failed to understand that he could drop the balustrade and show Stalin with a larger-than-life face on which the forces of history were inscribed. He had failed to understand that he should paint the columns smaller than they had been and instead direct Stalin’s gaze at a point outside the picture, so as to express the leader’s foreknowledge of the future of socialism.100 Yet the art soviet gave Yerushev a second chance: “You should draw sketches,” said the chairperson. “We have decided that you should perfect this painting.”101
Four months later, on 29 August 1949, Yerushev presented a new version of his painting of Lenin’s funeral. The painting now moved to a stage where the art soviet was supposed to make a decision about accepting or rejecting it.
CHAIRPERSON: . . . I think we can ask whether to accept this piece. (The painter: “I was told to get rid of the smoke to the right, to make GUM lower, to lighten up J. V. Stalin’s face, and to tone down the yellow of the snow on the platform.”)
ANTONOV: If we are going to talk about what was said, which critical remarks were made—we spoke of the quality of the drawing, we said that the proportions of J. V. Stalin’s head and all proportions of human figures are not right, that the entire crowd is not on the right plane, that everything is done poorly, unprofession-ally. The painting has stayed on this level. I think that it is impossible to accept this thing the way it is . . .
CHAIRPERSON: In my opinion we cannot demand more from this painter, we know his capabilities.
KOTOV: We can discuss if Yerushev is a professional or if this is amateur art. . . . If he owes something, one could petition that his debt be written off. That would be correct, but it is wrong to accept a painting which should not be accepted. . . . I must say that the worst here are the figures in the center—the figure of J. V. Stalin and the coffin with the body of V. I. Lenin. . . . Concretely, the figure of J. V. Stalin is too short, the head too large, the figure too small in relation to those behind it. . . .
BUBNOV: I would not like to reject this painting entirely. I agree that there are a lot of awkward elements here, for example, the figure of J. V. Stalin. It needs to be [seriously] drawn and painted, especially since it is in the center of the painting. What do I like in this painting? It captures the mood of the time, it is somehow warm, it is painted with great feeling. . . . I think this painting needs more work and someone should help Yerushev with this.102
Even at this point in the appraisal process, it turned out, there existed a range of opinions and the art soviet could not make up its mind. It is unclear what happened to Yerushev’s painting. Its whereabouts are unknown and no reproductions have surfaced, therefore it is likely that it was never accepted.
As can be seen from the discussion of Yerushev’s painting, the criticism of artistic representations of Stalin often concerned concrete physical details, as other examples also show. In one painting his “left arm up to the elbow” was described as “too long,” his “hands too poorly illuminated”; “Stalin has small hands. They need light and must be brought to life.”103 In another, “the ear needs a close look, it is small, it is out of place” and “the lower part of the nose is too dark and appears like a nostril, therefore the nose seems short.”104 A third painting was criticized for featuring “too pointed a head, even though Stalin has a round head”; “the entire head is too pointed, it should be slightly enlarged by making the chin rounder.”105 Finally, one painting was inspected for the third time and evoked such comments as, “it has become a lot better!” “Except for Stalin’s hand,” remarked one artist, and the painting was accepted only with the condition of “fixing the hand.”106
The commissioning institution of a work of art could substantially influence the final outcome. In the highest reaches of power, Voroshilov changed the places of the personages depicted in Gerasimov’s First Cavalry during an informal visit to the artist’s stud
io.107 Lower-level institutions exercised similar control. The Kalinin Museum ordered a painting by M. G. Sokolov, M. I. Kalinin Speaks with Delegates at the All-Union Congress of Female Workers and Farm Women, and directed exactly who was to stand where in the picture. However, unlike in the upper reaches of power in the case of the Kalinin Museum this clashed with the standardized process of the verification of paintings by the art soviet, which saw its own prerogative of upholding general standards for paintings violated by the museum. The art soviet complained: “The painter showed us this picture twice in the form of drawings and said in regard to our instructions and objections that this was precisely how the museum wanted the figures arranged.”108 In fact, at the heart of this conflict was not only the clash between personalized patronage and modern, standardized, bureaucratized forms of power. This conflict also revealed tensions over who, at the lower end of the power hierarchy, had the authority over the Soviet canon (how to represent Kalinin, in this case), as well as tensions between the seemingly single “correct” artistic representation of a leader and the mundane exigencies of a mass art industry that operated to a certain extent in response to market-like supply and demand forces.109 At the very top of the power pyramid, these tensions were unthinkable since there was no mediating institution between the commissioning person, Stalin, the decisive voice on what was a “correct” representation, and the executing painter. At most, Voroshilov shuttled between star painters to convey the demands of Stalin orally and personally.
As always, a critical issue in art soviet discussions was Stalin’s relationship with other figures in pictorial representations. By 1949, for example, Stalin was to be depicted as listening to Lenin with great attention and respect, invariably in a conflict-free, harmonious situation, and never from the inferior position of a schoolchild. A. I. Makarov’s Stalin and Gorky with Lenin, which featured a scene of Stalin and Gorky listening to Lenin in the latter’s office, was criticized for its untypical depiction of Stalin in relation to Lenin: “the interaction of Lenin with Stalin is not convincing. The impression that they are arguing is particularly underlined by Stalin’s facial expression, which needs to be improved psychologically.” As another artist elaborated, Stalin was portrayed as too agitated, “but Stalin always listens very calmly and intelligently. According to witnesses, when he spoke with Lenin he was always very attentive, even somehow acted like a military officer with his superior, with great dignity. . . . He might have behaved like this at the Batumi demonstration, but not with Lenin.”110 Similarly, there were conventions as to the place of a Stalin portrait in a picture. Arkady Plastov criticized N. P. Kucherov’s painting In the Classroom for violating the canon in this respect: “You have placed a Stalin portrait here, but it is usually located in a more respected place. Moreover, you hung it below the blackboard.” Fyodor Shurpin, who was also present, interjected: “That’s no problem!” Kucherov offered an explanation of his spatial arrangement: “I thought allegorically,” only to be outwitted by Plastov: “But this is already thought in touch with reality (a eto uzhe real’no myslitsia).” Shurpin intervened again: “He doesn’t need to take down the portrait!” But Plastov had the final word: “He simply needs to give this brains (nado prosto obmozgovat’ eto)!”111 Finally, there was critical talk of a case where “V. M. Molotov and J. V. Stalin are of lesser height, and Kaganovich is a lot taller.”112 It seemed to be clear to everyone involved that Stalin—with some rare exceptions—was to be depicted as being taller than other Bolshevik luminaries. This was never a mere issue of convention or of power, Stalin’s height was always indexical of his outstanding position as “locomotive of the revolution,” as incarnation of the revolutionary world spirit in an inexorable movement of history toward the telos of socialism.