by Leek, Peter.
Thus, Larionov makes a distinction between real, objective rayonism and non-objective, non-figurative rayonism, where external links with the visible world no longer exist. Larionov’s rayonism thereby pulled painting, little by little, out of the grip of the object, transforming it into an autonomous self-sufficient pictorial art.
175. Martiros Saryan, Large Oriental Still Life, 1915.
Tempera on canvas, 105 x 231 cm, Saryan Museum, Erevan.
176. Mikhaïl Larionov, Breads, c. 1910.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 84 cm, Private Collection.
177. Mikhail Larionov, Fish at Sunset, 1904.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 95 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Finally, after Larionov suffered a concussion in 1914, he and Gontcharova moved to Paris, where they worked as designers for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes but also of Prokofiev, Stravinsky and numerous other artists. He participated as well in the illustration of anthologies and poems, such as The Twelve.
Like Larionov, the Armenian painter Martiros Saryan studied under Korovin and Serov at the Moscow College of Painting and Sculpture, where he became friendly with Sudeikin, Kuznetsov and Petrov-Vodkin — all brilliant colourists. His still lifes, like his portraits and landscapes, have a remarkable zest. Many of them feature fruit, vegetables or flowers painted in vibrant, sun-drenched colours. A few include Eastern elements, as in Buddhist Still Life. A warm light emanates from the juxtaposition of colours. Though a landscape artist, he painted flowers all through his life, regardless of the circumstances. Only one bouquet stands apart from the others. On 9 May 1945, people had come to congratulate him on the victory. The artist’s studio was filled with flowers. According to his son, Saryan, although he was still in the army, conceived of his still life Flowers, which he dedicated and brought to “the Armenian soldiers that served the Great Patriotic War”.
178. Martiros Saryan, Still Life. Grapes, 1911.
Tempera on cardboard, 43.5 x 64 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
179. Kasimir Malevich, Haymaking, 1909-1910.
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
180. Mikhaïl Larionov, Smoking Soldier, 1910.
Oil on canvas, 99 x 72 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Twentieth-century Avant-garde and Revolutioary art
A New World of Art
By the 1890s the Society for Itinerant Exhibitions had become so well established that three of its members (Repin, Polenov and Bogoliubov) were invited to draw up a new constitution for the Academy. Then Repin, Shishkin, Kuindzhi and Makovsky were appointed professors. But at the very moment when the Itinerants had succeeded in storming the heights of academia, the Society began to fall apart. Although it continued to hold exhibitions until the 1920s, there was internal bickering about who should be allowed to join or participate in exhibitions, and up-and-coming artists began to regard the Society as backward-looking and no longer a dynamic force. Moreover, new ideas about art were in the air. Realism and populism were out of vogue, replaced by a preoccupation with “art for art’s sake”. This manifested itself in numerous forms, ranging from Impressionism and Russian Art Nouveau to the abstract art of the 1920s and 1930s. As happened elsewhere (for example in France and Germany), the various movements gave rise to a plethora of groups, associations, exhibitions and magazines. Among the most influential of these affiliations was the one known as the World of Art. The World of Art (Mir iskusstva) was founded by a group of young artists, writers and musicians in Saint Petersburg and included Alexander Benois, Konstantin Somov, Leon Bakst, Yevgeny Lanceray, the writer Dmitri Filosov and the future impresario Sergeï Diaghilev, who was intent on “exalting Russian art in the eyes of the West”.
Diaghilev soon proved to be a promoter and motivator with an unusual ability to recognize artistic potential. In 1898, at the age of twenty-six, he staged an exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists, persuading a number of well-known Muscovite painters to participate — among them Korovin, Levitan, Nesterov, Riabushkin, Serov and Vrubel. The following year he launched a monthly magazine, also called Mir iskusstva, notable for the calibre of its principal contributors, which included Benois, Bakst and Igor Grabar. The magazine was only published for six years (until 1904), but partly because of its enthusiasm for the style moderne (as Art Nouveau was called in Russia), it had an immense influence not only on painting but on a variety of art forms.
When the World of Art society was reborn in 1910 (after the period of turmoil that followed the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905), it attracted a new wave of supporters, including Konchalovsky, Kuznetsov, Roerich, Sapunov, Serebriakova, Saryan and Kustodiev. The latter sketched one of their meetings as a preparatory study for a large-scale composition that was going to be “both decorative and realistic, monumental and true to life”. Despite these lofty intentions, it failed to materialize. Artists as diverse as Dobuzhinsky, Maliavin, Tatlin and Chagall took part in the exhibitions that the society organized, the last of which was held in 1924. But the World of Art movement had further ramifications. Diaghilev commissioned a great many members of the group to produce stage and costume designs for his opera and ballet productions, giving them an opportunity to work on a grand scale and to explore analogies between the rhythms of painting, dance and music. And because Diaghilev’s productions toured Europe, it helped them to become known internationally.
181. Vladimir Tatlin, Nude, 1910-1914.
Oil on canvas, 104.5 x 130.5 cm,
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
182. Vladimir Tatlin, Sailor, 1911.
Tempera on canvas, 71.5 x 71.5 cm,
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
183. Leon Bakst, The Blue God, 1912.
Watercolor on paper, National Library,
Museum of the Opera, Paris.
The artists associated with the World of Art were also fortunate in having an imaginative patron, the millionaire merchant Savva Mamontov — memorably portrayed by Vrubel and Serov — who was endlessly hospitable, encouraging them to stay at Abramtsevo, his country estate near Moscow, where he provided a creative environment for them to work. As well as establishing craft workshops, he invited well-known artists to participate in building and decorating a new village church, urged them to decorate pottery and other artefacts produced in the Abramtsevo workshops, and got them to design and paint scenery for his private opera company. Another generous patron was Princess Maria Tenisheva, who set up craft studios on her estate at Talashkino, near Smolensk, and also helped to finance Diaghilev’s magazine. Unfortunately a rift with the Princess, Diaghilev’s high-handedness, plus internal dissensions, contributed to the magazine’s demise.
When Mir iskusstva ceased publication, many artists who had belonged to the World of Art society transferred their allegiance to the Union of Russian Artists, which had been founded the previous year (1903) by disgruntled members from within the World of Art group. That it was based in Moscow was in itself significant. Founded in 1832, the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture had for a long time offered a more flexible and progressive alternative to Saint Petersburg’s Imperial Academy of the Arts. Several of the most influential Itinerants had studied or taught in Moscow, and Moscow painters such as Korovin, Arkhipov, Maliavin, Nesterov, Riabushkin, Yuon and Grabar, all of whom were to a greater or lesser extent influenced by Impressionism, emerged as a distinct group.
The World of Art and the Union of Russian Artists were in effect the forerunners of the most innovative period of Russian art, which spawned a bewildering array of artistic groups and movements, often with bizarre names, among them the Link, the Triangle, the Wreath and the Union of Youth. One of the most seminal was the Blue Rose group, which launched a highly influential monthly magazine, The Golden Fleece. Reviewing their first exhibition, held in March 1907, the Symbolist poet Sergeï Makovsky declared that the group was “in love with the music of colour and line” and described them as the “heralds of the new Primitivism”. Prominent exhibitors included
Larionov and Goncharova (his lifelong companion and collaborator), Kuznetsov, the Miliuti brothers, Sapunov, Saryan and Sudeikin. Among the painters who influenced the group were Vrubel and Victor Borisov-Musatov (1870-1905), whose Symbolist paintings made a huge impression when Diaghilev organized a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1907. The Golden Fleece exhibitions held in 1908 and 1909 were notable for the participation of major French artists, among them Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Fauves and Nabis.
184. Mikhaïl Larionov, The Autumn
(from the Cycle of Seasons), 1912. Oil on canvas,
136.5 x 115 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
185. Vassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
186. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Bathing of a Red Horse, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 160 x 186 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Although Mikhaïl Larionov and Natalia Goncharova had joined the Blue Rose group and been active participators in the Golden Fleece exhibitions, their ideas were constantly evolving. Moreover, Larionov was an organizer of immense energy, and in 1909 the two of them, together with David Burliuk, set up the Knave of Diamonds group (sometimes translated as the Jack of Diamonds), which held its first exhibition in 1910. But before long Larionov and Goncharova felt the need to move on, and organized further exhibitions, as well as artistic debates and other events, including the Donkey’s Tail (1912), Target (1913) and No. 4 — Futurists, Rayonists, Primitives (1914). Most of the Russian avant-garde painters participated in the exhibitions of one or other of these groups — among them Burliuk, Chagall, Exter, Falk, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Konchalovsky, Kuprin, Lentulov, Lissitzky, Malevich, Mashkov and Tatlin.
An offshoot of the Knave of Diamonds was a group known as the Moscow Painters (1924-26), which in turn was succeeded by the Society of Moscow Artists (1927-32). The latter, in particular, was dominated by “Cézannists” and had a noticeable preference for landscape and still life. Falk, Grabar, Krymov, Kuprin and Mashkov were members of both organizations, as was Aristarkh Lentulov (1882-1943), an idiosyncratic innovator who was also an energetic organizer and propagandist. A more eclectic association was the Union of Youth (1910-14), based in Saint Petersburg, which embraced Cézannists, Cubists, Futurists and Non-objectivists. Its literary section, called Hylaea (founded in 1913), formed an important link between writers and artists.
Abstraction
The second decade of the twentieth century marked the start of an accelerating move towards abstraction. In 1913 Larionov published a manifesto explaining the principles of his latest artistic credo — called Rayonism, because its basis was “the crossing of reflected rays from various objects”. Rayonist works ranged from semi-abstract pictures such as Larionov’s Cock and Hen and Goncharova’s The Green and Yellow Forest (1912), to the totally abstract Blue Rayonism, also painted by Larionov in 1912.
Around the same time, Vassily Kandinsky evolved from the style of works such as Boat Trip (see below) to the more fully abstract style of his Improvisations and Compositions, which he painted between 1910 and 1912, in which he tried to free himself almost completely from the weight of space. Then his compositions became increasingly pure, as in Black Spot and Non-Objective. These first non-objective figurations of Kandinsky’s were not appreciated by the public until, little by little, the public finally asked itself how it had managed to live deprived of such art. Effectively, the non-objective paintings gave art a new environment in which to exist, virgin terrain that seemed worth discovering. As of that moment, abstract art became a serious alternative to figurative art.
Like many other pioneers of avant-garde painting, Kandinsky evolved a system of theoretical principles, which played an important role in the development of his work. After the Revolution, he became head of the Painting Department of Inkhuk (the Institute of Artistic Culture) in Moscow, but resigned when his “Symbolist philosophy” failed to be adopted as the basis of the Institute’s teaching program. Kandinsky’s intellectual orientation was above all philosophical; he did not comment on his work but on his ideas. His ideas can be appreciated independently of his paintings, as he managed to build into them reasoning which is as philosophical as it is aesthetic. He then returned to Germany, where he had lived between 1896 and 1914, and was able to put his theoretical ideas into practice when he accepted a teaching post at the Bauhaus in 1922.
187. Alexandra Exter, Still Life, 1917.
Oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm.
188. Alex Rodtchenko, Red and Yellow, 1918.
Oil on canvas, 90 x 62 cm.
189. Kasimir Malevich, Aviator, 1913-1914.
Oil on canvas, 124 x 64 cm,
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
He began work on Small Worlds, where he was confronted with the grandeur of the small and the littleness of the great. He explains this paradox very well in the following declaration: “The whole can be concentrated in a single atom, in its particles, because consciousness is neither big nor small and it is only within consciousness that worlds exist.” For years, Kandinsky’s fame went together with that of the Bauhaus. The spirit of that school corresponded on all points to what the artist had constantly sought: uncompromising professionalism, intellectual finesse as well as Romantic rationalism. He had to leave Germany to escape from the Nazi regime and settled in France. Already at that time, his success was worldwide.
Kasimir Malevich took a different route to abstraction. For a time he worked closely with Larionov and Goncharova, producing delightful Primitivist gouaches with peasant themes. Next came his “tubular” Cubo-Futurist phase, notable for masterpieces such as Haymaking and Taking in the Harvest (1911), which progressively led him towards a less figurative and more “mechanistic” style. Eventually, probably in 1913, he arrived at a system of abstract painting, which he called Suprematism, based on geometric forms. Among the thirty-five abstract works that Malevich made public in 1915 was Black Square, one of the most famous of his Suprematist works. “The keys of Suprematism”, he wrote, “led me to the discovery of something as yet uncomprehended… there is in man’s consciousness a yearning for space and a ‘desire to break away from the earthly globe’.” Malevich worked on his White on White series — arguably the ultimate in Suprematism — from 1917 to 1918. Principle of Painting a Wall: Vitebsk dates from 1919.
Kandinsky’s “Symbolist philosophy” and Malevich’s Suprematism found a rival in Constructivism, the brainchild of Vladimir Tatlin. Indeed, the rivalry between Malevich and Tatlin was such that on several occasions they came to blows. According to Camilla Gray, Tatlin “disliked his stepmother only a little more intensely than his father”. Not surprisingly perhaps, to escape the torment of their relationship, at the age of eighteen he enrolled as a sailor. While in the merchant marine, he learned to paint and produced such memorable pictures as Fishmonger (1911) and Sailor as well as some slightly Picassoesque nudes such as Nude. For a time Tatlin was influenced by Larionov and Goncharova, and worked with them closely. But in 1913 their collaboration came to an end. Deeply impressed by Picasso’s “constructions”, he began that winter to create “painting reliefs” and “relief constructions”, incorporating materials such as wood, metal, glass and plaster, until the distinction between painting and sculpture was effectively submerged. After the Revolution, he played a leading role in the organization of Soviet art, became increasingly interested in technical design, and for the last nineteen years of his life spent much of his time designing a glider, based on his observation of the organic structure of flying insects and the mechanics of insect flight.
In Russia, the 1920s and 1930s were decades of infinite experiment. The array of artists who made major contributions to the development of abstract painting during that period included Nadezhda Udaltsova, Alexandra Exter, El Lissitzky (who produced abstract pictures called “prouns”), Olga Rozanova, Mikhaïl Menkov, Ivan Kliun and Alexander Rodchenko
. Constructivism, in particular, had an impact on other art forms — especially sculpture, architecture and interior design.
190. Mikhaïl Larionov, Cock and Hen, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 69 x 65 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
191. Ivan Pouni, Draft of decoration of the Liteïny prospect, 1918.
Indian ink and watercolour on paper. 38.3 x 34.4 cm.
192. Kasimir Malevich,
Principle of Painting a Wall: Vitebsk, 1919.
Watercolor, gouache and India ink on paper, 34 x 24.8 cm.
193. Ivan Puni, Still Life, Red Violin, 1915.
Oil on canvas, 145 x 115 cm.
194. Mikhaïl Matiouchine, Movement in space, 1922.
Oil on canvas, 124 x 168 cm.
195. Vladimir Kozlinski, The Red Commander, 1920-1921.
Outline Voilà poster, citizens, a striking example,