Author Archives: Brennan Clark

Post Soviet Tatlin

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This was my first time ever looking at post-soviet art, and I was blown away by the creativity and power of both the paintings and the sculptures. I was particularly moved at how the modern pieces provided a more truthful distorted echoed of soviet ideals. Most notably the works seemed to play at the façade of socialist realism, reinventing Soviet art into its more raw reality.

My favorite work from the group that we looked at was Avvakumov, Kuzin and Podyomshchikov’s Worker and Peasant which is a reimagination of a notorious Soviet sculpture we analyzed as a class earlier this semester. Tatlin’s Tower, which was supposed to serve as a monument for the Third International, was going to be erected in Saint Petersburg and have a presence in the city much like that of the Eiffel tower in Paris. The tower was to stand 400 meters high and be a symbol of modernity to all of Russia, showing industrial strength with its constructivist architecture.  However, post-revolution Russia had no steel to lend to this artistic endeavor. It is important to note, this piece was made before socialist realism was indoctrinated, however its artistic meaning similarly was to show then post revolution Russia’s and eventually the Soviet Union’s industrial strength.

Worker and Peasant shows a more honest tower, one that’s unfinished and scaffolded in wood. Whereas Tatlin’s tower is meant to be a monument, Worker and Peasant is instead an unfinished ramshackle. Although Worker and Peasant contains the pieces for what could be a beautiful piece, similar to the Soviet Union in the 90s and 80s, it remains in disrepair, on the verge of collapse. The once great thought shows a different reality at the Union’s collapse.

I was wondering if any of you saw themes or allusions in these contemporary pieces?

Private made Public: ethical?

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Anna: 6 – 18  was a outstanding documentary film, where Mikalkov was able to use his own daughter as a microcosm to show the impact of a radically changing government, and how political instability and ideology penetrates adolescence.  There is a literary device called a metonymy, where a part is used to stand in for a whole: wheels for a car, crown for a king. Mikalkov is attempting to create a metonymy with his daughter, distilling the degrading nation into growing psyche of one of its children.

Although as a piece of art the film was beautiful, I was shocked at Mikalkov’s willingness to use his daughter for public art. Although most of these images weren’t violating privacy, the famous director is still framing and editing an interpretation of his own daughter for a clearly fixed political agenda. He is making the private public for a person who, because of her age, cannot control what her public appearance may be. This is supported by years later Anna stating she felt the film was “a dissection of her private life.”

I understand that this is a very liberal-minded argument, one that I personally don’t fully agree with. But I was wondering if I could open up this conversation to the class and hear other opinions. Did you find it unethical for Mikalkov to exploit intimate family moments with his daughter to create such a film? Or is this under his providence as a father? Or does that sort of publicizing the private not matter at all?

Great Soviet Posters!

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The soviet propaganda posters are all so rich both artistically and visually, I am sad that many of the first years in this course never got a chance to see the wonderful exhibition of soviet propaganda that was in our art museum. Last class when we talked about what “socialist realism” should be, the propaganda posters are perfect illustrations of the doctrine. They show life not as it is but idealized. They are easily understood and serve a distinct purpose of the state. I know given the time frame of our class we won’t have a chance to talk in-depth about each one, so I hope to in my post do a deep dive into one poster.

The poster I want to talk of is from the “Lenin era” specifically the one of the blind man (hopefully it is shown below). The intended message of the poster is written below “An illiterate man is like a blind man. Everywhere failures and misfortunes await him.” Skillfully and subtly, this poster visually fortifies the written meaning. Most notably, the man is walking to the left, which is unnatural to the viewing eye who is used to reading left to right. This motion indicates the man is walking the wrong way, away from the left to right arrow of progress that is the norm. Additionally, the Man is seen with long hair and a beard, perhaps referencing “old believers” and showing their “backwardness.” More so, the visual style of this poster is that of the wood prints we looked at early in the semester, antiquing illiteracy and the illiterate man. Interestingly also, the cliff seen here mirrors that of the statue of the bronze horseman. Whereas in that statue, Peter rears his horse pointing and looking off of the cliff into the modern world, the blind man instead stumbles backwards off of it.

You can see the amount of meaning that these Soviet artists saturated their posters with! It is an incredible form of art, just dripping with cultural meaning. To open this up as a discussion, perhaps people can put in the thread other posters, and historical cultural references they see in them, and how those references are being used under the “socialist realism” doctrine.

 

 

Some background

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I think that Heart of a Dog is a rather hilarious piece in our introduction to the Communist Revolution, more specifically a pointed humorous satire of those bubbling ideas. The book itself as an interesting history, initially not allowed to be published after its completion in 1925. The manuscript was actually taken from Bulgakov, and he had to put an effort in to retrieving the unique copy before the work was trashed! It was only published on Russian soil in 1987.

There is speculation that the book’s plot was loosely based off of a controversial Franco-Russian doctor Serge Voronoff, who experimented with grafting Dog and Monkey testicles to men to “rejuvenate” things like sex drive, basically give older men hormones to be younger. Voronoff grew incredibly wealthy off of his procedures and was a sort of celebrity in French circles. He is even alluded to in a E. E. Cummings poem. On the verge of transplantation science, Voronoff did radically liberal procedures that many today would deem unethical. His xenotransplantations are something straight out of a science fiction book, but yet were a commonly known procedure for the ultra-wealth of the early 20th century.

Bulgakov grabs Voronoff’s ridiculousness and (sorry for the pun) grafts it onto the growing ideas of bolshevisms within Russia. It is no mistake that the drunkard whose parts were transplanted into the dog has Bolshevik sympathies. Bulgakov is crafting a sort of allegory for the transfiguration of the lower class of Russia, those who are uneducated and un-modernized, and showing how ideas of Bolshevisms lead towards those former peasant people absurdly entering “civilized” society.

Hammock Collective

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Eisenstein is really a master at frame composition. There is no shot in this entire film that seems unintentional or wasted. Every single shot has a meaning within the sequence of the rest, as well as every shot, in its own right, is visually interesting and dynamic.

However, I think one of the most iconic shots and the one that lasted the longest in my head after watching the film was that in the beginning of the film of the sailors hanging in hammocks together in the ship. This ship is not only incredibly visually stimulating with many diagonal lines leading the eyes to different edges of the frame, but more importantly it depicts the proletariat work force as a connected web. Each hammock seems to connect to another, linking the workforce. More so, the shirtless men are depicted as vulnerable individually in this state (think of the shot of the young man’s bare back), but because of their numbers and mass in the small room seem imposing. Once the young recruit is whipped, the ripples of that impact echo throughout the whole mass of hammocks, showing how mistreat of one member effects the whole group.

This single shot cements the character group of the working force in the film. Amazingly, it groups together individuals, showing their power as a collective.

Just a black square?

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A work that is at the upmost importance for all of Russian Avante Guarde art is Malevich’s Black Square, which’s perhaps is one of the most famous works of the period. At first glance, one might be puzzled at the piece’s significance or importance—it is literally just a black painted square. But, something that is important to keep in mind with the futurist is that all work needs to be understood with in the historical web of other work. Although some of the pieces may not be as impressive technically as for say Repin, the historical meaning and overarching social critique that the work contains elevates futurist art.

Malevich’s Black Square encapsulates that mantra perfectly. The entirety of the pieces meaning is from its historical context, specifically the Russian tradition of Icon painting. At the exhibition, the painting was placed high in the corner of the room, in the spot traditionally meant for the Icon. By placing a black square there, it is as if Malevich is restarting the artistic Russian tradition, replacing centuries of religious depiction with just the color black. When doing research on the painting, art historian Philip Shaw at the Tate Modern notes the distinct viewing experience of the work: “The experience of viewing the painting thus involves a feeling of pain brought about by the breakdown of representation followed by a powerful sense of relief, even elation, at the thought that the formless or massive can nevertheless be grasped as a mode of reason. In other words, the failure of the black square to represent this transcendent realm serves ‘negatively’ to exhibit the ‘higher’ faculty of reason, a faculty that exists independent of nature.”

I have some unresolved questions about Malevich’s work, perhaps that could be best explored in further discussion of the class or on this bog. By painting the canvas black is Malevich covering up the past traditions? Or by doing so is he allowing space for new artistic growth?

 

The Mad Man and the Dog

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In “Diary of the Madman,” Gogol continues to critique the artificiality of Saint Petersburg society by drawing the narrative into the obscure. Although the ending is where the Mad Man narrator really spirals into insanity, the interactions between the narrator and the dog are particularly meaningful. We know from our historical readings that Saint Petersburg society at the time was based on a titular system, where each citizen had a set place within the social order. Gogol is comparing this system to the relationship of the director’s daughter and her dog to show through this parallel the damaging impact Saint Petersburg’s social structure can have on an individual.

The “superfluous man” narrator seems to have little impact on the society around him and in his workplace. In almost every way he is unnoticed. Similar to how an owner looks at a dog, he is not treated or addressed as an equal. This leads our Mad Man to elaborate on his feelings about dogs, “I’ve long suspected that dogs are far more intelligent than people; I was even convinced that they are able to speak but are only prevented from doing so by their great stubbornness” (164). The Mad Man is projecting his position within society onto the director’s daughter’s’ dog. Just as he writes, so does the dog! Although our Mad Man, as a person, has opinions and a voice to express them, within this absurd Saint Petersburg society he might as well be a not listened to animal.

The Camera and the lovers

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Perhaps it comes with being a Russian major, but I have become obsessed with Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin ever since I first read it. Maybe it is that the story found me at a certain moment of fleeting youth. Just as Eugene laments at his youthful years passing, it is hard for me not to reflect on my own time here at Bowdoin. I don’t think about the time I have wasted, but instead about the tragedy Pushkin points out: that no matter how the time was spent there is no way to recover it. I believe that why Eugene Onegin is as resonating today as it was when it was first published has much to do with the story’s conclusion. Much like Eugene and Tatiana must reflect on their choices, their missed timings, their youthful rashness, we too realize that the decisions of our past stalk our present, decisions which are impossible to renege.

Any visual adaptation is left with a near impossible task of how to portray the ending of Eugene Onegin, its tragic conclusion of the two old lovers coming to terms with their unbraided fates. Within the verse of the poem, the author’s self-reflection and interruption of the prose provides a fitting conclusion, “oh, much, to much you’ve stolen, Fate!”

The opera we watched for class lacks this narrator like voice, instead granting the viewer a sense of conclusion using cinematographic techniques. In the final scene of the movie where Tatiana and Eugene meet each other again, the camera intentionally alters between shots of them together and displaying them separately as individuals. This tension between who is included in the frame echoes the dialogue and turmoil between the two lovers. By bouncing between shots of them together and their individual faces the film develops tension in the visual space. The frame separates and pulls together the fated lovers, much like two different sides of a magnet. This tension persists till the film’s ending, were the two are separated on either side of the door, the closing shot altering between Eugene’s face and Tatiana’s. By concluding the film as such, the opera fortifies visually the two lover’s ultimate separation.

You do not know how to die

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“You are a slave within the borders of this country but beyond them you are free.” (274)

Radishchev’s Journey is a haunting but important reminder to the harsh realities of Russian life to those who were enslaved and less fortunate. Much of our class we have been studying and focusing on the life of the aristocrats of Russian society—which is very rich in its artistic output and cultural significance. However, the lives of these important few are far from representing the majority of the population. Radishchev’s Journey is not only a product of the growing political resentment found in some of the stories we have read and the films we have watched, but it also realizes and historicizes the stories and mistreatment of the peasants.

In perhaps one of the most intense sections of our reading, Radishchev graphically critiques Russian society for its hypocritical practices against the Christian faith, specifically describing a sale of serfs. On life of a serf Radishchev writes, “Hunger, cold, heat, punishment, everything will be against you. Noble thoughts are foreign to you. You do not know how to die. You will bow down and be a slave in spirit as in estate.” (273) Importantly, Radishchev describes the torturous life of the serf more than just that of physical turmoil—of sweat and blood—but also depicts a spiritual and emotional damage. Quite plainly what Radishchev describes is torture beyond that of the flesh.

Radishchev does just that which he describes. On speaking of injustice, Radishchev writes, “then even a thought shakes its (the government’s) foundations; a word of truth will destroy it; a manly act will scatter it to winds” (270). By writing and then publishing the truth Radishchev makes sure that the mistreatment of the serfs—and not just the physical turmoil—does not go forgotten. Instead, Radishchev reveals the emotional and spiritual consequences of the mistreatment of the peasants.