Proletarians, Painters and Propagandists

The Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2017

The poet Vladimir Kirillov vowed to ‘burn up Raphael for our Tomorrow’s sake’ but didn’t say what would come next. The Bolsheviks’ was a supremely didactic revolution, intended to produce a new kind of man. Artists were ready to help out. Even before the revolution, painters such as Kazimir Malevich had taken abstraction to new extremes, pursuing what he called the ‘zero of form’—a rejection of everything that had gone before and a timely anticipation, it might be thought, of the Bolshevik ‘year zero’ that lay just ahead.

‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932’ (Royal Academy Publications, 320 pages, $65) is a beautifully illustrated account of art that followed upon, but was ultimately discarded by, the revolution. It closes with a 1932 exhibition commemorating the artists of the new order’s first 15 years, a swan song for an avant-garde rapidly being eclipsed by the inspiring banality of Socialist Realism.

While “Revolution” focuses on painting, the lavishly produced ‘Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test’ (Art Institute of Chicago, 324 pages, $65)takes a broader approach with regard to types of artistic expression, documenting theater productions, posters, periodicals and other ephemera as well as painting, photography and design. The works are often of remarkable quality, raising uncomfortable questions about how we are to regard great art that was the accomplice of totalitarianism.

The earlier part of ‘Moscow Vanguard Art: 1922-1992’ (Yale, 278 pages, $55) highlights the debate between those who pushed art’s frontiers forward toward Utopia and those who believed that the masses needed something more easily understood. Stalin, no Utopian, took the latter side, to the delight of artists such as Evgeny Katsman: After a meeting in 1933 to discuss this controversy with the Soviet leader, Katsman rhapsodized in his diary over Stalin’s ‘sweet face’—a vision that only a Socialist Realist could see.