Early Morning Discussions: John E. Bowlt : Esoteric Culture and Russian Society

One of 19 essays in the catalog of "Abstract Art : Abstract Painting 1890-1985" ..for the 1986 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Ivan Kliun, untitled, 1923, 16 x 12"

The creative wealth and diversity of the Russian avant-garde (the constellation of artists that contributed to Russia’s cultural renovation just before and after 1917) is indicated by the enormous range of aesthetic and philosophical ideas that they formulated and practiced. One of the central concerns of the modernist artists in Russia was the exploration of nonobjective painting, an exploration that found its most elegant conclusions in the Improvisations and Compositions of Wassily Kandinsky, the Suprematism of Ivan Kliun and Kazimir Malevich, the Painterly Formulae of Pavel Mansurov, the architectonic paintings of Liubov Popova, and the Constructivist paintings of Aleksandr Rodchenko. There were many artistic systems operative in the Russian avant-garde, and many artists are still unfamiliar , especially of the "second generation" during the 1920s — for example, Kliment Redko and Konstantin Vialov. There can be no question that, from the beginning of their careers, all these artists were exposed to the spiritual in art, especially because many facets of their culture still reflected the esoteric concerns of Symbolism. But the curious fact remains that only one of the major avant-garde painters, Kandinsky, maintained a consistent and studious interest in psychic phenomena, arguing at all points of his development that any investigation into the creative process must be undertaken with the help of both scientists and occultists.

With no mention of painting in the title - and several other essays in this catalog covering the Russian avant-garde - I was intending to skip this one — until I read the above first paragraph. Kliun, Rodchenko, Mansurov, Popova, and Bialov were all new names for me. AND - the word "elegant" appears in the second sentence. Will this be the rogue art historian who actually shares aesthetic feeling? To top it off - the author confirms what I suspected: most of these Russian artists did NOT have a"consistent and studious interest in psychic phenomena". Is it too snarky to call it a passing fad ? It might have become more without the militant materialism of the Russian revolution - but once a life is devoted to painting, why confine expression to any other kind of spiritual practice?

Ivan kliun, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1910, 13 x 11"

As it turns out - no - the author will not tell us how he feels about paintings. Instead, his focus is on social/cultural context - especially the Symbolist movement of which the above is a beautiful, though piteous, example. Consumptive women were apparently a typical Symbolist subject matter. I’ve never seen fatal illness so beautifully depicted.

(The above piece was included in the catalog - but since this author does not discuss specific paintings, there’s no point in sticking with the catalog for examples.

Disciplining and improving the body through Yoga practices, including fasting, and gymnastics was also a ritual of preparation for the day of awakening when the converted would be summoned to make the final journey, the ultimate pilgrimage. The theme of the long and arduous journey, of vagabondism and nomadism assumes an added significance in the context of Russian bohemia. Whether genuine pilgrimages (Filonov's trip to the Holy Land in 1908), spasmodic meanderings (Khlebnikov's treks across Russia), nostalgia for the steppes (Kuznetsov), marathon marches across the Caucasus (Gurdjieff), artistic grand tours (Petrov-Vodkin's bicycle trip to Western museums in 1901), or simply the "mobility and instability of the Russian social mass, ", the rootlessness of the Russian bohemians was a prominent and important element. Artistic researches coincided with physical searches, a condition that lasted right up until the late 1920s when one writer referred to the "tramp-like and nomadic tribe" of the Soviet intelligentsia

Above is a typical snippet of text. No special interest in either paintings of spiritual practices - just relevant biographical details - such as a gossip columnist might record.

So let’s just go through the artists who get mentioned - continuing with Kliun:

Kliun, Composition, 1920 , 29 x 15"

A certain kind of tension keeps these elements in a balance

eternally ephemeral.

They could fly apart at any moment -

but they don’t

Ivan Kliun, Red Light, Spherical Composition, 1923, 27 x 27"

Not much here for the mind to measure. The red light is slightly oft-center above - but it’s dead-center in the catalog’s illustration - who knows which is correct.

Kliun, Composition With Three centers, 1932, 26 x 18"

Sure reminds me of Kandinsky from that period.

Pavel Mansurov, Composition 181, 1918, 9 x 15"

A graphic haiku

Pavel Mansurov, 1931, 70 x 12"

Pavel Mansurov (1896-1973), 1969, 57 x 27" (Formule Pictorale)

Love the interaction with the uneven edge of the wood panel

Mansurov, 1972

According to one source: " Mansurov was head of the theoretical section of the Institute of Artistic Culturee in Petrograd. In the sixth point of his 1923 “Declaration,” he states the following: “Down with religion, the family, aesthetics, and philosophy” (p. 206)"

The cultural atmosphere of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the first decade of the twentieth century was so highly charged with the Symbolist ether that it was virtually impossible for young artists to escape its effects, either visual or philosophical. Filonov, Kliun, Mikhail Larionov, Malevich, and even Rodchenko began their careers as Symbolist painters, and some of their pieces of the 1900s, such as Kliun's Portrait of the Artist's Wife, 1910, and Malevich's Woman in Childbirth,1908, are compelling manifestations of the Russian style moderne, or Art Nouveau, reliant on the conventional, if still esoteric vocabulary of consumptive maidens, embryos, lotuses, lilies, and so forth.

In fact, during his attendance at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1904-5 and at Fedor Rerberg's studio in Moscow during 1905-10, Malevich became deeply interested in the metaphysical concerns of the Blue Rose group of Symbolist painters led by Pavel Kuznetsov; he even tried to participate in their single exhibition in March-April 1907. The motif of women and embryos that appears in some of his early works, such as Woman in Childbirth and The Nymphs, 1908 , relates directly to the concurrent Symbolist interpretation of woman as the incarnation of a higher, purer, more spontaneous realm, as refracted variously in the poetry of Vladimir Solovev and Blok and in the concurrent paintings of mothers and babies by Kuznetsov. The Blue Rose artists aspired to capture and register ulterior reality through their allusive vocabulary of

So now let’s take a look at the paintings associated with Symbolism:

Kazimir Malevich, Nymphs (Oak and Dryads), 1908, 13 x 13"

A strange and wonderful piece. Pictorial space is utterly destroyed in that world centered on the big red tree trunk. Were psychedelics involved?

Kazimir Malevich, Woman in Childbirth, 1908, 9 x 10 "

The Malevich shown above is at least as interesting as his Suprematist works. It’s like expressionism, but it’s so upbeat - a happy woman with child - a familiar theme in Christian art - but this is not Christian.

Pierre Bonnard, Woman Pulling on her Stockings, 1893

Here’s something similar from 10 years earlier,

probably too relaxed and ordinary, though, to call it Symbolism

Pavel Kunetsov (1878-1968), Birth, 1906, 28 x 26"

A similar theme by the leader of the Blue Rose Group - proclaimers of Symbolism.

Fedor Rerberg (1865-1938), On the Boulevard 190(3 or 5), 10 x 13"

capturing bourgeoise ladies having a moment in the park.

We’re told Malevich frequented his studio.

Viktor Borisov-Musatov (1870-1905), Phantoms, 1903

An artist for whom "Symbolism was a primary component of a world view". It recalls, for me, Bocklin’s famous Isle of the Dead — or maybe a book cover for Romantic pulp fiction.

Ciurlionis, Creation of the World III, 1905-6

Also referred to as essentially a Symbolist -

this Lithuanian composer appears to have migrated to non-objective painting even before Malevich.

Mikhail Vrubel. (1856-1910), Demon Downcast, 1902, 55 x 152"

Without the identifiable figures and stuff,

this is angst fueled Abstract Expression

or maybe cover art for a death metal album.

The artists detailed in this essay represented but a very small component of the Russian avant-garde. If their work can be associated, although not filled, with mystical content, the concurrent paintings of Gustav Klucis, Lissitzky, Popova, Olga Rozanova, Sergei Senkin, and the constructions of Rodchenko, the Sternberg brothers (Georgi and Vladimir), and Tatlin stand almost outside this context. If the antimystical statement of Lef (Left front of the arts) in 1924 means anything, most members of the postrevolutionary avant-garde would be highly indignant at being linked with the occult traditions of the fin de siècle, as Mansurov implied in 1981. The pioneers of abstract art in Russia did not consistently and continuously support systems of higher meditation in the way that Blavatsky, Gurdjeff, and Ouspensky did. We should beware of regarding the art of the avant-garde as a pictorial counterpart to the esoteric teachings of the time. Still, it is highly improbable that without this mosaic of ideas, without this mystical impetus, artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich, and Matiushin would have created the innovations that they did or would have linked their abstractions with the world of the future. For them, painterliness was next to godliness. Ultimately, the exact correlation between the spirit and its embodiment is impossible to determine, and we must remain content with allusions, insinuations, and veiled connections; after all, these are the essential ingredients of the spiritual in art.

Allusions- insinuations- veiled connections.

If that identifies the spiritual in art - what art does not have it?

Examples follow for the seven artists mentioned above:

Gustav Klucis (1895-1938)

So socialist - and so spaced out.

Olga Rozanova (1886-1918), 32x 29", 1916-17

Just a bit too serious than the jazzed up urban sophistication of Stuart Davis.

El Lissitsky (1890-1941) A Proun, 1925

Lyubov Popova, Spatial Force Construction, 1920-21, 44 x 44"

This one’s a killing machine.

Sergei Senkin (1894-1963). 1921, Non Objective Composition

Alexander Rodchenko, Dance, 1915

Could have been made yesterday

Stenberg Brothers, 1925, Kamerny Theatre, 28 x 42"

Belongs in the poster hall of fame.

Vladimir Tatlin, relief, 1916-17, 24 x 21"

Mystical or not- they do seem to proclaim the emergence of a new social order - and a new man to populate it. Some of these artists identified with suprematism - others with Constructivism.

The author does not discuss them, but Suprematism seems to present a highly organized energy emerging from the void (the blank canvas). Constructivism seems to reflect the new, angular, organized world that has been built.

There certainly seems to be an intense idealism that the more personal non-figurative painting of our era does not share.

... for Malevich, Kliun, and their colleagues Symbioism was a transitory concern. Filonov, Larionov, and Rodchenko, affected by the mood of the fin de siècle, also transmuted their spiritual lexicons, expanding them far beyond the confines of the Symbolist program. It is precisely this extension and reprocessing of occult ideas that is of great relevance to the premise of spirituality in abstract art. Consciously or unconsciously the avant-garde developed affirmatory, practicable systems from the often disparate thoughts of the Symbolists. They asserted "optimism of feeling"and linked their art to everyday life, as with Natalia Goncharova and Larionov's Neoprimitivism, or to broad social, utilitarian issues, as with Malevichs and Tatlin's design projects. They created a credible doctrine out of the "haze of the unspoken.

David Burliuk mentions those two neoprimatives here in the Blue Rider Almanac - and examples are shown in that post.

Ciurlionis - Summer Iii

Ciurlionis , Day

Valley of the Green Giant?

A vital argument espoused by Symbolists and to some extent by particular artists of the avant-garde, above all Kandinsky, was that the more an art form aspired toward music, the closer it approached the ultimate revela-tion, whereas the more spatial or material it was (for example, architecture), the more static and distant it became. This explains, in part, their fascination with the musical painter Ciurlionis, who, in "fusing time and space" created his pictorial symphonies from the "boom of the waves and the mysterious language of the age-old forest, from the twinkling stars, from our songs and our immeasurable grief."Like Kulbin and Matiushin, Ciurlionis sensed the presence of a titanic strength in natural phenomena not only in the more obvious manifestations such as lightning or a tree bending in the wind but also in those phenomena that are ostensibly serene but are in fact variable and dynamic. That is one reason why Ciurlionis "humanized" some of his landscapes, imbuing trees and clouds with anthropomorphic forms (for example, Day, 1904-5, and part 3 of Summer, 1907), thereby symbolizing the supernatural, gargantuan force inhabiting every component of the natural world. This concept of the inner energy of nature underlay the philosopher Berdiaev's argument that "painting is passing from physical bodies to ether and astral ones. The terrifying pulverization of the material body began with Vrubel. The transition to the other plane can be sensed in Ciurlionis. "Berdiaev, Bely, and Ivanov might have praised Ciurlionis for his advance toward the "global orchestra," but the artists of the avant-garde actually had little patience with him. Alexei Grishchenko, a pupil of Tatlin and one of the first to write about the connections between modern Russian art and Byzantine art, responded to Berdiaev by dismissing Curlionis, "who for me and any real painter is just individualistic-synthetic nonsense. "

Here are some pieces by Alexei Grishenko (1883-1971)

Possibly in chronological order -

the later two are after 1930.

The dismissive quote about Ciurlionis was published in 1922.

Ivan Kudriashev, Luminescence, 1926, 42 x 28

Kliment Redko, 1897-1956

Kliment Redko, Abstract Space, 1921, 20 x 27"

Both of the above examples by Redko feel visionary - as in a special moment of revelation.

Serge Charchoun, Movement of a Painted Film Based on a Folk Song, 1917, 18 x 13"

Bowlt admits that Charchoun really does not belong in an essay about art in Russia: the artist spent his entire career elsewhere,. But this piece is too wacky to be ignored. It’s facial structure is like nothing else in this catalog

One of the most sophisticated distribution centers of this wisdom was the Society of Free Aesthetics. Founded in 1906 on the Bolshaia Dmitrovka in downtown Moscow, the Society of Free Aesthetics arranged lectures, exhi-bitions, and dinner parties, and most of Moscow's artists and patrons visited it.

Under the leadership of Bely and Briusov, the society did much to propagate Symbolism, although it broadened its interests considerably after 1909-10, when mercantile members began to "raise their voices."se The intellectual membership of the society was domi- nated by painters and musicians, including all the Blue Rose artists; the painters Goncharova, Larionov, Vasili Perepletchikov, Valentin Serov, and Yakulov; and the musicians Leonid Sabancev and Scriabin, both highly esteemed by Kandinsky. Like other cultural clubs in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the society inspired a continuous cross-fertilization among the representatives of various disciplines, something that resulted in many joint projects. The society lasted until 1917, when it closed, as Bely recalls, because of an "excess of lady millionaires. "

Here are the visual artists mentioned above.

None of them were especially committted to non-objective painting -

though some occasionally did it.:

Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964), self portrait 1910

Which might be compared to the more intense self portrait of another artist born in 1881:

Picasso: self portrait 1907

Valentin Serov (1865-1911) Portrait of Princess Olga Orlova, 1911

A wonderful figurative painter whose works I will probably never see.

Georgy Yakulov (1884-1928), Spring, 1915

Vasiliy Pereplyotchikov. (1863-1918), Peka, Boat in the Water, 1898

Reminds me of early Mondrian.

Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962). Rayonist Lilies, 1913

For some reason, Rayonism never conquered the mainstream like Cubism - perhaps because it’s more enjoyable.

Two impressive contributions to Iskusstvo were devoted to the art of Japan and Mexico: seventeen photographs of old-master Japanese paintings and twenty-three photographs of Mexico taken by the Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. Their appearance coincided with a growing tendency to document and research primitive and oriental cultures rather than to regard them as merely colorful phenomena alluring to the Western palate, as in Bakst's interpretation of Schéhérazade of 1910 or Somov's honeyed illustrations to One Thousand and One Nights. The oriental aspect of early Russian modernism has yet to be studied in depth and, no doubt, further investigation will establish valuable precedents to Kulbin's Buddhism of 1910 and Goncharova and Larionov's praise of the East in 1912-13. It is known that Yakulov's simultanist perception of space and light derived from his experiences in Manchuria in 1904-5; Kuznetsov and Martiros Sarian, the "Russian Gauguinists, "49 traveled extensively in Kirghiz and Armenia as they were producing their Symbolist masterpieces; and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin painted his strong impressions of North Africa in 1910 just as the first reproductions of Assyrian drawings appeared in Kulbin's book, Studita impressionistov (Studio of the Impressionists). Such disparate experiences, part of the entire complex of Russian orientalism, prepared the ground for the general assessment of the East as a receptacle of mystical truth and for the more down-to-earth statements of the Neoprimitivists to the effect that "[we] aspire toward the East... [and] protest against servile subservience to the West. "